Strength From Within, Part 5 - Reaffirming My Faith

This is the fifth post in my series on Strength From Within.

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us as an entirely new person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my different body- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.

In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses, letting myself feel all the negative emotions, and let the losses go so that my heart could have emotional freedom and the space to discover myself.

In the third post I describe a process I went through in how I decided to do something scary and face my fears, not letting them take over my life. This took courage, but it changed my life and let me teach my son Reilly about being brave like his name describes.

In the fourth post I walked through some of how I have had to recalibrate my thinking so that instead of focusing on the negative things of what I had lost, I needed to realize what I had gained through Fibromyalgia. I didn't want to at first, but I learned a great deal about myself and about focusing on what's really important.

In this post I will describe a little as to how I reaffirmed my faith and how my faith has helped me.

During my counseling classes we had what we called labs, where we practiced some of the skills we were learning. During one of the lab times in my first year I walked in and sat down to do the exercises. I don't remember what it was that I was upset about specifically, but I was so bothered by it that I couldn't stop crying and had a hard time even talking.

One of the lab leaders took me aside. I don't really remember what I said to her, but one of the things that bothered me must have been a topic that I struggled with often over that time period- that I had a hard time knowing God was there and with praying because my emotions felt like that nothingness that I later recognized was from exhaustion and depression. I had questions. I had doubts. When I prayed it was as if I could have been talking to the backside of a barn because it just felt like it was going nowhere and that God wasn't hearing me.

Now, if you don't believe in God or have never found anything you really had a lot of faith in, you might think, yeah, it wasn't going anywhere because there was nothing there to hear! I can't convince you to think otherwise, but I will tell you that I had previously felt God's presence in my life. It was awesome and wonderful. I know God protected me at various times in my life from physical and personal harm. I often just felt a sense of peace even if there was no circumstantial reason to feel that way.

At some point though, that feeling was gone, and it was gone around the time that I felt the fatigue and depression ramp up after I got married (No, I don't think those are related!) and felt worse around the time I was in the counseling program and classes. Regardless of my emotions feeling blank, I know I was experiencing doubt, discouragement, and depression. I kept wondering, What's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Is God angry with me? Do I even have faith? Have I just been fooling myself this whole time?

So, you may be wondering why I know roughly what I was upset about even though I don't remember what I said? That's because of the response from my lab leader, which I remember almost word for word.

"Sarah, I know it may not seem like it now, and it may take some time in coming, but I know there will be a day when your faith in God is so strong that nothing will be able to shake you from it." 

[This is a 1,300 year old monastery built on a single enormous rock in France. There is a passage 

in the Bible about a wise man building a house on a rock instead of shifting sand. 

I often thought this was referring to what teaching you followed and what you placed your faith in- 

if you placed your faith in God your foundation was strong and immovable.]

Wow.

I remember thinking things like, "That's nice for later but not so helpful for now."  However, as the days went by I heard her words play and replay in my head. If you've read my post about finding and holding onto your hope, you might understand what I mean as I tell you that this thought became something for me to hold onto when the days were dark and difficult.

This time period, that lasted a number of years, tested, sifted, measured, weighed, examined, filtered, and purified my faith. I didn't realize this at the time, because all I saw was the pain, but this was good for me. Actually, this was one of the best things to happen to me that I never would have wanted or asked for. This was another way that Fibromyalgia was a benefit to me in ways I wouldn't have thought before. I mention more of this in my post about recalibrating my thinking.

I've come across people that seem afraid of dark and difficult times partly because they can shake your faith. They seem afraid of questioning anything related to faith and how faith intersects life as we now live it because it's seen as shameful to have doubts and fears. It seems wrong to them to have any questions about God and faith because isn't that just a lack of faith, and doesn't it say somewhere that isn't a good thing?

Having been through this process I say, you can be afraid. You can't change how you feel right now. However, while it is a painful process, there is nothing to fear about having your faith tested, sifted, measured, weighed, and all the rest. There is nothing wrong with crying out to God, asking Him the hard questions, and beating your fists against anything you find (though, as we tell our son Reilly- not people!).

