How Hard It Really Is Read online

  How Hard

  It Really Is

  A Short, Honest Book

  About Depression

  Copyright © 2017 by J.S. Park

  Publisher: TWE Media

  Published July 2017, Edited December 2018

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or study/presentation material.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Cover art by Rob Connelly. http://heyitsrob.com

  Editor's note: This publication is an informative guide on the subject matter. It is not intended to replace or countermand the advice of your physician. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

  Park, J.S., author.

  How hard it really is: a short, honest book about depression / J.S. Park.—First edition.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0692910368

  1. Depression, Mental. 2. Cognitive Therapy. 3. Depression, Mental—Religious aspects—Christianity 4. Mental health 5. Healing—Religious Aspects—Christianity

  Printed in the United States of America.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Citation Information:

  J.S. Park, How Hard It Really Is (Florida: TWE Media, July 2017) p. _

  Join me in the journey of faith.

  Wordpress. jsparkblog.com

  Facebook. facebook.com/pastorjspark

  Tumblr. jspark3000.tumblr.com

  Podcast. thewayeverlasting.libsyn.com

  Twitter. twitter.com/pastorjs3000

  YouTube. youtube.com/user/jsparkblog

  Dedicated

  For my wife, J,

  for life.

  For my dog, Rosco,

  for laughs.

  Table of Contents

  Preface — Sneak Attack Phantom

  Part 1 — The Crime Scene

  Chapter 1 — How Hard It Really Is

  Chapter 2 — Moving at a Dead Stop

  Chapter 3 — Everyone's Got Advice

  Part 2 — The Flashback

  Chapter 4 — Choice or Disease or Door Number Three

  Chapter 5 — When It Rains: From Above and Below

  Chapter 6 — Reality Versus Romanticism: Everyone's In On It

  Part 3 — The Hero's Quest

  Chapter 7 — "Solutions"

  Chapter 8 — Everyone Leaves

  Chapter 9 — Without You, I Survived

  Chapter 10 — Healers Need Healers: An Interview with a Depressed Doctor

  Chapter 11 — Elijah, by Bread and Water

  Conclusion — The Truth Is

  Appendix

  "At the moment what I heard was God saying, 'Put down your gun and we'll talk.'"[1]

  — C.S. Lewis

  Disclaimer

  I am not a licensed therapist.

  This book is about the conversation around depression. It should not replace the advice of your physician.

  This book is also about my experiences with depression.

  I majored in Psychology for my bachelor's and I have a Master's degree in Divinity (MDiv). I was a pastor for seven years in two different churches, mostly dealing with youth and college students and their families. I've been a hospital chaplain for three years (which requires intense accredited training). My chaplaincy work includes: attending every death, attending every Code Blue, next-of-kin notification, advising patients on end-of-life decisions, and grief and crisis counseling. Many of the patients I've visited are dealing with grief or depression or both.[2]

  In January of 2004, I attempted to kill myself by ingesting half a bottle of acetaminophen. I was placed under the Baker Act, an involuntary hold by the state for those who have harmful thoughts towards themselves or others, and after two nights in a hospital, I was sent to a care facility for another two nights. I've been diagnosed with clinical depression, and my only experience with antidepressants is that I tried them for two days before quitting (I should've tried longer). I struggle with depression to this day.

  My family has a history of depression and suicidal ideation. My late maternal grandmother suffered from dementia (and possibly Parkinson's disease), and my uncle has schizophrenia. They both lived in the house until my parents divorced when I was fourteen.

  In the following pages, any technical information regarding depression has been carefully cited. I highly recommend further research on your own, as new studies constantly emerge and can contradict one another.[3] There's also not a single consensus in the medical community about the causes and treatments of depression; the "experts" are still learning how to navigate through it.

  Please know: I am a big advocate of medicine and therapy. Please see the appendix for other kinds of treatments.

  This book is filled with triggers. While I have tried my best not to be overly gratuitous, the subject matter necessarily entails that I do not shy from its depths.

  Whenever I insert my own opinion, I start with the phrase, "I believe," "I think," "I have a theory," or similar self-referential phrases. Please feel free to disagree or to engage in dialogue with me.

  There have been many good books on depression, including Andrew Solomon's magnum opus The Noonday Demon and Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones' Spiritual Depression. They cover much more ground than I could, and I recommend them to you.

  Any identities and identifying markers in the book are altered for privacy of the individuals.

  Preface — Sneak Attack Phantom

  Depression is a rumor, until it is reality, and then it's as if nothing else was ever real. Still, no one will believe you. I find it hard to believe it myself. I wrote this book for those who believe, and for those who want to.

