What It Means to Be Strong

Nicholas L. Laning

Being strong is tough.  I know.  Duh.  The hardest part of the depression for those on the outside, is the same on the inside.  It isn't the intensity of the pain.  People handle so much for short bursts.  No.  For everybody involved, the hardest part is the relentlessness of the pain.  It does... not... stop.  For those suffering, the problem is obvious.  They hurt constantly.  For the loved ones trying to encourage, the problem is tricky, so tricky.

Ever since I came out of my depression, I have dealt with quite a few depressed people, and I have learned much about being on the other side.  What kills is that there is no equality in the relationship for that season.  What I mean by that is, when healthy, we expect our tone to be at least somewhat matched.  If someone acts off, says something awful, acts poorly, we get rightfully upset, and are hurt and let them know it.  However, with a depressed person you cannot do that.  You are not on equal footing.  It isn't fair that they get to be weak, to need you to be so strong for so long, to put up with so much.  Yet, it isn't fair that they are depressed and your not.  The shoe could have been, and may one day in fact be, on the other foot.  For this season, you will have to endure a lopsided relationship.  Not that you must let them be mean, but that in EVERY way you must be strong.  As frustrated and angry as you feel , you cannot lash out, or you will push them away.  If you must challenge, or rebuke, you must do this always with gentleness.  There is no leaning on this person.  No trade off moment where they carry you for a bit.  You'll have to let someone else who's healthy do that until the one depressed is redeemed.

I remember how my mother reacted at first to my depression.  Every time I talked about it she would cry and get angry.  She would be overwhelmed by my words, by my despair.  It drove me into seclusion for some time.  It was so dangerous to fight alone.  Over time, she learned the truth, that she had to be the strong one.  As unfair as it was, I was struggling too much for us to be equal.  She could either love me and be strong, or I would leave.  I had no strength to return.  It was not normal.  Even in the face of horrifying words from her beloved son, she was a rock.  Her and my father would put on the brave face, and find a way to encourage me, even when I lashed out in my pain.

Know that I am praying for you right now, both you whom are depressed, and those trying to encourage someone who is depressed.  

For the depressed, fight.  No one can carry you out.  You must fight, and fight hard!!!  Don't take advantage of those trying to help you.  Lean on them, but realize that your struggle, while it may give understanding to your actions, does NOT excuse them.  What you do in the midst of your struggle counts.  Relationships burned now will probably still be burned.  The consequences of life have not ceased for you.  I carry many scars from my actions in depression.  What I did mattered, and still is in effect.  




For all you loved ones, be strong.  As hard as it is, and it is hard, having been on both sides, it is not harder than what they are going through.  You have your whits about you.  You have your mind whole.  Use it, and be something transcendent in their lives.  Ultimately, none of this can be done apart from the grace of God.  He changes hearts and minds.


I am praying right now that God would grant us the wisdom to discern what is true, and the courage to fight for it once we see it, that we would never relent.  When we do, I pray that God would carry us.  He is the reason we live.  He is good.  To God be all glory.  In Jesus' name, amen.

#4: 10 Things to Say (and 10 Not to Say) to Someone With Depression

This is number two 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.  Number Three Thing to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone With Depression.  Here's number three:

What to say:
You are not going crazy.

What NOT to say:
So you’re depressed. Aren’t you always?

Nicholas L. Laning

"You are not going crazy."  This is huge.  Depression is a mental illness.  What most people fail to understand is that doesn't mean you are crazy.  All it means is that it is an illness that effects your emotions and thoughts.  In a way, every sickness does this.  I have witnessed multiple people express a desire for death in the midst of fighting the flu.  Not that they are suicidal, as they know it will end.  Point is, there is some part of them that would rather be dead at that moment than suffering as they are.  Headaches, colds, broken limbs, all of them effect our thoughts and emotions.  

Mental illnesses seem to do almost exclusively.  In other words, a depressed person may have physical issues such as stomach trouble or insomnia, but the main thing affected are the thoughts and emotions.
  

Depressed people's thoughts are surely warped by their pain, by the illness, but they are not crazy.  Their ability to rationalize is very strong.  They are simply being influenced heavily by a blinding emotional pain and numbness, and an overwhelming, uncontrollable negativity.  

