Lesson 10: Treatment is something you have to do for yourself

Just like having faith in God is a personal issue, treatment is another one of those things that while you get support from those around you, it is ultimately up to you. I've been relearning this concept over and over again, and especially lately.

When I've been finding myself in low days or ruts, the defining moment of my day isn't the feelings I have throughout, but what I DO with those thoughts, feelings, and resulting actions. For example, I have the option of taking my thoughts captive, dwelling on my thoughts until they consume me, bringing God into the situation to ask for help, or finding as many friends to text as I can.

As much as I love my friends and all they do to support me, the responses I know will get me the best results are the ones where my focus is returned to God no matter what. This is really a struggle for me sometimes - I like to have attention on my problems because it gives me the sense that people care, so when I take it just to God and have no one to commiserate with, it is hard for me to really work things out. Part of that comes from the last lesson of pushing God away. It's a daily choice whether we will pick up our cross and follow Him, but that choice can change the entire course of our day.

And this brings me back to treatment (and faith) being our own personal issue. Here's the deal: yes, we are created to be relational and to share in one another's burdens. BUT that does NOT mean that we simply unload everything onto someone else and do nothing ourselves. It is good to have people that will pray for you and hold you accountable (even counselors do this), but when they replace God and your own efforts in your life, things start to spiral down very quickly until those relationships crash and burn.

If you have a support system like mine, you probably hear quite often that you need to take things to God, find time to be in the Word, pray, and ask for His help in choosing Him every day. And if you're like me, sometimes you cringe at those responses because you wanted someone to have a pity party with you. BUT in the end, those responses are exactly what you need to get yourself back in gear and get your focus back on God. Between you and Him, there is nothing (even treatment and recovery) that is impossible!!

Lesson 7: You only get out of treatment what you put into it

When I first started treatment, it was almost out of desperation - I needed help and would take it from almost anywhere that could guarantee me I would be feeling better soon. I find this is the case with a lot of people I have talked to about their experiences with treatment. What a lot of people don't realize going into it is how hard treatment is going to be. It's not laying on a couch and just saying whatever comes to mind like we so often see portrayed in movies. In reality, you are asked to really think critically about situations you find yourself in, analyze your thoughts and feelings and where they come from, and often even get 'homework' of sorts that needs to be completed by the next session.

Now, all of this is also dictated by you. Yes, the therapist is going to give you things they want you to do, and they're going to ask questions and such; but ultimately, what you give them to work with determines how much help you can recieve from them. If you never want to say anything in your sessions, that's fine. It can take time to get to a place where you trust your therapist enough to talk openly with them. Just know that if you don't say anything, they don't know anything about your situation and can't help you as easily as they otherwise could. They also aren't going to force anything out of you - they make ask a lot of questions, but no one can get more information from you than you are willing to give. With this in mind, take the chance to test the waters a little bit - see how much you are able to handle sharing - instead of diving in all at once.

Ok, with the 'homework' mentioned before - don't get discouraged. It's not overwhelming and it's not even really an assignment. Think of it more as a part of your every day routine that is going to get you living healthy. Whether your therapist asks you to keep track of your mood at various times throughout the day, schedule yourself for a massage, journal, work out, or look into using a new medication, if you look at these things as ways to improve your overall health and well-being, they won't be a burden. Over time you'll start to see how all of these things not only become routine, but actually help you to process things better and get a better idea of how you live your life (and things that need to change).

Even if treatment so far has seemed hopeless or you don't see yourself making progress, you are! It takes practice and time to understand how all of this works, and after living with something like depression, a healthy lifestyle is very hard to attain. Have patience, do your best, but remember, you're not getting anything out of something that you never put anything into.

⁶ Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 2 Corinthians 9:6

It's Time You Knew

Disclaimer: While this post is long, I feel it is important that you read all of it. To those of you who know me, whether it is really well or hardly at all, this post is different from really anything I've written for public eyes before. Be aware that it touches on some heavy subjects and if you have anything come up that you want to talk about after reading it, please don't hesitate to contact me!

 

It's Time You Knew

 

Sitting there in that office, I was making one of the hardest decisions of my life. It was the second semester of my second year of college. I had tested out of a full year of school, making me a junior already; but now I was faced with a choice. Was all that hard work to get ahead really worth it? What would it mean if I gave it all up now? Here was my choice: Do I stay in school and finish out this semester at my university, or do I take medical leave and check myself into a residential treatment center for the depression I had been living with since I was 14 years old?