  Depression is, when you're in it, absolutely ridiculous, because it seems to be the most important thing in the world when it's happening. At the same time, it robs the world of any importance, as if nothing could ever happen again. It is a nightmare of infinity wrapped in cellophane.

  The whole thing sneaks up with a dreadful, creeping stealth, "like feeling your clothing slowly turn into wood on your body."[4] It is remarkably invasive, a highly honed, weaponized virus of the mind.

  Whenever I describe it happening, it sounds absurd. And it is.

  At the grocery store I'm thinking about how to grill this salmon, and my chest folds inward, a curled up canvas of wax paper in a cruel, gnarled fist. It's the familiar feeling of drowning, of disappearing in frothing acid. I fight back both tears and laughter, and I tell myself, Everything's fine, everything's fine, a cognitive trick to pull myself out of the falling, but nothing is fine, nothing is fine. There's nothing I can do. My basket full of trinkets is weightless and a wrecking ball. I see people rushing to somewhere, but the illusion of significance slips away in a long, defeated sigh. I hate this part. My shoulders crumple because I've stopped holding them up. I can barely look at the cashier and I don't remember paying when he hands me the receipt. I can't turn on music in the car; it's unbearable to turn the wheel. I'm someone else's ghost in someone else's body.

  I wish I could say it gets easier each time, but I never know how long it's going to be.

  I never know when the colors will come back.

  I never know if this will be the one that wins.

  Clinical depression will often do whatever it wa
nts with you. It has no rules or code or fairness or dignity.

  I have every reason to be fine, but depression is a dirty sneak attack that leaves me completely naked and debilitated. It's a liar that sells truth: a false reality that says how-I-feel is who-I-really-am. And when a grafted lie overruns the truth, it doesn't matter that I have "every reason" to be fine: the lie has switched every goalpost and sunk the baseline.

  Depression is the worst kind of lie, in that it not only attacks your self-worth and value, but steals the meaning out of words like "self-worth" and "value." It is cold inertia, slowing down worlds in orbit. It leaves you carved open, constantly bleeding out, unable to retain the vital stuff that makes life. There's spiritual discombobulation; every emotion is a phantom limb, and no amount of affirmation about "life-gets-better" can reach me there.

  The thing is, when I'm hit with depression, I already know what to do. I know I have to fight for air. I know I have to crawl for every inch of territory that's stolen. I know I cannot make decisions unless I talk with someone first. I must reach for my phone. I must reach for every scrap of surface to escape this tunnel. I must remind myself that there's so much worse in the world, and that the war inside cannot compare.

  I know. None of this makes the fog any easier.

  By the tiniest shred of sight, I must crawl.

  This book is about the crawling.

  —

  This book is also a primer for those who don't suffer from depression, but want to understand.

  Here's what I've discovered: no matter how much someone wants to sympathize, any time I talk about depression, I see eyes glaze over.

  Some will find my earlier description of depression to be difficult to read because it's so painful. Others will find it difficult to read because it's so over-the-top.

  All this talk on mental illness can sound theatrical and maudlin, a "downer," embellished in hindsight, a hackneyed purple prose that induces eye-rolling.

  I get it. I'm with you.

  I have to admit that even as a fellow fighter of depression, I tend to evaluate "depressives" with a grain of salt and skepticism. Some cases appear to be a self-indulgent product of the need for drama and attention, a hyperactive imagination, a young artsy moodiness without a leash. And in some cases, all of that could be true.

  Those with depression can come across as overwrought and heavy-handed. As the screenwriters say, we drop too many anvils. I am Chekhov's bazooka, exchanging subtlety for soap opera, overplaying my hand.

  My humble plea is that you'd still hear me. That you'd endure a bit of cheese and flourish. That even when the "skeptical gag reflex" is set off, you could push past it towards empathy. I hope that amidst the lofty and grandiose, you may hear what is unheard.

  —

  Why a book on depression?

  Imagine a crime scene where everyone speculates with conspiracy theories. The approach would be unreliable and the conclusion inaccurate. There would be panic, wrong solutions, and more confusion.

  Depression itself is encased in misconceptions. The pain of going through mental illness is already hard enough; to add myths only makes it that much more unbearable. By investigating the mystery of depression, we can remove some of the fog around the fog. We can add layers, depth, and nuance to clear up the many misinterpretations. It's in sharing what we go through that we are empowered to make it through together. I wrote this book as a conversation so we can talk differently about depression with the thoughtfulness it deserves.

