Depression and Decision Making Do Not Mix Well

From the title alone there are issues...

"Nicholas" you may be thinking, "What if you're depressed for years... akindalike you were.  Can you really live and not make decisions?"  

No.  No you can't.  As a matter of fact, depression is filled with choices that have to made.  Let me say that again.  Depression will present you with some of the hardest choices you will ever face.  Do I take meds?  Go to counseling?  Do I keep on believing there is a God, or abandon my faith?  Do I keep on believing there isn't one, that we are just an accident, or do I abandon my faith?  Do I keep living?

Decisions are everywhere, and they have to be met... but there should be special considerations for special times such as this.  

For one, decisions in depression should not be made alone.  Depression is a MENTAL illness.  It is an illness that affects your mind.  What happens when people's thinking is impaired?  When someone is drunk, should they be making decisions alone?  What about high?  They shouldn't, and neither should someone who is depressed.  If you have a depressed loved one, do everything in your power to gently be involved.  You can't force someone, but you can be there, be available, pour in wisdom when possible, provide a safe place for them to share and allow you to be involved.  

Depressed folks, I pray you'll have just enough of yourself left, enough of your will, your decision making power to recognize how much help you need.  Seek help.  Ask people you trust.  I'm not saying do everything others say, or relinquish yourself.  I am simply saying to take in good advice.  Have the wherewithal to recognize your state of mind and emotions, and let others help.  It could save your life, your marriage, your friendships, your job, your faith.  

It is wise to not make life altering decisions while depressed.  It just makes sense.  I would advise against deciding to marry someone while depressed.  You can't feel what you should, then don't put that onus on another person.  If married, don't decide to not be.  You aren't yourself.  That's okay.  Just keep breathing.  Others may not know just how hard deciding to keep breathing can be, but I do, and many others do too.  You are not alone.  Sometimes, just breathing and choosing not to leave can make you a heroic spouse.  Same goes with having children.  You should wait to pursue marriage and kids when you are not sick.  You don't sign up for a marathon when your leg is broken.   

There is no going back.  Sure you can quit on your marriage, but you can't unmarry someone.  You become divorced, not unmarried.  There's a difference.  Your decision will affect yourself and countless more for the rest of your lives.  You'll leave a wake of broken hearts, only to have your depression end, as it will, and you'll realize just how stupid what you did really was.  You can't unhave a kid.  You can't become unpregnant.  You can kill your unborn child, but not undo what you did.  

If you decide to get married or have kids you are still expected to be a spouse, be a parent.  I say it all the time, and I'll say it again.  Suffering from Depression does not give you a right to sin.  You are given some latitude in understanding from others, but not a free pass.  Depression, if anything, is an opportunity to rise, to overcome, to do what is right in the face of what feels to be insurmountable evil and torment.  You ARE capable of doing the right thing.  It is just way way way harder, but you can do it.  I believe in your victory.  

I was once depressed and tormented, nagged by the abyss, incessant, involuntary negativity that stole my life, and emotional paralysis.  I was amongst the dead, connected emotionally with zombie movies, and yet now live.  I hurt like a healthy heart does, love like a healthy heart does, and it is beautiful.  Fight on.  

HEBREWS 4:15-16

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.   Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Being Clinically Depressed Doesn't Give You The Right to Sin

1 CORINTHIANS 10:13 

"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

This verse is truly a double-edged sword.  It cuts both ways.  It gives us so much hope that we have the ability to have victory.   On the other hand, it let's us no there is no getting off the hook.  There is no excuse for our sin.  

"Temptation" by Nicholas L. Laning

As I read this verse to put in here, it really sank in to me that this is a constant truth.  God doesn't say sometimes I'll provide an escape, or occasionally you'll have the ability.  It is a simple statement.  You, I, have the ability to overcome temptation.  God will ALWAYS provide an escape. 

That includes the temptations met during depression. 

I spend most of my time on this blog trying to crack through the walls of ignorance and stigma that surround being clinically depressed.  It is not the same as normal depression.  It is not an emotional phase.  It is a physical unbalancing of the chemicals in the brain and the hormones of the body that greatly affect the emotions.  When emotions shift, if one is not very strong, so does the thinking.  I pound away at those on the outside, the loved ones, not out of anger but a loving desire to help, that they might have grace and understanding, to be sympathetic.

And yet, I don't want to come across saying something I'm not.  I am not one of those people that believes that depression is the only hurt.  It is simply the hurt I was given, and the one I am qualified to thus speak on.  I am also not in any way trying to encourage anyone to think that depressed people should be coddled to or given everything they want.  Hear me, people on the outside, depression is awful.  It is beyond awful.  Yet, it is not so awful that those who are fighting it have an excuse to sin.

