Mental illness doesn't just happen to a person. It happens to a family.
This is a story birthed out of 20 years of experience: both
good times and bad. It's a window inside
the lives of two people who love each other madly and have made their fair
share of mistakes but also some pretty amazing decisions too. The end goal of this story is understanding. If that's where you want to go with me,
please come along.
Also, I want you to know that this is shared with the
enthusiastic support and permission of Josh.
I'm the writer in the family, but this narrative is both of ours and we
want to share it with you. This is the story of our family's journey with
depression and anxiety.
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There's a dragon that lives in my house.
It's not my dragon actually.
It belongs to my husband, Josh.
He didn't ask for it.
He didn't want it. It arrived in his later years of high school
before we started dating. It was so small it was easy for Josh to dismiss and
pretend it wasn't there. I was totally
unaware of its presence as we went along in the early days of our romance. Being
all goo-goo eyed over someone will do that to you.
We married, Josh started his career, we started having kids,
and the dragon grew larger. We could no
longer attribute "dragon sightings"
to being part of a personality that is more quiet, introverted, serious,
and sometimes indecisive. Lack of sleep wasn't the problem either. We had a dragon
as an unwanted houseguest and that
was clearly a problem. This needed to be taken care of - so the dragon and Josh began fighting.
Fighting looked a lot like retreat, for him. Disengaging from life. Always sick. Not taking care of himself. Emotionally
Paralyzed. Overwhelmed. But it was fighting nonetheless. He had to protect
himself and his family, because the dragon kept growing. The dragon wasn't just here for Josh, it was
here to keep the whole family from living if it could.
With each passing year it seemed like the dragon was winning;
taking up more space in our home, requiring more attention, wounding Josh's
spirit and our souls . By the time our
third child was born, he was a wreck. So were the rest of us, really. The dragon was moving beyond our home and into
our social life. It was starting to follow him to work too.
Having a dragon that you are always, always trying to beat
back is exhausting. It's not that there
are never happy times together when you have a dragon, there are. But every moment
with a dragon is lived on edge, in a constant tension of waiting and wondering: when, where and how the dragon is going to
show up.
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Once you admit to yourselves that a dragon lives in your
house, you go through what is probably a typical pattern of grief and
coping.
At first you are in total disbelief. You see things you've done and decisions
you've made that in hindsight were tell-tale signs of a life lived with a
dragon. Denial and decision-making are
odd bedfellows.
One way of controlling the dragon for us in the early days
was through forcing change upon our family. The dragon always seemed to disappear if the
changes were big enough. I think, in
part, it's why we moved so frequently when we were first married. Dragon sightings would become too frequent
and I would start looking for things I could do to make something better. For
us that looked like moving around a lot. Maybe a better kitchen, more storage, more
daylight: anything, everything, maybe something
different enough would let us outrun the dragon.
We'd move and for many weeks, even months it would seem like
we had finally shaken it. We'd start to relax and live like what we thought
normal people lived like.
Then it would happen.
Josh would appear one day singed and weary, altogether more wounded than
in the weeks and months before. The
dragon had clawed its way back into our lives.
The noise of the kids was too much- again. The to-do list was too much- again. Again, all focus was going to keeping the A-game
for his professional life. All energy went to keeping that from falling apart. It was
shockingly all he could do, until one
day he couldn't even do that.
Wherever we went the dragon followed. It always found our forwarding address and it
always made us pay for trying to run away.
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Sometimes, when a dragon lives in your home, you forget that
it's the dragon you're fighting. It's
not because you want to and it's not that it's right - it's just the constant
claw marks and lingering smell of burning sulphur and charred ruins makes you
want to find someone else to blame.
"Why won't you kids be quiet, stop being so silly!
You're going to hurt yourself! Don't you
know there's a dragon that lives here? Just calm down! Someone is going to get
killed - I'm serious!"
"That thing never leaves - Why can't you make it
leave? It's your dragon - make it go
away!"
"Are you kidding me? You think I want this? Can't you
see my wounds? My scars? They're from
fighting. I'm not just sitting here
doing nothing - I'm fighting a DRAGON with
every breath and all I've got!
Apologize. Hug. Cry. Pray.
Apologize some more. Do better, try an old thing harder, do whatever you can to
get some control back. Try trying
something new: another battle technique,
a new weapon, something - anything, we've got to find a way to beat this
dragon. The human cost is too much.
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The dragon has no rhyme or reason as to when or why it shows up. It just does. For us, the dragon was always
worse around other people, or preparing to be around other people. Probably
because in those moments we were trying so hard to act like we didn't own a
dragon.
For example, it might show up when we were trying to do something
completely bland and ordinary - like gathering our kids to head out the door. I mean, for the love, all you need to do is round
them up, put on their shoes and buckle them in.