That might seem odd to you, but I think it's right. If you know something about the Bible you might be familiar with David. He did this all the time. He questioned, he yelled, he was discouraged and depressed, he made mistakes (and several really big ones!), he sobbed. And God called him a man after His own heart. Job, the man who went through almost every kind of misfortune on earth, had strong faith and still questioned God, at one point basically saying, "Why do I even exist?". God later blessed him and restored everything He took away.

Why would God do and say these things about men that had deep questions about Him, about their circumstances, and about their relationship with Him?

I think it is because even while doubting, even while being angry, discouraged, and afraid, they still turned towards God. They never turned their back on Him and said, "Forget you!". Their spiritual posture was still facing God. They still had faith even if they didn't realize it, even when it wasn't obvious to themselves. They recognized His hand, knew God was there and had their back, even when their feelings and their circumstances told them otherwise.

So, this is why a testing and sifting of faith is good for us, and me- because it ends up strong and purified. A faith that hasn't been through testing of some kind can't become strong- it's just an untested weak kind of faith.

So, after years of struggling with wondering what happened to my faith, I realized that faith in God was one of the very few things I was still holding on to. I was still turned to Him, I still searched for Him, I still found Him, even when my feelings and my circumstances kept telling me my life had a huge void with God's name on it.

I found pieces of who God is in seemingly random places that showed me I wasn't forgotten. I found Him in books (not just Christian books!), I found Him in movies (not just Christian movies), I found Him in nature (not just at church), I found Him in people (not just the seemingly uber spiritual ones!). Please don't mistake me saying these things as some sort of "there is divinity in all of us, etc." That is NOT what I am saying here!

I'm saying that I would go through my day and God would show me little bits of Himself, basically saying, "Hi Sarah, I'm still here. I'm not gone. I've been here the whole time. Just see me. I'm right here in front of you." At first it was a bit here, a piece there.

If you've ever had someone write little post it notes to you and put them in random places around the house for you to find as you go through your day, you might understand how this was. I saw the equivalent of little post its from God here and there, basically telling me He was thinking about me.

At first I was aware of very little. But, then I started noticing. Once I started noticing, I eventually started seeing. And once I started seeing, I saw Him everywhere.

God was here. He was with me. He had my hand. He had my back. He wasn't letting go. He wasn't leaving me. He had me. He holds me. He's got me. 

And once I realized that, I knew that my lab leader was right. It had happened. I was finally at the place where my faith in God is so strong that nothing will shake me from it - including Fibromylagia.

Holding Onto Hope- Combating Depression and Fatigue

If you haven't read my first post on depression yet I hope you will read it first. I talk about zombies in it, so really, why wouldn't you want to read it?!?

Once you have, I want to tell you that if you suffer from depression and still want to try to live a full life, there are several steps I would urge you to take.

Step 1: Find Hope
In my previous post I stated that, "you want to believe there is hope for things to be different when you so often feel like there isn't any." When you suffer from depression, especially deep depression, hope is what you need to hold on to. You need a reason to hope. You need a reason to keep going even when you don't feel like it. Even when everything seems impossible, everything feels like blah blank boring empty nothingness, you think you can't possibly go another day the way you are...ness. You need to find something, or several somethings that give you a reason to get up day after day, to resist giving into the blahness, to continue to form and maintain relationships even if you keep thinking there isn't any point. You need a reason.

Allie's reason was kind of nebulous- she was able to laugh hysterically at something small (a piece of corn sitting all alone under the fridge), so maybe everything isn't hopeless. However, when everything seems hopeless, when you have no reason to keep going... A reason, however nebulous, is enough for a while.

 
After a long while I realized I had three reasons to hope, and things I hold onto to maintain hope: My God, my husband, and my child (now children). The more reasons you have, the more motivation you have for making yourself do things that seem impossible when you are lying in bed thinking everything seems too difficult.

