Some Struggle and Some Don’t
Darren Friesen up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, relays an interesting give and take about his recent struggles with Depression.
Go read it to see some understanding comments to him and some less than helpful … ahem … comments. Hence the discussion.
I only want to add that part of the difficulty in people understanding depression is that it is a complex disorder. It does involve series of choices made and then not made, but you can’t reduce it to a matter of the will. Nor can you simply point to the presence of sin anymore than you can claim the presence of sin in each person’s life. It does involve the nature of one’s relationship to faith and to God, but you can’t reduce it to simply a spiritual matter. It also involves one’s resistances to intimacy and love, but you can’t reduce it to simply a matter of isolation or loneliness. It is a matter of losing control of one’s moods and emotional responses to life, but it cannot be reduced to simply a matter of feelings. It does involve one’s brain chemistry and the pathways for the processing of neuro-transmitters, but you can’t reduce it to simply a matter of chemistry.
In my own struggle with my depression I find that whenever I have tried to address only one part of the complexity I have have temporarily felt better, but ultimately felt worse. I am thinking more and more that the reason depression is becoming so prevalent is that we try to reduce it to just one thing instead of the impairment of body, soul, heart, and will that it reflects. So medication AND counseling AND working on relationships AND growing one’s connection with God AND bringing more influence upon one’s active life AND whatever else comes up in that context (I am trying to leave this open-ended) reflects the true life struggle for a depressive.
I realize how intimidating that is, and I suppose it comes out of my Nth attempt at my depressive struggle, but I am finding that while it is a challenge, the fact that it begins to come closer to the reality of my experience actually brings me more hope in the struggle. Even though there are still days and weeks when the fog descends (or the swamp rises) one must chose again to embrace life even though the embrace is as small as a mustard seed (oops, am I mixing metaphors?).
