Living with a Mental Illness

Living with a mental illness is difficult. Just like any other illness it has its difficulties but for some reason there is a stigma attached to having this particular kind of illness. I study psychology at North Carolina Wesleyan College right now and plan on going onto graduate school to study social work in the future. I graduate in December of this year and getting to this point has been one hell of a ride. My passion for breaking the stigma that Christians have placed on mental illness doesn’t just have to do only with my studies and career goals, it also has a lot to do with me and my own journey through life.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in July of 2010. The onset of the illness however, was almost 9 months before the actual diagnosis. At first it wasn’t too obvious that something was wrong. I got really depressed about October of 2009, which coincided with my dad’s return to Christ. God has a mysterious way of moving sometimes. My dad was making a radical change in who he was and I was getting ready to undergo one of the most difficult times of my life. There is no doubt in my mind that God had everything to do with the timing. But the initial depression and other things going on in my life at the time caused me to seek help through the school counseling center. Things didn’t get better; in fact they just kept getting worse. I continued to fall deeper and deeper into depression. I kept it to myself mostly. I went through the motions of life afraid to tell anyone just how much pain I was in because I feared the stigma. I didn’t want lectures about how I needed more of God. I didn’t want people telling me not to get all caught up in therapy and medication because they believed that those things couldn’t really help you.  I didn’t need any of these things. I needed support. And I did find some support. My family and friends are amazing. Even though they didn’t know exactly what was going on with me at the time, they knew me well enough to know something was off. And instead of pestering me about it they just prayed, which is awesome.

I went back to school after Christmas break and things didn’t improve I was still depressed and it didn’t seem that anything was ever going to change. Then something amazing happened. I thought God had intervened and that a miracle had taken place! I felt amazing! I was on top of the world. I went about the campus doing everything. I was so happy. I all but quit sleeping because I had endless energy and I was so happy. I was relieved that the depression had gone away. I was also getting a little “too” happy if you know what I mean. I wrote papers that weren’t due for three weeks in the middle of the night. I rearranged the furniture in my dorm room at three in the morning. I ran around campus acting like a fool. I was so happy. I spent almost all of my school refund money and didn’t think twice about it. This lasted for about a week and then the depression was back and with a vengeance. I crashed hard and I stayed there for the next 6 months. I ended up coming home from school to be with my family because I wasn’t stable enough to remain at school. I wanted to kill myself so badly. I contemplated suicide on a regular basis for the next 6 months. I had started seeing a psychiatrist and she was doing her best to find a medication that would bring me out of that horrible depression. We tried countless medications and nothing seemed to work. My friends, my family, my doctor and I were all at a complete loss as to what to do. We were all crying out to God for wisdom on the situation. All the time keeping the fact that mental illness had snuck into our family a secret. Not telling people at church and not telling most of our family about what was going on in my life. My family and I both feared the stigma that comes with mental illness.

Then in July of 2010 I became manic again for the second time in my life. I drove around in my car like a maniac, no regard for speed limit or the safety of myself or anyone else on the road. I had endless energy and stayed up to all hours of the night. I almost completely quit sleeping again. One night I was driving home and saw sprinklers on at a church so I turned around parked my car and proceeded to run screaming, yelling and laughing through the sprinklers. I talked so fast it was like someone had pressed the fast forward button on me and I couldn’t sit still for the life of me. I went to my psychiatrist that week and very excitedly told her how well I was doing and what all I had been up to for the past couple of days. Well she figured it out then. She figured out I had bipolar disorder. That day was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because then we could start trying a new treatment route and get my moods more stable. But it was also a curse because I knew that it was a life sentence. I knew then and I know now that without a divine miracle from God I will have to live with this illness for the rest of my life.

I cried when I left my doctor’s office that day. I had known in the back of my head that what was wrong with me probably wasn’t like a cold that would just go away with time. But now it was reality. It was something real that was going to be a hard journey. Bipolar wasn’t just a word that I read in a book anymore. It was something I was going to have to learn to manage in my life.

The next few years were hard. We were still having trouble finding the right treatment path. I would go for months in a debilitating depression. I wanted to die when I was in that kind of pain. I wanted so badly to end my life. The illness was taking away my life, slowly but surely, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before it won. But I didn’t give up. I prayed. My family prayed. My friends prayed. But we still didn’t turn to our church or the rest of our family for their prayers. We kept it quiet; after all we didn’t want everyone knowing that mental illness had invaded our lives. Neither my family nor I wanted that label.

Things are much better now. I have a great support system. I have a great team of professionals on my side and I have a family that loves me and goes out of their way to support me. I also have friends that care very deeply for me. My family and friends went above and beyond the call of duty. They not only pray for me on a regular basis but they educated themselves on the disorder so that they could be aware of the warning signs and help me manage the illness better. They ask me questions when they get suspicious of a mood change that could be a danger sign. But we still keep it quiet. We don’t want that label.

But I am writing this today because I am breaking down that stigma. I don’t want you to treat me different because you now know that I have a mental illness. In fact I want those of you that know me to really think about who I am as a person. I am intelligent, funny, and passionate about God and life. I am so much more than bipolar disorder. I have a mental illness but I am not mentally ill. Bipolar disorder does not define who I am. I am defined by who God says I am.

I want my readers to know that this is a part of my journey. I have to manage my illness, just as someone who is diabetic has to manage their illness. But just because I have to manage this doesn’t mean I should be treated as lesser of a person. In fact I believe that those who suffer from any illness but still have a smile on their face and still face each day ready to go and trusting in God should be treated with even more respect and admiration than the average person, me included.

We have to stop treating people with mental illnesses like they are some kind of social piranha. These are people just like you. They need prayer just as much as you do. They should be able to stand up in front of their family, friends and church and tell them that they have a mental illness and receive just as much respect, compassion, empathy, understanding, and prayer as someone who stands up and says they have cancer. And while you pray with them for a miracle you need to encourage them to seek help and follow their doctor's and therapist's treatment plan.

It’s time for churches to rise up and really represent Christ. I am sick and tired of people being judgmental just because they do not understand something that someone else is going through. If someone comes to you and asks for your prayer and support because they are suffering through a mental illness then pray for them just like you would for anyone else with any other illness. And go a step further if you really care for this person; educate yourself on what they are going through. Then you would be even more equipped to pray and support them.

Rise up my fellow Christians! Rise up and be the Christ follower that God has called us all to be. We are not to stand idle while people are suffering around us. Rise up and do as God has called us to do!

Thanks mom, dad and Drew. You guys are always there for me and always praying for me and it means a lot to me. Thank you Krystal and Jennifer you have both always been there for me through thick and thin even when we were miles away from one another. And thank you Dolan and Lynn for being on my team. I care for you both so much, probably more than you will ever know.