Is The Purpose of Life To Go Through It Without Medicine?

Yesterday I ran into a  friend and she confided that her 15 yr old daughter, who is a friend of my son's, was not doing well.  Her grades had dropped, she was uncharacteristically irritable, and she spent long hours in her room alone.  She turned down invitations to socialize with family and friends.  A man standing nearby said, "Sounds like depression to me.  Depression....or drugs."

I opened up about my son's depression.  She was incredulous when I told her that my son had struggled with depression and anxiety since before the age of 8.  She never would have known, she said.  Of course not: we cannot guess what is really going on in the heart of another person, even the ones in our own homes.

We talked about antidepressants, and I told her about my initial fears and my attempts to treat the depression with counseling and fish oil and gymnastics and wrestling and St. John's Wort. ANYTHING but a pill.  There were strategies, right?  There were tools and good counselors, and we would figure this thing out!

But through all these methods, I could see that my son was still isolating himself at home and at school.   His anxiety was keeping him awake long after he had gone to bed and waking him up long before dawn.  He had stomach aches daily, and often I had to force him out the door to school.  Nothing in our life had changed.  He had a good teacher, friends, and he wasn't being bullied.

But he could not do the things he wanted to do.  For example, he wanted to play little league basketball, but on game days, he would cry and fret and not be able to get out the door.  He was irritable and overwhelmed by very small tasks.  He was not the person I knew him to be.  I mourned the loss of the son I once had


We finally (after a 5-month wait), got into a child psychiatrist, who changed our perspective.  He said something to this effect:

"There are people with mental illness that go through life without taking medicine, right?  So I want you to ask yourselves: Is the purpose of your life to go through it without medicine?  Or is the purpose of your life to do as well as you can do?"

That doctor gave us the courage to give our son a very small dose of Zoloft and to watch and see what happened.  During that appointment that doctor also persuaded my husband to try medicine for his never-before-treated depression, something that I had been begging him to do for nine years.

That was in the spring of 2006, and I remember Thanksgiving of that year vividly.  As my family went around the table saying what we were most grateful for that year, there was one thing on my mind:  ZOLOFT!  Of course I was still hiding and projecting perfection, so I made up something else to say, but antidepressants had changed our family dynamics drastically, and I was grateful to God for allowing medicines to be developed for mental illness.

Mental illness is an illness.  Not a lack of will power.  Not a consequence of sin.  Not something that can be snapped out of.  Not something to be ashamed of.  But boy, our society shovels shame onto mental illness like we shovel Ben and Jerry's ice cream into our mouths.

"Cavity carved into the soul.."

"The cavity carved into the soul through adversity will someday become a receptacle of joy." 

Neal A. Maxwell

Depression That No Amount Of Exercising, Reading, Thinking, Talking or Praying Could Alleviate

About five years ago, after a surgery that required several months of rehab, I found myself in a depression that no amount of exercising, reading, thinking, talking or praying could alleviate.

I didn't know that during this time and the months leading up to it, my husband was not in a months-long depression, as I had believed, but he was an active sex addict, whose addiction was escalating in frightening ways.

One day as I expressed sadness into his cold, disconnected eyes, I became so exasperated, that I threw a phone into the wall!  I had never done anything like that before, and it forced me to look at myself.  I was miserable.  Obviously, my old coping mechanisms weren't cutting it anymore.  I had resorted to throwing objects to get his attention!

I was sick, and I knew it.

Although I had confided my sadness to my close friends, I found my outer happy facade cracking to mere acquaintances.  Like a friend's husband, who called our house for something, and I ended up in tears when he asked me how I was doing.  I think I cried to a few people in the grocery store.  My sadness dam broke and spilled over, and I was powerless to fight it.   God seemed like a distant relative, with whom I had lost contact.

I was filled with fear: if I allowed myself to crumble, then our entire family would crumble.  My husband cycled perpetually in and out of family involvement, and I realized that even in my needy, post-surgery state, he could NOT stay present and emotionally support me, let alone pick up the slack with the kids and around the house.  The day I realized this was a horrible day: the man I married was not available for me when I really needed him.  I felt weak and alone and desperate.

Not too long after that, with my two year old on my hip, I walked into my pediatrician's office (I didn't even have my own doctor), and I asked for an anti-depressant.   I was brimming with shame that I couldn't handle my life.  Next I came home and made a counseling appointment with a therapist out of the phone book.

These were my first baby steps towards healing, and although it would be another three years before my husband finally disclosed his addiction, I began to learn about self-care and co-dependency and the grief process.  As painful as it was then, I believe now that God was giving me a head start on the things I would need to know to survive the future.

Confessions Of A Depressed Comic

For a while now I've wanted to do a series of posts on depression.  Happy thoughts, huh?  Up until my mid-20's I had no idea mental illness would be in my future, since it hadn't been in my past.  I bought into all the stigmatizing things people say: about depression being a choice and how taking medicine for mental illness was unnecessary and wrong-headed.

Since then I have lived every day with at least one mentally ill person.  Now I live with several, including the person I see in the mirror every day.  Ms. Experience is the best teacher (albeit the toughest teacher) I have ever had, and she is still teaching me better ways to live with my own depression/anxiety and with that of my family members'.  Having depression has increased my compassion.

The following is a video of an outstanding teen who struggles with depression.  I want to be part of this conversation.








Confessions of a Depressed Comic

Gentle readers, please let me know if this video doesn't work.  It's my first video post.

A Brain Full Of Jelly Bellies And An iPhone In The Toilet

A few days ago I had a day where the gaping jaws of hell were out to get my family, or at least it felt like it.

