Antidepressants & Grace Upon Grace
I'm supposed to be studying for my first test in grad school that's coming up, but this seems to be the only thing I can think about tonight. I kept thinking I would write about this later when I seemed to have it all figured out, but this is my life currently and I'm living it and I'm learning. So here it is, in real time. I think sometimes there's something really important about being open during the process of the things you're going through—even if it isn't wrapped up in a pretty ending with a bow on top.
I started taking an antidepressant in December. That was hard enough for me to tell my family and closest friends; I never thought I'd write that sentence for anyone to read who finds themselves on this blog. There is such a stigma against mental health, and I think keeping quiet about depression and the fact that I take a little pill every night adds to the stigma. I understand why some people choose not to disclose something like that, and if someone doesn't want to be open about their personal struggles I wouldn't fault them or think any less of them. For me, I've realized the things I try to hide and keep to myself somehow are always wrapped up in shame, and I would say there's a lot of shame that comes along when you're wrestling with yourself when your mind doesn't seem right. When it doesn't seem like something you can control. If I've learned anything about shame, the most important is that it's only as strong as the silence it creates, so I realized the secret to kicking shame in the balls was to talk about the things it tries to keep quiet. Depression is one of those things for me.
Depression has been the quiet shadow that's followed me around my entire life, but it always seemed mild and I always did a decent job at functioning or pulling myself out of it when it got too heavy sometimes. I wrote it off as maybe I'm just someone who feels too much. I never wanted to call it what it was and I hid it really well. I would just say I was in a "funk" or something softer because depression scares people. From what I have gathered and observed, it seems like people either automatically think depression=suicidal or that you're making it up and you should just pull it together. I was one of those people that assumed the latter for a long time. I regret concluding that so easily without having actually known what depression was capable of.
It started to get bad in the Summer and gradually got worse through the Fall. I didn't even recognize myself in the Winter. I tried everything I could think of to help and avoid medication. Yoga, meditation/praying, worship, believing for healing, exercise, writing, counseling. E v e r y t h i n g. I tried to figure out if there was a trigger, if there was something underlying that was causing it that I could fix or work on or get rid of or something. If _____ gets better, I can kick this. But it wasn't situational and it wasn't seasonal. I went to the doctor with vague complaints to rule out anything medical, and I made sure to insist I wasn't depressed before she even asked or screened for that. Nothing medical (bummer, my medical brain was hoping for a black and white something wrong I could fix and not something in my mind I couldn't see ).
Then I got to the point where I couldn't even make myself do anything I loved doing or anything that was necessary to care for myself. I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to leave my apartment. Everything seemed really hard. I knew it wasn't like me to curl up on my couch and equivocate doing the dishes to climbing Mount Everest, but that's what it felt like. The idea of getting ready for the day sounded like running a marathon. I felt ridiculous, but it was real. I literally cried all the time when I was alone: driving in my car, at my apartment, etc. Just tears running down my face and sometimes for no reason. I'm not a cryer, and this was really annoying to me because I couldn't shut it off or make it stop. Anything social made me have crazy anxiety. I was barely surviving working 12 hour shifts, and I was irritable and unpleasant when I was working (people noticed, too. I wrote it off as something believable and lied, like "boy problems" lol and people believed me because I have a lot of those). It took everything in me to throw on some makeup before work (because my patients already think I'm 12 years old, I figured I can put their mind at ease if I throw some makeup on and look at LEAST 20). I couldn't do anything the way I normally could. I couldn't concentrate; it took me 2 weeks to complete the online student orientation for grad school, which they said should take 3 hours. I felt crazy, but I truly couldn't control my mind and it felt visceral, like something was legitimately wrong on a chemical level and it was way out of my control. When I really got worried and knew I had to do something was when I started having these weird thoughts out of nowhere, "What's the point of all this?" It was uncharacteristic of me to have such a deep hopelessness. I figured if I was having those thoughts, somehow suicidal thoughts could be next. I really didn't want to wait until that point. And I really didn't want to fail out of grad school, which was coming up in a month. I'm not the kind of person that wants to take medicine for everything. I have a hard enough time taking Advil for a headache. I've always been more of the "just eat better, drink more water, and let my body heal itself" type. But I had tried everything I could think of and knew I was out of options. I also knew antidepressants can take 4 to 6 weeks to be effective, and I was running out of time before school started. And I had done most of this alone, not telling friends or family. Because….well, I don't have a good reason because I have incredible family and friends. I am just stubborn and withdrawn when I'm figuring my crap out. But I was tired.
