Category Archives: depression

Guilt Triggers

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Daddy, depression, Easter, explaining his death, guilt, powerlessness

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While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. (Luke 24:36-37)

This was part of our Sunday school lesson yesterday. Jesus has appeared alive after being crucified; now the disciples are holed up in a room talking about it. Our teacher yesterday described how all of the disciples must have felt at this time. They all had betrayed Jesus in one way or the other by not speaking up.

That was about as far as I could listen before my throat started getting thick and my bottom lip began quivering. These end parts of the Gospels hit too close to home for me. Yesterday, I gathered up my belongings and said with that voice I hate that’s all quivery and weak, “I apologize, this is just too hard.”

Last week, I left early, too, only I didn’t apologize because last week I tried to push everything down and pretend I was fine. That resulted in having a full-assed panic attack right there in the middle of the Sunday school class. I ran out with the church’s bible still in my hand. Afterward, I was embarrassed and thought myself a drama queen.

The above verses are a guilt trigger for me. I know exactly how they felt—they blamed themselves. I don’t think about failing Jesus when I study that passage. I think about how I failed my father who killed himself seventeen years ago. I still suffer from the guilt of not understanding how depressed he was, not insisting that he get help, not doing something. I think there is terror in that kind of guilt because it digs in like a diseased tick.

I am glad I went to church yesterday and heard this verse. Even though it hurt like all hell, I learned something. I’m triggered by feeling like a disciple, and not by the resurrection of Christ, which is what Easter is all about, that Jesus died and came back. Jesus was human and is God as well. It is complicated, and it is simple. Jesus isn’t my dad. My dad isn’t a God. Maybe I can work on untangling them in my mind now.

The death of someone I love cracked a hole in my heart and my soul. Stuff gets jumbled up. My dad killed himself just a week or two after Easter. I fear that holiday and the days afterward when disciples feel so guilty.

Yesterday, I also heard that Jesus said “peace be with you” to his miserable and frightened followers.

Therefore do not let anyone [I think includes myself] judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (Colossians 2:16)

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Cries and Sighs

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in anger, boundaries, conflicts, courage, depression, faith

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Let my cries and sighs heal me and restore me and bring me to joy. Let me never again succumb to bitterness or depressing thoughts, God, show me life’s meaning. (Rebbe Nachman of Breslow)

This coming Friday will mark the anniversary of my father’s suicide, gone now for seventeen years.  The calendar this year is the same as it was that year, with Easter coming the week before he died. I am so grateful for the space of time between his death and now. The first year after he died, I was caught—every day— in the rawness of grief, and in the post-traumatic-stress of losing him to suicide.  The second and third years the grief washed in and out like the tide. I suffered with periodic depressions all through the year. Now it’s mostly around Easter and his death date.

Things still remind me of his suicide.  I’ve worked at desensitizing my tender feelings as much as possible, but every year around this time, I feel irritable and emotional. Movies, books, family, friends, and Easter are big reminders. Some little thing like my husband not listening to me will tie me in knots for days.

A minister where I used to go to church did that suicide-mimicking thing from the pulpit.  I finally drummed up enough courage to let him know the way he joked up there during his sermons bothered me.  He reacted insensitively, and said I needed to get over my dad’s suicide. I stared at him, pushing back the desire to jump up and leave. I stared at him, thinking of every cuss word in my large profane vocabulary. I think I stared at him for a long, long time. It might have only been a minute.  But my knees were weak and my mouth was speechless.  Finally, we started talking, beyond my anger at his quick remark and his callousness, beyond his reaction that I was criticizing his sermons. He apologized. He said, still, he was trying to tell me I needed to live in joy and not let things hurt so.

I wish I could say that his insensitivity is the reason I left his church. It’s so much easier to blame someone than to look deep within, and I did kinda do that for a while. But things always go deeper. Every year, I want to not do this holiday. I want to push past Easter. I want to push past the anniversary of Daddy’s suicide.  I hear how people say they are so grateful for Jesus dying on the cross for their salvation.  His dying breaks my heart, and guilt pours out of me nearly as much as the year Daddy died. I can’t say I am grateful for anyone dying for me. Mostly, my feelings just hurt.

I feel defensive that I don’t want to celebrate Easter. It seems to announce, in my mind anyway, I’m not a Christian and that I don’t love Jesus.  My epiphany today: If I didn’t love Jesus (or my dad), I wouldn’t have this grief swirling around in my brain.

     God listens, loves, and heals a grieving heart.