People’s opinions about my decision swirled around in my head as I tried to weigh out the pros and cons of each of the options I had. What would my parents think? That I was a hopeless case? That they had messed up too much to have a successful daughter? What would my teachers think? Well, quite honestly, it was more like ‘What will I think of myself if I let down these teachers who have put so much time and energy into my education?’ What would my friends think? Oh, I already knew what they thought. They kept telling me they would understand whatever decision I needed to make, but was that really true? I wasn’t so sure. As much as they said they would understand, they also kept telling me how wrong it would feel to be at school without me. I knew, though, that eventually they would get over it and soon it would be as if I had never been there with them in the first place. Deep down, though, I knew the answer I was really searching for: Would I be able to live with the results of leaving school for a semester and having my secret, private life be made known to everyone I knew on campus? The prospect of that scared me because as much as I would have liked to believe that people would be understanding and supportive, I feared more that they would judge me, think there was something wrong with me, and criticize me for being too weak to keep going.

As I sat in the office with my outpatient counselor patiently drawing an answer out of me, I couldn’t get my feelings straight. Finally I found a moment of peace and said, “I don’t think inpatient treatment is right for me right now. I am going to stay in school for the semester and just really focus on my treatment as it is. I know the inpatient option is always there if I ever do need it.” She looked at me with eyes that told me she was the epitome of sincerity. She affirmed my decision and the conversation moved on to what needed to happen next.

As we talked my mind was still sprinting in all directions with questions of how things even got to this point, what made it come to this decision even having to be made, and was I searching for my answers in the place I knew I could find them. For the rest of the evening I kept turning those same three questions over and over in my head until I was relatively satisfied with the answers.

How did things even get to this point?  Well, that one I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be honest about. For years I had lived with depression being the only way of living I understood. Even before I knew I had depression, I knew there was something wrong with me that kept me from living the way most other kids did. Why couldn’t I be carefree and love being around people? Why did one little word have to ruin my whole day? Why was I so terrible at making friends and keeping them? I have come to know now that the depression was not an excuse for all of these things, simply an explanation. As I learned more about the way depression works, it became more and more clear that I had grown up with depression ruling every area of my life as much as I had been trying to fight or deny it. I had put up a front and pretended for so long that everything was perfect in my world that it became what I truly believed. Instead of facing the things that tried to tear me down, I rejected their existence and even the fact that God existed in the midst of my problems.

I had been raised in a Christian home, attended a Christian school my whole life, and truly loved the church my family called home. I learned the truth of God’s Word from a very young age, and there was no question that God had proven His faithfulness to me time and time again. So why, then, was it so hard for me to be authentic and vulnerable with Him? Maybe because I was afraid of what the people around me would think. My perception of some members of my church and school was that they expected no one to have struggles and judged those who were open about struggles they did have. I realize now that my thinking that way was wrong, and that has given me a lot of freedom in being vulnerable with those God has placed in my life. Maybe it was because I didn’t understand that God had allowed my life to be the way it was for a reason. I spent many years going back and forth between feeling God’s presence all around me to being bitter and rejecting God, having too much pride to admit I needed His help and even convincing myself that He clearly didn’t care about my life anyway. I let that bitterness invade my relationships with classmates and even my parents. It tore my family in two, especially the way I behaved in regards to my own dad. I refused to recognize the efforts he made to make my life as great as it was and only looked at the things that he had done to cause me pain and heartbreak. I see now that everything under the sun has a purpose for its happening. There is some reason God allowed me to experience a life with depression, emotional and verbal abuse, bullying, social anxiety, and self-image problems. I don’t believe that these experiences bring God glory and make Him pleased; rather, it is what we do with these experiences to be a witness of His faithfulness through our many trials that bring glory to His kingdom. There is nothing I could say or do without His being in it. He was in these experiences with me and was working in them every single moment to teach me how to use my life for the purpose it was created – His purpose, to bring His children into His kingdom.

So then, how did I get to this point of having to make this seemingly impossible decision? In the midst of my experiencing depression, I had encountered what it means to feel as though my life was worthless. As much as I would push the thoughts out of my mind, they took root and infiltrated my thinking to the point of wanting to take my own life. My first plan of suicide came when I was 16, a sophomore in high school, with so much going for me that no one would have believed what was going on under the surface. I had two friends who were willing to face the reality with me and prayed for me when I couldn’t pray for myself. I am still thankful to them to this day that God saved me from what I almost did to myself that night. After that I was pretty stable for a couple of years. Then my senior year of high school came and I was overwhelmed by everything that involved. So much of it was full of joy, but a lot of it was filled with the prospect of missing all these friends I had finally come to know, leaving the only atmosphere I had ever lived in, and facing the uncertainty of all the years yet to come. I made a lot of decisions during that year without allowing God to be a part of them. I lived out of fake authenticity and became very good at hiding the fact that I had any problems at all – except to my closest friends. To them, I made some of my problems bigger than reality in hopes that I would gain their attention. It was almost like my cry for help without really knowing that that was what I was doing. Many times during that year I thought of ending my life, just wishing everything I was feeling – frustration, confusion, helplessness – would go away forever and leave me be. That’s all I wanted – to just BE, whatever that meant.  I sought help in two teachers at my high school who I knew I could trust, and I finished my senior year and graduation with the appearance that I was in love with life and all that was laid out before me.

