Today I have
something to share, and it’s not easy for me to talk about. The truth of the matter
is this, -- I have a mental illness. A year ago, I started therapy for
depression and eventually received a diagnosis that took me months to come to
terms with (and it’s not just depression). May is
Mental Health Month,
as
well as National
Maternal Depression Awareness Month. I suppose it’s
inspired me to do something bold and share my story of finding mental health
once again in my life.
I will warn you, this is long. But perhaps it will be a worthwhile read to you.
Throughout my life, I have always been someone who has had depressive tendencies. Each time I felt the depression eating away at me, I
would tell myself I needed to think more positively, smile more, stop selfishly
worrying only about what I was feeling and letting it suck me into that downward
spiral. I would painstakingly survive each day
until eventually, the depression I felt would leave me. Normally I was able to explain it away to
myself with a legitimate reason for the depression, because I have experienced some rough things that
in and of itself could warrant depression. I would tell myself life was tough
because of x, y, or z, and if I could just pull myself together, it would get
better. And eventually, it did, until it would inevitably strike again.
Over the years I started to recognize when I was depressed,
but as I mentioned, I excused it away because of whatever circumstances I was dealing
with. I remember sitting in the doc office at a postpartum visit after Connor
was born and telling the doctor that I felt depressed and it could possibly be
postpartum depression, but maybe it was the absence of my husband, and then
feeling a little confused when she looked at me blankly and said “OK, well if
you feel like you need a prescription, just let me know.” I remember wondering
why she thought I would have the guts to say to myself (and someone else for
that matter): "Hey, something is wrong with me. I need to get on meds!” (Now
I’ll say right here and now, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH GETTING PRESCRIPTION
MEDICATIONS! But at the time, it didn’t seem like something I would be capable
of just making the choice to do on my own). I remember walking away and
thinking to myself that even saying I felt depressed was my effort to
reach out, and so obviously there wasn’t much wrong with me if she wasn’t concerned.
I just needed to hunker down and get through it, because eventually it would lift,
and I would be OK. I was tough, and I could handle it, and I was OK.
After Evelynn was born it struck again, but more mildly. I
tried to combat that depression I felt by motivating myself by doing something
exciting in my life and go back to school. I’d come to recognize that any time
I had a baby, I just… got lost for a little while after. And sometimes in
between. I just get lost sometimes when life is tough. So, after the stress and
anxiety of Liam’s pregnancy, I fully expected to have it rough after he was
born. But nothing prepared me for how bad it actually got.
July 2015
I had a different OB/GYN during Liam’s pregnancy than I had
had with the older two kids. This doc had me fill out a postpartum screening
survey before I could even leave the hospital, and I told myself that I had to
be 100% truthful when I filled it out. I recall pushing the paper away and not
wanting to look at what I had answered and have to acknowledge how bad it had
gotten—I didn’t want to have to see my inner struggle written on paper and know
that other people would look at it and see how weak I was.
I was mentally prepared when the doctor came in and said she
was very concerned by the survey, but I wasn’t mentally prepared for her to
tell me she would have to have the in-house social worker come in and talk to
me. I think I just expected her to hand me meds and it would be better. I was
absolutely terrified to have to talk to someone about how I was feeling, and
had been feeling for months on end. When the social worker first came in to
talk to me, I think I cried so much I couldn’t even form coherent sentences.
Eventually I managed to explain my stress over my husband leaving our religion,
us picking up and moving to a new state, and the stress that I felt over passing
certifications, new jobs, and having no idea where we were going to live. He
was very kind as he listened to me and calmly told me that it was
understandable that I would feel so overwhelmed I would just want to escape it.
However, he appropriately chastised me with the reminder that suicide is never
a way out, and required me to make a crisis prevention plan that both I and him
would sign. He also needed assurance that I wasn’t at risk of harming myself or
my kids, and left only after extracting a promise from me that I would do some
type of counseling or therapy and consider meds after we moved.
Leaving the hospital was a relief to me. I couldn’t handle
sitting there feeling like everyone was seeing how fragile and broken I felt
inside. Unfortunately, my mental state didn’t get much better after I was
allowed to go home. I was still tearful, emotional, and fighting back suicidal
thoughts. The baby blues hit me hard on top of the depression I was already
experiencing, and moving just 2.5 weeks after Liam was born didn’t help matters
at all.
The first few months in Utah were rough… And I mean, really
rough. Caleb was excited to be living near friends again, working long hours,
had a long commute, and I was stuck home with 3 small children and absolutely
no friends. Zero. I was about as low and low could be, and it affected my
marriage a lot. Caleb was dealing with some personal stresses as well, and the
kids and I seemed to fall through the cracks amidst the people and things he
had on his mind. With both of us dealing with our problems on our own, our
marriage was not unaffected. While I tried to keep my head afloat at home, I
felt neglected, alone, and like a broken mess that was a burden to my already
stressed husband. I recognized the depression I was experiencing and began to
realize maybe something really was wrong with me, not just stress. Maybe, just
maybe, I was broken…. Or, maybe my life was too broken to fix. Either way, I managed
to have enough clarity to recognize that that type of thinking did me
absolutely no good. I decided to take the kids up to Idaho for a week to get a
little bit of space and be able to think through everything I was dealing with,
surrounded by people that I knew loved me and cared about my well-being.