I can't tell you how many days I woke up lying in bed thinking, "Why am I awake? Why should I even get out of bed? Why should I even care about getting up?" Once my first son was born, the answer always became, "Because Reilly needs me. I love him. I'm his mom and I need to take care of him because there isn't anyone else to do it when Steve is at work." Reilly gave me reasons to get out of bed, and often I got smiles which made a little pocket of happy in my day filled with zombie like foggy thinking.

Steve gave me reasons to care about other aspects of life and drew me more into being around other people, whether I wanted to or not. I wanted to because I wanted to see people, and to be and feel normal. However, it often seemed like a lot of effort and energy expended so I wasn't always sure I wanted to. Afterwards, I was always glad I did. Classic introversion made a lot worse with depression!

Steve, himself, is an amazing man, loves me unconditionally, and has often made me laugh or smile when I wasn't expecting it. At some point there will be a post all devoted to him as there are so many ways a spouse can help or hurt someone going through a chronic condition.

[Steve, Reilly, and I taken a few years ago by our friend

 Sarah at Sarah Zimmerman Photography]

My God is the underlying foundation beneath everything. I seriously think He's the reason I'm still able to show love when my emotions feel so much like nothing. He's the reason I push myself to care about and for Reilly and Steve, now Connor, and my other relationships when I could so easily just not care and let myself be isolated. He's the reason I even want to have hope, because life without God so easily seems hopeless. Holding onto my faith hasn't been easy, as I'll share in a later post, but it has been completely worth it.

If you don't believe in God, I would ask you to consider the reasons that keep you from it. I wouldn't be surprised if it had little to do with God and everything to do with people that gave you a reason to resist believing in Him. However, whether you believe in God or not, I urge you to find some reason, any reason, to have hope and hold onto it day after day.

As you go through each day find little reasons, little signs, that there is a reason for hope. It can be as little as a flower or sunset, and as big as someone showing you love in some way. Each person will have different things that give them hope throughout their day. I will tell you, though, that this can be difficult as it's easy to just ignore everything that could be a sign of hope as you continue in your depression. Still, please try. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Step 2- Find Ways to Ease Your Symptoms
Whether it's medication, supplements, exercise, relationships, dietary adjustments, or some form of meditation/spirituality, it is really important to find ways that help ease your symptoms. I won't list all the possible things of each you can do in this post as you can easily do a Google search and come up with a ton of information- although I may go into some of them in more detail later. I can tell you that the more you can do, the more it will help.

However, what works for some doesn't always work for others. Also, because there is a ton of information available, it can also be overwhelming to figure out where to start. Where I would start is with something that seems manageable that could help a lot- like taking a daily vitamin if you currently don't do that. A vitamin is such a little thing but I always feel better when I've taken them and always feel worse if I've skipped a few days. I don't always recognize it in the moment, but after I've started feeling bad I look back and realize I forgot to take them.

Another manageable thing is to just sit outside in the sun for 15-20 minutes every day with no sunscreen. Unless you have extremely sensitive skin you shouldn't burn during that amount of time. The reason you want to skip the sunscreen is that while sunscreen blocks UV rays, it also blocks the rays that carry vitamin D. Vitamin D can help your body feel better in general and most people are deficient. So, if you want to gain Vitamin D skip the sunscreen just for a little while.

A seminar I listened to said you can get all the Vitamin D you need for a day by being naked in the sun just for 5 minutes with no sunscreen. Now, I don't recommend that- don't want to scandalize the neighbors or cause issues with little kids running around (though if you have privacy areas, what you do in your home is your business)! However, with summer approaching, unless you are so deep into depression you can't get out of bed (in that case perhaps open the window and shades for a while?), it shouldn't be too difficult to sit in the sun with shorts and a t-shirt for even 10 minutes while you read or play games on your phone. Well, at least that's probably what I'd be doing (being honest)!