Hear it, depressed people.  Hear it from the word of God above, not from me.  I am just reiterating.  Being depressed does not give you an excuse to treat people poorly, to be mean, to manipulate.  We all struggle extra hard when we hurt, and there should be grace and understanding.  When you lash out, when the pain causes you to do or say something mean or hurtful, to do something awful, those around you should not leave you.  They should have grace for you.  Then, if they really love you, they will calmly remind you what I am now, that your pain, while enormous, while we are proud of you for fighting so hard, does not give you an excuse to sin.  Period.  Yes, it is going to be extra extra hard.  

"Nicholas," you say, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.  That's what it says, but this is not common."

Everyone who struggles with depression thinks that.  I don't know what it is about depression.  I did it too.  I fought my mother tooth and nail for YEARS on this.  She would tell me I was depressed, that other people were too, but noooooo my pain was different.  It wasn't.  The pattern was there.  I just didn't want to believe it.  Even once I accepted that I was depressed I thought depression to be this super rare thing, and thus there was different standard.  Nope.  Depression is super common.  As a matter of fact, it is the third most common disease in the world, according to the World Health Organization, and as it is the fastest growing, will soon be THE most common disease on planet Earth.  That does not lessen the magnitude of its awfulness one iota.  That doesn't lessen your struggle, but it does mean you are not alone at all.  The temptation you feel when depressed, whatever that may be, to be angry, to lash out, to manipulate, to use others, say through sex, to try and feel better, they are all common to man.  This verse absolutely includes the clinically depressed.   

Obeying is hard enough when well, when whole.  You have been given an extra hard task.  We all take our turn bearing heavy loads.  You're not alone.  You are not unique in that.  We all do it in our own time.  We don't have excuse either.  Consider it pure joy that you have such an immense victory ahead of you.  Rejoice that you have a God that is with you every step of the way.  Keep fighting.  Keep obeying.  Don't quit.

As always, remember that God loves you deeply.  I am praying right now for the end to this dreaded disease, that it would be finished off like polio.  In the mean time, I pray that all of you, whether on the outside or in, would be given understanding, courage, hope, peace, and love.  May love abound between you.  May people be amazed at the love you show and share in the midst of such horror.  Amen.  Feel free to write me if you need to talk or have a question you want me to try to answer.

Nicholas L. Laning
    

Are You a Bloodletter?

There is still some dispute over the exact cause of George Washington’s death.  Some believe it was pneumonia.  Most now believe it was a severe throat infection of some kind.  

Washington's Death

There is no dispute, however, over the ignorance of the treatment given to Washington in an attempt to save his life.  Many of you are familiar with the fact that the main treatment given to Washington was to bleed him.  They drew out 3.75 liters of blood, a very large amount.  He may well have survived had they not bled him so.  As it stands, they may have inadvertently killed him. 

That’s what they did do.  Something they didn’t do was perform a tracheostomy, a simple surgery where the throat is cut open so that breathing would be restored, and so that any secretions might be removed.  Two of the younger doctors attempted to convince the elder, trusted physicians to try this (at the time) very new and controversial surgery.  The elder physicians went with what was trusted, and elected to forego the tracheostomy.

Had they not performed the bloodletting and/or performed the tracheostomy, Washington almost certainly would have survived. 

Thing is, the physicians were acting out of ignorance.  It is easy to judge them, but they were doing the best they could.  They were acting on what was at the time, cutting edge knowledge.  They were acting on what they thought they knew to be best.  Sadly, it doesn’t change the outcome of Washington’s fate, nor many others who suffered from a needless, harmful treatment.  Many suffered and died at the hands of ignorance.

Were it not for a desire to learn, a desire to discover the truth, we might still be using this treatment today.  People asked questions, challenged the status quo.  At every turn, the new is challenged and the accepted truth defended.  Fortunately, through the boldness of a few, the truth usually eventually wins out. 

It is such a change that is needed now with depression.  Depression is the third most common disease in the world, and as is the fastest growing.  It is predicted to become the most common disease by 2030.  Yet, unlike many less common illnesses, most people don’t even want to recognize the truth of it’s existence.

My challenge to you is to consider the fact that depression is going to touch your life whether you want it to or not.  There are depressed people all around you.  Yet, so harsh is the stigma, so ignorant are the reactions to depression, that they are not only probably going to hide it from you, and everyone else, but they are going to do everything they can to deny the truth themselves.  Because of ignorance, an inability to change and grow, millions of people are suffering needlessly, they are not getting the help they need.  Just like with George Washington, the problem is treatable.  Depression is a beatable disease.  Yet, again, just like with Washington, we are treating those with the disease poorly, and we are not giving them the help they actually need to overcome. 

