Day Two: A Christian dealing with mental illness- The Boiling Pot

Today I am happy to say that I received a comment from one of my dear friends and that makes my heart happy. My goal in blogging is not to gain sympothy but to let people know that even though you are a Christian or believe in God doesn't mean that you can't have a mental illness. Just like diabetes or any other illness, mental illness is just as important and needs to be treated with therapy and medication. Not everyone that is depressed has a mental illness. I was diagnosed with being manic depressive or "clinically depressed" and I didn't realize that having no treatment would later end up making me even more sick. Subsequently, after I tried to commit suicide I was told by a social worker that I had to either get outpatient therapy or that I would be admitted into a behavioral health facility so I chose to go with seeing a therapist. Although I found a therapist to go to I didn't like the feeling of exposing myself to that person. I had a great fear that opening up the pot of boiling water would later burn me in the end and I would become even more depressed so what I did was shut down. I would talk to the therapist about ordinary subjects like when did the depression start and so on. I was attending ASU at the time and something happened that made the pot boil even more. A friend of mine had passed away prematurely and right then I had wished it was me who died and not her. I was so distraught and absolutely out of my mind that I stopped seeing the therapist that I was going to and tried another which didn't help me either way. At this point in time I was given no medication to take and didn't know that I would need to. Has anyone felt that their life experiences were kept in a boiling pot ready to pop at anytime?

Day One- The Beginning- When the illness began

I was brought up in a Christian home and taught to believe in a God that loves us unconditionally. Although that I knew this I no recollection that I was sexually abused until some years after I lost my dad at an early age. I have been depressed most of my adolescent life. I never knew what depression really was because I felt unhappy ALL of the time and didn't know why. After my dad died something inside of me died and the remembrance of my sexual abuse became real and that is when everything went downhill. At 15 I was diagnosed with being clinically depressed and having a chemical imbalance. I had no idea what "clinically depressed" meant. I was told that I had a low level of "serotonin". I tried to commit suicide when I was 19 years old because I had enough of being lectured by my mother and feeling that no one loved me. My mother made no real attempts to pull me out of my self loathing so the depression grew to extraordinary lengths.I had no idea how greatly this disease would affect my future.