Dear AlanFromWichita -
Firstly, I apologize for getting Wichita spelt Witchita in my postings. Aussie ya know!
I agree with all you have said. I certainly am a different person from the one who got ill 30 years ago and like all with mental illness it has been quite a journey, sustained by Faith and a dear and very holy and most wise director who said to me “The Lord does not want you ill, I’ll tell you that, Girl! The seed of joy is within you” ( I was in hospital, depressed and expressing resignation to my lot of illness . . . also called ‘self pity’!). He died not long after that but those words rang clear as a bell to me always and these sustained my Faith and belief that I was not into a journey of some terrible darkness, an ending - but somehow, somwhere, sometime ahead I would come together - and my experience was much as you outlined - a total dismantling of the
‘me’ then . . . not suddenly but over a period. I went through six years of dire poverty and homelessness and other matters. Somewhere somehow at sometime during that journey a new me was ‘born’ . . . at first stirrings of and over a long period of years, slow growth, until now when I reflect back on the person who became ill, I seem totally different yet the same person, but I think, a better person for the experience of mental illness. More aware and grateful for the simplicities of life and certainly far more open minded and accepting and compassionate to mention a few changes.
Some doctors have said its impossible I’m Bipolar, others that it is absolutely sure that I am . . . I put it this way to my doctor “I don’t care if you call me a pineapple upside down cake, frankly, I just want to live a fulfilling and contributing life in the general community”. The words Father spoke to me kept coming back to me and I never lost Hope - not completely, although I guess sorely strained at times.
I take my medication religiously because the two times I have come off it, I have become ill again. I think it was Glasser who said that we can waste a lot of energy on cause, when we need to concentrate on ‘where to from here’. Somewhere along the line, I let the doctors have their field, which is cause (it doesn’t really interest me too much) while I concentrate on what I have and where to from here.
My own case, however, is nothing to do it seems with environment and why I began to experience rather nasty depressions some four years before I actually became ill, very ill, and was put into a psychiatric hospital is unknown as to reasons. It also went undiagnosed since I had no experience prior of depression and all I could state to my GP was that I just didn’t feel right. He declined to send me to a psychiatrist since he knew my history (no real problems) and I had no reason to be depressed.
I think really whether one is in ‘the dark night’ (a spiritual mattter) or perhaps biologically or environmentally caused psychological and perhaps pathological difficulties (matter for the doctors) is something of a mute point other than to perhaps a spiritual director and/or one’s doctor. Either dark night or psychological problems . . . one deals with them in the same way in that Faith and Hope, trust and confidence,Grace etc., they all play a very positive part in the rehabilitation or renewal, reconstruction of the personality, whatever, process. They may also be very sorely tried.
Doubtless those who have Faith etc. during a journey with mental illness have their Faith sorely tried at times, very sorely tried! At times when illness (whatever!) is pressing and most difficult, one can seem to have lost it . . . but cling . . well I don’t know what! . . . but one still clings.
My own two sons now 39yrs and 42yrs are very well adjusted men and both single, working, independant. And as much as they hate to know it, were raised on the philosophy of Bob Dylan!!! (with a few adjustments here and there!!!) . . . well Dylan more or less. I don’t want to get into a tangle over Dylan, or anything else for that matter if I can help it.
The Spirit moves where and as He will. Also, the Holy Spirit does not have our biases etc. etc. etc. Gold, after all, is where one finds it.
Send regards and may your Easter unfold joyously - Barbara