You may think this is someone else’s problem.  It is not.  Your father, mother, friend, son, daughter, brother, someone is going to suffer through this.  Do you really want to be like those doctors who drew Washington’s blood?  Thirty years from now depression will be known for what it is.  Do you really want to be the person that allows their own prejudice, fear, and ignorance to hurt those around them?  Don’t you want to be the man or woman who actually helps those they love?  I know you do.  We all do.

Mental Illness is a very misunderstood concept.  People think it is vastly more mysterious than other illnesses.  Most see it as wholly different from being a real medical illness, something closer to voodoo, best to be treated with tricks of the mind or some other weird treatment, or better yet, to roll your eyes at, because it’s a all just weakness from weak people. 

Most mental illnesses don’t START in the mind.  They aren’t floating in the land of thoughts.  They are physical in nature and AFFECT the mind.  Take dementia.  Another illness once not understood.  We used to just think people’s minds got old.  We called it senility.  Now we know that the brain actually deteriorates, and there is a growth of compassion and treatment with that understanding.  Clinical Depression is physical in nature.  As of now, what we understand it to be is an unbalancing of the hormones of the body and chemicals in the brain.  Those shifting hormones and chemicals mess with our minds.  Everyone on Earth experiences this in some way.  We all experience puberty.  Women endure PMS and later menopause.  All of us are at the behest of these chemicals and hormones, and have a limited ability to control how we actually feel.  With depression, what little ability to control is stripped. 

So, telling someone to simply get over their clinical depression won’t help any more than telling someone with cancer to stop having cancer.  If you want to help, understand the truth of the problem and fight it.  You wouldn’t fight cancer by telling people to get over it, so stop doing so with depression.  You fight cancer with the means we have.  You do chemo, leaches, whatever.  Do the same with depression.  Go get help for you or your loved one.  Go to the doctor, see a psychiatrist, a counselor, a pastor.   Let go of the archaic knowledge that is prevalent about depression, and embrace the truth, lest you be like those doctors who let out Washington’s blood, and resisted giving him the surgery that would have saved his life.  Your loved one’s life is worth the difficult task of accepting a hard truth that can save it.

As always, remember that God is with you and loves you.  Depression is beatable.  It is going to be okay, as long as you don’t quit.  Keep fighting.  If you have any questions or thoughts, please write me.  I’d be happy to talk to you.

Post-Depression Life: An Introduction

 

Job 42:12-17

12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys.  

13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters.  

14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch.  

15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.  

16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 

17 And so he died, old and full of years.

 

Again and again, the same scenario played itself out in my life whilst depressed.  Some song, such as Coldplay’s Fix You perhaps, would be blaring through the speakers of my car, sparking my recurring fantasy.  Though the means always changed, whether it be a hidden tumor, some rare disease, some pill, being struck by lighting, or simply just hitting my head, the end result of my fantasy was the same… healing.  I would go from my state of horrific, torturous emotional paralysis and involuntary negativity, and would return again to a normal heart.  The lightning would strike, BAM, and somehow, as if by magic, the hell would be over.  I would be alive again.  I would look in the mirror and see myself.  Not just the physical body, but me.  I would feel me, and everyone around me.  I would be normal, whole again.  

Some five years have gone since my depression subsided.  It has been absolutely wonderful to no longer be under the thumb of such torment.  My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude, joy, and excitement over no longer “living” as I once was forced to.  However, it has looked little like my fantasy. 

One of my best friends just had half of his liver taken out after they found a cancerous mass in it.  As of right now, it looks like he is going to survive completely.  There is great hope that the surgery was the last of it, that the cancer is gone.  Praise God!

However, things will never ever be the same for him.  The surgery may have saved his life, but it also left him with an enormous scar.  He will carry it for the rest of his life.  Not only that, but that surgery was painful, and so is the recovery process.  Think about that for a moment.   Even the process by which healing came hurt, still hurts, and will leave it’s mark on him, both in body and in spirit.  His life will never be as it was.  Every doctor’s visit will be met with a hint of fear of recurrence.  Every decision made form here on out will be made through a lens of cancer.  Can I eat this?  Should I do that?  Can I drink this?  The doctors have given him a list of new guidelines by which he will have to follow in order to ensure he continues.  He will live every single day with the fear of recurrence in his mind.  Over time that fear will be assuaged, but at each occurrence of his body acting up, the fear of recurrence will jump straight to mind.  He may live to be ninety, and never have cancer ever again.  He will still live with the residual scars of it until the day he dies.

