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.

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.

How Living With A Sex Addict Dad Has Affected My Kids (Part 2)

The inconsistency of addiction has depleted my kids' self-esteem.

Sometimes my husband was Super Dad.  He was involved and attentive.  He was fun and validating.  These were the times that kept me going.  Ok, so he is difficult for me to live with, but look what a great dad he is!

But the addict always showed up, sometimes the very next day, and he was wholly disinterested in the kids.  Work stress was always to blame, but kids don't care why.  All they know is what they feel:  I am a burden not a priority to my dad.  Add to this my own emotional exhaustion and inconsistency as a mom, and this was a confusing and uncertain environment for our kids.  I think it caused them to question their value, and to feel more insecure and anxious about life in general.


When my kids are insecure, they fight a lot more. 

It is normal for children to compete for their parents' attention.  Because our parenting was so affected by the addiction cycle and the pressure it put on me, our attention to our kids was unpredictable and often emotionally distant.  On a regular basis, our kids needed more than we were giving them.  They competed voraciously for attention, and that included lots of problem behavior.


Lust addiction and lies brought a lot of darkness into our home.

"When eternal covenants have been destroyed by a transgressor's choices, dark spirits, or emissaries of Satan, are allowed into a home. The darkness and venom brought in by those evil spirits literally poison the atmosphere of the home, leaving in their wake bitter destruction -- for example, oppressive darkness, overwhelming discouragement, prolonged depression, intense despair, feelings of worthlessness, restless anxiety, confusion, sometimes even temporal or physical afflictions."  Ruth Davidson,  Out of The Ashes.


Resentment is contagious.  Our kids caught it from us.

I resented my husband's selfishness.  I resented that he frequently did whatever he wanted, without a thought as to how it might affect someone else.  I resented that he resisted family dinners, and that he blew off the kids when he wasn't in the mood to be a dad.  I still resent that he resented me. :)

He used loads of resentment against me and others to fuel his addiction.


Addiction caused our lives to be out of control; therefore, we tried to control our kids.

I recognize now how I tried to force them in many things.  For example, if my son's eczema flared up,  and he refused to apply cream, instead of allowing the natural consequences of itching, pain and cracking skin to set in, I would force-apply cream before bedtime.  Sad.

We didn't practice self-acceptance and self-love.  We expected perfection from ourselves and them.

We used manipulation and shame to motivate our kids.

I'm sorry to admit that, Brene Brown, but we did.  Our communication was the Drama Triangle.  We persecuted, rescued and played the victim, over and over again.  Our kids learned this pattern of communication.






I have painted a pretty bad picture here.  Of course, addiction ebbed and flowed, and our parenting likewise ebbed and flowed.   It wasn't terrible every minute of every day; there were still many joyful moments.  But, my husband's sex addiction profoundly affected every person in our family.  Writing this is helps me see that reality.  This wasn't what I wanted for my kids.

"The lotus flower grows out of mud.  The lotus cannot grow on marble.  Suffering is the mud that we use in order to grow the flower of understanding and love."  Thich Nhat Hahn


I have hope that recovery for both my husband and me can infuse our family with love and patience and understanding and vulnerability and humility and more love.   Maybe we will try growing a lotus out of the mud puddle in our front yard.




If you started with this post, you may want to read Part 1 of "How Living With A Sex Addict Dad Has Affected My Kids".
http://bloomwhereplanted.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-living-with-sex-addict-dad-has.html

How Living With A Sex Addict Dad Has Affected My Kids (Part 1)

"At least his addiction is coming out now, and not ten years from now, when we have four kids."


I said that sentence over and over to myself.  It was all I had: my ONLY consolation in 1998, when my husband first disclosed to me. I know the date, the day of the week and the exact time of day of his first disclosure.  How sad.

Cute, but not my real kids.

After a few months of counseling and a few bishop's interviews, he pronounced himself "good", and like a fool, I believed him.  It took some years to build back trust, but looking back now, it didn't take much for me to fully recommit to the marriage.   I believed his depression to be the reason for all his lows.  He lied whenever I brought up the topic of porn.

Life was up and down, based on his mood.  There were good times, but there were also times when I felt alone and abandoned. Sometimes he looked at me with love, and sometimes he looked at me with blank indifference, as if he didn't know who I was.

As the years went on, his depression seemed to worsen, even though he had started medication in 2006.  Of course, I had no idea it was his addiction escalating.  His episodes of emotional withdrawl, irritability, impatience, and utter selfishness were lasting longer, sometimes for months.

I remember crying to him on several occasions,  "Your depression is affecting our kids.  It is affecting them."  But, I couldn't put my finger on how.

Now we have four kids, and it hasn't been ten years, but over fifteen.   Our kids are growing up, and I am starting to see more clearly how badly they have been affected.  It is with great personal pain that I say: there is no way my kids can grow up in an addict home and come out unscathed.  

Some things that have affected my kids:

I was over-functioning in our home and family.

Because my husband was inconsistent and couldn't be relied on to follow through, I took on the burden of everything, except his job at work.  I mowed the lawn with the baby (wearing baby earplugs) in a backpack, for hell's sake.  I rescued him in his church callings and community obligations, by making excuses and covering for him.   I felt I had to hold it all together.  This depleted my energy and my emotional reserves.

What was left for my children?  A mom that burned out early in the evening.  A mom with less patience and understanding.   A mom that had difficulty being silly and laughing.  A mom that was exhausted and beaten down.


To be continued in Part 2.