My Mind: From Prison to Playground

My mind has always had wanderlust.  No matter where I was… I wasn’t.  My report cards all read the same thing.  They all spoke of how I was respectful, obedient, a great kid, yet one that could not stop daydreaming.  My poor teachers just couldn’t compete with the playground in my mind.  My narrative and visual capabilities have always been off the charts.  That vividness of imagination gave me so much freedom.  I would fly like Peter Pan, score the winning touchdown, save the day, create fantastic worlds all at my whim.  Every night I would love going to sleep, as it gave me the freedom to visit that playground in my mind unabated.  It was bliss.  My mind was my constant escape, my favorite place to go…

…until it wasn’t.

In the blink of an eye that playground got turned into a torture chamber.  Depression ravaged my mind, heart, and soul.  If you haven’t experienced it, I’d like you to try to imagine your thoughts not really being your own, nor your emotions.  Imagine the sensation that someone else is picking your thoughts and feelings, and they are choosing only the worst ones you could have imagined.  That mind that gave you freedom now was a prison you could not escape.  You took your torment with you everywhere you went.  Everywhere you were… you weren’t.  You were never able to feel the emotion of the moment.  The best thing in the world could happen to you, but all you don’t care.  You are screaming inside the prison in your mind.  No one sees it.  Most don’t care.  Worst yet is that you come to believe the prison is inescapable, that it is your fault, that you built it, only adding to your torment.  If you built it then you should be able to tear it down, right?  I hated my mind, for it had believed it had betrayed me in the worst of ways.  How I wished to be able to go anywhere else.  It was my least favorite place in the world…

…until it wasn’t.

Some years ago things changed.  The slow slog back to health began.  To this day I am still unlearning things taught to me in my pain.  This last year has seen the resurgence of myself in a way I once thought completely impossible. My mind is once again a playground, and I am struggling to even know how to use it.  I feel like I had my legs cut off, and they’ve been reattached.  It is hard to fathom that this mind of mine was once a place of torture.  The pain is not forgotten.  I have to sometimes remind myself that it is safe to go, that I no longer have to fear my mind, have to try and constantly distract myself.  The bonus is that, unlike before, I cannot take for granted what I have.  The scar inside me will never let me forget.  If memories are wrinkles in the brain then that memory is a canyon.  It is my belief that pain is necessary for the highest good, for it is in the face of true pain that true joy is felt, and do I ever feel it.  Oh how I feel it.  My mind is once again a place of awe and wonder, love and life.  Praise be to God.

God is a God of redemption.  He has brought me out of the abyss.  He has restored my mind when I thought that it was impossible.  May you find some hope and peace in my story, and may God show you the joy felt on the other side of tragedy. 

A Beautiful Mind by: Laning Photography

Nicholas L. Laning

#8: 10 Things to Say (and 10 Not to Say) to Someone With Depression

This is number eight on the list of things to say and not to say to someone with depression, as was posted by health.com.  Here's the link: 10 Things to Say (and 10 Not to Say) to Someone With Depression.  It's a super simple article.  It gives a good and bad example, that's it.  If you missed it, here was the Number Seven Thing to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone With Depression.  Here's number eight:

What to say:
I’m not going to leave you or abandon you.

What NOT to say:
I think your depression is a way of punishing us.

Nicholas L. Laning

Is this not a fear we have anyway?  Of being left or abandoned?  Add in the confusion, the stigma, the uncontrollable negativity that comes with depression, and you can just imagine how much this plagues the soul of your depressed loved one.  Chances are they have reached out to others, maybe not wholly, but in some way, and have been rejected.  

The hard part of this is that you can be near someone and abandon them.  We see it marriage, where the spouse is physically present, but no longer emotionally engaged.  This is true with depression.  It isn't enough to be simply be physically present.   You must also be emotionally engaged.  That doesn't mean feel what they feel.  You feel what you feel, which, if you love someone and they hurt, should include hurting for them. 