Guys and girls, so it is with depression.  In my fantasy, the catalyst would come and wake me up.  Life would go back to the way it was.  The truth is that there is no going back.  I know what they may make you feel.  I know that hurts you.  That is not my intent.  There is life, love, hope, and goodness on the other side.  It is just going to be different than your life was before.  Life is still good for my friend, but it has changed.  My desire is to give you so much hope, but a hope based on what is real.  I want you to thrive in your post-depression life, and that means not being set up for disappointment by not being told what is true. 

Like my friend with his cancer, you will have to change things in order to live fully, things others may not.   You will have scars, big ones.  There will be an enormous healing process that goes on long after you are depression free.  Your mind and heart has been twisted by pain.  That doesn’t come undone overnight.  It takes faith, hope, love, courage, patience and much more.  You will live the rest of your life with a fear of recurrence.  Over time it will get better, but it will always be there. 

Now, go back up and read that passage on Job again.  Feel the hope in those words.  One of the most famous sufferers of all time.  So famous is his suffering we are speaking of it thousands of years later!  After his suffering, Job was given back what was taken.  Now, at first look we just get excited.  With further thought it hits us that what was taken from him was people.  His children died.  Are those people replaceable?  You know they aren't.  Nobody is replaceable.  You can refill an emptied roll, but you cannot replace a person.  Job was blessed.  His life was good!  However, it was not the same ever again.  He was given new life.

So will you be given new life. It's not that what was disappears completely.  There will always be links to who you were.  Our lives are a whole, not just of the moment.  You are no more you now than you were in the past.  You will simply grow and change.  It is only logical.  Let’s start looking at what is ahead, after you are healed.  Let's let go of the parts of the fantasy that are not real... the instant healing, the return to your old life one hundred percent, the miracle pill, and replace it with the truth.  You are in the fight for your life, and even after depression is defeated, your healing will take a long time.  In some ways (some bad, but some GOOD) you will be forever changed.  You will have new insights into the world.  You will have experienced and survived a torture and torment that is daunting.  In many ways I struggle with feeling like a failure, as most of us do.  I have not achieved much of what I wanted.  However, when I reflect genuinely upon what I have come through, when I remember the true depth of the hell I survived, I know that I have already achieved something great.  Every breath, every wondrous emotion, every time I feel love, sadness, wholeness, it is a victory I once thought impossible.  Most people will never know it, and that's okay.  God knows.  He knows my pain, my struggle.  It has not been lost, nor forgotten.  Nor has yours.  Nor has yours.

Life Without Love

1 Corinthians 13

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^{[b] 6} it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

There is something transcendent about this passage.  You don't have to believe in Jesus to be moved by it.  The idea that life without love is nothing is universal.  It speaks to everyone.  Love is our greatest motivator.  Some might say happiness, but love is greater than happiness.  Happiness is whimsy, it comes and goes.  It has no purpose.  Love is eternal.  It informs us of who we are.  We define our selves by what we love.  

 

This is the greatest unspoken pain of depression.  If you can, imagine not being able to feel love.  You can act it out, your love, but not feel it.  Some people would argue love is an action, and not a feeling.  Now, I understand the desire behind that statement.  Most healthy people struggle with their emotions greatly.  They are desperate for some measure of control, as emotions are scary.  Sorry to say it is still a lie.  The depressed person knows this all too well.  They are forced to live everyday acting opposite of what they feel.  Everything screams for an end, yet they keep on.  They act love they do not feel, and it a special kind of hell.  To not be able to truly affect is the greatest pain there is.  It is worse than losing a loved one, worse than being left by a loved one.  

 

To those on the outside, remember this when you look at the depressed person.  Imagine waking up and looking at those you know you love, but you cannot feel the love you know is in there.  Imagine trying to get out of bed with that.  Without love, life is so pointless.  You wake up and think, "Who cares."  You just want to make another day.  You push on because you remember a time when you once felt love, and deep down, buried beneath the mountain of pain, you hope you will feel it once again.   Keep that perspective when you speak to them.  This isn't to say you should coddle.  Sometimes depressed people need a good nudge, and they don't have a free pass to act poorly.  However, it should give your heart an enormous amount of grace for them.  It should break your heart for them.  It should give you, as one who does feel love, and feels it for them, the desire to encourage often.  It should give you the ability to understand them a little better what they are experiencing, that you might act wisely.