Thankfully, when I came back from Idaho, I had a renewed
motivation to get through things, and little by little, it got better. After
we’d been here a few months I started to remember my willingness to seek
counseling for depression, but I was still emotionally raw and not quite ready
to have to talk to someone about what I was experiencing. Having to be so
vulnerable is hard, but when you also throw in the social anxiety I experience
on a regular basis, it’s a particularly torturous process to open up to someone
about your weaknesses and feelings of worthlessness. The end result was me feeling
unmotivated and unwilling to seek out any help at that point in time.
2016
As the new year began, going through the motions of daily
life was getting easier, but I was developing an increasingly worrisome
tendency to shut myself away when I got overwhelmed, and those dark thoughts
would come more and more easily. Eventually, in a moment of clear-headedness that
I sometimes consider divine-intervention, I remembered my promise to talk to a
counselor. I mentioned it to Caleb and
asked if he thought it would be good for me to do, and he agreed it would be
smart. I did a little research on counselors in the area, but I still wasn’t
quite able to conquer the anxiety of calling to set up an appointment. Doing so
would mean that I couldn’t handle it on my own—that I was weak--, and that
wasn’t something I was quite ready to accept yet.
February 2016
However, in February it all fell into place like an answer
to prayers. I had seen a new OB/GYN to get an IUD in place and at that
appointment, I filled out another postpartum screening survey. I remember feeling
relieved when I realized I wouldn’t have to initiate a conversation about my
struggles on my own. The doc casually chatted with me then asked, “Now, postpartum
wise…. How are you doing?” She had such a look of care and concern as I
attempted to tell her that I thought I was mostly OK. She looked up from the
survey, made eye contact with me, and simply said, “I’m not so sure that you
are.” To have all those walls you put up completely seen through makes you so
vulnerable, and I wanted to fight my embarrassment and discomfort somehow, but
I couldn’t. As you can probably imagine, I burst into tears. She put me into
contact with a LCSW that had been working with her office and said she thought
it would work really well for me. I had the distinct feeling that I needed
to just admit defeat. I was not OK. She was right, and it was time to stop denying
it.
March 2016
I went to my first appointment feeling apprehensive,
nervous, and slightly overwhelmed over the amount of paperwork and questionnaires
I had filled out. At that point I had already accepted that something was wrong
with me, but figured it would be a depression or maybe a postpartum depression
diagnosis. I will admit that I did NOT see it coming when my therapist looked
up from the collection of papers and asked me “Have you ever wondered if you’re
bipolar?” Surprisingly, in that small moment, I was overcome with a feeling of exquisite
peace. I only let it last a moment before I quickly shook it off while my
mind screamed out “What?! I’m not crazy!!!! Bipolar?! No!” Somehow despite the
startled panic going on in my mind, I turned to humor and said with a little
laugh, “You know, once I took this funny test about “What Mental Illness Would You
Have” and it said bipolar…. *insert awkward silence*”.
Thankfully, the therapist took my attempts at humor well and
gave a small smile, and said “I know, it’s tough to wrap your head around
sometimes. But I really think judging off this mood questionnaire, we might be
dealing with a mild case of bipolar here.” So, as I sat there, my mind reeling
from this unexpected news, she patiently explained a little bit about it and
said we’d put the idea on the self and not stress for now, but we would most
likely revisit the idea soon.
In the weeks after that first appointment, I started doing
more research almost to disprove her theory. I wasn’t convinced that I could
have bipolar. However, the more I learned, the more my heart started to slowly open
to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there’s an explanation for why depression
has always plagued me. After several visits, my therapist started to ask me
more about if I was recognizing the ups and downs in my daily life. I had to
admit that I did. She explained to me that I have
Bipolar
II, which is different than Bipolar I (the type most people think of when
they hear Bipolar). My type doesn’t experience full blown manic, rather it has
what is called hypomania, and it doesn’t impair normal life in quite the same
way that type I does. Another key part of Bipolar II is the reoccurring bouts of major depression. She recommended to me that I get a book called The Bipolar II
Disorder Workbook.
It took me several months to come to terms with my
diagnosis, and the handbook she had me read helped answer a lot of my questions
on whether or not this was something I did in fact have and how best to manage
it. As I battled the idea of a bipolar
diagnosis, I experienced crippling depression that brought me lower than I have
ever, ever been, and ever hope to go again. I battled the ups and downs that
exhausted my mind as I went through rapid cycling, and I experienced those really
awesome days where I felt like I could totally handle whatever was thrown at me
and I got a million things done, only to eventually remember that I’m not capable of that every day, because what I was experiencing was the hypomania,
not normal “me”. Despite it all, I was still not ready/willing to seek out a psychiatrist and get on mood stabilizers. I stubbornly thought I could handle it alone with an occasionally therapy visit on the side.
