Depression Deconstructed

They say depression is anger turned inward. What an uplifting post for my first post of 2012. But it's true: anger turned inward. That definition makes my head swim as I try to really understand how anger is turned inward and how that turning results in depression.


First: anger. I don't believe in anger. Well, I do believe it exists, but I think it's a cover. A big dramatic show, hiding a much simpler truth. Anger is the prideful covering of pain. When you feel angry or encounter an angry person, you can be pretty sure something, somewhere is hurting emotionally.


I think it works like this: pain sucks. Regardless of how pain is delivered, it can be devastating and crippling. When we experience pain we have a few options:

1. We can deny and suppress pain (which is an illusion, it will come out somehow). 
2. We can give into pain, be very sad, feel miserable, cry all the time, become scared of what hurt us. 
3. We can get angry about what or towards who hurt us. Sometimes we take out our anger on people and things that weren't the cause of our pain. 

This last option, getting angry, is very interesting to me. I don't think anger is good, but I think it can be good for short periods of time and in certain situations. Initially, when pain is felt, anger gives us a way out of sadness. I think that's why so many people are angry with their ex after a divorce, for example. Sure their spouse may have been a jerk, but it always hurts when we are not treated the right way by others and when things don't go as we wish they had (if you married someone, at some point you were believing it would work out). 

Staying sad is debilitating; anger is motivating. Think about in terms of war. If country A attacks country B, country B could be sad about it - Why did they attack us? What did we do to them? But sadness is certainly not helpful when you're being attacked. The aggressor doesn't care that you're sad and in your weakened sad state, you'll easily be conquered. So, what does country B do? Country B gets mad - How dare they attack us?! Who do they think they are?! And in that prideful anger, country B returns the attack. 

The same thing happens in every day life. If my long-term boyfriend breaks up with me (this is hypothetical), I will be sad. Very sad. I might want to crawl in bed and eat chocolate and never come out. However that won't be very helpful to my employment, my social life, or my hopes of eventually finding another boyfriend. So, in time, I would get angry - That jerk! He doesn't deserve me! Which would motivate me to get up, get out of bed and live my life. 

Those are ways in which anger can be beneficial.

BUT, what if, for some reason, you are unable to express your anger? What if country B couldn't fight back against country A? What if I couldn't say that my ex-boyfriend was a good-for-nothing-jerk who didn't deserve me? When pain turns to anger, it is beneficial to express the anger in healthy ways. Vent to a friend or counselor, go fun a run, punch a punching bag, go somewhere private and scream at the top of your lungs, write an angry letter that you never send, etc. 

I believe anger sometimes goes unexpressed because either:


1) it is considered unacceptable or
2) it is subconscious. 

Unacceptable Anger

This could go in lots of directions. I'm going to give one example from my own life, which actually falls into the both categories of being unacceptable and subconscious. 

When I say unacceptable I don't mean objectively unacceptable (because feelings are always acceptable), I mean unacceptable to a particular person or group of people. 

In my own life, I was angry with God. I believe it was subconscious because I didn't want to admit it to myself. I didn't want to admit it to myself because of course it was unacceptable. He's God. You have no right to be mad at Him. Plus, He's supposedly good, loving, perfect, and always has your best interests at heart.


When it is unacceptable to express the pain you're feeling (either through anger or sadness), the pain has nowhere to go. It just sits there, toxically, in your mind and heart. But like garbage in a garbage can, you can't just ignore it and hope it will go away. It must be dealt with. Undealt with pain and anger in the heart will fester and rot and become more and more painful and destructive.


Sometimes we make ourselves the source of our unexpressable pain and anger. Instead of leaving responsibility with the person who hurt or disappointed us, we say to ourselves, if only I didn't feel this way, it's my fault that I'm upset because I just don't think the right way. While it could be true that you need to learn to change your thinking patterns and think true thoughts, blaming yourself is not beneficial and is not going to solve your pain and anger problem.


Blaming yourself - the way you were created, your natural make up as a human being - can make you feel hopeless, powerless, defeated. Afterall, it's hard to escape yourself.


My plea to anyone struggling with depression is to seek the source. Find the roots of anger and pain that are fueling your depression. You most likely will need the help of a counselor or a trusted friend. Don't be afraid to be honest with yourself and with God. Honesty is your path to freedom. Tell the truth about what happened and about how it made you feel. Not necessarily to everyone, but to someone. Your feelings are real, your feelings are important, your feelings are telling you vital things about what's going on inside your heart and spirit. Listen to them, EXPRESS them (in a healthy way), and find freedom and joy.