 

To those in the thick of it, all you need to know is that love will come back if you have the courage to persist.  It will.  I lived without being able to feel love for over ten years.  It was a certain type of living hell.  Like you, I thought it would never end.  I was stuck, broken, not fixable.  The power of the darkness was too strong, unbeatable.  I am living proof that is not true.  My heart beats, it bleeds love, and it does so for you.  My affection for you, though you are a stranger, is what drives me to write these articles, as there is surely no glory nor benefit to be had otherwise.  This heart that once felt so dead I used to think, "If they only knew how dead I was, they would have a funeral for me right now.  Nicholas Laning died years ago, and they don't even know it.  All that is left is this brain sitting atop this body.  My soul is somewhere else."  That same heart now beats with love.  It weeps.  I am moved to tears even as I write this thinking about you.  If I feel love after what I went through, you can too.  You can love again.  You can.  Hear it.  You can love again.  Your heart can love again.  Beauty can return.  You will one day again look up at the stars and be moved, see your mother's face and remember her presence, even see yourself in the mirror and like your own life again.  You will.  Just keep on fighting.  Keep having hope beyond hope.  Don't quit.  I am proud of you for your fight.  So proud.  Just keep fighting.  I am praying for you right now. 

Depression, Emotion, and Reason

There's much to talk about when talking about depression.  Sometimes it feels overwhelming.  I get to thinking that I might forget something.  Something important.  Something that'll make a difference.

Yet, in the end, though there's quite a bit to cover, most of it is just extra.  There are some things that are the core of the fight.  They're the things that make or break you.

Hear me now.  I'm going to share with you one thing that really can change the battle, and not just for depression.  The truth works for anyone any time.

Your feelings DO NOT always tell the truth.

That's it.  Sounds simple enough, but with that in mind I think you will start to see just how often it is you let your feelings, how often I let my feelings, dictate how we think.  That's why I don't even like to say the adage, "Well, you can't control other people, but you can only control yourself."

Nope.  I can even do that, at least not a hundred percent.  If so, I'd be the happiest man alive.  Truth is, feelings are bigger than we think in rational process.  Start talking to someone with an opposing worldview.  If you know your stuff well enough to decently defend your view, there will come a point where that other person will throw out the "I just" clause.  It's where all actual reasoning has played itself out, and taken you or them so far, but not to the end.  Faith is inevitable.  And that point, when reached, is when we all say, "Well, that may be so but I JUST cant believe that... or I just have to believe that... and the following is filled in with what was wrought from emotion, not pure reason.

Everybody struggles with this.  I do all the time.  Only, most of the time, feelings follow enough of a pattern that corresponds with the circumstances of life, that it is easier to trust them (and also to be deceived by them).

This is why depression is so dangerous.  Thing is, in depression, your feelings stop corresponding with life.  Your feelings don't corresponding, seemingly, with anything.  Feels like satan himself has your brain in his hands and he's squeezing the living daylights out of it.

It is here where we are really challenged to ask ourselves... just what are we to do with our emotions?  Because, it feels like all hope is lost, and not just for now, but forever.  It feels like happiness is a lie.  It's not that it will not come back.  It can't come back.  Your every emotion screams for your life to end, or at the least for you to curl up in a ball and cease to move, for what's the point of moving?

I'll tell you how I first responded to this challenge.  Like an idiot, that's how.  I took on the problem of my emotions of death and utter hopelessness clashing with the memories of life before depression , of joy and wonder and happiness, and the need to survive for those around me, by trying to simply deny the importance of emotions in general.

"Feelings don't matter," I'd say.  So many times did I say it that my soul started to change.  A numbness came that I am still trying to fend off these couple years removed from the brunt of it.  My heart still tries to shut down at every turn.  All pain causes the walls to go up, and to my own detriment.  Walls keep out good things as well as bad.

Healthy people do it too.  This is where we get sayings like, "Love is a decision."  Takes out those pesky, unpredictable feelings and gives us a sense of control.  Only, it's a lie.  Love has a decisive quality to it, but it is much more than just a decision, and everyone knows it.  Love is scary because it is somewhat out of our control.  That's just the way it is.

On the other hand, as I said, most people feel something and take it as book.  If something feels true, we are almost helpless to believe otherwise.  The compulsion to comply with our feelings is huge.  I think this is because of the good feelings, the ones we cling to.  When we feel them, we want them to be true so badly that we feel we need to believe all our feelings.  If this feeling led me to this wonderful place, then my feelings must be true, because I want this feeling to be real, not just a fluke.

Why can't feelings be like people?  Yes, this is a metaphor.  People are real.  Some lie, and some tell the truth.  Part of life is discerning between them.  To feel the need to trust all people, at the risk of denying the reality that some people do tell the truth, is just foolish.  You'll believe any lie that comes your way.  Well, feelings are the same way.  They are all real.  But some of them lie.