I was tired of not feeling like myself, of feeling like my mind was a strange place I didn't feel at home in. So I finally made an appointment with my doctor.
You guys. It was dramatic. I cried the morning of the appointment when I woke up, cried the entire drive to the appointment, cried the entire time in the waiting room, cried the duration of the appointment. She handed me a box of kleenex and a checklist for depression which stared me in the face and punched me in the gut in black and white. I am a list kind of person. I like lists. But that wasn't the kind of list I liked. So it was confirmed. I was diagnosably depressed. Then I ugly cried in the parking lot after the appointment and waited to start my car until I could see again, cried on the drive to the pharmacy to fill the damn prescription and cried when I swallowed the first pill later that night.
I have never felt more defeated and more brave at the same time. I have never felt so hopeless and so determined at the same time. I have never felt so helpless and so proud at the same time. Taking that damn pill ruined me in the best way possible. It was something I needed to do even though I hated that I was having to do it—and if that isn't a metaphor for a lot of things in life, I don't know what is.
So here we are, 7 weeks later. I feel like myself again. I feel so much better and I'm so thankful. This has been a huge learning curve for me. Here's what I'm learning, in no specific order.
Depression is real. Duh. I have so much more compassion for the people whose mind it has moved into, and even more compassion for the people who wouldn't let it make a home and stay. That shit is hard work.
I am not less of a Christian for not being miraculously healed without medication. While I whole-heartedly believe it is completely possible for the Lord to heal people without modern medicine, it don't believe any less in God just because I wasn't healed in the way I wanted him to heal me. But it was admittedly really hard for me not to feel less full of faith than so many of the people I had heard who had been healed through prayer. Because I freaking prayed so hard. But at some point I had this epiphany where I'm pretty sure the Lord was like…"Mackenzie, medicine is a miracle in and of itself. Take the freaking pill that can help you." Healing is healing, okay? I also remember reading something once along the lines of believing in the Healer and not in the healing. That became a reality for me. I could shout that from the rooftops, people.
On top of that, I had to truly wrestle with the Lord about my identity. He is gracious and full of compassion when you're figuring this kind of stuff out, too. His loving kindness drew me in and reminded me that my identity isn't in a diagnosis (and on another note, my identity isn't in my GPA either, thank you Jesus). His blood was shed for me regardless, and I had to learn to know that I am truly His before I am anyone or anything else's.
I wish I would have asked for help sooner, because I regret keeping myself in a prison whose door was open and I just didn't see it. I also regret being so miserable to people, and regret being so miserable to myself. I wish I could take back those months where I hid. If I could do it over, I wouldn't have waited so long. If I could go back to the Mackenzie I wrote about earlier, I would grab her pretty face and tell her everything I know now. I would give her much more compassion and grace. I would be more gentle with her. But it's never too late, so I'm doing those things for myself now.
Depression is unsettling for anyone who is familiar with it, but I think it was more unsettling for me than most because typically my emotions are something I'm good at controlling and switching on and off (hello, I'm an ER Nurse. That's like, ER Nurse class 101). But it's taught me that I'm actually not always in control and sometimes that's okay. Controlling my emotions at work is necessary and appropriate at times, but in life it's okay to have emotion. I'm still learning how to separate the two.
This has been one of those times in life I had to constantly choose grace upon grace upon freaking grace. I would never think half of the horrible things about other people that I thought about myself during those months. I would never shame someone for asking for help or taking a medicine. I would never want someone to feel embarrassed for telling me they were taking an antidepressant. I would never think less of a person who was in the place I was. I would never want someone to think they weren't good enough for their faith because they didn't have the same experience as some others who believed like they did. I realized if I would give all of that grace to someone else, I should make enough room for that grace to include me, too. It feels nice. It turns out there's enough room here.
The Lord has more compassion and kindness than I do shame. And although recently I've struggled and stumbled my way through parts of the faith I choose, I never felt like I wasn't allowed to. I never felt like He was angry with me. If anything, He probably laughed at the idea that maybe I wanted to try and keep those things from Him. I've always felt like God was big enough to handle my anger or pain or doubt or bitterness. I think He truly wants all of it. So I figured He could handle me taking a pill for depression, and He has. We're on good terms. I also read something recently that said the searching for God should lead to more wonder instead of always getting more answers, and I think I'm deeper in wonder with all of this than I've ever been, which I think is the point of faith.
