Mental Health – Zelophehad's Daughters

A Tangible Presence: Thoughts on the Eucharist

Lynnette6 July 20224 July 20222 Comments

If I hadn’t grown up immersed in Christian symbolism, I suspect that I would find the Eucharist both bizarre and deeply disturbing, perhaps even offensive. Even as accustomed as I am to the whole thing, the sheer strangeness of it still hits me at times. I wish that Jesus had come up with a different ritual for remembering him, I sometimes think. I’m not sure how much I care for this one. In John 6, Jesus graphically comments that “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (v. 56), and links this eating and drinking to eternal life. The disciples complain that this is a difficult teaching (v. 60), and then many of them end up leaving him (v. 66). Honestly, I’m sympathetic. I don’t think that this would have won me over.

But on a week-to-week basis, I find that I struggle less with the weirdness of the ritual, and more with how mundane it actually is in practice. Maybe I’ve read too many exciting accounts in which the Eucharist worked wonders, but I find myself wanting it to be a mystical experience, to be somehow transcendent. I don’t think that it ever has been. Read More

In Depression, General Conference, Mental Health

Bits of Conference That Might Be Harmful to Mental Health

Ziff2 November 202128 Comments

Like I said in my review a few weeks ago, I really appreciated Erich W. Kopischke’s talk “Addressing Mental Health” this last General Conference. The motivator for him to give the talk was that his son who went on a mission suffered from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and suicidality, and as a result, returned home after being out for four weeks. Elder Kopischke talked about the need for people who are supporting their loved ones who are facing mental health issues to learn more and to judge less:

Learning will lead to more understanding, more acceptance, more compassion, more love. It can lessen tragedy while helping us develop and manage healthy expectations and healthy interactions.

What struck me, though, thinking about his message was how many other messages in that very Conference were probably contributing to people’s mental health struggles. I realize it’s way beyond what one talk could accomplish, but there is so much preaching of perfectionism and black-and-white thinking that really needs to be toned down if GAs want to be serious about helping improve members’ mental health.

Here’s a list of some of the bits of Conference that I thought were possibly harmful to mental health. Of course, I’m no mental health expert. I’m just a run-of-the-mill neurotic Mormon, prone to depression and anxiety, so those are the types of issues I’ll focus most on. Also, note that I’m doing my church experience on the easiest setting, as a straight, white, married, cisgender man. There are plenty of messages in a typical Conference that are hard on single people, or LGBT people, or childless people, that really don’t strike me because I’m not their target. So what I’m struck by is probably a lower bound estimate for the total number of potentially harmful messages.

In Depression, Mental Health

Going to the Edge

Lynnette23 November 201923 November 20199 Comments

CW: Suicidality

To start with, it was my birthday, and even in good years I don’t like my birthday. It comes just after New Year’s, after everyone is burned out on holidays and get-togethers and eating too much rich food, and has moved on to New Year’s resolutions about healthier living. It’s only two weeks after the winter solstice, and the light is barely making any headway against the still-dominant darkness that somehow seeps into everything. And by that point I am usually tired of people and celebrations, and feel cranky and just want to hide. In bad years, I am also deeply upset about being alive, and the anniversary of my birth feels like a bleak thing to be noticing, let alone pretending to be happy about. Read More

In Church Life, Depression, Episcopalians, Liturgy, Mental Health

Evensong

Lynnette29 January 201929 January 20195 Comments

When I was in the hospital a few months ago, I missed church on Sunday. Obviously I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter; I have yet to see a psych ward that would let you out for a few hours to catch a church service. (They’d probably be especially nervous about Episcopal services, come to think of it, with all those candles.) But I was a little surprised at how sad I was to miss even one week. Since I’d walked into my local parish in February 2017, thinking at the time it was just for a temporary change of pace, I had not gone a single Sunday without attending Episcopal church somewhere. Even when I turned into a somewhat manic church-hopper later that year, and tried to visit at least one new church every Sunday, the possibility of skipping Episcopal services was simply never even on the table. It had become too much an essential part of the rhythm of my life.

That Sunday in the hospital, I tried to look on the bright side—I’d been wanting to see a religious service in the psych ward, and indeed I got to go to one. It was very low key. A chaplain came and had a small group of us read a few things, and then talk about them. The predictable result was that we spent a lot of time listening to the not always coherent thoughts of two patients who always had a lot to say. I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to the chaplain more; she was warm and thoughtful, and seemed like an interesting person. I definitely appreciated her efforts. But I also thought about how only a mile away, my parish was holding its usual Sunday services. It was a blunt reminder of how much you’re cut off from the rest of the world in a place like that. The next Sunday, when I walked into church, being in the familiar building again actually made me emotional.