Summer 2016
In the following summer went through some periods of time with a really clear
understanding of what I needed to do (like when I wrote this original post but
never shared it), but then I would start doing better and
would feel like I didn’t need anymore help, and definitely not medication. But inevitably, it would cycle back and I’d
sink into that gaping hole of nothingness that never truly leaves me. Eventually
I reached a point where I sunk very, very low, and I remember feeling angry
that this is something I have to deal with. I decided to tell God that I demanded
a very, very clear answer about what he expected me to do—a very clear piece of
guidance, some way He intended to help me, because I was done. I was tired, exhausted,
and just done. Anyone who’s ever reached
a point where they aren’t sure if they can or even want to continue on can
probably imagine how I felt in that moment. After three phone calls from my
doctor’s office asking if I’d followed up on the referral to the psychiatrist,
I had a tiny speck of clarity that allowed me to see that maybe that phone call
was my answer.
August 2016
The psychiatrist’s office was probably more intimidating
than the therapist’s had been, but after explaining my therapist’s theory and answering
a long, long list of the doctor’s questions, he told me that he felt very
comfortable with the diagnosis and agreed 100%. I think part of me had still
hoped he wouldn’t agree. When two different types of specialists who are both
trained to help people in need say that you have a problem, and the problem is
bipolar, there’s nothing left to do but accept it and see if the method of treatment
helps. I was told it usually takes about a week for the mood stabilizers to make
a noticeable difference, but on day 3, I woke up and nearly cried because for
the first time in longer than I could remember, I woke up without feeling either empty
or feeling every emotion on the planet in a 5-minute span (at least that’s how
it felt to me). I felt utterly and completely normal, and the relief I felt was
all the answer I needed. I accepted right then and there that I have a mental illness, and that it was in fact, bipolar II.
Current - May 2017
Going through this process of learning has been incredibly
hard for me. But having answers has also brought me some peace and normalcy in
life again. In addition to the Bipolar II diagnosis, I also have
Anxiety.
The combination of the two sometimes make simple things really hard for me –
like keeping up with all my household responsibilities, or even just fulfilling
my calling at church. I’m prone to depression, easily triggered to fall into a
depressive state I then struggle to climb out of again, and sometimes I get
depressed for no legitimate reason. I'm often highly emotional and overly-sensitive. Sometimes I get agitated when experiencing
hypomania and snap at people. Sometimes I'm unorganized, and other times I'm the best at it. Sometimes I am extremely friendly and no one
would know that I’m shy until I’m out of that hypomanic phase and can’t even
make eye contact without wanting to cry. Sometimes, I’m so overcome with
anxiety I jump to the worst conclusions all the time and stress over everything
and anything. Sometimes…. sometimes I’m broken. And that’s OK.
The acceptance of this diagnosis was confusing for a lot of people
in my life, and it took me a while to come to terms with it as well because I’ve
never really portrayed the obvious signs and symptoms loudly enough that the average
person could tell something odd was going on. However, my psychiatrist
pinpointed several things I’d mentioned to him as likely triggers and moments
of hypomania in my life, and it has all made sense to me over time. I’m continually learning new bits of info that shed some light on my life experiences and reaffirm to me that they got this diagnosis right.
He told me
that it was rather remarkable that I had gone so long and handled the symptoms of bipolar II so well
without it impacting my life more, so I suppose maybe that was a blessing. I was also
told that typically the first incident of bipolar mania/hypomania appear in the
late
teens – early 20’s, so based on the timeline of experiences I had mentioned to the
psychiatrist, there were good chances the stress I was under when my dad
deployed to Iraq (age 14) triggered a major depression a little early, which then set off
things from there and never really stopped. I would do OK for a while, then
each time something stressful happened or I had a baby, things got really unstable again.
New
mothers with bipolar have a heightened likelihood of experiencing postpartum
depression, so
that could explain why I really struggled after each baby. Because of this new understanding of my diagnosis and the impacts it has on my mental health, we've had to put a lot of thought into the timing of any additions to the family. The odds are that I will continue to struggle badly with depression every single time we have a baby. We'll also have to adjust treatment plans. It's brought me peace to realize that I wasn't just weak in those moments and really did experience postpartum depression, intensified by bipolar. I have seen the positive impact therapy and appropriate medications have had on my mental health, and have recognized an overall improvement on my well-being because of it.
If you or someone you know has ever
experienced depression outside of the normal every once-in-a-while “I had a
crappy day”, please consider talking to someone about it! Talk to a trusted
friend or family member. Talk to a specialist. Get help! I understand how tough
it is, I truly do. People don’t always know you’re struggling unless you say
so. There are people that care. There are people that love you. There are
people that have been there and understand. Please know whoever you are and where ever you are, you are loved by someone and they need you and want you in their life.
I’ll end with sharing a piece of one of my all-time favorite talks ever given in Conference:
“Whatever your struggle, my brothers and sisters—mental or emotional or physical or otherwise—do not vote against the preciousness of life by ending it! Trust in God. Hold on in His love. Know that one day the dawn will break brightly and all shadows of mortality will flee. Though we may feel we are “like a broken vessel,” as the Psalmist says,10 we must remember, that vessel is in the hands of the divine potter. Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed. While God is at work making those repairs, the rest of us can help by being merciful, nonjudgmental, and kind.”