I think a great way to imagine you are talking to someone who is being stretched across a rack, or having bamboo shoved under their finger nails. There is going to be no surprise when the person says things out of the ordinary, or their thoughts aren't healthy.  You don't think them crazy.  You simply recognize the influence of extreme pain on their rationale.  Right?

You must continue to let them know that what they are struggling with is common (they may hate this, as it pushes them to deal with it, and not get to wallow and quit fighting.  Tough.  it's the truth.  1 in 10 struggle with it.)  They are not whole, but they aren't crazy either.

"So you're depressed.  Aren't you always?"  You probably think I am going to again come down harsh on those on the outside.  I'm not.  It is a stupid thing to say.  It is.  But, it is a very, very human thing to say.  Something to remember is that those who love someone depressed are hurting like hell too.  They need help too.  

My mom was a champ.  She was a rock.  Does that mean she never got weak?  Yeah right.  There were times when she wasn't so strong.  The constant battle wore her out.  Even at the time, I understood it.  

You can't over do that, or you risk isolating the depressed person.  I have known depressed people who almost crumbled, almost caved into suicide, because they were fighting their depression alone.  At one point in time they shared their pain with a loved one who responded by being overwhelmed.  In order to not be a burden, the depressed person decided going to people was a no no.  

This is BAD.  Depressed people need as many people on their team as possible.  The more people involved, the easier it is to share the load.  Then, one person doesn't have the weight of the world on their shoulders.  They can go to the others helping and say, "Hey, I am feeling weak today.  I am struggling to be strong.  Can you hang out with ________?  I could use a break to get strong again."

Battling alongside someone who is depressed is absolutely exhausting emotionally.  It is AWFUL!!!  My heart breaks for any of you who are the loved one.  I know it is hard.  There are no breaks.  Depression is relentless.  It comes and comes and comes, and eventually you just want to scream, "ENOUGH!!! When does it stop, Lord?  I can't do this anymore!"  And it keeps on coming anyway.

Don't say it though.  Find ways to not need to say it.  Get help.  Get a group.  Do whatever it takes, because you do not want to say, "Oh, aren't you always depressed?"  The answer is, "Yeah, I am, and now I know that I have to deal with that hell without you.  Thanks for nothing."

Let us recall that perseverance is a virtue, something to be desired.  By God saying that we should be able to persevere, He is saying that hard times are going to come.  We wouldn't need perseverance without the existence of bad things, hard things.  I don't persevere through eating ice cream, or getting a back rub, or swimming at the beach.  I love those things.  They take no perseverance.  They are enjoyed.  So let's keep in mind that God is using all of this to His glory, that there is purpose in it.  Like it or not, He is building you for something more. 

Romans 5:2-5

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Why Do Men Struggle So Greatly in Understanding Depression?

Picture of Douglas MacArthur from Shorpy.com

“He doesn’t understand.  He thinks it’s just… he thinks I should just get over it.  You know?  He doesn’t understand that it isn’t something I can just get over.  I can’t go to him when I feel like this, I just have to deal with it alone, ‘cause I know he won’t understand.  You know?”

Those are the words of a women explaining to me how her husband has dealt with her depression.

Men are just set up for struggle when it comes to understanding depression.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Generally speaking, men are less empathetic than women.  We often find ourselves reverting back to football boot camp methods for every kind of motivation.  Someone is struggling?  Can’t seem to fix it?  Then you aren’t yelling and swearing loud enough!  To be fair, this is how we are motivated most frequently when we are segregated by sex.  The peer pressure plus the yelling turns out quite effective… if you are teaching someone how to overcome their fear of getting hit in football, or trying to get someone over the wall on an obstacle course.  I am chuckling thinking about someone employing this technique on someone in depression, simply because it is so awful and absurd, it is ridiculous.

The main reason men are handicapped compared to women in their understanding of depression is because they have never experienced anything like it.  Almost any other pain can be empathized with even if not experienced directly, because it still links in with pain already felt.  For example, I don’t have to have lived through the holocaust to empathize with those who went through it.  Can I know the full breadth of their specific pain?  No way.  But I CAN definitely imagine it.  I can easily picture the faces of my family getting thrown aboard one train as I am thrown aboard another.  I can picture their tattered faces lurch slowly away as the train pulls out of the station, taking them to their death, as I head to mine. 

Depression is not like that.  It is so unique, so different from anything felt previously, that if you haven’t felt it, then your brain will struggle mightily to comprehend it… at all. 

