The crisis of identity hidden in anxiety and depression

Having suffered anxiety and depression enough to know, I was astounded to face a new reality in my most recent bout of the blues. At the end of the year, tired in the mind and harried in different directions, I wrestled with my reality, and began to tussle for a way back.

It felt like my spirit had lost its peace; my soul had lost touch with its silence.

I couldn’t understand how or why I had descended so quickly—from functioning and feeling well to being caught up in a whirlwind of exhaustion, in a matter of days it seemed, much to the point where I felt I couldn’t even help myself.

Ah, at least I knew who could! But finding my way back to God, from that disconnected vantage point, felt next to impossible. And that was the clue I needed to face.

As I took myself offline and began to allow myself to rest, I soon also took myself off to retreat. Back to nature. As I allowed the plethora of information and concerns to float away into the ether, something I’d lost touch with somehow returned.

It was in the silence and solitude, through my reading, and through the Spirit’s massaging of my soul, that my mind sprang alive ever so gradually, and what I call “the stream of eternal truths” started flowing into and through my psyche again!

But there is something I can saw as I meandered from the cognitive freeze to the thawing:

I discovered that, sometimes when I’m not myself,
I feel like I’ve never been myself.

Let me say it a different way. When we’re anxious or depressed (or both!), just by example, we may feel like we’ve never been anything or anyone—like we feel like nothing. That is to say, we know we’ve had times of mental health and vitality, but it seems that those experiences are not only irredeemable, but impossible now to access, and not just that, but we may be shut out of all knowledge of these positive experiences of being. As if they never existed in the first place, though somehow, somewhere deeper within, we do know.

It’s as if these positive realities never were.

That—as a thought—
is a lonely, scary concept!

This is a scary place to be in, especially when we consider that most of the time, we’re completely unaware this is occurring. Times like these, we’re in a state of being that is locked out of the very rooms that would be key to our escape back into normality. And we may not even be aware!

Yes, my reality has sometimes been that the flow of the stream of eternal truths has not only stopped flowing, it’s as if it never was.

Therein lies the genesis of a crisis of faith, because though we know God, it’s more like we KNEW God, or worse, NEVER knew God, because our present has lost touch with our past.

I’ve had this occur to me several times, and sometimes it’s occurred for weeks (but never to date for more than several months).

You know something’s wrong, but you have no idea what it is or how to get back.

For those helping those with mental illness, it pays to be aware of this dynamic. To understand that it’s not only possible but probably likely that a spiritual assault has occurred—and NOT centrally because the person’s been disobedient. Often these things occur because we’ve been TOO obedient. In that, we’ve been too available to others in terms of our time and/or lack of boundaries.

Spiritual helpers bring calm and gentle encouragement, not challenge, well at least not straight away. Or, perhaps the best challenge is one that redirects a person’s focus onto what will be an encouragement—like encouraging them to slow down.

Empathy is most crucially needed. And many times, it’s empathy for two that the helper brings, because people battling anxiety and depression often can’t access empathy for themselves for the self-loathing they’re bombarded with. And that’s no poor reflection on them! It’s just what is. Anyone can find themselves in the depressive mindset, because once we’ve been there we see how humanly available such a mindset is.

What do we do when we find ourselves in these dire straits?

We must give ourselves time. We must enter a process of change. Environments of silence and simplicity and few stimuli are needed. We start to observe what we’re telling ourselves. We reject all self-talk of rejection. We redirect doubts of worth in the direction of thoughts of praise. In many ways, these are elements of trust that we put in place by faith. We open ourselves up to the Spirit’s inquiry. We expose our spirit. We do all this in the trust that God will restore our soul. And we remind ourselves that we ARE. Just as much valued of God as anyone ever was!

Connection with our identity is crucial for mental health.