It shouldn't be hard, and yet - this dragon keeps getting in the
way. It threatens to eat you alive. It breathes fire and scorches the very hairs
on the back of your neck. So you yell and fight and scream or run and
hide and cower but the dragon will NOT leave you alone. It's just waiting.
Waiting.
Always waiting for you to attempt to have a life.
It might not be kids, it might be other social engagements,
deadlines, events and situations that people without dragons don't even think
twice about - but you must think about it always
when you are a dragon warrior.
Always.
The dragon has convinced you it will never, ever, leave. It tells you that you must manage and control your life to the nth degree. The
dragon convinces you that anyone or anything around you that doesn't go as
planned will cause your destruction and demise.
Anything. Anything at
all.
You start living your life convinced that everything that
happens or might potentially happen
will be the end of you or someone you love.
And it will be all your fault because you tried to live instead of
listening to the dragon.
Sometimes you try anyway.
You work up your courage and say yes to the outing, to the social
gathering, to mowing the lawn, organizing the garage, cleaning your office - pick your poison- it ALL feels
like poison. The thing is: you
see other people doing it and they're living and they're fine so you have to
try. You want to live so you have to try.
You so badly want someone to understand.
It can be disheartening when you try and bring up what your
struggles are. You tend to get an odd look followed by "It's only this..."
, "All you need to do it that...",
"It's not a big deal, it's just..." .
"Why am I so broken?" You ask yourself.
Even at that- you DO need to keep trying . It's easy,
though, to feel like you are unworthy of
a life because something always happens, and the dragon roars. It tears
into you nostrils flaring, fire breathing, voice screeching because how
DARE you try and live when you have a dragon.
******************************************
Dragon damage can takes days, even weeks to recover
from. It doesn't seem to matter how much
you apologize, blame yourself, blame others, try harder, try less, hate
yourself, love yourself, pray, confess, repent, twist yourselves in knots, nothing
appeases the beast.
Time is no respecter of persons, dragon warriors included. It marches on even when it feels like time
standing still is the only thing that would help. You end up with incident piled upon incident
so you can't ever really seem to get out of recovery mode and each infraction sends you a little further into hopelessness.
The dragon affects the people closest to you as well. They all need to put on a brave face and keep
trying; giving reasons that probably sound like excuses but hopefully somehow
sound better and more believable than "a dragon is trying to kill us."
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I've noticed that those of us who love someone with a dragon
usually become dragon managers.
We will try and control things to keep the dragon quiet.
Because if the dragon is quiet - we get to see the one we love and they might
see us, too. They might show a spark of
life, though not too much, because dragon. But there's always that hope that you, as the
dragon manager, will finally manage things well enough that you might almost
have a life. Trying to create a life
without any ripples becomes your highest goal. Almost living is better than not
living at all. So you manage and
feel alone and feel like crying a lot. Probably almost as much as your warrior
does.
Dragon managers become adept at PR. You become spin doctors trying to put a happy
face on the tragedy you find yourself in. "He/She couldn't make it today, sorry,
just not feeling well...again." Which sometimes feels like saying: "Hi, we're the Faily McFailersons,
sorry to let you down...again."
Failure is the soup-de-jour for dragon managers because
obviously trying to control situations and people never works. So defeat and hopelessness become your
sidekicks, and you just try and soldier on because at least you don't have a
dragon to fight. You just have to pick
up the pieces and hope it doesn't take the one you love.
We've all seen that
the dragon wins sometimes. We all know it can be an incredibly powerful
beast. It's an exceedingly difficult
curse to shake. You've got to give it everything you've got to keep the warrior
fighting.
If they lose...
No. They can't. They
just can't lose. You CAN NOT become a
dragon statistic, Warrior - you are far too loved, too precious, too wonderful. So you control. You manage. The warrior and
you fight the dragon. You will both do
whatever you can to keep the dragon locked up. The warrior's life depends on
it.
Managers will take on more than their share of work and
effort because they just want the dragon to leave. Then the dragon warrior can
live and we can all feel good again. It
will look to the outside world that we are doing all the things and the dragon warrior is doing nothing. Even dragon managers feel like that's true
sometimes. However, we also know this
truth: that oftentimes fighting a dragon is the hardest, bravest, and most
exhausting thing a dragon warrior can do.
So we fight for our warriors and we protect them by picking up their slack. Sometimes it's the only thing we can do.
We're not saints, just exhausted sojourners who love someone with a
dragon.
I have wondered if being completely real and sharing the
extreme difficulty and brokenness we were going through would have served us
better. Except that for so many years we
were in denial ourselves. Years ago we wouldn't have had the words or space to
make sense of it. That's only come in
recent years, months even. We might not
have even thought life could be different years ago. It just was.