I firmly believe that chronic depression is a form of deception. Fight it! Get angry and fight it! Do not let it steal your peace and fulfillment. Life is full of beauty and opportunity and you are perfectly loved and accepted just as you are right now.

PLEASE PRAY FOR SARAH

Please pray for Sarah. Even if you've never prayed before or aren't sure if you believe in God, please, please, pray for Sarah.

Sarah is a young woman around my age who has cancer. She attends the church I attended in Houston and I learned of her struggle back in August of this past year. Sarah has a blog that she has regularly updated with her thoughts and experiences.

To be completely honest Sarah's blog has truly changed my outlook on life. I tend to struggle with melancholy and sometimes even depression and seeing Sarah's positive attitude of faith and hope in our Savior Jesus has been incredibly convicting, inspiring, and encouraging.

Sarah is going through something no one should have to go through. Many people have been praying for her for months now. PLEASE join us!

This is a prayer I recently wrote for Sarah in my personal prayer time, but feel free to say anything you want to the Lord on her behalf!

Father God, You created Sarah and You have the ability to heal her. No cancer is too advanced for you. Cancer bows down to Your Power. Sarah's cancer is aggressive, strong, and powerful. Please show the world that You are God by supernaturally healing her in way that only You could. Glorify Your Loving, Healing, Powerful Name. Please, do it! In Jesus' Name we continually pray.

Thank you for praying!

And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God.

“It is true, LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, LORD, are the only God. (Isaiah 37:15-20)

You can call me Peg-Leg

Well, it's been over a week since the fateful foot breaking episode and I am doing much, MUCH better. Last Monday was a bad day, a VERY bad day and by the time I drove home I was crying like a maniac and probably frightening my mother a great deal. My housemate Angela had to literally lift me off our front steps (in the pouring rain) so that I could get into the house. One of the lowpoints of my life maybe. By the end of Monday evening my mom had purchased a plane ticket to come help me. Yeah, it was that bad.

Tuesday morning I knew for sure I wasn't going to work. My whole body was killing me. The thing about walking on crutches is that it uses all your other muscles, so while my right leg was getting a break, my left leg and both my arms (and my stomach muscles apparently) were working their little hearts out. Tuesday I felt like a train had hit me. Tuesday night my mom got into town and all was right with world. And my coworker, Tracy, brought me Subway and a Donald Miller book (the only one I hadn't read...that is no longer the case) and picked my mom up from the aiport so she didn't have to take a cab. My Multnomah coworkers and Angela have been awesome!

Wednesday my mom and I went to the orthopedic doctor and found out some GOOD NEWS! As it turns out the immediate care doctor was incorrect, I don't have a Jones fracture, I have an avulsion fracture, which means that it is at the bottom of my 5th metatarsal bone and that it is much less serious (Jones fractures are pretty bad). The doctor said that this fracture will heal itself and that all I needed was a walking boot and to bear weight on it "as tolerable". This news was such a relief that it made me want to cry! A walking boot means a) I can walk(!) b) I can take it off to take a shower or whenever I want and c) I don't have to worry about it getting wet!

So far I have still needed my crutches, but I am easing into putting more and more weight on my right foot and I am getting better and better at walking with the crutches. I will go back to the doctor in a month to get x-rays and see if my foot is healing; if it is, I will probably get to wear regular shoes! if it's not healing I might have to have surgery to remove a bone fragment (!). Yikes! Needless to say, I'm hoping it heals well in the next month.

For now I am taking it a day/a week at a time. Spending most of my time in bed (when I'm not at work) talking on the phone, watching movies/seasons of Frasier, and reading, lots of reading. It's not so bad. It makes me feel a bit lazy and I'm a person who likes to have places to go, but I'm viewing this as a forced time of rest, relaxation, and reflection on my life and where I would like it to go. Leave it to me to make this situation a dramatic life-reevaluation :) But in all seriousness, 2010 has been a CRAZY year for me. One day soon I will outline the events of this past year, every month has held some sort of change, challenge, or difficulty - topped off by a broken foot. I'm just hoping that these last 2 months of 2010 are relatively uneventful...