In depression, your feelings are very real.  Your feelings are valid.  I am not taking away the validity of your pain.  I am simply saying that what they pain is telling you, "that you'll never be happy again, that you're lost forever, so just end it," is not true.  It just isn't.  And if you really want to fight well, you need to start internalizing this and acting on it.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest turning point in my fight against depression was when I stopped denying the existence of my emotions, started validating the reality of my pain's existence, but then rejected the message it was sending me.  It's when i realized that admitting that a feeling is real does not mean that what it is saying to me is true, that things changed.  I just said, "Okay, you're there.  The pain is real.  I'm just not going to believe what it has to say any longer.  Life is good, no matter what my feelings say.  It will be good again.  It will."  And things did change, slowly.  For a long time I felt that sense of hopelessness and had to daily reject the message.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and also one of the greatest.  Hope became real, because I didn't have to wait to feel something to be true for it to actually be true to me. My feelings no longer dictated reality.  They influenced, but no longer dictated.

And here I am, and I am no longer depressed.  I was right.  My hope was well founded.  What would have happend had I believed my feelings?  I'd be dead, that's what.

This is true for everyone.  Always know that what you feel is real, and is validated.  Then, have the wherewithal to discern whether or not your feelings are lying or telling you the truth.  Rejecting the lie of depression didn't make all other feelings lies.  That's impossible.  In order for love to be real, the feelings of depression had to be a lie.  Praise God they are.  Truth is you or your loved one can feel whole again.  Love is real.  Happiness is real.  Life is good.  People love you.  You are not a burden.  This will pass.  Whether you feel it or not, God is real, and He loves you, so much so that He didn't just stay above it all, but sent His only son to be a part of it.  He saved you and me.  That's the truth, feel it or not.

May God give you the strength to accept then rise above the emotions telling you that life isn't worth living.  May you press on toward the prize, and claim it.  Amen.

Hitting the Play Button in My Heart

Nicholas L. Laning

If you were to ask me when my depression ended, I would say a couple of years ago.  It is hard to give an exact moment, as there wasn't one.  My ascent out of depression was a long one.  It took years.

That said, I am still not untouched by my time in depression.  I find that I am still in this very long recovery process.  Slowly but surely I am becoming whole again.  By whole, I mean healthy.  I still have problems, and I still hurt, but there is healthy, normal hurting, then there is depression.

Something that has happened lately has been a reconnection with my past.  For those of you on the outside, I don't know if this will make sense.  To those of you who have or are battling depression, I think this will resonate.  It is as if my life got put on hold when my depression started.  The Nicholas that once existed almost stopped to be.  Perhaps a sliver remained, but only a sliver.  All in all I was gone.  I'd look in the mirror and see and feel nothing.  Just within the last couple of months I have been feeling the play button being hit on my heart again.  I look in pictures of me as a child and it finally hits me that really is me.  It is the same person.  Those pictures, sensations in my head weren't planted there, they were lived, experienced.  Again, to those of you who think this psychobabble, I am sorry.  It is not.  It is how my mind has dealt with such enormous pain.

It is something I never thought would happen ever again.  I never thought I'd ever connect with that kid in those pictures.  My childhood was lost.  Yes, we change in some ways.  However, I now see that I really am the same person as that kid.  I am not more me now than I was then, nor the other way around.  That was me then, and this is me now.  I am so excited to have those memories come back.  It is like a treasure chest that held me away during the storm is slowly opening up.  I wish it'd hurry up and just open, but it is taking time.  Slowly but surely.

I wanted to write this to encourage those who don't feel themselves, those of you who are staring in the mirror and feel and see nothing.  You feel dead inside.  You don't feel the warmth of your mother's touch, or the strength in your father's words, nor the kindness of a friend, nor beauty.  All are there, just not for you.  They can and will return.  I fought it for ten years straight, and thought I'd never come out the entire time.  I thought I was lost forever.  Yet, here I am writing you this.  It is coming back after a decade of hell and years of recovery.  So take heart!  Fight on!  Be brave, and remember that God is not lofty, far away.  He is here next to us, and came down and took part in all our pain that we might be saved.

John 3:16-20

16 "For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.  

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.  

21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

Break Over

Nicholas L. Laning

I apologize for my absence from this blog.  It is not that I have forgotten this blog, and those I have been writing to, or intending to encourage.  My struggle is a human one, and I have needed to rest from the attack a bit.  Bit off more than I could chew for while, and got bitten in return. 

Not but a couple of months ago I set out to write book on encouraging people in depression.  My parents welcomed me at their house, a get away to focus on writing.  The plan was to hammer out the outline and a couple of chapters, enough to send out to a literary agent.  After one day, the truth hit me.  This is not a novel.  It is my life.  Talking about the concepts of depression is easy and painless enough.  For the most part, I can discuss it at great length with little or no relapse.  However, writing the book called upon me to do something I never do… not just recall and discuss the concepts, the ideas of depression and how to apply them, how to fight depression, but to recall my personal, actual, struggle with it.  Since I never do this, I was taken by surprise when, after just one day of inundating myself with recollection of the horrors of my stint in depression, I relapsed terribly. 