Confession, before I was depressed, I struggled to believe that depression was real.  Irony, I know.  It’s a gift though, as it humbles me to recognize the struggle of those on the outside looking in, particularly men. 

Women, on the other hand, are all familiar with the something happening to your hormones, to your brain chemicals, that changes the way you feel, turning you into a different person.  Women experience this once a month for a majority of their lives. 

Men don’t understand this really either, but here is the kicker… they accept that it is real, and they (if mature) react accordingly.  I’ve never heard a man tell a woman that her PMS isn’t real.  Cowardly men may hide, but that’s only because they know it will go away in a couple of days.

Depression, most likely, isn’t going away in a couple of days.  It needs the attention of every loved one that can be there.  Besides, if men are all about bravery, then this is a time to be brave, because you are being asked to wade into uncomfortable waters.  A piece of encouragement is this though.  You don’t really need to understand depression to help someone in it.  Many men have become incredibly adept at encouraging the women in their lives when they go through PMS.  Our patience grows.  We understand that things are going to be said that are not common, that may even fly in the face of what was said just days ago.  Such it is with depression.  You don’t have to understand depression.  However, you do have to believe it is real, and you have to learn how to encourage your loved one in the face of it. 

Another thing that deters men from being involved with a depressed loved one is that you can’t FIX depression.  My father almost lost his mind as he watched me, his beloved son spiral into the darkness for a decade, and he didn’t have a damn clue what to do about it.  It changed him, crushed him a bit.  I could see it in his face.  He would look at me and it was blank, as he was completely overwhelmed with his inability to duck tape my heart back into my chest, or drain the poison out of my mind.  All he could do was be there.

What he doesn’t know is that my depression would have been years longer if it weren’t for his acceptance of my depression as real.  Not one time did he tell me to get over it.  He did try to convince me I was more okay than I was, but that is what everybody does (makes me angry just thinking about how many times people tried to convince me I was depressed, but not THAT depressed), but when the rubber met the road, he was there with my mom looking up the next doctor, or buying the latest book, or whatever. 

In all of my dealing with those whom are depressed, fathers and husbands have been one of the greatest impediments to healing.  So many people have shared with their inability to move forward, because they are crippled by the doubt and harassment of their ignorant, prideful husband or father. 

I want to remind you that I am not bashing men.  I AM one.  Women are not better.  They didn’t earn their understanding.  It is simply a part of their biological make up.  The point is that the men of this world need to join this fight, now.  You can’t close your eyes on this one.  If your son, daughter or wife is hurting from depression and you’re playing the ostrich, then you are a prideful, hypocritical coward.  Don’t let your ignorance and pride stand in the way of you loving your child, spouse, friend, whomever it is.  It isn’t really that hard.  All you have to do is accept that depression is real even if you don’t understand it.  (statistical reminder, over 100 million people have been diagnosed worldwide.  Seeing as how most deal with depression alone in the shadows, that number is actually much higher.  Are a couple hundred million people all faking it?  Really?)  From there you can grow in patience.  You will strike idiotic phrases like, “just get over it,” out of your speech, and you will instead say things like, “I don’t fully understand it, but I am here for you.  You understand me?  We’re in this fight together.”  And you are, because the truth is it IS a battle, one like you can’t imagine.  You can either be a part of the biggest battle of your loved one’s life, or you can go AWOL and hide in the corner.  What’s it going to be?

The most horrifying part about this struggle that men have with depression is how it affects those men who become depressed.  All of that pride, that fix it attitude, that unbeatable attitude… they are concrete boots… and we’ve been thrown in the ocean.  Men in depression always seem to take the longest to deal with it, because they spend so much time and effort, years maybe, fighting their new reality.  For me, it took a year of feeling the hell of depression before I was worn down enough to admit that there was a problem.  A year!  Gone!  Why?  Because I could fix it.  I just had to push through, pull myself out of it.  Only I couldn’t.  Not only that, but the harder I tried to fight it by not accepting it, the worse it got, the more complex the knot in my mind became.  I truly believe that, had I accepted my depression sooner, I could have gotten help sooner, and I believe years would have been shaved off of my battle.  Years.  I am thirty.  A decade was lost to depression.  That’s a third of my life, and to be honest, a lot of that is my own dang fault.  Those concrete boots have laces.  They can be untied at any time.  I just couldn’t let go of my concrete boots.  I thought they made me a man.  In reality, they nearly drowned me.