In Depression, Mental Health, Mental Hospital

Writing in Crayon: A Night in the ER

Lynnette20 January 201920 January 201911 Comments

I’m in a hospital room with almost nothing in it. A bed, with a single blanket and pillow. A chair. One of those narrow little tables you can pull over the bed, where they put meals. They let me keep two paperback books, and my notebook. I’m glad I remembered to get a notebook before we went to the ER. I asked my brother if he happened to have anything around without any wires, and he found me an old green composition book. 100 pages, college-ruled. That should last me, I hope.

I ask if I can have something to write with. Sometimes they let you have plastic pen-like things. I saw a box of them once, and it said that they were for maximum security prisons. Sometimes instead they offer pencils. In one hospital I was in, I got frustrated with the regular pencils, which were those tiny golf-sized ones, and started writing in colored pencil instead. One of the other patients got mad when she saw me doing it, because she felt that the colored pencils should only be used for coloring. She took coloring very seriously.

The nurse says that he can get me a crayon. This is new; I’ve never been to a place that didn’t allow either pencils or pens. I say, okay. He asks what color, and I say that black would be best, but I’ll take whatever they have. He comes back with a black crayon. It’s at least new and sharp, though of course the sharpness doesn’t last long. After a while it breaks in half, making it even more difficult to use it for writing. It’s slow, and tedious. For a person used to typing, which I imagine is pretty much all of us these days, any kind of writing by hand can feel slow, but doing it in crayon is definitely an extra challenge. I find myself only writing on every other line in the notebook, because I can’t write very small. It’s easy to smear the letters, so I have to not rush, and take my time with each letter. But for all that, it’s good to be able to write. No matter how bad it gets, I’ve learned over the years, it helps me deal if I can just put it into words somewhere. Read More

In Depression, Mental Health, Prayer, Revelation, Spiritual Experience

When Good Spiritual Practice Goes Bad: Prayer, Rumination, and Revelations of Damnation

Lynnette21 August 201821 August 20187 Comments

CW: brief mention of self-injury

I still have vivid memories of a particular day in December over a decade ago. I was in my second year of doctoral work at the time, and I spent an evening talking with some of my fellow students. We found ourselves disagreeing about a number of theological questions, including the topic of whether God’s justice would allow for universal salvation. I was the only LDS student in the group (in fact, I was the only LDS student in the doctoral program); the other participants represented a variety of religious backgrounds and theological outlooks. My memory is that people were trying to be respectful, but there was an undercurrent of tension, and I left feeling a little unsettled.

In Mental Health, Personal Narratives, Therapy

Ending Therapy

Lynnette8 June 20188 June 20185 Comments

Next week, I’m ending work with a therapist I’ve been seeing for over a decade. This has caused me to reflect a lot on our years of working together, and what it’s meant for me. It feels like a strange thing to blog about this, maybe, but I don’t really know what the correct venue is for processing a relationship like this. I don’t feel like there are a lot of cultural scripts for talking about therapy that don’t involve poking fun at it (which I don’t necessarily object to; I’ve seen What About Bob? so many times that I can extensively quote it). But this is a big deal for me. Read More

In Mental Health, Mental Hospital, Personal Narratives

Waiting for Visiting Hours: Memories of the Psych Ward

Lynnette28 January 201828 January 20186 Comments

It’s been almost two years since I was last hospitalized (yay!), but I’ve been reading through some of the journals I kept while I was there, and it put me in the mood to reflect yet again on some of my experiences.

In every psych ward I’ve been in, visiting hours were restricted to an hour or two a day. After lots of experiences with this, I’d actually forgotten that for people in regular hospitals, they usually let people come throughout the day and only send them away at night; I remember asking a friend of mine who was in the hospital for medical reasons a few years ago when I could visit, and being surprised when she said, anytime. In the mental hospital, they seem to think it’s a distraction that needs to be limited. Though at least everywhere I stayed, they had visiting hours every day; I’ve heard of places that only allowed them a few times a week, if even that, I think on the theory that you needed to focus on their program and on getting better, and less contact with the outside world would help you do that. I would have really hated that.