In the month or so since, a great many thoughts have arisen.  Can I do this?  Can I keep trying to fight this publicly?  There is surely a reason almost no one ever writes first hand stories of depression.  The battle has been left largely to outsiders, which is sadly, part of the reason why so many people struggle as I did to believe they are depressed.  I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but there is a certain language that only depressed people speak.  It isn’t our words, but the ideas behind them.  It is in the sharing of those ideas that the first trap of depression, that what we feel is completely unique, and thus to be fought alone, and without hope of recovery, continues on so strongly.  I read tons of books describing depression.  And while the words had some vague nearness to them, they rang hollow to me.  The person writing the description was writing because they had a PhD in psychology or counseling or bio-chemistry, or theology, or whatever.  What they couldn’t convey was that another person, chiefly themselves, had ever experienced, had shared my pain.  And so I went on, falling into that classic depression trap of thinking that my pain was SOOOOOO unique.  No one else had ever felt how I did.  It justified so many things.  I could mope, whine, be angry at God, whatever I wanted, because I had been given a burden no one else had.  Every person I have ever talked to who is depressed has thought this, and had to overcome it.  The number one way they were able to do so was through someone else connecting with them, revealing their shared bond through a pain that is not only not unique to one person, but shared by hundreds of millions across the globe.  The irony is that almost all of them are doing so in the shadows, trying to duke it out with the biggest foe they have ever faced, blindfolded, legs and arms tied, mouth covered, ears plugged.  They have nothing.

So, it is my desire to do what I can to return to the fight.  Pushing myself so hard in it that I relapse does no one good, as that doesn’t comfort anyone to know that I am not all that much better off than they are.  I am better off.  My depression subsided very quickly with a couple days of patient hope.  This is in stark contrast to the incessant hell millions face every day. 

Let us continue on in the fight.  We may not fight perfectly.  We may fall.  We may stumble.  Yet, we continue on in the fight.  We have hope in our redemption.  To God be all glory.  Amen.

#7: 10 Things to Say (and 10 Not to Say) to Someone With Depression

This is number seven 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 Six Thing to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone With Depression.  Here's number seven:

What to say:
I can’t really understand what you are feeling, but I can offer my compassion.

What NOT to say:
Believe me, I know how you feel. I was depressed once for several days.

Nicholas L. Laning

This is great, because sometimes I think that we feel like we need to understand to sympathize.  We don't, not fully.  I don't have to experience cancer to hurt for someone who has cancer.  All I have to do is know they hurt, and that hurts me.  It's that simple.  The only way this gets complicated with depression is that people want to understand it so they can actually believe it.  Most people simply don't trust that depression is real.  It is very difficult to sympathize with someone when you feel they can stop the pain.  That doesn't move us toward sympathy.  It makes us angry.  We feel manipulated.  So, behind this is the very simple question... do you believe depression is real?  If so, then you understand that depression is not controllable.  The depressed person can't simply stop it.  They are being tormented against their will.  If you see that truth, then sympathy should be beyond easy.  

I also love this because, again, it does not attempt to fix.  It says that you believe them, and are there for them.  That is the bulk of what they need.  Done!  How easy is that?  Your job is to just believe and be there.  Simple.

Believe me, I know how you feel. I was depressed once for several days.  Sighs.  I understand the heart behind this.  At least, for most people, I think this is said in an attempt to help, to fix.  As I have already said a hundred times though, you can't fix people.  Heck, one of the lowest points of despair in my battle was when my psychiatrist of three years told me he had nothing left for me.  He had used the extent of his knowledge on me, and I wasn't better.  It was brave thing to admit, but it devastated me.  Each week I went in with hope that this next time we would find out what was wrong, that the answer would be found.  So when he said he had nothing for me, my hope faded.  

Point of that story is, if this genuinely talented psychiatrist couldn't fix me, you definitely weren't going to.  Trying to relate is incredibly human, and in a way, really touching.  So, I understand this.  However, it is folly.  You don't have to be depressed to know this.  This line of attack against sorrow comes up empty.  There is a reason people who are battling cancer go to cancer support groups, and that is to be around people who genuinely understand.  

Contrast the what TO say with the what NOT TO say.  One admits a lack of understanding, but is liberal with compassion.  The other falsely claims a knowledge not possessed.  If you wen through a couple of days of depression, I would say that you have a touch of understanding of what I went through.  You would have a clue.  But, if you were to think that a couple of days of depression is equivalent to ten years, then you are a fool.  That's like someone who spent two nights in jail telling someone who just got done doing ten years hard time in maximum security they understand.  No they don't. 