Gratitude List

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in depression, explaining his death, feelings, grief, Higher Power, Jesus, PTSD, shame, suicide, Thanks

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           Today, I woke up feeling shame that I always dread Easter.  This year that dread seems to be at a higher level than usual.  It will be fourteen years since my father’s suicide, the Friday after Easter, and I still feel weighted down.  And even that feels shameful.
            I don’t talk much to my church friends or pastor about the reason I tend to disappear during Easter.  In a nutshell, I’ve got Daddy, Jesus, and death rolled up in a pretty tightly knitted ball.  I feel pain, so I retreat.
            This morning I thought maybe a gratitude list of what is going on in my life right now might help me out of my funk.  Here it is:
·         I am grateful that my Higher Power loves me and allows me moments of doubt as well as moments of clarity.
·         I am grateful for my marriage.
·         I am grateful that my mother is still alive and seems to be doing so well.
·         I am grateful for my decision to write even though I struggle for ideas and scenes.
·         I am grateful for the Spring season coming.  I saw buttercups sprouting this morning.
·         I am grateful for my Codependence Anonymous support groups that I attend on a regular basis. 
·         I am grateful for the friendship of my dog.
·         I am grateful for grocery stores.
·         I am grateful for new friendships.
·         I am grateful for the realization that I grieve today.

Contagious Depression after the Suicide of a Loved One

18 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in counselors, depression, fear, genetic suicide, pain, suicide, trustwrothy

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            You might have called my father an adventurer.  Certainly his suicide caused me to explore a new whelm of thought.  Before he ended his life, death to me was something that came swift or slow either unwanted or welcomed.  The key idea, though, was that death came; it wasn’t an option.  Something innocent in me had the notion that no one person had that much power as to end their own life.  Death, like birth, came from God.
            The first few years after Daddy died, I went through my own depression.  I suffered through countless child-like angers at family and friends.  Little problems or stresses brought about a thought of how easily death now could be called upon.  Suicide or perhaps more the fear of it carried a heavy weight in my thoughts. 
The fear that I could simply kill myself sat upon my shoulder like a maliciously smiling monkey, chattering extreme suggestions into my ear.  I was scared of my own thoughts.  Dangerous thoughts came from the mile-wide crack in my soul; I wasn’t in full control of myself.  I felt no one in my family would understand, but they, too, were just as shocked by my father’s death.    
            Rather than death, I sought help.  I began talking, first to counselors, then to a priest, and then to friends.  It was important that the people I chose to talk with about my father’s suicide and my fears were not dependent upon my being ok—that I didn’t have to put up a front for them.  I needed to tell the truth; I was horribly afraid that suicide was genetic.  These trustworthy, objective people allowed me to safely expose my fear and be as weak as I felt.  They listened, nodded, and assured me that I wasn’t crazy—and that I had more strength than I realized.  The fears eased up as I shed light upon them.
            The thing about suicide is that its bleak aftermath wants to spread like a bad cold or influenza.  Get help.  Talk to someone immune to your pain.

Spirituality—Strength

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in choice, depression, evil, fear, suicide

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            Almost immediately after my father’s death, I had suicidal thoughts of my own.  These thoughts seemed so alien; I didn’t believe they came from me—as if the same dark force that had killed my father now stalked me.
The demon whispered killing directions into my ear.  It stayed at me—bullying me into a whimpering mass night after lonely night when my husband worked night shift.  In isolated moments of the day, it seized me.  I shuddered when I picked up a kitchen knife.  “This sharp edge will easily slice your skin”, it whispered.  I gritted my teeth and finished putting away the silverware.  “Just take out the gun and look at it,” it begged.  I asked my husband to take the gun out of the house.                    
Finding Daddy’s body had dislodged my thinking.   Evil became tangible to me.  The demon was too real to think otherwise.  I had never been as frightened as I was then.  Daddy’s suicide had terrified me.  What I didn’t realize was how a serious depression can manifest itself.  I felt that I needed help to fight an evil spirit.  What I needed was help to find my way out of the hole I’d fallen into.
            After my father’s death, I asked a priest for more information about evil.  I wanted that knowledge to fight my sinister enemy.  “Take your eyes off of it,” she said, “focus on the good in your life.”  Each week I met with her and discussed bible stories.  They nurtured my battered spirit.  The talk, just as fortifying as the stories, helped me see the good in my life.  My thoughts about evil stepped back and became less commanding. What I consciously (or unconsciously) chose to center my attention had a powerful effect on my mental health.
   Search out something that will feed your soul with strength and light.  Listen to good music, walk in the woods, or discuss a good story.  Talk to someone who listens. Don’t look evil directly in the eye; there’s a black hole behind it.