  Depression can feel like a solo sport. There's no team backing you up. It's like swimming or gymnastics; once you get going, it's up to you to make it to the other end of the pool or the mat. Most of the resources I found on depression began with the "solo" premise: It's up to you, go get help, here's this method, try this and this. But that sort of individualized isolation was very vacuum-ish to me. Life doesn't work in such a frictionless shrink-wrap. We affect others in a causational web and we need their help, too.

  So I try to answer some questions. How do we collectively get through depression? How do we manage the stress and cause-and-effect and even the global consequences of depression? How do you talk to your friend about it? I want to bring in every person involved, because depression affects families, cultures, marriages, churches, all of it.

  This discussion is a game of telephone. "I'm depressed" sounds like "I'm antisocial" to most people. When I got to the research and surveys, it was even worse than I had thought. There was this nearly impermeable membrane around the discussion of depression. My whole goal is to peel back that weird membrane around depression so, if anything, there would be more empathy on every side.

  There are three purposes in these pages, for both the person wrestling with depression and for those who are not:

  1. To help us be free from some of the myths about depression.

  2. To give us tools to fight through depression.

  3. To help your friend fight through depression.

  I've conducted multiple informal surveys, with over 40,000 words in responses from nearly two hundred individuals, so that a myriad of voices can be heard. You will hear from many fellow fighters of depression. You'll see you're not alone.

  I'm afraid that at some point, I will let you down. I'll come up short. I'll have missed an opportunity. I'll eventually say something that will warrant a really poor review.

  That's the bad news. I don't have a magic formula, a six-step cure, or a silver bullet. I wish I did. But I don't believe there's a right combination of words that will unlock depression.

  The best thing we can offer each other is each other, our set of experiences, our voices, our ears, so that the tunnel is less intimidating and the light is not as distant as it was.

  I wish I had more than this. I wish I could cover every angle. Maybe, though, I can cover a few.

  At the very least, I can tell you what I've been through, and what's worked for me. And maybe some of that will work for you, too.

  Please feel free to skip around, browse through, or go directly to the chapter you need.

  Part 1 — The Crime Scene

  Through Wet Streets and Back Alleys, Unraveling the Myths and Mystery of the Unseen Villain

  An investigation through the myths of depression, and trying to find a better way to communicate through the mystery.

  Chapter 1 — How Hard It Really Is

  What It Feels Like

  I've had clinical depression for as long as I can remember, a lifelong whisper on my shoulder feeding poison in my ear—but as familiar as it is, I've found it hard to show others that it's really there.

  I can show you an open gash, a purple bruise, a swollen eye, and even hidden monsters like cancer or blood clots can be laid bare. Describing depression, however, is like relaying someone else's dream with someone else's tongue.

  Knowing what it feels like might seem gratuitous, but without an accurate description of our experiences, we're severely limited in sharing, consoling, and empathizing with our deepest wounds. We then float in a starless space, without reference or a vantage point to heal.

  I'm hoping to make the abstract into a concrete tangible.

  Since an estimated 350 million people suffer from depression around the world, then the other 95% of the world is standing on the outside. There's one death by suicide every forty seconds worldwide, and over half of the 40 million Americans with a mental illness don't seek treatment for depression.[5],[6]

  We may have already heard these numbers in statistical whirlwinds of TED Talks and blog posts. If you're like me, stats can be numbing until they're pinned down to a single image—an impoverished child, a spouse with heart disease, or a disaster-torn city. The problem here's that the popular image of depression—a sad, sour thespian—is quickly laughed off stage.

  This is all the more reason we need to talk about what it's like. Depression thrives on its unrelenting invisibility, creating a fatal cycle in which its own camouflage is the very mechanism by which it dest
roys. It thrives by hiding. It feels silly to bring up depression, which is isolating—and to feel isolated often feeds into the isolation, which is depression's most insidious strategy.

  By talking about how hard it really is, we can find refuge in our connection.

  —

  In an online survey, I asked, "For fellow sufferers of depression, what does it feel like?"

  I wanted to know if we could converge on a common ground.

  The responses were overwhelming, alarming, and heartbreaking. Some of them were:

  - It feels like you're constantly drowning but you just won't die.

  - I call it the Deep Purple Morass. Clinging molasses, seductive but disheartening.

  - My mind takes temporary, yet complete residence in the times I have hurt people I love. I think myself doomed to a lifetime of continuing in those patterns of hurt and shame, and am consumed with terror over what effect that will have on the relationships I treasure. I feel powerless against myself.

  - A two ton weight that follows you around. It constantly holds up a mirror to the past. It keeps a log of all the abandonment, pressure, loss, rage, and loneliness, and constantly tries to break the record. It always says you're not good enough.

  - Spiraling circles of powerlessness. You think something can change, and right when you think it will, you turn around and realize you're headed right back to where you came from.