When I arrived in River Falls, WI, to begin my freshman year of college, I knew it was time to allow my true self to come forward, but I didn’t know how to do that. I made some friends and got connected in a Bible study right away, but I fell into my old patterns of keeping up appearance. I got worn out – really worn out – and by the end of the first semester I could feel things changing again. I was miserable my second semester, barely keeping my head above the water, but kept pushing on with no one suspecting a thing. Several times that semester I had contemplated ending my life, but I couldn’t bear to think of what it would do to the last few people I knew loved me. Summer came and went and I started my second year at UWRF even worse off than the last. I was low to the point that I wasn’t even sure I could handle school. I found myself being honest with another friend and telling her what I had been living through the previous year and where I was at now. For a while, things were good. I had friends close by, was enjoying my classes, and was actually feeling pretty good about things; but I started to notice this cycle of low weeks and my coping skills were just not there to handle them. By November, I was at rock bottom.  I remember that night so vividly it hurts. I was within seconds of taking an entire bottle of Tylenol when I just broke down. I was shaking, couldn’t breathe, panicking. I called a friend in North Dakota and she told me I had to find someone on campus to get to me right away. I texted a girl in my Bible study and she found me in my room hardly able to stand. That night was lower than I’ve ever been.

The next morning I went to the counseling center on campus and was referred off campus because of the severity of my case. I started outpatient treatment for severe depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation on December 1, 2011. I also had my mom come over that evening so I could share with her everything I had been feeling for the past six years. Within weeks I was making incredible progress, and I went on to do very well in school that semester. J-term break was definitely a challenge, but I kept people around me who knew what was going on to support me. We arrived back at school for the spring semester, and the transition into routine was really a challenge. The cycles of low weeks had continued and I found myself isolating much of the time – wanting to be alone, do nothing, sleep constantly – and one afternoon I ran away from campus and refused to answer calls when people came looking for me. Thankfully I hadn’t intended on harming myself, but nonetheless, I knew it was time for a wake-up-call. That night, I found myself being taken to the emergency room, stripped of any pride I had left, and weak enough to just let what happened happen. That’s all it took – I was shocked into knowing I wanted my life to change from that point forward because I couldn’t take being under the scrutiny of all that happened in the ER that night. So that is what led me to the outpatient counselor’s office for this decision.

Being in the ER that night made me realize I had been drawing on only my strength, still keeping secrets from the people I loved and those who loved me. By then I had told my dad, too, what was going on, and I had found a friend in one of the professional staff on campus who I knew was praying for me and there for encouragement any time I needed her. But I also knew that my strength alone was no match for this terrible, haunting depression that had become my normal; and I knew I wanted nothing more to do with it than to let it be a way for God to help others find His love, grace, hope and faithfulness.  That day when I was released from the hospital into the care of my roommates, I knew things had to change, and they have. In the last few months I have repeatedly asked God to help get me through the inevitable low days, I’ve learned the things I should be doing to cope with them when they come, and I have made progress that even I sometimes can’t believe is possible.

Thanks to God and a few close friends, my life is starting to make a difference. Every time I hear of another person lost to suicide because they don’t know how much their life means to the other people around them, I am struck by the sheer tenacity I have found in allowing others to see my pain. I pray that by sharing all of this someone somewhere would be saved from a life so miserable they feel it can only get better by ending it. I am thankful for every experience God has allowed me to have, simply for the reason that it gives Him another chance to make His love and faithfulness known. Yes, there are still days when life gets me down – but it’s not about those low moments. They are moments, not a definition of your entire life!

My last words to you are this: if you are finding yourself feeling the way I described in all of this, please don’t continue to face life alone. We were created to need each other and to need God. If you need someone you can trust to help you through this, know that I am making myself completely available, any time any place. But if it can’t be me, please seek out someone it can be. Don’t keep making things look ok when really you are barely holding up inside. Life is worth living, and you are worth more than life itself. If you’re reading this, know that there is at least one person, a college student in River Falls, WI, who loves you possibly without even knowing you, and that God knows you and loves you in a way that is unfathomable. Know that I am praying for you and here if you ever need it.

<3 Kelly