These verses have been what I've meditated on, prayed for, believed for, and held closely the last several months, so I figured I could end with them:
I started taking an antidepressant in December. That was hard enough for me to tell my family and closest friends; I never thought I'd write that sentence for anyone to read who finds themselves on this blog. There is such a stigma against mental health, and I think keeping quiet about depression and the fact that I take a little pill every night adds to the stigma. I understand why some people choose not to disclose something like that, and if someone doesn't want to be open about their personal struggles I wouldn't fault them or think any less of them. For me, I've realized the things I try to hide and keep to myself somehow are always wrapped up in shame, and I would say there's a lot of shame that comes along when you're wrestling with yourself when your mind doesn't seem right. When it doesn't seem like something you can control. If I've learned anything about shame, the most important is that it's only as strong as the silence it creates, so I realized the secret to kicking shame in the balls was to talk about the things it tries to keep quiet. Depression is one of those things for me.
Depression has been the quiet shadow that's followed me around my entire life, but it always seemed mild and I always did a decent job at functioning or pulling myself out of it when it got too heavy sometimes. I wrote it off as maybe I'm just someone who feels too much. I never wanted to call it what it was and I hid it really well. I would just say I was in a "funk" or something softer because depression scares people. From what I have gathered and observed, it seems like people either automatically think depression=suicidal or that you're making it up and you should just pull it together. I was one of those people that assumed the latter for a long time. I regret concluding that so easily without having actually known what depression was capable of.
It started to get bad in the Summer and gradually got worse through the Fall. I didn't even recognize myself in the Winter. I tried everything I could think of to help and avoid medication. Yoga, meditation/praying, worship, believing for healing, exercise, writing, counseling. E v e r y t h i n g. I tried to figure out if there was a trigger, if there was something underlying that was causing it that I could fix or work on or get rid of or something. If _____ gets better, I can kick this. But it wasn't situational and it wasn't seasonal. I went to the doctor with vague complaints to rule out anything medical, and I made sure to insist I wasn't depressed before she even asked or screened for that. Nothing medical (bummer, my medical brain was hoping for a black and white something wrong I could fix and not something in my mind I couldn't see ).
Then I got to the point where I couldn't even make myself do anything I loved doing or anything that was necessary to care for myself. I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to leave my apartment. Everything seemed really hard. I knew it wasn't like me to curl up on my couch and equivocate doing the dishes to climbing Mount Everest, but that's what it felt like. The idea of getting ready for the day sounded like running a marathon. I felt ridiculous, but it was real. I literally cried all the time when I was alone: driving in my car, at my apartment, etc. Just tears running down my face and sometimes for no reason. I'm not a cryer, and this was really annoying to me because I couldn't shut it off or make it stop. Anything social made me have crazy anxiety. I was barely surviving working 12 hour shifts, and I was irritable and unpleasant when I was working (people noticed, too. I wrote it off as something believable and lied, like "boy problems" lol and people believed me because I have a lot of those). It took everything in me to throw on some makeup before work (because my patients already think I'm 12 years old, I figured I can put their mind at ease if I throw some makeup on and look at LEAST 20). I couldn't do anything the way I normally could. I couldn't concentrate; it took me 2 weeks to complete the online student orientation for grad school, which they said should take 3 hours. I felt crazy, but I truly couldn't control my mind and it felt visceral, like something was legitimately wrong on a chemical level and it was way out of my control. When I really got worried and knew I had to do something was when I started having these weird thoughts out of nowhere, "What's the point of all this?" It was uncharacteristic of me to have such a deep hopelessness. I figured if I was having those thoughts, somehow suicidal thoughts could be next. I really didn't want to wait until that point. And I really didn't want to fail out of grad school, which was coming up in a month. I'm not the kind of person that wants to take medicine for everything. I have a hard enough time taking Advil for a headache. I've always been more of the "just eat better, drink more water, and let my body heal itself" type. But I had tried everything I could think of and knew I was out of options. I also knew antidepressants can take 4 to 6 weeks to be effective, and I was running out of time before school started. And I had done most of this alone, not telling friends or family. Because….well, I don't have a good reason because I have incredible family and friends. I am just stubborn and withdrawn when I'm figuring my crap out. But I was tired.
I was tired of not feeling like myself, of feeling like my mind was a strange place I didn't feel at home in. So I finally made an appointment with my doctor.
You guys. It was dramatic. I cried the morning of the appointment when I woke up, cried the entire drive to the appointment, cried the entire time in the waiting room, cried the duration of the appointment. She handed me a box of kleenex and a checklist for depression which stared me in the face and punched me in the gut in black and white. I am a list kind of person. I like lists. But that wasn't the kind of list I liked. So it was confirmed. I was diagnosably depressed. Then I ugly cried in the parking lot after the appointment and waited to start my car until I could see again, cried on the drive to the pharmacy to fill the damn prescription and cried when I swallowed the first pill later that night.
