How do I possibly bear the pain of this anxiety and depression?

I’ll never forget the first time I was cast into an oblivion of pain.  It descended so suddenly.  I could not have predicted it beforehand.  On one side there was one life, and on the other I entered the vast and dark in-between.  I was there for months.

And in some respects, it lasted well over a year, and in all honesty, there are still intermittent reminders every now and then, as if echoes of that time long past.

In the swing and tumble of grief, anxiety came in the form of plummeting panic attacks where I literally had to move in flight to escape to safety.  The surges of what felt like adrenalin shooting straight into my heart.  The sheer sense of dread.  And to top it off, there was the steady drip of despair that plagued me, most of the time.

The depression completely transformed me from a self-starter who managed the many facets of life well into someone who could barely move, could hardly eat, where hours felt like entire days, where I occasionally cried myself to sleep, and to wake up was an instant reminder that I’d woken, again, to a nightmare.  I did not want to be alive.

The worst moment was a complete breakdown where my parents and children witnessed me catatonic; the grief, depression, anxiety, and state of my life was unmatched in my 36 years of life experience.

But the fact my life hopes had plummeted into the abyss wasn’t 100 percent bad.

I never knew life could be so hard.  I’d been utterly ignorant.  It completely opened my eyes.  Suddenly I was awakened to the pain everywhere in the world.  And once the eyes of my heart opened, they could never be shut again.

I also reached out for support, because I just could not do life without it.

I had several men in my life who I’d met in AA and a few women too — all people I believe God sent me not only to keep me alive, but who gave me meaning and encouraged me to believe there was purpose in recovery.  I also drew purpose from being with my daughters, five, eight and eleven at the time.  They did what they could to help me and something in me ensured as much as I could that they always succeeded.  And I also had the marvellous support of my mother and father who often just listened.

Anxiety and depression are predecessors for recovery, even if we resent the fact that we need to enter some kind of ‘journey’ to get there (I did).

In seasons where anxiety and depression descend and remain as uninvited, insistent and even bullying ‘guests’, our spirit within us moans and wails, which is a paradox, because moaning and wailing takes energy, and much of the time when we’re in these states we’re too exhausted for it.

When we’re in struggle street, we so often ask ourselves, “How do I possibly bear this pain?”

The fact that we endure it means we’re a day closer to healing.

But we must have some vision for the prize ahead.  Perhaps hope of the old life is gone, but all that means is a new vision must be dreamed up.  Every time the pain cranks up, we remember where we’re headed.  We imagine that the pain is worth it.

All this pain is impossible to bear without the support of wise and caring people who can listen patiently, who can love us without words, who have the knack of saying the right things in few words, who are there for us over the long haul, and most of all, don’t tell us what to do.

Whenever we’ve survived such a time in our lives when pain threatened our existence, there is always some compensation or consolation.  If we’re able to look for it, we can find it.

Your job if you’re in that place is to refuse to ever give up or give in.  Always reach out.  There is help at hand.

International helplines: https://checkpointorg.com/global/