The Family Secret

I have visited with several people lately and feel like this post needs to be reposted.  Not necessarily for my experience, but the information that might help other people:

I haven't wanted to post lately because I felt like maybe I was being too negative.  Then I realized that one of the reasons I started this blog was to be open and honest and remove the mask of being a member of the LDS Church and being a wife and mother in this day and age, particularly with the challenges that God has given me.

I have stated in earlier posts that my mother suffered from depression and anxiety and there is a long line before her and several people right along with me in this challenge.  I have been preparing myself to share what goes into that depression and anxiety meltdown.  I have had a couple, but one very severe one that ended in a hospital stay.

Its funny, some LDS members look at mental illness as an sign of sin.  There is a book by Elder Alexander B. Morrison called Valley of Sorrow, a layman's guide to mental illness.  He asks why there is still such a misunderstanding and fear of mental illness.  It should be seen as it really is, the mental "equivalent" of physical disorders.  He believes the way to change attitudes "is to bring light where there is darkness, knowledge where there is ignorance, and reason where there is superstition."

He talks about the "widespread, long-held public attitudes that attribute mental illness to divine punishments only increase the problem.  Latter-day Saints are particularly vulnerable to these false beliefs."  "All too often it is assumed by uninformed people that those who are suffering from mental illness are somehow responsible for their plight, that they have brought it upon themselves by sinful behavior."  This is false.

Anyone who has seen the unbearable pain of a severe panic attack knows full well that nobody would suffer that way if all that was needed was to show a little willpower.  No one who has witnessed the almost indescribable sadness of a severely depressed person, who perhaps can't even get out of bed, who cries all day, retreats into hopeless apathy, or tries to kill herself, would ever think for a moment that mental illness  is just a problem of willpower.

In this book, his daughter shares: "I seem to be in the middle of a never-ending nightmare of blackness and despair, so fatigued both physically and emotionally I know not where to turn.  Many days I longed for death -- it seemed the only door open to me."  I very easily could write these very words.

"I was too frightened to go to church.  . . .  all I could do was to walk in one door of the church and out the other door.  Staying for even five minutes just wasn't possible, even though I longed with all my heart to do so and prayed over and over again for the necessary strength."  I have been unable to attend church with any regularity since November of 2009.  I have had many well meaning people just tell me visualize going to church and just buck up and do it.  I want to say to them, if it was that easy, do they not believe I would be at church?

People, who are well meaning, often invite me to go to dinner, a movie or something and I will say yes, but as the time gets closer, I will find a way not to go.  I am blessed with a dear friend who understands now, but not many others do understand.  I become choked with fear and doubt and can't go.  I have little self-confidence and loneliness is almost more than I can bear.

In some ways, I have died.  My talents, potential dignity, self-worth, etc. all have been killed by this illness.  I dare not completely allow myself to feel the full pain of these losses.

I have been angry with God.  Why hasn't this burden been lifted, if not for me, then for my family?

So, maybe this helps people understand this illness.  In June of 2010, I had reached a time when my medication had been changed AGAIN which means I had to wean off of the old and start slow on the new.  In addition, there were several other types of medication for anxiety, etc.  One afternoon, when I was beyond the depth of despair to get on my knees and when my mind had convinced me that my family would better off without me, I shut my bedroom door and locked it.  I set out a different medication to confuse any EMT's and then pulled about 30 pills out of the trash can and swallowed them.  I lay down on my bed and waited.  Slowly thoughts started running through my mind.  At the time, I was a missionary for the ARP program and I had several sisters in that group that I had worked with and had grown to love.  I wondered what my dying would do to them.  Then I thought of my kids having to find me and that was unacceptable.  I finally reached for the phone and called poison control and soon after was in the ER.

It wasn't that I didn't want to die -- I did.  I just didn't want to feel the pain anymore, it was too much.  More importantly, I didn't want to hurt my children and those people I love by having to find me that way.  I spent a week in the Psych Unit at Lakeside Hospital.

I wish I could say that solved the problem.  It didn't.  There were many time I was driving and just thought "drive right under that semi-truck."  Another time, I was walking along a busy road and kept telling myself to step out into traffic.



I hope this helps someone -- either someone that is in my shoes or has a loved one who is struggling.  I wish I had a happy ending and could tie a bow around the whole story, but it is still ongoing.