If we could have broken through the shame our answer probably would have
sounded like: "I don't know what's wrong aside from everything."
Maybe that would have been enough. Maybe we would have found
ourselves striving less and trying to be good enough for other people at lot
less, and that might have helped us out of our dragon years faster. That's the
discomforting part we just have to live with.
You live life, you make your best decisions and some of them turn out
not to be the best ones.
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Dragon warriors and dragon managers have been told by
society that nowadays it's fine to say you have a dragon, or to talk about it
like it was a growth that you had removed.
However, if you actually talk about all the ways it affects your life, if you actually discuss your battles, well, obviously there's something wrong with you. You are probably not
trying hard enough. Usually your battles
will only make sense to someone with a dragon like yours. So instead you stick to polite conversation
and speak about things that other people find acceptable to struggle with-
because you have those too.
We spend our energy trying to look normal like everyone
else. But the dragon comes along with
us. Sometimes it means the ugly spills
out and we might not even see it because all our mental energy is going to
trying keeping that dragon quiet and trying to act normal. But normal for us is
trying to prevent a battle. We assume
it's what you are doing too . We think
that's normal. It certainly doesn't
excuse things, but it does maybe give a little context and understanding.
Dragons and their battles don't come instead of whatever you want to
call "normal". It's just a
wretched added bonus.
******************************************
I remember the day 12 years ago when Josh finally went to
the doctor and asked for help. The
doctor talked with him and looked at this broken shell of a man and he saw- HE
SAW!- the scars and bloody mess that the dreaded dragon had left behind. We felt such relief. We weren't going crazy. There was in fact a real invisible thing that
was preventing us from living fully.
Dragon, thy name is Depression, Anxiety, Mental illness.
It was an incredible relief and yet only the beginning of a very long
journey towards recovery.
We tried from the outset to be open and honest about Josh's
struggle with depression. We told people when Josh was first prescribed
antidepressants. We didn't want them to
feel awkward and we were desperate for support and understanding.
We've seen that while it's acceptable to have a mental
illness there is really so much people don't know or maybe don't even want to know about it. It is difficult to communicate how depression
affects your life, especially when you're neck deep in it. We thought people would connect the dots.
We
were living it, so most things seemed obvious to us. We assumed it was evident
to everyone and that was a mistake.
I wish we had found a way to explain what it was like to
live with a dragon we never asked for. Grace and acceptance are harder for
people to give when they don't understand what's going on. I wish we had done better with that. I wish
we had handled ourselves with more grace too.
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Here's a side benefit to growing older: you see and
understand things that you just absolutely couldn't when the journey was new. Many
times early on we thought we were being judged and help was being refused. In
most cases our perception was incorrect.
When you are fighting a dragon, or going through any hidden
struggle, I suppose, it's very easy to receive comments and
reactions as unkind or judgemental. You are so tired and wounded from
fighting the dreaded beast that you can't really see straight. It's hard to
address because you're already so ashamed that this dragon is something you
can't seem to conquer, even with the
help of medication. The truth is sometimes
people think and say and do really insensitive things. The other probable truth is- so do you. I
think it's important to remember that when you're trying to filter painful
experiences
We can't go back in time, but we can share what we've
learned. We can share what we know now -
20 years in as dragon warriors and managers and more than halfway through the year into
treatment option 397. This option appears to be working better and bringing
more freedom and transformation than any of the other 396 things we tried
before. The size and scope of the dragon's influence is shrinking daily, but we still have a dragon, and maybe we always will, or maybe we won't. We are sharing this story now because we have the mental space to do it. It's
only because we believe we've finally found the other side of the shore after a
long, painful journey with our arms flailing and our heads barely above water for
years and years that we can see ourselves a little more clearly and share these
things.
The Truth About
Dragon Taming
1) Taking medication to treat depression doesn't always "get
rid" of the depression. It helps
you fight it- but you've still got to fight it. Medication can be like armour
for Dragon warriors. It doesn't get rid
of the dragon, it just helps you tie him up and get him to behave a little
faster with hopefully a little less wounding. Sometimes medication is the answer. Sometimes it's not.
2) It is very hard to explain your struggle and ask for help when so
much of your energy is going to fighting, or trying to manage your life
to help the one fighting the dragon. If you knew what would help, you would do
it, therefore not having the problem anymore, so you can end up feeling kind of
stuck. You are chronically exhausted in those early years of discovery,
treatment, trial and error. So, so, exhausted. For us we were in the already fatiguing baby
phase of life while we were trying to navigate this new world of constant
dragon battling. Have I mentioned the exhaustion yet? Ex. Haus. Ted.