In Christ, Depression, Grace, Guilt, Mental Health, Sin

“The Hardest Thing There Is”: Turning to Christ in the Midst of Sin

Lynnette15 April 201720 April 20175 Comments

In his writings, the great reformer Martin Luther, who turned the theological world of the sixteenth century upside down, returned again and again to a very basic problem: how do you believe in the atonement, or grace, or the saving work of Christ, on a personal level? How do you really take in that those things apply to not just humanity in general, and more to the point, not to some category of “good people,” but to a sinner like yourself? “I have often experienced,” he wrote, “and still do every day, how difficult it is to believe, especially amid struggles of conscience, that Christ was given, not for the holy, righteous, and deserving, or for those who were His friends, but for the godless, sinful, and undeserving, for those who were His enemies, who deserved the wrath of God and eternal death.”¹ Luther noted that when he found himself consumed by the forces of sin, it was nearly impossible to turn to Christ for rescue and forgiveness. He attributed this at least partly to the work of the devil, whose voice constantly whispered in his ear, reminded him of his unworthiness, and informed him that Christ would surely damn him. He described his experience of being frightened of Christ: “even at the mention of the name of Christ,” he recounted, “I would be terrified and grow pale, because I was persuaded that He was a judge.”² Luther also observed the inexorable and unforgiving logic of the conscience: “You have sinned; therefore God is angry with you. If He is angry, He will kill you and damn you eternally.” He went on to even suggest that as a result, “many who cannot endure the wrath and judgment of God commit suicide by hanging or drowning.”³

The only way to quiet these condemning voices is, of course, to throw yourself utterly on the mercy of the Savior. But Luther was well aware that this is much easier said than done. To turn to Christ, to look for grace, while being assailed by the forces of judgment and condemnation, he observed, was enormously challenging: “to do this in the midst of struggle is the hardest thing there is. I am speaking from experience, for I am acquainted with the devil’s craftiness . . .”⁴

Luther’s Works Volume 26: Lectures on Galatians, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), 36. [↩]
Ibid., 178. [↩]
Ibid., 150. [↩]
Ibid., 38. [↩]

In Mental Health, Personal Narratives, Psychology

Reflections on Hundreds of Hours in Therapy

Lynnette11 April 201726 April 201711 Comments

The first time I ever went to see a therapist, I was 18 years old and a freshling at BYU. I’d finally gotten up the nerve to admit to my bishop that I was suicidally depressed, and he referred me to the university counseling center. I’d never been in therapy before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Unfortunately, it turned out to be kind of a disaster from the very beginning. The person who did the intake asked me about my suicide plans. When I hesitantly told him what I was thinking of doing, he said dismissively, “oh that would never work.” I was seriously burned by that brief interaction; years and years later, therapists would plead with me to share the specific details of my suicidal thinking and I would remain reticent, not wanting to re-live the shame of being told that my plans (and by extension, me) were not worth taking seriously. Read More

In Mental Health, Personal Narratives, Psychology

Some (Okay, Actually Way Too Many) Notes Made in the Absence of Depression, about Augustine, Willpower, and How CBT Failed Me

Lynnette2 April 201723 April 201716 Comments

I recently emerged from a very long depression. While I am quite enjoying this rare life interlude of an existence not characterized by overwhelming apathy and despair, and am wanting to just savor the radical sense of being remarkably and unexpectedly enthusiastic about this whole being alive thing, my therapist keeps pushing me to think about how I can cope better when the depression returns. This isn’t a fun question to tackle, of course, because in my current state I’d prefer to believe that the depression won’t ever return. I do realize that this is completely wrongheaded. My particular manifestation of bipolar disorder is constituted by something like eighty percent down, fifteen percent in between, and a mere five percent up. (To really look at that, which I don’t often do, makes me feel both profound grief about how much of my life I’ve lost to depression, and intense rage about the unfairness of it all. Which is probably why I don’t like to think about it too hard.) But I do know in my head, at least, that the chances of the depression being permanently gone are close to zero, and I’ve thus been reluctantly willing to do the kind of strategic thinking that my therapist is asking me to do.

In Mental Health

Things That Keep Me Going

Lynnette15 December 20161 April 20172 Comments

As a follow-up to my last post on chronic suicidality, I thought I’d mention some of the things that have kept me going over the years.

1) Poetry

I’m like Hermione—when life throws you lemons, go to the library. Except that it’s hard to find books that have anything helpful to say. I’ve read my share and more of self-help books, and they’re almost all completely stupid—they don’t really speak to the experience of utter despair. There are some books on depression that I’ve found to be worth reading, though they can be hard to find. I prefer memoirs, accounts of people who’ve actually experienced it. But what’s helped me the most, honestly, is poetry. Mary Oliver in particular has a way of re-connecting me with what matters in life, of making me see things differently, without being cheesy or sentimental. For example, “The Journey”:

In Mental Health

Choking on Life

Lynnette14 December 201614 Comments

It was junior high when I first started thinking about how I’d really prefer not to be alive. I don’t think I got to the point of actually thinking about how I could bring that about—it was just a desperate unhappiness. But by high school I was starting to think more actively in that direction. I read all the books I could find about suicide, looking for information about methods, but also, I think, hoping to find something that would somehow help, even if I couldn’t articulate what that help would look like. If nothing else, learning more about it made me feel less alone with my demons. Read More

In Depression, Mental Health

The Mental Health System Strikes Back

Lynnette3 April 20163 April 201620 Comments

I’m sitting in a small room on the fifth floor of the local hospital. I’ve had to change from street clothes to scrubs, and my possessions are being examined to see what I can keep. I didn’t bring in much; I turned most of it over to my sister Melyngoch when she left me in the ER. A nurse is sitting at a computer, answering question after question. I haven’t been in this particular hospital before, but I’ve been in enough similar places that the drill is familiar.