Also, there is this weird conundrum that follows loving someone.  When you love someone you trust them.  So, you can be tempted to leave things unspoken as a means to almost honor or cherish your closeness.  "We are so close, that we don't have to say it to know that we love each other."  This may be true to a degree, but love needs to be reiterated everyday.  We need to hear it.  Silence leaves room for struggle.  It is in that silence that temptation grows.  Doesn't it?  Am I wrong?  Is it not the mystery that usually drives the believing of lies?

Express your love and involvement, and do it often.  Don't leave room for lies to form in the mind of someone whose mind is being attacked by uncontrollable negativity.  

I'll never forget my brother sharing his process of coming to grips with the reality of depression.  Towards the end of my battle with depression, he shared with me that for the first year or so of my depression he didn't believe that I was in fact depressed.  Not only did he not sympathize with me, he resented me.  He was angry with me because he thought that my depression was an act.  In his mind, depression was fake, merely an emotional play, a grab for attention.  

In his mind, he had always been able to overcome his moods.  So, everyone else should be able to as well.  Therefore, if I was continuously acting depressed, then I was doing something to myself.  I was choosing to sit in a mood that I could in fact overcome.  If I was choosing to do this, and it was hurting our family to see me do it, then I was punishing them.  I was self-centered beyond belief.

Only, that's just not true.  I will continue with the same analogy I have been using all along to show how ridiculous this is.  Depression is a disease, and you don't choose it.  Can you imagine your loved one having cancer, and you saying, "John, just stop it!  Stop having cancer!  I feel like you're punishing us with this cancer!"

If you think it is different then you are wrong.  Depression is no more brought on personally than cancer is.  Perhaps someone smoked, and cancer resulted, but is that the same as choosing to have cancer?  No.  And you would never say that to someone.  It is so incredibly self centered it is unbelievable.  It is self-centered in about ten ways.  To think that someone's utter and complete misery is about YOU!?  Really?!  

I don't want to condescend.  I am the worst.  I have been guilty of this.  That is why I can say it with such fire, because I was extremely self-centered in my rejection of depression before I got slapped upside the head with it.  So, I am right there with you.  That doesn't make it any less stupid.  It just means I am stupid too.

Pray that your heart would be open.  Keep soft, and be willing to be wrong.  It's not only okay, but a fact, that we are all wrong about a lot.  We are human.  Fortunately, you can rest in the knowledge that a perfect God is there when you are not for your loved one.  That same God is there to strengthen you.  God changes hearts.  If you are struggling to believe, pray that he will change yours so that you can be what you need to for your loved one.  I am praying for you as I write this. 

Lingering Scars

My depression started in the fall of 1998, my junior year of high school.  The brunt of my depression faded in the fall of 2008, when I was doing mission work in Ireland.  Those stories will be expounded upon, but what I want to talk about is the lingering scars of depression.

If people were to ask me if I was still depressed, I feel like saying no, and perhaps I am right.  I no longer feel any of the overwhelming negativity that ruled and tortured my brain for a decade.  I no longer get the feeling that Satan has my brain in his hands, and is squeezing it at his leisure.  The darkness has been lifted off of me.

But, I don't feel whole either.  I don't know if there is perhaps just the slightest effect of depression still on me or not.  Or perhaps, it is the natural outcome of being tortured for far too long.  My heart has been mangled, my soul shredded, and now it must slowly be mended.  I knew it would take time, but just like those in the throws of depression, I struggle each day to believe that it will get better, that this isn't my life.  If it is, then I will be just fine.  Compared to what I came out of, this is paradise.  To finally have the pain of the negativity finally stopped.  It is bliss, and I am thankful.  The question is one of restoration.  It is one I have yet to ask others who have survived.  Can I be whole again?  Will my heart ever sore again?  There have been moments, teases, to let me know my heart still could do it, that it wasn't just some fluke of childhood.  It will return to itself, and I just weep in gratefulness.  Then it fades, and I am left feeling just ok.  Always okay.  Not up, not down, just okay.

I am going to believe it will end.  Why shouldn't I?  I would rather spend my life pursuing it, and even if it is never realized in this life, that doesn't mean it couldn't have been.  Yes, I will fight for it.  I will fight in hope.  I will fight.