From Drowning to Jumping Joyfully Into Life
A few years ago, I quit my very stressful job after becoming completely overwhelmed and depressed. Below is something that I wrote then, as I began my journey toward better health. At that time, I was questioning whether or not there was something fundamentally wrong with me and wondering what I needed to do to get myself better. I had accepted that I had a mental illness and needed to learn how to deal with it the rest of my life. I was open to anything, any method of healing, in order to get better. In future blog posts, I will share more with you about how I got from that point to where I am today. Today, I am not overwhelmed, anxious or depressed. Today, I believe that mental illness is not something that I have or that defines me, but it is more like a disease that can return if I don’t continue to live a healthy lifestyle. I need to eat well, get good rest, exercise and do many things to maintain a healthy mind and body. I am not saying that the negative feelings will never come back, at times they do. When I start to get flickers of fear or sadness for no reason, I know now what to do to get my life back in balance.
For me, depression feels like you’re almost drowning, but your nose is just above the water. I think a person with a healthy brain can handle the challenges and stresses of life and keep moving forward. Being healthy is so important to me and I’ve been through seasons of life where I’m obsessive about the way I eat or how often or how far I run and exercise.
So admitting that my brain is not in top condition is humbling and difficult. I’ve lived my whole life in denial that I might actually be anxious or depressed. I realize now that I really didn’t need to struggle so much and so often when I had these feelings. Not everyone feels so overwhelmed by life’s challenges. Most importantly, I realize that I shouldn’t have felt weak and guilty for being born with a brain that naturally thinks differently than a normal or more resilient brain. It has been less than a month since I have accepted my predisposition to this mental illness, but as I learn about this, writing my thoughts helps me to process and understand it all better.
I think there may be some people who are born with healthy, strong and extremely resilient brains. These people jump joyfully into the water of life with a life jacket on. Imagine the sun is just rising over the hills behind a beautiful lake in New Hampshire. It is calm and clear and you have a life jacket on. You jump off the dock into the water and the jacket holds your head up high above the water. You swim with joy and enthusiasm over to the raft. It is so fun, you move your arms, you kick your legs and you glide through the water. You arrive at the raft, climb up the ladder, sit down with a huge smile on your face with excitement and anticipation to jump back in and swim some more.
There are probably many people who have an average healthy brain. You are on that same dock looking out at the water. You jump into the water, you know how to swim, but you don’t have a life jacket and you aren’t a professional swimmer. You swim and it is challenging but pleasurable. When you get tired, you casually and easily turn over onto your back and float for a while. Then you continue to swim to the raft, climb up and relax, peaceful and happy. You look around and notice a cute little duckling swimming by and appreciate how adorable it is.
Now, here is a person with some anxiety and mild depression. You look out at the water and you think to yourself, “There might be snakes or snapping turtles or maybe sharp rocks down there. How deep and how cold is the water? That raft looks really far away. I don’t know if I can really swim that far. What if I get tired and can’t do it?” You look behind yourself and you see your little brother waiting his turn. “Oh no, I don’t want him to have to deal with this. He might be scared, he might get hurt too…” With some fear and worry, and pressure from the people around you to “Just jump!” you quickly splash into the water. You go down deep and you feel like you have weights on your ankles. They don’t pull you to the bottom, but they are enough to really drag you down, you have to really pump those arms to keep you afloat. The weights are heavy enough that they prohibit you from floating, so you struggle in the water to keep your head afloat and are determined to get to that raft as soon as possible. As you shakenly climb up the ladder you are exhausted, discouraged and nervous about having to go back in the water.
Finally, here’s a person with severe anxiety and depression. You are sitting on the edge of the dock, your arms tied behind your back with heavy weights on your ankles. You hear muffled shouts of encouragement around you, but there is a thick cloud of gray around your brain that prevents you from really hearing them. You visualize yourself jumping in and your foot getting gouged with a sharp rock, your foot bleeding profusely. You decide to fall into the water because you know you have to. You have to because you care so much about the people around you, you love them and you don’t want to disappoint anyone. You have to, because it is the right thing to do. The weights on your legs are pulling you down and you kick really hard to keep your nose above the water. Surprisingly, your foot did not get sliced off on a jagged rock, but your arms are tied uselessly behind you. You struggle all day to keep your nose right above the surface of the water. Then you cry uncontrollably as you climb up the ladder onto the raft and lay there. You think to yourself, I just can’t do that again. That is when you stop getting back into the water, that is when you decide it is just too hard and you are sick of feeling like you are drowning with your hands tied behind your back all the time.
I’m still learning about all this. I feel like most of my life I was a person with some anxiety and mild depression. Life always seemed more overwhelming and intimidating to me than it was to most of my friends. Being a shy, highly sensitive introvert, I thought it was normal that life worried and exhausted me. There are times in my life when I really enjoyed what I was doing and my life was simple and happy and my brain seemed healthy. I seemed normally and appropriately challenged by the day and would look forward to getting up and doing it again. But whenever I had a job that didn’t allow me enough time to pay attention to and do the things I value the most, I would become mildly depressed. I would feel like every day was a struggle, I was so tired and I just wanted to be alone.
This fall, I had the most challenging job that I have ever had and I became very anxious and depressed. A person with a strong and resilient brain could probably figure out how to do this work and still have balance in their lives. There were many wonderful things about my job, but everything in me wanted to be at home with my family living a peaceful, simple life so that I could swim and maybe float again and not feel like I was drowning with my arms tied behind my back.
Now that I’m home, I’m trying to figure out if I can have a healthy brain by eating well, exercising, not adding too much stress or exhaustion to my life, praying, reading and doing all the things that bring me peace and balance. Or do I need therapy and medication to feel like I don’t have those weights dragging me down and making my life a constant struggle? I would like to work again to help provide for my family, but because of my mental illness, I feel like any job could lead me back to mild or even severe depression. And unfortunately, I am really anxious about finding another job.
So now that I’ve accepted that this mental disorder is something I do have, I need to figure out what I’m going to do about it. To protect our daughters from having to go through the same thing, I am extremely fired up and motivated to figure out how to get better and how to live with this illness. My hope and prayer is that at a younger age, anyone who may suffer with a mental illness can learn to jump into life and swim with enthusiasm and joy.
If you ever feel like you are drowning, I pray that you will know that you don’t have to live your life feeling this way. That those weights around your ankles can be removed and there are lifeguards out there who really care and want you to put your life jacket on, if and when you need it.