I’m reading the questions over the nurse’s shoulder. She has to check boxes about my attitude. Am I hostile? Aggressive? Withdrawn? I can’t help but notice that all of the options are negative. She checks “other,” and writes, “overly polite and helpful.” I can’t help sighing a little—it’s a reminder that whatever I do, however I act, it’s going to be seen through the lens of dysfunction. She asks my name, to find out if I know who I am, and I answer her. She asks if I know where I am. In the psych ward, I say. She corrects me, explaining that this is actually the “stress care unit.” I just smile. I know perfectly well where I am, regardless of what they’ve decided to call it.

In Mental Health, Personal Narratives

A Sustainable Life

Lynnette1 December 20151 December 20157 Comments

It’s gray outside. That’s not unusual here; it’s been gray for days, and I know this is only the beginning of some long months. I remember that from living in the Midwest before, years ago. But twelve years of living in California got me used to seeing the sun on a regular basis. I knew this part of the move would be challenging.

This past summer I was starting to crash yet again. Life was increasingly appearing both bleak and terrifying, and I was barely treading water. I hadn’t been hospitalized for an entire year—an accomplishment, that—and I saw myself headed to the ER once again. Except that I wasn’t sure I could stand yet another trip to the regulation and boredom of a psych ward, and I wondered whether this time around I could keep myself safe.

In Identity, Mental Health

Stories

Lynnette2 April 201514 Comments

I’m eating Cheerios for breakfast, and contemplating the small plastic pill box sitting in front of me. Seven days of psychotropic magic. Unlike my evening meds, the morning ones are small and easy to swallow. But the thought crosses my mind, as it so often does—why am I doing this, exactly?

—————

After too many of them, the hospitalizations start to blur together. Sparse double bedrooms with doors that you’re not allowed to shut. Showers that turn themselves off every minute or so, so that you have to keep pushing a button to keep them going. Rules against having anything sharp, against shoelaces, against pens, against personal electronic devices such as cell phones or laptops. That last one makes life particularly challenging. One or two payphones for the unit, with stiff competition and time limits. A common area with a television which, except during groups, is on almost constantly. If you aren’t all that fond of television, it’s likely to drive you crazy. Crazier, I mean. Read More

In Callings, Church Life, Mental Health, Psychology

Making Space for Myself as an Uncorrelated Mormon–Part 4: Learning to Say No

Mike C31 January 201431 January 201410 Comments

I’m going to share with you something important I’ve learned in therapy (said the blogger, both of his remaining readers scrambling for the exits). In order to have healthy relationships, we need to have healthy boundaries. And when constructing boundaries, we must be aware that they can be either too porous or too rigid.

First, the problem with too porous: Read More

In Depression, Mental Health

Impressions of a Girl Lost at Sea

Mike C16 August 201316 August 201311 Comments

This guest post is brought to us by my daughter, the crooked girl. Recently I wrote a post on my perspective of her depression, and I invited her to write her own experience. This is what she wrote:

——————————–

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

–Stevie Smith

——————————–

I learned recently that a large number of deaths in the water take place within mere feet of the victims’ companions. Mario Vittone writes in a post on aquatic safety that “drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect…drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event.” Most people have not been trained to recognize the signs. This description struck a chord with me because, although I have never experienced such physical danger, my struggles with mental illness feel like a different sort of drowning.

In Atonement, Children, Depression, Fathers, Mental Health, Parenting

Sometimes I Dream

Mike C6 June 201310 Comments

Sometimes I dream that I’m watching a girl drown. The water is deep and dark, the current is strong yet gentle, almost caressing her. It seems to be a slow-motion drowning, lacking in drama and velocity. And I’m standing right there on the shore, waving my arms ineffectually as I look on in despair. I am useless. Sometimes it seems that she isn’t even trying to swim, and I become frustrated as she stops stroking and kicking, apparently consigned to letting the waves calmly wash over her and carry her out to sea. Read More

In Mental Health, Missionary Work, Missions, Uncategorized

Missionaries and Mental Health

Beatrice5 September 20125 September 201225 Comments

In the middle of my mission, I had two very sick companions one after the other. With both companions, their health was so bad that we slowly spent more and more time in the apartment until they were eventually sent home. It was a challenging experience for me in both cases as I focused my energies entirely on supporting them in this frustrating circumstance. After the second one went home, I was assigned an extremely energetic and capable companion. I missed my previous companions, but was relieved to have the pressure taken off so I could focus on missionary work again. However, soon after I got this new companion, I spiraled into depression. Read More