Be encouraged by all of this.  My hope is that as you have read through these responses you will see a pattern, and see just how simple your task is.  In reality, all you have to do as someone who is on the outside is be there.   You don't have to fix.  You don't have to reason away their pain.  You can't.  You can't reason away cancer, or the flu, or any other illness.  this is no different.  You can look up doctors if you feel led.  Buy books.  Admonish your loved one to get outside, to put the donut down and grab an apple, to push themselves to be as social as they realistically can.  Don't get mad when they can't do stuff healthy people do, because they aren't healthy.  Whatever.  Just be there.  Have compassion.  Have compassion.  Have compassion.

Meditate on these words from Romans 12:15...

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."

#6: 10 Things to Say (and 10 Not to Say) to Someone With Depression

This is number six 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 Five Thing to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone With Depression.  Here's number six:

What to say:
When all this is over, I’ll still be here and so will you.

What NOT to say:
It’s your own fault.

Nicholas L. Laning

I love this one.  "When this is all over, I'll be here and so will you."  I can't remember where it is that I read that the two main driving forces in life were the seeking of goodness, or aversion from pain, but it stuck with me.  When we hurt, what do we want?  To stop hurting.  This is true with any pain.  Let me tell you a secret though, it is even more powerful for depression.  

Recall that one of the facets of depression is an unrelenting, overwhelming, involuntary negativity.  Depressed people cannot help it.  Their brains have, for whatever reason, turned on them, so to speak.  Everything that comes to mind is automatically turned to the negative.  You can be as optimistic as you want.  You can tell yourself all is great.  You can exhaust yourself finding the silver lining mentally.  In the end, you still feel like it is all terrible, useless, awful, pointless, etc.  

Believing that it will end is one of the most powerful tools for overcoming depression.  One of the biggest turning points in my battle was when I finally decided that I was going to believe it was going to end, no matter how I felt, no matter how much the depression tried to make me feel hopeless and trapped.  Slowly but surely things started to change.  

"But Nicholas, I myself struggle to believe it will end."  

Then change your mind right now.  Hear me.  Your loved one needs you to believe they are going to get better.  My mom was completely unrelenting on this point.  She kept saying it, "You will get better.  Just be strong, and it will end."  I would argue, "You don't know that."  She would say, "No, but I believe it with all my heart.  I just know you'll be okay.  It is going to end."  The more she said this the better.  Take whatever skepticism you have and stuff it.  Don't leave it to a person who is depressed to be the only one trying to the belief that they will be okay.  Talk about a bad idea.

Quickly, I also just like the reiteration, "I'll be here and so will you."  It may sound redundant to say, "so will you," after you said, "when this is over," but that's okay.  They need to hear that they are going to be back, that they will be redeemed and restored.  Use those two words frequently, by the way.

Again, this can only be said with a complete ignorance of what depression is.  Would you tell a woman her period is her fault?  What about when someone gets the flu?  What about kidney stones.

"Lisa, you know what, I am tired of your attitude, and I am sick and tired of hearing about this period.  It's your own fault you are like this, now get it together."  

"Ugh, Mike, I am sorry, but I don't feel sorry for you.  Get your act together.  Those kidney stones are your own dang fault."

Anyone else cringe?  Anyone?  It's bad, right?  How dumb is this?  Truth is, maybe you did do something that was a part of why you got depressed, cancer, the flu, kidney stones, whatever.  However, it still isn't your fault.  People don't give themselves cancer.  Perhaps they smoked too much, or ate poorly, or whatever, but lots of people do that and don't get cancer.  Lots of people have casual sex.  Not everyone that does gets and STD.  Same with kidney stones.  There are certain things that my uncle cannot intake without getting kidney stones.  He gets them all the time.  I can intake those things that would give him kidney stones and be just fine.  

So it is with depression.  Lots of people drink too much.  Yet, only some get hit with depression.  Everybody deals with loss of loved ones.  No one is above it.  Yet, not everyone gets thrown into depression over it.  Just like any disease, it hits some and not others.

Nothing outside set mine off.  I was fine.  I loved life.  One day I came home from High School, plopped my backpack on my bed, and wham!  Just like that, everything changed.  Torment entered me like I had never known, and it stayed inside me for ten years.  I still have no clue as to why.  It just did.

I know it is hard to understand.  It is such a difficult thing to wrap your mind around.  If you are reading this, then you are trying, and that says something!  

We cannot change our own hearts.  But, the Holy Spirit can.  Pray for knowledge.  Pray for understanding, and I believe God will answer your prayer.  He will move you closer to the one you love who is struggling so.  I believe it!

Proverbs 2:2-6

2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;  

3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,  

4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, 

5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.   

6 For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

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.