I haven't blogged much lately. The basic reason for this is that I've been going through a particularly tough time and I wanted this blog to encourage people, not depress them! But I think I've now reached a stage where I can begin to talk about what I'm learning from this tough time. So here goes.
Recently, I have come to realise that I am teetering precariously on the brink of clinical depression. I haven't been there in 20 years, so it was a bit of a shock to find it happening again. Once I acknowledged that this was happening, I was able to think about how it came to happen...
THE STORY SO FAR
As followers of this blog will know, a little over four months ago, I had my heart broken. (I have thought in the past that I had had my heart broken, but judging from this experience, the other times must just have been nasty sprains! :'D) I was finding it very stressful to have to see the person who hurt me in this way regularly at church meetings, which in turn had an adverse effect on my M.E. (which does not respond well to stress). So as soon as I could manage it, I went away for three weeks to give myself space to recover.
The time away was a really good time with God, during which I was able to work through things in a healthy way, and I returned feeling refreshed and much stronger. So far, so good.
Where I went wrong was that I had decided that by the time I got back, I should 'be able to cope'. So when I found that it was still a great strain, I started to bottle things up again and went into a form of denial. Unsurprisingly (with hindsight!) this amplified the stress to an alarming degree, and resulted in the state in which I now find myself. (Things were not helped by the sudden death last week of someone I was once very close to.)
PHYSICAL CAUSES
Since I have acknowledged to myself where I am, I have started to improve again. I have got myself I a little book called
"Coping with Anxiety and Depression", written by a Christian nurse called Shirley Trickett and published by Sheldon Press. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is going through anything similar. She explains that depression and anxiety both occur when your nervous system has had more than it can physically cope with. Then it starts to malfunction in one or both of the following ways:
Your nervous system has two parts: the 'sympathetic' nervous system and the 'parasympathetic' nervous system. The 'sympathetic' side speeds things up. It is what gives you an adrenaline kick when you face a crisis. Ms Trickett invites us to picture it as a man in red Ferrari with his foot on the accelerator! When this side goes into overdrive, it causes anxiety.
The 'parasympathetic' nervous system (which Ms. Trickett pictures as a man pootling along in a blue Morris Minor) is the side that slows things down. When this side malfunctions, it causes depression. Simple, really.
My overloaded nervous system has been swinging between the two, which is apparently not uncommon. I had anxiety for days before a meeting, and depression for days afterwards. This pretty much filled up the week! This had a very bad effect on my M.E. quite apart from the anxiety and depression in themselves.
CONCLUSIONS
As I say, once I acknowledged the problem and it's causes, I was able to begin to deal with things again, and have been starting to improve. I realise now that I had put a burden on myself that God never meant me to bear. He certainly never intended me to lie to myself, which was what caused my system to overload.
Jesus knows our human frailties; He has lived with them Himself. He doesn't require us to be 'Superpeople'. If we are struggling - yes, we are supposed to praise God in it, but
nowhere does the Bible tell us to pretend that we are
not struggling! The Apostle Paul acknowledges his struggles time and again, while still giving God glory in the midst of them.
The problem was never God's faithfulness. He has been staggeringly faithful through it all, including leading me to things that helped me, like Ms Trickett's book. The problem was how I handled things. It wasn't that I stopped talking to God, or even that I stopped asking Him for strength. But because I wasn't acknowledging the true state of things within myself, I wasn't able to receive all the help and strength that He wanted to give me.
So if anyone else is in a similar situation, I urge you to acknowledge this to yourself! You cannot receive the fulness of the help God wants to give you until you do. Honesty really is the best policy.
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