Depression Starts With A Lie

Stanton Martin is a recent graduate from Belhaven University; he's spent the last year working the typical 8 to 5 office job, writes regularly over at his blog, and has spent the last 12 years of his life wrestling with depression. Parts of the following post were inspired by Donald Miller's book, To Own A Dragon. 

Where does depression hurt?

Whenever I hear that commercial I laugh. I laugh at most things, it’s one of the ways I cope with how profoundly sad life seems to me at times. Where does depression hurt? If only there was a concrete answer to that question.

I will soon be twenty-five years old, and I have struggled with depression since the age of twelve. That is a crazy statement to type. I can’t believe I have struggled with depression for over half of my life.

My carefree days of innocence are now outnumbered by periods of time marked with overwhelming feelings of loneliness, darkness, and despair.

My depression was fed by my own insecurity. It was always waiting in the wings, anticipating my next failure, and seeking any circumstance to sink its roots further into my psyche. Depression, for me, was an almost audible voice that told me lies.

Depression told me I was stupid when I didn’t make A’s on all of my exams.

Depression told me that I was unlovable when my friends excluded me.

Depression told me that I wasn’t Christian enough when surrounded by other Christians.

Depression told me that everyone left me because I wasn’t enough, and that no matter how hard I tried, I would never equate to anything of consequence. I would be alone for the rest of my life.

I bought these lies every single day of my life. Every failure (even ones only perceived by myself) was hugely personal. It was further proof that all of the lies were in fact true. It wasn’t long before my insecurities and depression became self-fulfilling. I pushed people away as I struggled through my trust issues, and desperately grappled for any sense of self-identity based outside of what people wanted from me.

While I have only experienced prolonged periods of depression three times in my life, once in high school, and twice in college, it was a battle I had fought every day since childhood. Depression was a multi-headed monster for me, and every time I cut off one head, another sprouted back. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I finally got a firm grasp on one of the causes of my depression.

You see, when a child grows up feeling he is a burden to the people around him, he is going to grow to 

believe and live as though the world does not want him. That’s how the lies first grabbed hold of me.

Even when I could believe that there was nothing wrong with me— that there was a problem with the message that had been to sent me— that knowledge didn’t make me feel any less insecure.

There have been times when I have watched the interactions of my friends and their fathers and mothers, and I have been jealous. I’m not saying that I was jealous of my friends. Jealous probably is not even the right word. It was so evident to me that my friends’ moms and dads had taught them that they mattered. The idea that I mattered had not been instilled in me the way my friends’ moms and dads had instilled it in them. My friends never had to learn that they mattered, or at least they never had to wade through the ocean of lies like I had.

I was in a complete free-fall by the spring semester of my senior year. I was a shadow of my former self, and I had given myself over completely to the lies of depression. I woke up every morning panicked and shaking. I was terrified of graduating; of being alone. I hated that I needed the love of others, and I hated those same people for not loving me. I was worthless. I had nothing to offer. Everyone I had ever cared about had used me. I hated myself. I hated my life. I hated God for giving me such a burden.

I was operating out of feelings of inferiority. Deep inside, at my very core, I had a sincere belief that life was for other people— that joy was for others, and responsibility was for others, and so on, and so on. In life, there were people who were meant to live and people who were accidentally born, cursed to plod the globe as the despised. I was the latter.

I acted out toward my friends and family. I drank far too much, and said horrible things to people that I cared about. I manipulated, I lied, and I gave my heart over to anger and hatred. I was too proud to admit any of this though, and I wrapped all of my sin in a shroud of goodness. I continued to serve my friends, but with a heart of jealousy and resentment.

I didn’t think I was going to be able make it. There were days that I wanted to give up. I began to buy the lie that not only was everything screwed up, but that it would never get any better. It would never change. I would always be miserable. I would always be unloved. That is a dangerous lie.

A breaking point came, and I knew that things could only end in one of two ways: I would get better or… things would truly end.

There came a point when I realized I could continue to buy the lies I had been buying my entire life, I could continue to live as a victim, and I could let life pass me by, or, I could explore the truth.

The truth is that I have a profound need for a savior and a heavenly father.

I had built my identity on the ever-changing soil of other’s opinions of me. I had spent years cobbling it all together and trying to keep it from collapsing. My self-worth, my faith; my very existence had all been hanging by a thread for years. I needed a foundation. In order for anything of substance to be built, everything else had to be destroyed. God knew that.

It’s strange, but the foundation I needed to build upon was the realization of my need for a Father. I realized that I had taken the messages I had received from my father, and I had transferred them into my relationship with God, and I made my heavenly father just as absent from my life as my earthly father.

I had taken all of the brokenness from my relationship with my dad, and I said, “God, you’re no different”.  I hadn’t been able to experience God’s love because of my broken relationship with my dad. I hadn’t trusted that God cared about me, or wanted what is best for me, or that He had me where I was for a reason.

I stopped viewing myself as a victim, and I started looking at my life through a new set of lenses. I was able to see things clearly for the first time in my life. I was able to see people as individuals rather than an archetype.

My campus minister wasn’t my father. My favorite professor wasn’t my father. My boss wasn’t my father. My best friend wasn’t my father. That meant that these guys were not responsible to love me unconditionally, and they weren’t responsible to tell me I am a man. All of the love or affirmation they gave was a gift, but holding them responsible for the wounds that my father inflicted was inappropriate.

As it turns out, God is not like our fathers, our mothers, our youth ministers, our mentors, or our best friends; He does not leave because He is tired of putting up with our crap. He doesn’t drift out of our lives because He found something better to do with his time. It is us that He cares about; we are the ones that walked away from Him.

Once I realized I possessed a need for both a heavenly and earthly father, I was able to begin the process of mending both of those relationships. I began to believe new things for myself. I read Jeremiah 29:11 which states, “For I know the plans that I have made for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” For the first time in my life I believed that life was meant for me. I could see God’s hand in all of my pain, and I could see the path he had chosen for me that year.

A path that led to the understanding that I do not have to be ‘good enough’ for anyone, not for my parents, not for my friends, and certainly not for God. A path that led to the understanding that Christ died not only for who I was, but who I am, and who I will be. I understood God’s love for me in new and exciting ways, and I built my security around His affections for me, rather than on those of the people around me.

I understood that God had written a beautiful story of redemption just for me, and that it was my own. There was no use in comparing it to others, because that was their story, and while it was right for them, it was not for me. God may have chosen to make depression part of my story, but that doesn’t make my story somehow sadder than others, in fact, I have a greater hope and even excitement to see how God uses that part of my story to shape my life and impact others.

Over the last year and a half I have been asked several times by friends whether or not I regret any of that year, and if so, what would I have changed about it. I tell them that I do not regret any part of that year, no matter how hard it was for me; no matter how close to destruction I came, because the Lord was with me, and though I could not see it at the time, He was preparing a path of healing for me.

It has been over fourteen months now since God rescued me from the abyss, and by His grace I have not experienced a state of depression in all of that time. The old wounds are still present, but they are healing. That voice still whispers lies to me in moments of rejection and doubt, but now I know the truth, and I cling to it with abandon.

I know that one day I will probably struggle with depression again, but I am thankful to my Savior for giving me a new hope and a new foundation on which to battle it.

Depression takes on many forms, and can manifest for many different reasons, but if my story is similar to your own, I hope that you will find some sort of encouragement by it. Feel free to contact me at info@stantonmartin.com if you have any questions or comments.