In any case, I will let you know!

The Incredible Story of my Broken Foot. Sad Face.

I'm 28 years old  and I've never broken a bone, never so much as sprained my ankle, but all that changed Saturday night...

I was at a Halloween party in downtown Portland where my friend Erin's brother was DJ-ing. The place was super, super crowded, like you could barely move. We hadn't been there very long and I was talking to Erin and Chelsea when out of nowhere I felt a stabbing, horrible pain in the side of my foot and I noticed a girl in high-heeled boots walking off behind me. I have no idea how it happened, but somehow she stepped on my foot. Hard. It hurt really, really badly for about 60 seconds, but I just shrugged it off and didn't think about it again.

A couple of hours later my friends and I were walking to my car when I realized my foot was really hurting, but I still didn't think that much of it. I got home and pretty much immediately went to bed. When I woke up Sunday morning I moved my foot while I was still in bed and it hurt. I knew that was a bad sign. However, it was even worse when I got up and tried to walk, it was intensely painful. Probably an 8 or 9 on a 1-10 pain scale. PLUS the whole right side of my right foot was swollen and turning purple. It didn't take me long to figure out I was going to have to go to the doctor.

I went to an immediate care clinic and they x-rayed my foot and then announced to me that I had a double fracture, specifically a "Jones Fracture" on the outside bone of my right foot, the bone that leads to my pinky toe. The fractures are in the middle of the foot. Right now they gave me a temporary cast and told me that next week, when the swelling has gone down, I will have to go to an orthopedic specialist to get a permanent cast put on. They also gave me CRUTCHES - which suck. I do not like walking with crutches.

So now everday stuff has become incredibly difficult. The kind of fractures I have require no weight being put on my foot in order to heal, which it's not easy to do everything with ONE LEG (and virtually no arms because they are always holding the crutches). The doctor instructed me to "stay in bed as much as possible". Oh. OK.

After informing me that my foot was broken they also told me that I couldn't drive or take showers or go up steps of any kind or get my cast wet or dirty or put any weight on my foot. Great. I live in Portland. My family lives in Houston. Tears immediately sprang to my eyes. I'm a very independent person and it has been difficult to live in Portland without my family, but I am trying to be obedient as I believe this is where God wants me. But now here is a situation where I actually NEED my family and I am all alone. I'm now having to rely on my friends and coworkers to help me, which is a humbling, scary situation for me.

I know I'm not the first person on earth to break their foot and I know things will get easier as I get more and more accustomed to my new broken foot lifestyle. But as I've mentioned many times before, the past 12 months or so of my life have been very trying and I thought I was about to enter into a season of peace and calmness. Only to find that no, the season of strengthening and refinement is not quite over yet. This is another opportunity where I feel overwhelmed with life and want to give up and where I will have to choose to live moment by moment, trusting fully in God's love and provision, and letting His Holy Spirit empower me to do things and endure things I don't think are possible (or I just really, really, really don't want to do).

So, there's my broken foot story. Stay tuned for more updates.

In Training

Last week I joined a gym. And I signed up to have a personal trainer for 6 weeks. 

Today I deeply regretted that decision. I've always hated exercising. Always. I've also always tried to make myself exercise. The thing is, when I make myself exercise, I really don't push myself at all. As soon as something starts to really hurt, I back off until it's at a more tolerable level. I'm just really not good at pushing myself. That's a big reason why I decided to try a personal trainer - I really need to be pushed. My body is capable of a lot more than I think it is. However, when you go from barely pushing yourself to being pushed more than you ever have in your life, it is a little shocking. 

Today, at one point, during my workout I started seeing spots and I felt really nauseated, like I was about to pass out. I even had to cut a couple of parts of the workout short. The trainer said it was because I hadn't eaten enough beforehand (imagine!). I had eaten some yogurt and berries 2 1/2 hours before my workout and he said I needed to eat something more substantial about an hour before workouts. My next workout with him is scheduled for Wednesday and I need to look into what would be a good thing to eat beforehand. I do not want to feel the way I felt today, it was awful and almost made me want to quit the personal training thing all together. 

But I'm not going to quit. I really need to persevere on this one. I'm tired of me listening to my body - I don't want to work out...I want to eat that... I'm ready for my body to start listening to me - you will workout!... you will eat healthy things!