It was primarily about one of my sons and the shocking impulsivity of his teenage brain, which appears to contain nothing but jelly bellies.  As I was reeling from some of his decisions, I began to mentally ask myself two questions:

"What are the worst case scenarios that could happen to him if he continues on this crooked path?"

"Could I handle them if they happened?"

I mentally listed out some miserable places I could imagine him winding up (I am NOT talking about not making the honor roll here), and I discovered, that even though I would cry buckets of tears, because I really, really love this kid, I can accept where his choices could lead him.

I have to have hope that God is watching over him, and that this life is long, and that it's never too late for anyone to change.  I have to have faith that the Atonement of Christ will enable all of us to do what we could never do on our own.  Without all that....well, I got nuthin.

Except.....a working iPhone!  It dropped into the toilet on this same atrocious day.  Dropped with a splash and a scream of horror.  And I thought, "Of course.  Of course this would happen today.  How could it not?"

But when I touched the screen, it lit up! After a thorough Clorox wipe down, the phone is even better (cleaner) than it was before.  I choose to believe it was a little gift from God, letting me know He's there and reminding me that although things could always get worse, they could also get better.

My Pumpkin-planting Friend

There are friends, and then there are FRIENDS.  All the pumpkins on porches lately remind me of a certain friend and her efforts to show me love during the sunless days of 2012, when my life resembled the scrambled mess inside a pumpkin.

It was a beautiful spring, but I couldn't see it.  One day she came over with hoes and shovels and attacked an ugly, ignored corner of my back yard.  Then she brought in top soil and seeds and planted a pumpkin patch.  

"Pumpkins make people happy, Wildflower," she said.  "When you look out your kitchen window, you will see pumpkins, and it's going to make you happy."  

That was a year and a half ago, and although the patch produced only four small, unimpressive pumpkins that rotted within weeks on my front step, in my mind's eye, I can still see my friend, hacking away at the dirt and weeds, so I could have something to nurture and to anticipate.

Hey, you friends, you make a difference to me!  Thoughtful service, including patient listening, is super glue for friendships, and like it or not, you friends that are sticking by me through this have cemented yourselves to me.  I consider you all among the richest blessings of my life.

Thank you to my pumpkin-planting friend, and ALL OF YOU.  I know my burdens are mine and yours are yours, but thank you for not running from me and my soggy, pumpkiny life. 

If we lived near each other, I would invite y'all over to eat pumpkin bars and carve pumpkins. My friend was right, pumpkins do make people happy.

Newsflash: 98% of U.S. Parents Lie To Their Children

While I was shopping recently, I overheard a mother say to her toy-begging son, "Honey, if I buy you that toy, I will be in sooo much trouble with Santa.  So much trouble with Santa.  I promise."  

Umm...does Santa punish parents? If he did, he should punish us for lying.

Apparently 98% of US parents lie to their children as a way to change their behavior, according to a study that came out in the Journal of International Psychology last January.  The study questioned ~200 parents in both the US and China, and parents are lying to kids in both countries at very high rates (84% of parents in China lie to try to get their kids to behave).

Guess what the number one lie from parents of both countries is?  The parent threatens to leave the child in a public place if he/she refuses to follow the parent, as in, "If you don't come out of the McDonald's ball pit right now, I am leaving without you."  I confess it does sound slightly familiar.

"Instrumental lying" is the term the study used for the parental lies.  The lies are "instruments" of manipulation.  I would say all lies are "instruments of manipulation" in some way.  The lies included the following categories:

1- a lie designed to get the child to behave
"If you don't stop yelling, that lady over there is going to get mad."

2 - a lie to protect a child's feelings
"Your dog went to live on your uncle's farm where it will have more space to run around."

3 -  a lie relating to fantasy characters, also used to encourage good behavior
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Santa's elves are watching."

I thought it was interesting that "the parents who reported that they were strongly committed to the goal of teaching their children that lying is always wrong were no less likely to have lied to their children than were other parents."  In other words, it's another do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do parenting tactic.  We're pretty good at not practicing what we preach, aren't we?

So, I have questions!!  If most of us parents, at least to some extent, are lying to our children, how does this affect them?  Are they more insecure, more anxious, more distrustful?  How do our lies shape their world view?

I do not think kids believe all that we tell them; I give kids more credit than that.  So then, do they grow up perpetuating the lies they heard as children?  Does it undermine trust in the family?  Do they think our lectures on honesty a joke?

A quote from the article:

If parents are concerned about socializing their children not to tell lies, why do they lie to them? One possible reason is that parents often feel considerable stress about their children's noncompliance, as was suggesed by one parent in the US who explained, "When a parent is going nuts, they will do whateve it takes." Another said, "Most of the lies I've told my children are last resorts and out of despair. If I could get them to do what I'm asking another way, I would."

It's clear how instrumental lies such as, "If you're not quiet, that man over there is going to kick us out", may condition a child to behave well.  However, the behavior is based on external cues, such as someone else's anticipated reaction, in this example, a man's anger.

Doesn't our good behavior, at it's best, stem from us adopting values and developing our own moral compass?  When we act, we learn to listen to our conscience or the Spirit, and we feel positive or negative feelings when our actions either align or disalign with our values.   At our core we know how we should behave, because "the light of Christ is given to every man/woman."  Parental lies and threats are unnecessary if parents are doing their job.

I like the magic of Santa, and he makes a visit here every year (that's another controversial parental lying category :), but I've never been comfortable when I have used an instrumental lie and threatened my kids with a lump of coal.  To me that is a parenting cop out, and yes, I've used it.  I want my kids to develop confidence in their internal, God-given sense of right and wrong and to practice acting on it for their personal peace and happiness.  I want the same thing for myself.

Not because a policeman or an elf or a kidnapper or even an angry God said so.