Struggling

I try not to focus too much on my struggles when writing this weekly article, however, occasionally I need to be totally honest with my readers. I have a mental illness that cycles between depression and mania. Sometimes I’m not cycling dramatically because there are medicines that help with that.

But even when I’m faithful to take the medicines, cycling may occur. Right now I’m cycling into a depression. And due to a variety of circumstances in my life, I’m not doing a very good job of coping with it. I want to believe that it is all due to my doing or not doing certain things including eating right, exercising enough, doing daily readings in the Bible and AA literature, Bible study, prayer, praise, and focusing on the positive things in my life. However, the truth is sometimes I can be doing all those things and it’s still not enough to overcome the mood swings due to my mental illness.

When I have things to look forward to, I do better, so I try to focus on those things. For instance, my daughter is coming home from college for a week this Friday. I get to go pick her up and hopefully will be able to spend some quality time with her over the course of the week. However, there’s also the nagging sense that things will not go well and I will not be able to keep up a good front and I will crash. I don’t want to disappoint my daughters, or my husband. I feel like crashing would do that.

The reality is I’m afraid I will need some drastic help to overcome this round of depression. That could mean doing some things I just do not like to do. One of those things is calling my psychiatrist and asking for her help (which usually means more meds and I hate taking more meds). Another thing is being accountable to my therapist and trying her suggestions to get through this experience. I just don’t know if I have the energy to follow through on those suggestions.

If I can’t control my thoughts and urges, another option, which I really hate, is to go to the mental hospital and see what suggestions they have for medications and behavior changes. That idea was thrown out as a possibility to me today. Of course, I don’t like taking more meds no matter who prescribes them – the outpatient psychiatrist or an inpatient psychiatrist.

So today, I’m trying to pray and trust God to see me through another day. But, when I’m feeling the way I am right now, it’s hard to believe that God is working in my life – or that He wants to work in my life. If He wanted to work in my life, wouldn’t He prevent me from getting to this place? But disease is disease, because we live in a fallen world. I may just have to deal with my disease as best as I can and trust God is giving the professionals in my life the wisdom they need to treat me. Is that enough? I don’t know.