Depression has been my ever-present friend for most of my adult life.
Friend? Yes, friend.
In recent years I have learned to embrace who I am and depression is a part of who I am.
For many years I tried to answer the “why” question? Why do I suffer from depression?
Is it genetic?
My Mom was mentally ill for as long as I can remember. Numerous suicide attempts, the last attempt succeeding at age 54.
I see a counselor every two weeks and my Mom’s mental problems come up from time to time.
Am I going to end up like my Mom? Will I end up in the nuthouse like she did?
My counselor assures me that I am NOT my Mom.
I appreciate his support but some days I wonder.
I am a perfectionist with an Obsessive Compulsive Personality.
Is this what drives my depression?
Perhaps my religious background is to blame.
A perfectionist driven to please and obey a demanding God.
I served, worked, and sacrificed my health, wealth, and family to please the Christian God, but no matter how hard I tried I always came up short.
Is this why I am depressed?
Somewhere deep in my mind I still feel the need to be perfect, to please, not God, but others?
I don’t have any answers to these questions.
All I know is that my life is a rollercoaster of highs and lows.
I refuse to take medication because I don’t want to lose the highs and lows.
The highs and lows are what make me who I am.
When I had my last fall down the rabbit hole I stopped blogging a-g-a-i-n.
People who know me just wait…
They know…in time…the darkness will lift.
I came out the other side making all kinds of promises.
Who was I kidding?
A friend who read this blog told me that I am one of the kind of people that must run as fast as they can and then crash, only to later start running again.
I think he is right.
Years ago my doctor told me, Bruce, you have a mind that never shuts off.
And he is right.
No matter how hard I try, my mind runs like a freight train rushing down the track.
Even in my “healthy” days this was the case.
The wind down, the time between laying down to go to sleep and actually falling asleep, could take an hour or two.
These days, with pervasive pain and muscle spasms added to the mix, wind down often takes three or four hours.
Bedtime? One AM to Five AM.
It is just how it is.
My dear wife has learned to adapt. She has learned not to pattern her sleep around me, that is unless she wants to watch re-runs at four in the morning.
My battle with depression permeates our marriage.
I wonder, if she knew then what she knows now, would she have signed on for the Bruce Gerencser show?
I hope so because I can’t imagine life without her.
I have stopped asking how or why.
All I know is is this…
I am a man, a decent man, a loving, kind, compassionate man, who just so happens to battle with depression. It is a part of the fabric of my being.
I know dark days will surely come. As sure as Fall turning to Winter, I know that, at the most inopportune times, depression will spring itself upon me and, for a time, maybe for a few days or weeks, or a month, life will seem unbearable, perhaps even unlivable. But just as sure as Winter turns to Spring, the darkness will lift and life will once again break forth just like the perennial flowers that have wintered over waiting for the call of Spring.
I think it is a gift to always strive for perfection, though we both know, ultimately futile. We both love sports. Would we ever want our teams to give other than their best? Is not our place in the lives of family, friends, and acquaintances not far, far more important? At the same time as we age we have to accept our limitations, embrace them, see them as opportunities for others. Let the great world spin. I think it’s wise of you to recognize that depression is just part of who you are, not something you must be rid of to reveal the “real” you. Ha, I’ve never done that with a single thing. Time to learn. You create such a unique space here with your words, one so many of find refreshing and real. Thank you for that.
My counselor is trying to get me to embrace my memory loss as being a good thing. I am having a real hard time with this. I find the inability to remember things like I used to and my frustrating loss of short-term cognitive function to be quite upsetting. I fret and fume over it and when it is on full display it irritates the hell out of me. I always prided myself on having a sharp mind and having the ability to remember things without writing them down. These days, if I don’t write it down, it is lost forever.
I counselor wants me to see that the loss of cognitive ability can actually be a blessing because it means that there’s a lot less for me to be accountable for. I get the point and I know that he is probably right, but I still find myself quite frustrated by this. In time I am sure I will learn to embrace my new reality.
Exactly. In my line of work one is expected to be a know-it-all, but I’m fast becoming a forgot-most-of-it. That’s okay, it’s time for others to know these things now, hold them in their minds, and work them into something good and new. I’ll read Montaigne and admire the beauty of my wife (not that I ever have time to, too busy working). Here’s a charming poem by Billy Collins that you may have once known, but have probably forgotten…
Depression is one of those things that forces you to look at your world view in a different light, to reexamine all those assumptions on which you’ve founded your life. I know Christians in this day and age have done their level best to reinterpret, but the religion of the New Testament doesn’t really abide depression very well. It’s the sign of a spiritual problem, one that can be fixed by getting one’s spiritual house in order. But it doesn’t work that way; and when one is besieged day after day with the reality of depression–a reality obviously not remediable by the dilettantish spiritual measures prescribed by believers–one is forced to the realization that the religion has simply failed in one of its predictions.