Step 3- Avoid Pity Parties
When you are in deep depression, and especially in that spiral of depression, it is soooo easy to throw yourself pity parties. Then, when you do get together with people you tend to invite them to your pity parties too. I could tell you some stories but they would just depress you. Just suffice it to say, Yeah... so easy!

Unfortunately, when your depression has a piece of it based on mood, internal and external factors, this just feeds your depression and makes it worse. It can sometimes feel like it's helping. After all, misery loves company! But, that's the thing... company in misery just makes more misery. It doesn't really help at all.

What helps with this is to replace pity parties with thinking something positive, even if it's little. When you realize you are in that place where you are entertaining your pity party, find one of your hopes and just embrace it. Immerse yourself in it, marinate in it, (insert favorite action verb that basically means to surround yourself with it here). Spend time/talk with that person, do that thing, look at that piece of beauty. Whatever your hope may be, just start feeling, thinking, and doing everything about that hope that you can so it blocks the feelings, thoughts, and actions of your pity party. This can take a while to get to where it's an auto shift in thinking, but you can do it.

Every time you shift your pity party to your hope it helps that much more. Any change takes a while to become automatic. First, it's completely hindsight- so it could be days in your pity party before you remember, and that's ok. The more you do it the better and sooner it will get. Then it becomes the same day, then hours, and minutes, until finally it's a pity party mode first with a quick shift to hope in almost the same instant. But, all this is a process. So, it will take a while. Give yourself grace in the meantime and don't give up on it.

[If you are a Doctor Who fan (because who wouldn't want to be!?!), you will immediately recognize 

David Tennant who plays the Tenth Doctor on the show. David Tennant did an excellent job at portraying 

the dichotomy of a deeply depressed individual who still managed to often find happy things in life 

and reasons to maintain hope, sometimes after indulging in a pity party. He's a favorite 

Doctor and actor for that alone.]

 
Step 4- Adjust Your Coping Mechanisms
A coping mechanism is anything you do to adjust to the effects of stress in the hopes of reducing the impact stress has on you. Coping mechanisms are most basically broken down into fight (e.g. learn more, attack the problem, seek help, blame others) and flight (e.g. avoidance, denial, distancing, humor).

Some of these are positive, and some not so positive. Learning more, attacking the problem, and seeking help are all positive coping mechanisms. Blaming others, denial, and avoidance (anything you use to keep from dealing with stress, such as substances, affairs, or overindulging in hobbies) are negative ones. You will notice I didn't mention humor as a positive thing even though you would think it was? I also didn't mention distancing in the two categories. Well, with these two it's not so cut and dried (ever wonder how we got sayings like that one?!?).

Sometimes distancing can help because it gives you space to look at stressors and the situation more objectively so you can handle it. However, you don't want to stay with that distance maintained. That is when it becomes a negative, and more like avoidance. At some point you will need to deal with the stress rather than keep it at arm's length. Humor is a form of distancing. It can be a stress reliever, but if you use it too often it can become annoying, unhelpful, and more stressful.

My go to coping mechanism is avoidance, and most often is with books. I tend to read a lot. No, I really mean a lot. Seriously, a LOT. If I had a physical book for each book I've read, including the multiple times I've read them, I think my entire house would be lined with books.

If you are a book lover of any kind this could seem like a dream come true! The only problem with my coping mechanism of reading is that I often read fiction... and when I read I tend to completely immerse myself in the story... so much that if it's a good book I can view what's happening in my head like a movie or as if I'm there. Book lovers won't see a whole lot of problem with this (I can totally hear you saying, "Of course not! Why is this a problem!?!").

Well, here's the problem... when I'm living immersed in the world of the current book I'm reading, I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world ("Well, yeah, that's half the point of reading!"). And, if I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world, while I am missing [read: avoiding] the stress, I'm also missing all the good stuff and memories that are happening with the people I love ("........*blink*.......But.....*blink*......").

Yeah, not a lot I can say back at that one...

