Throughout the bouts of depression I have suffered, I have found that each time it descended like a storm cloud over my entire life.
To be clear, two of my significant depressions emanated from a deep, dark grievance that changed my life. In another major season it was as a result of an abusive relationship and not being able to get out of what he had experienced as a toxic situation. And my most recent fight, a few years ago, was over a job I didn’t enjoy and wasn’t good at, which indicates how important my job is to my mental health.
I found that depression subsides in two ways: sharply, without warning, and slowly and subtly over time. I have experienced both, the first many times and the second enough to know.
The sharp form is scary and leaves you anxious as the subtle slips into the present moment collapsing your hope and crushing your self esteem. I can remember times when things seemed fine, say in the morning when I woke up, but by mid-morning the shroud of contempt would descend within an hour or even minutes. Or the day would pass and the stillness of the night would reveal my inescapable and lonely reality. Instantly, in these moments, I felt like I was drowning in a paradox of emotions: unable to control them, but unable to feel them apart from the pain. Completely untenable and unfathomable. It’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced because it’s completely an inside job, where your world feels like it’s imploding, worse than dying. This is how it feels.
When depression gradually descends over weeks or months, it’s scary in a different way. It comes with a great deal of confusion, which is deeply perplexing. It’s like you’re looking for answers and they just don’t come. Something is wrong, you know it, but you can’t do anything about it. I always found inexplicable bouts of irritability or worthlessness (both at different times) that were the telltale sign that I was in the black dog fog. Sometimes I have seen in other unresolved grievances that remain latent in them, that turn them inside out, turning them into what they were not, but there is good news…
The good thing about the symptoms of depression is that they indicate where we are. I always found it more of a relief to admit, “Wow, yeah, that’s it, I’m down!” It was always a relief to know that I needed help. It was always a relief to my wife and children when I raised my hand and said I needed help.
The fact that we can say “I need help” by itself inspires hope, because it is an admission that we believe help is available. Having made such an admission, life, hope and purpose are not far away, but of course, this also depends on other conditions. For many people, there are chronic conditions that surround them. For many people, their mental health is just part of the picture and becomes an effect of other, more intrinsic causes.