You are so right that the New Testament doesn’t abide depression very well. The Bible presents the Christian as an overcomer, a person who has found victory in Jesus. The depressed person desperately wants to be an overcomer, a person who has found victory in Jesus, but this life seems impossible for them to find. In fact, I suspect this makes their depression even worse.
Thanks for commenting, Mike.
Yes, it does make life worse. Like others have mentioned here, now you not only have the depression itself but the guilt of somehow not being able to “let go and let God” or “appropriate the grace of God” as you were promised that anyone who is really “in Christ” should be able to do. Basically, you’re not holding your mouth right. Problem is, the depression itself can sometimes make it impossible to hold your mouth right–and that would be true even if there really were anything to the religion.
“the religion has simply failed in one of its predictions.” Yes. There are a lot of those. I used to have a problem with depression. Somewhere along the way, it turned into anxiety. But, anyway, while I was a Christian, I was certainly not “joyful.” So of course that caused a problem in my mind: “maybe I’m not really saved cause if I was saved, I’d be joyful.” Christians talk about joy all the time. It’s a fruit of the Spirit.
All that “stuff” makes me angry now, thinking back on how much I tortured myself trying to make it all real! It was really the religion I was raised in told me things that were not true, but I thought they WERE true, so all the mental torture was because I was taught lies.
Bruce, I think it’s a very good thing that you accept that you get depressed sometimes. I mean, we are who we are. We have some inborn tendencies. It irks me greatly that we’re made to feel guilty for those-like we’re doing something wrong. Born with a personality that tends toward being negative? “That’s bad. That’s a
sin.” Tend to be anxious? “That’s bad. That’s a sin.” In other words, don’t be who you are. Who you are is a problem. You’re not good enough as you are. Jesus/God/Holy Spirit must change you. Pray that that will happen. While waiting for a personality change, feel guilty, feel inferior.
My family had (and still has) to deal with depression. When you think scientifically, that would be just another disease in the myriad of diseases that affects humans.
But if you take into account that just centuries ago mental illness was still treated as a “lack of character”, “satanic influence” or just “lack of God” things get real tough.
Even these days, the majority of people STILL think of depression as just a “sad state” that you just can snap out of it anytime you acknowledge your “stubbornness” and “let God in to the equation”.
My mum had to deal with depressive states almost her entire adult life, and my sister and I were the only ones that had to fight agains all other members of the family to let her take the meds. The other members just stated that “who has God, doesn’t have depression”, depression is “lack of faith”, “depression’ is cured with the bible and with work.
After a difficult period in my life I developed panic syndrome, and although supportive, some family members even said that my symptoms were totally opposite from the “fruits of the Spirit”, and “I don’t need this type of meds because I have Jesus”…
Well, time is a bitch, and now, after a period of silence, I discovered that that same person is now on depression meds (of course, he didn’t tell anyone).
Technically, some people have more predisposition to suffer from depression, as other people may have more predisposition to suffer from kidneys. In summary, I always say that your brain is ALSO part of the body.
I am SURE that religious thinking is the perfect catalyzer to trigger depression and other mental illnesses.
A lot of people think that religion (even if it’s not true at the end) gives comfort, but I think it gives a lot of anxiety and anguish. The bible if filled with ambiguity, at the same time you should pray and be cured, and in other passages you have to accept your illness and your suffering. Pray works but then not. This “fence sitting” and doubt are powerful triggers.
Thanks for sharing this. I have no doubt that my religion has helped to fuel my depression. I think I’m going to write a post on this and hopefully I can share how guilt played a crucial role in my depression.
I’ve had several pastor friends who were dismayed to find out that I was depressed. They consider depression sign of a spiritual defect, lack of faith, a sign of secret sins, etc. I just needed to have faith, confess my sins and get on with my life of serving Jesus. As you know this doesn’t work for people who suffer from depression. I am glad to be free of this kind of thinking.
I used to be very depressed. Then I realized I had a lot to be depressed about and I decided to deal with my issues. Sometimes I still get depressed but I cope better now. I take charge and change what I can and survive the rest. I talk myself up and make sure I remember that even though life sucks sometimes, it sucks even worse for many people all over the world. I remember a National Geographic photo of a pitifully thin widow begging on the streets of Calcutta. So sad. Thank goodness, I have never been quite that low although I think I have been close once or twice. It’s only a mood and it will change for the better.
Embrace who you are, love your self and treat yourself kindly, don’t hate your self for not being perfect. After all, no one is perfect. In this happy wappy country it is considered bad to be introspective, do any real thinking and to be a real person. Don’t let it bother you.