Now, I'm not saying I don't read anymore. Far from it! I still have stress and have a hard time coping with stress sometimes. However, I try to limit it when I can. If that doesn't work during a high stress period, after a time I will have a book fast in which I don't read many books at all (I'm in one now and decided to start a blog- funny what can happen!). Sometimes this comes naturally after I've read all my favorite books again, and everything that I can find at the library, and am in a waiting spell for more books by my favorite authors to be published (sometimes with internal pouting... and lots of sighs...). However, usually I get to some sort of saturation point when I have gotten to a place where I've avoided for as long as I can mentally, emotionally, and physically take and just have to deal with the parts of life I've been avoiding.

So, how do you adjust your coping mechanisms? First, recognize the coping mechanisms you have in the list I mentioned above. If you are having trouble with figuring out your coping mechanisms, you are welcome to let me know and I will help you with this! Second, identify one or two coping mechanisms that you think would be good to do instead. Or, to do what I've mentioned, which is do what you can to keep it from taking over your life. With some things this will work. In other instances (substance abuse being a big one), you may need to abstain entirely and find another way to cope.

After these two things, you adjust similarly to the process I mentioned in the pity party section. It will take time, but you can adjust, you can do it, and it can become normal to have a positive coping mechanism that still lets you experience life in the midst of depression and stress. 

Hold onto Hope, even (especially!) when all you can feel right now is nothing. Feelings aren't facts and don't get to dictate your life. You can do it. Find your somethings to have hope and just hold on.

Blah and Nothingness- Fibro and Depression

I have been struggling with depression all of my adult life. It can be difficult at times to relate to people that have never experienced depression because it's so hard to remember a time when I didn't feel that weight of depression in my life.

Almost two years ago I came across this post about depression by Allie on her blog Hyperbole and a Half. [Warning: If you are offended by certain words commonly used as curse words in our modern language, do not read it]  Her posts always include purposely bad drawings and often tell some sort of story.

As I was reading this post on depression, I couldn't help giggling... and laughing... and more giggling... and laughing so hard I cried.

Now, you may think this is strange... laughing... about a blog... about depression...?

But... here's why! Because in reading this blog on depression, it was as if a little voice inside me kept shouting and getting louder, "Yes, Yes, YES!!! Someone finally found words for all the things that I've been feeling inside!! This is what it's like!!!!" And that little voice felt relief, validation, and a little piece of happy.

Because depression isn't really just sadness. It's like a big blanket of nothingness just slowly creeps into your life until it's too late and you sit there wondering what happened. It's slow, it's sneaky, it's insidious (meaning stealthily treacherous), it's cyclical (you spiral down getting worse because it feeds itself at your expense), it's destructive, it's mind numbing, and it doesn't easily go away. In thinking about it, depression is like zombies.

 [You don't want to know how many gross pictures I waded through 

to find this relatively benign and artistic picture. You're welcome.]

Just think about it. Zombies are slow. Zombies are quiet. Zombies sneak up on you and then attack you. Zombies grow by feeding. Zombies are hard to kill because they just keep coming. Zombies don't care about anything except consuming, thereby making more zombies. And, zombies destroy life as you know it. See... depression is zombies!

If you don't like that idea (which, you really should because, hello... zombies!), you can just think of it like a sneak attack in a siege. Before you even know they are there, the enemy has already penetrated your defenses and have put up their own to keep you from casting them out. To make it worse they use a white foggy gas that makes you feel sluggish and difficult to move. The longer it takes to realize they are there, the harder it is to fight them. Before you know it, you have lost half the city and are struggling to keep them out of the rest.

Or, you could put the two together and have zombies doing a sneak attack during a siege in your city. Seriously... perfect! 

If you've never experienced depression before, perhaps the post by Allie and these descriptions and pictures give you some idea of what depression is like. I would like you to understand because it may help you when talking to someone with depression.