I have never felt more defeated and more brave at the same time. I have never felt so hopeless and so determined at the same time. I have never felt so helpless and so proud at the same time. Taking that damn pill ruined me in the best way possible. It was something I needed to do even though I hated that I was having to do it—and if that isn't a metaphor for a lot of things in life, I don't know what is.
So here we are, 7 weeks later. I feel like myself again. I feel so much better and I'm so thankful. This has been a huge learning curve for me. Here's what I'm learning, in no specific order.
Depression is real. Duh. I have so much more compassion for the people whose mind it has moved into, and even more compassion for the people who wouldn't let it make a home and stay. That shit is hard work.
I am not less of a Christian for not being miraculously healed without medication. While I whole-heartedly believe it is completely possible for the Lord to heal people without modern medicine, it don't believe any less in God just because I wasn't healed in the way I wanted him to heal me. But it was admittedly really hard for me not to feel less full of faith than so many of the people I had heard who had been healed through prayer. Because I freaking prayed so hard. But at some point I had this epiphany where I'm pretty sure the Lord was like…"Mackenzie, medicine is a miracle in and of itself. Take the freaking pill that can help you." Healing is healing, okay? I also remember reading something once along the lines of believing in the Healer and not in the healing. That became a reality for me. I could shout that from the rooftops, people.
On top of that, I had to truly wrestle with the Lord about my identity. He is gracious and full of compassion when you're figuring this kind of stuff out, too. His loving kindness drew me in and reminded me that my identity isn't in a diagnosis (and on another note, my identity isn't in my GPA either, thank you Jesus). His blood was shed for me regardless, and I had to learn to know that I am truly His before I am anyone or anything else's.
I wish I would have asked for help sooner, because I regret keeping myself in a prison whose door was open and I just didn't see it. I also regret being so miserable to people, and regret being so miserable to myself. I wish I could take back those months where I hid. If I could do it over, I wouldn't have waited so long. If I could go back to the Mackenzie I wrote about earlier, I would grab her pretty face and tell her everything I know now. I would give her much more compassion and grace. I would be more gentle with her. But it's never too late, so I'm doing those things for myself now.
Depression is unsettling for anyone who is familiar with it, but I think it was more unsettling for me than most because typically my emotions are something I'm good at controlling and switching on and off (hello, I'm an ER Nurse. That's like, ER Nurse class 101). But it's taught me that I'm actually not always in control and sometimes that's okay. Controlling my emotions at work is necessary and appropriate at times, but in life it's okay to have emotion. I'm still learning how to separate the two.
This has been one of those times in life I had to constantly choose grace upon grace upon freaking grace. I would never think half of the horrible things about other people that I thought about myself during those months. I would never shame someone for asking for help or taking a medicine. I would never want someone to feel embarrassed for telling me they were taking an antidepressant. I would never think less of a person who was in the place I was. I would never want someone to think they weren't good enough for their faith because they didn't have the same experience as some others who believed like they did. I realized if I would give all of that grace to someone else, I should make enough room for that grace to include me, too. It feels nice. It turns out there's enough room here.
The Lord has more compassion and kindness than I do shame. And although recently I've struggled and stumbled my way through parts of the faith I choose, I never felt like I wasn't allowed to. I never felt like He was angry with me. If anything, He probably laughed at the idea that maybe I wanted to try and keep those things from Him. I've always felt like God was big enough to handle my anger or pain or doubt or bitterness. I think He truly wants all of it. So I figured He could handle me taking a pill for depression, and He has. We're on good terms. I also read something recently that said the searching for God should lead to more wonder instead of always getting more answers, and I think I'm deeper in wonder with all of this than I've ever been, which I think is the point of faith.
These verses have been what I've meditated on, prayed for, believed for, and held closely the last several months, so I figured I could end with them:
"The Lord is gracious and righteous; our god is full of compassion.
The Lord protects the simple-hearted.
When I was in great need, He saved me.
Be at rest once more, oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.
For you, oh Lord, have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living."
Psalm 116: 5-9
and here is an artsy picture because a post feels weird without a picture.
Oh Mack. I love you and your tender heart. Thank you for always being so open and honest.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. It is a show of great strength to reveal vulnerability. Stay strong and God bless.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing and being open about this. Shining a light in this is important because it takes away misconcetions about mental health. For some it is a process and a journey. God does heal minds and restore hearts, the process can take time. Thanks for sharing again, it helps to hear other people's personal testimonies and experiences.
ReplyDelete