And by the way, you really are not your mom. I had a scary mom and I worried about becoming a monster like her but I never did partly because I actually thought about the kind of person I didn’t want to be and the kind of person I do want to be. Since you are aware and trying to know who you are, I do not think you will be your mom. Just my opinion.
my mother had a lot of things on her plate by the time she found out that she was pregnant with me at the age of 18. She grew up in a home where both parents were drunkards in the hotly contested divorce the court ruled that neither parent was fit to raise her and custody was awarded to her grandparents.
She was sexually molested as a child, rape as an adult, and sexually manipulated by her psychiatrist. She married a man who may have been or not been my father. The man she married move from job to job, small-town small-town, and mom never had any sense of stability or permanence.
Her “Christian” psychiatrist hooked her on drugs and she spent most of her adult life as a drug addict. She tried to commit suicide numerous times and finally succeeded at age 54. She and my father divorced after 14 years of marriage. She married her first cousin who committed suicide not long after they were married. Her next husband was an alcoholic and her husband after that was an attorney who sold life insurance rather than practice law.
Underneath all of this was the fact that she had numerous health problems and I think it was these health problems that ultimately led her to shoot herself.
I certainly did not have the life my mother had. Yes we moved around a lot and I hated my dad for moving us but, all in all, I have good memories of my childhood. While we were always poor, I always seem to find a way to make money so I could have the clothing that other kids had. I worked a job from the age 14.
I married a good woman and we have had a wonderful 34 years together.
In most every way my life was better than my mother’s, but like her I live with depression, and like her I have pervasive health problems.
Unlike her, I came to see that Jesus is no cure for depression and unlike her I did not seek help from Christian mental health professionals. I sought out someone who is not a Christian, a person who did not have the baggage that being a Christian brings to being a counselor. My counselor has literally saved my life and I am grateful for him and all that he has done for me.
Your Mom also had to live under the crushing guilt of being molested, raped and divorced. You sit in a church that values virginity and you are molested. Now what? You really are tainted for life, aren’t you? You are not a virgin when you get married. You didn’t make a choice to sin like the girls in the back seat of a Chevy:) but you are worth less because you are not a virgin. Then there is being divorced which was a huge stigma for women. Christian sexuality is all screwed up and the girls pay a huge price under that system. That is my personal opinion.
It took me quite awhile to realize that a whole lotta my guilt and self hate was due to the Christian values surrounding sexuality.
Bruce,
As you may know, I am a scientist. I study the human body, not so much the mind, but I have some idea of how difficult it must be for those who battle depression to understand where it comes from. The human body is a mysterious thing sometimes, hard to come up with reasonable answers to some questions.
I don’t have any answers for depression, and I’m very fortunate I haven’t experienced it, though I do have a mind that won’t shut off like you. I often take hours to wind down at the end of the day.
Let me say, whether it helps or not, there is something about your writing and your life story that is very compelling. The mixture of intelligence, humor, and the ability to now objectively look back on a life-long relationship with Christianity is simply fascinating. Often I come to read your blog when I need cheering up or need to read something that makes sense. I never leave disappointed.
Thank you for your prolific blogging, I for one really appreciate it whenever you are up to it.
Thank you my friend for the kind words.
Bruce
thanks for writing bruce. so many of us are getting so much from your writings. your honesty is much appreciated.
Ditto…from a bipolar athiest…your thoughts resonate with me Bruce. When you are blogging that is great and when you need a break that’s cool too. I always know to just wait a bit for Bruce to be back.
I spent 25 -30 years in spiritual abuse in a church. Been out for about 18 years now. After reading pages and pages of your site, this page on depression helped me understand more about you and it helped me. Enough about me, let’s get to the pithiness.
On this page, in my cheap opinion you finally lightly brushed humility. I admire that honesty. The other pages just go on and on ad nauseam (sorry but for me it is) about hurts, how good you were / are, what a life you’ve lived, contradictions you have, conclusions you’ve come to, how well versed and read you are, etc. etc. And yes I didn’t have to read it, but there are striking similarities between us.
These pages are meant to help others through Bruce, right? That’s what this website is about and what you plan to do the rest of your life, right?
This page on depression is the best and I’m not just rattling off at the mouth – honest and sincere you are here. That’s what you want, right? Yet the biggest / best thing on this page – Bruce is vulnerable. Why do we as humans secretly admire that? Yet I’d be willing to bet (based on the pages I’ve read) if you could lose one thing in life it would probably be the depression (other than the flaming evangelicals, like myself). Isn’t the depression your worst part of life? Yet it is somehow the part Jesus uses to encourage me, like it or not.
I wish you the best.
Mark
I am glad you found this post helpful.
If I could choose…I would choose to be free of muscle/joint pain. This would then likely improve my mental state.
Thanks for reading.
Bruce