There are only two other things I would say as far as description goes. The first is that while some things are universal for everyone with depression, some things vary from person to person. Some may have mild depression and they are able to shake it off with only a little trouble, and some have deep depression, it's a life long struggle, and have given up hope that they will ever feel like a normal person again (if they even remember what that was like). If you really want to know what depression is like for a certain person, go and ask them with genuine compassion. Then, be prepared to listen (without talking) with open ears and heart.

I mentioned at the beginning that depression is a weight. It is. If you've ever read an older allegory called Pilgrim's Progress, you might understand exactly what I mean. If you have not, just imagine carrying a backpack around with you everywhere, and every day that backpack feels heavier and heavier and heavier. This weight is internal, but it is still heavy, weighs you down, and causes everything to be a whole lot more difficult. 

The other thing is that depression is isolating. You often feel alone, that no one wants to be around you, that you don't want to intrude your sad blahness into their happy, and that no one really knows or understands what you are going through.

Whenever I'm around people I try not to be too negative in how I talk about what's going on in my life and how I respond to the inevitable "How are you/How have you been?" I could easily list out all the aches, pains, emotional turmoil, mental difficulties and fatigue... but unless they are my oldest, closest, or dearest friends they likely wouldn't want to be listening too long (and if I only talked about those things, it's unlikely even those would remain my oldest, closest, or dearest friends!) to all my tales of woe. Also, this tends to feel negative to me, and I've learned that the longer I dwell on the negative the harder life feels (and I really don't need life to feel harder!). So, I will give an honest but vague answer to the merely inquisitive, or if I don't have time to get into anything more even to closer friends. Usually it's some variation of "Exhausted but here", "Things are difficult but I'm hanging on", or "Yesterday was rough but today is ok".

If there is one thing I would want those that don't know what it is like to experience depression, and those that have only ever had a mild form, to know is that you can't assume that what works for some people will work for others. You also can't assume that just trying to convince them to have an attitude change will work. Or, that if they consider themselves Christians all they need to do is have more faith.

These ways of thinking can be damaging because in order to think in these ways you are already assuming that on some level a person that is deeply depressed wants to feel that way, because otherwise why haven't they just gotten better by now? Just put a little more effort into it and I'm sure you will feel better! Yeah... that's not really accurate or helpful, and can potentially be damaging for the person you are talking to because now you heap guilt, self doubt, and inadequacy on top of their already mile high pile of tumultuous emotions and internal self flagellation. That's the emotional equivalent of having a person alone in the middle of the ocean, trying to make it to shore with only a small flotation device and then taking their flotation device away. It's just not very nice.

[Side note: Depression is caused by one of two things- chemical imbalances or external/internal pressures. Some that have a mild form of depression that started with external/internal pressures can change their attitude, make other healthy changes in their lives to manage stress, and are able to feel better and get better as a result. Those that start with a chemical imbalance, even if they have a more mild form, can't usually feel better just with those things. Also, even if it starts with external/internal pressures, once they hit a certain level of depression their chemicals automatically go out of balance, and create the beginning of cyclical depression. In this case, the sooner you start treating it and changing things the easier it is to get to a place where you start feeling better. Not easy, but easier. Once depression has cycled several times by either cause, it is difficult to get better by yourself. You need help with medication, counseling, or both, in addition to supplements and other methods.]

I assure you, those that suffer lifelong deep depression don't like it, don't want it, and would give anything to not feel the way they do anymore. They just have tried everything they can think of, and nothing seems to help, or only help for a time. Believe me when I say that you want to believe there is hope for things to be different when you so often feel like there isn't any.

When it comes to having Fibromyalgia, it's very difficult to not feel depressed because fatigue and depression feed off of each other, and fatigue and Fibro go hand in hand. The more tired you are, the more depressed you become and the more tired you end up being. So, depression is a major factor in having Fibromyalgia and in how you feel mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Because Fibro is a condition you have for life, if you have Fibro you will pretty much have depression for life. However, just because you have depression doesn't mean you need to stay in an isolated state of blah nothingness! 

In this post I will talk about some of the things that can help, and some things that are necessary to maintain a state of hope in the midst of foggy fatigue and depression.