Praise God the times are changing with regard to depression, and people are really starting to talk about it and address it.  Thank God that more and more people don’t have to grope around in the dark as I did.  It is a new day.  It is a new battle.  Our Earthly fathers are great, but like us, they are flawed.  Fortunately, we have a Father in heaven who is not flawed, and while He doesn't promise to wave away your pain, He does promise to give you courage while your in it.  He promises to give your pain meaning, something atheism takes away.  He promises that, if you'll just hold on to Him, one day, the pain will stop... in this life or the next.

Homesick

Play the song, and read the lyrics.  I'll continue below.

 

I lose some sales

and my boss won't be happy

but I can't stop listening to the sound

of two soft voices blended in perfection

from the reels of this record that I found

every day there's a boy in the mirror

asking me

what are you doing here

finding all my previous motives

growing increasingly unclear

I travelled far and I burned all the bridges

I believed as soon as I hit land

all the other

options held before me

will wither in the light of my plan

so I lose some sales

and my boss won't be happy

but there's only one thing on my mind

searching boxes underneath the counter

on a chance that on a tape I'd find

a song for

someone who needs somewhere

to long for

homesick

cause I no longer know

where home is

Nicholas L. Laning

Those last few words, "homesick, cause I no longer know, where home is," are some of the greatest lyrics ever.  So simple, yet so powerful.  The idea of being homesick, not because home is out there and you are separated from it, but because it has been lost inside yourself.  It has broken my heart many times, but it flat out devastated me in the midst of my depression.  

One of the most powerfully terrible sensations was being around my parents and not feeling their "parentness" any longer.  No longer could I feel the essence of my mother or father.  I recall moments where I stared into their eyes as I spoke to them, searching for what was once there.  My soul had been lost to the abyss.  The idea of home was gone, not because home ceased to exist, but because I ceased to exist.  

Every morning, when I got ready for the day, I would find myself in front of the mirror and just stare.  My brow would furrow.  My focus would sharpen, going form pupil to pupil trying to see if that day, I could find anything in there.  It took eight years before little bits of me started showing up, before I started to show up.  

Every now and then, as I am cruising down the road, especially if I am driving over one of the many massive clover leaf overpasses that connect our main thoroughfares here in Dallas, I recall what it felt like to drive for the first time.  Something I now often loathe was once absolutely wonderful.  It is in that same vain that I now must stop, look in the mirror, and not take for granted that I can see myself, that I can feel the essence of my father and mother, that my heart might be thankful.  Even still, I am not home.  I am still homesick.  Read below to see where home is.

JOHN 14:1-7

1 "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 

2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and WILL TAKE YOU TO MYSELF, THAT WHERE I AM YOU MAY BE ALSO. (emphasis mine)

4 And you know the way to where I am going."  

5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"  

6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  

7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

 I added that emphasis in verse three because I have heard this verse a ton throughout life, and the emphasis has always been on the house, on the rooms.  We still just want Jesus' stuff, God's stuff, but our home isn't that house, it is Him.  One day, if we are His, He will bring us home.  He will bring us to Himself.  Amen.

from the shores of the Abyss: a mother's view

This, too, is my first post - actually almost my first ever post. So be kind! I am Nicholas's mother. It is impossible to cover 10 years in a post so I want to begin with that first day. My precious son came home from high school and collapsed into my arms weeping and sobbing that there was something terribly wrong. My heart leapt, my imagination ran wild - but I never could have guessed that I was about to spend the next ten years in the greatest struggle of my life. At first I thought - this too shall pass- but when he not only did not improve but became more -humm -there are no words for what he became -despondent is as close as I can get. Then I thought something had happened to Nicholas to cause this emotional collapse (one rarely recognizes the problem as depression from the beginning and I was no exception). Maybe someone attacked him, or ridiculed him -the suppositions were endless! I just held him in my arms - both of us were weeping and I was scared. As a mom I felt I should be able to fix any and everything - but - I did not even know where to start. I was helpless - the only place to go was to Jesus Christ my Lord. I tried to console Nicholas and to pray - pray HARD! It was a long journey but in my next post I will tell about the words the Lord gave me to cling onto until Nicholas was healed! Everyday was a journey and still is but God gave us hope at the start and He has rescued us from the Abyss.