3) Mental illness, for most people, is a long-haul. "Having
a night off" won't fix it. In fact
- nothing the Dragon warrior is trying seems to "fix it". They are already trying a billion and six
things to fix it. If you are going to
offer help to someone who is suffering with mental illness the goal of the help
has to be something other than fixing
the person who is suffering. This is a
big one and probably the most misunderstood.
It's the difference between trying to be a savior and suffering
alongside someone. BY ALL MEANS: Take
them a meal, babysit kids, help with yardwork - All the yeses and amens to helping!
Your help would lift such a burden to a
family that deals with mental illness. And
do offer - because you probably won't be asked.
Just remember your help won't fix it, and you as the helper need to be
ok with that. It will be somewhat dissatisfying because it will only lift
someone who feels like they're constantly treading water for a few moments- but
it won't save them. Warriors have to save themselves in the end. They'll probably
still be tired, overwhelmed, emotional, or withdrawn next week but they might
feel a little less hopeless because they didn't suffer alone.
4) Warriors want people to know that they are always trying to figure
out if the symptoms of this beast: chronic exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed
at small things, over-reacting to seemingly small things, avoiding "normal"
activities, for instances, are in fact - part of the disease, part of one's upbringing, or part of his or her personality. This is part of the hard work that a family
dealing with mental illness has to do. It takes much trial and error and maybe even
some counselling to figure that out. But
remember they are working on it as best as they can.
5) Shame is a central feature of mental illness. Shame silences. Shame teaches you that you should not ask for
help. Shame instructs you that you
should try and hide and compartmentalize your life to be acceptable. Try as best as you can not to give in to
shame. We lived under this burden for
years and can attest that it only leads to further destruction. If you love someone who owns or manages a
dragon, try and understand the massive weight of shame that they are likely
living under. They need boatloads,
legions even, of gentleness, grace and kindness to help them break through the
weight of it all.
6) It would be better to "own it" and be honest about what
feels like unfixable and stupid complications of the disease and let people
decide if they can handle it or not. Not everyone can. People have their own stuff to deal with. To continue to try and be good enough for
people who won't extend grace to you when your life is messy in different ways
than theirs will be more hurtful in the end. Don't try and compartmentalize
your life. The truth of your brokenness will seep out in uglier ways if you try
that. Own the truth of your life. Admit
to having a dragon. Continue to try and
be the best version of yourself. Let the people that want to love you, love you
- but don't try and be good enough for anyone, because it will never happen.
7)There ARE people who will meet you where you bleed. There are people who will love you as you
move towards healing. There are people who won't cross to the other side of the
street so as to not soil themselves with your wounds. They exist. But they are harder to find if you are trying
to hide your dragon and compartmentalize your life.
8) To the dragon warrior and managers: You will have blind spots. There will be things you are doing and saying
that are not at all good and you won't see them because you are too busy
fighting other fires the dragon has set.
Own them when they are exposed.
Make things as right as you can. Actually - this is true of everyone - fighting mental illness or not.
9) Talk it out. There
are potentially a lot of things a person dealing with mental illness might do
that bother you, or you don't understand. This is also true of any relationship,
though it seems there might be a higher opportunity for frustration when
dealing with dragon warriors and their families. If trying to overlook behaviours as a weird
quirk or odd reaction isn't helping you get "unfrustrated" with that
person - talk TO them.
It's true that a conversation may or may not go well. You can't control that. But you can control you, and if you have a
problem you should talk with the person and assume they aren't trying to hurt
or offend you. Believe they are doing their best and that they will try and
make it right.
Seeking to understand first is always healthier for everyone
in the end, rather than assuming motive and passing judgment. Love them enough
to have a difficult conversation.
Not sure how to start that conversation? Here's one of many possible openers: "Is everything okay? Because I think you are great and there's
this area of your life that just doesn't jive with the rest of who you
are. Can you help me understand what's
going on? Because I care about you. I want you to live in wholeness. Is there anything I can help with?
10) When people appear to be struggling, and they are pulling back and
disengaging, it's probably a good sign that they need help. But again - they don't need a savior, they
need a sojourner. Offer your presence,
you can't control what they do with that offer, but if it's in you to walk
alongside someone who is suffering with mental illness it is one of the
greatest gifts you can give.
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Every journey with a dragon looks different. There are a lot of high functioning people
who own big dragons. You can't always
tell a dragon warrior at first glance. If you ever want to tell us about your Dragon,
we promise to listen, and create space for a "me too" moment.
To all of the dragon people out there: I hope you feel a little less alone knowing there
are other people fighting the same fight. We believe in you. We see you and we are cheering you on. These battles you fight day after day are so
exhausting and disheartening. Some days
it really feels like nothing will ever get better. Please don't give up hope. Keep trying the next thing. Keep asking for help. Keep looking for those kind and gracious
people who will lift your head and remind you that you are worthy of a life, even if
you have to fight for it.
