A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

I have always been one of those people who uses internal images to get a handle on what is going on in my life. That actually helps my preaching, because I find that images can really help others get the idea easier than step by step logical propositions. Maybe that is why most of Jesus’ teachings were in story images (parables) and many of the prophet’s visions were images. The image can also lead us to understand more as we contemplate them.

So as I have tried to understand my own experience with depression I find myself switching between three primary images that help to illustrate the tendancy of depression to lessen life. I will take these one at a time.

The one that I’m currently trying to see through is fog. This is a kind of dullness of thinking that makes it really hard to concentrate. I find my field of vision to be more limited and so I become more anxious, more hesitant, less patient, and less sure. I read somewhere
(follow this link to the q&a page and then down to section 8) that one researcher described dysthymic depression as a state of perpetual anxiety, a lurking uneasiness. So the brain’s system needs to keep adding more limiting chemicals to try to tone down the anxiety. When I read that I went, “Yes, there is my fog.” A perpetual coverup for what might be fearful out there. But while the fog covers up the possible fears, it also covers up the beauty and the possibilities and the hope and the joy. I believe those things are there, but that is an expression of faith not current experience (most of the time). Grace does lift the fog from time to time to keep me from completely losing it, but the fog is never far behind.

I remember that it was 14 years ago when my District Superintendent used the word Depression as the name for the mood and orientation that I was living within. The counselor I went to used the word dysthymic depression to describe my chronic condition and experience. I continued therapy with him until the floods of ’93 broke th pattern and besides I was feeling better. Then about 4 years ago, I began therapy to deal with the failure of my first marriage and the reoccuring emptiness of the return of the depression, and I got a little better, but then I moved. I thought I was better

I was not. The slow slip into the swamp/desert continued and the move away from most of my supportive relationships combined with the extreme stress in my wife’s job meant I had little or no emotional resources to use in dealing with the major transitions I had experienced in the last 5 years (separation, divorce, mother’s death, remarriage, and then moving). So I struggle and fail and still thought I could handle things.

I could not, because depression is not something to be “handled.” It is something to treat and something to pursue healing in and from. So last week, I opened my eyes from my denial and finally named the place of my life. Again.

So started with an antidepressant and with counseling and spiritual direction (ongoing).

But the journey is only starting and it is a long and slow one. Since my dysthymia has probably been active in my life for over half my life it will not be reversed quickly, so I have to accept this with patience (something that I have lost along the way).

At least I have begun the journey and hopefully have slowed or stopped the regression into the emptiness.

I have decided that I will use this category of my blog to reflect on that journey for myself and maybe for anyone else who might be slogging in the same swamp.

Grace, only with Grace, can this happen.