When A Community Is Rocked By Suicide

Last Saturday, I sat in church for a service with many people from my community. None of us wanted to be there. We listened to Pastor Roger give a message around the question, “Why?” A question that will never be answered.

We all gathered together: the young man’s mother, father and stepmother. Aunts and Uncles. Cousins. Friends. Classmates. Parents of friends and classmates. Teachers. Bus drivers. Coaches. VBS teachers. Pastor. Church family.

Through tears, we watched a slideshow of pictures. Twenty-one years of life – a happy, smiling kid loving life. How do you leave out a photo when there will never be another?

After the service, we all hugged each other, bound together through grief and tears. As I hugged the young men and women from our community, I saw grief and unanswered questions in their eyes. The question, “Why,” weighs heavily.

But in the eyes of their parents, mixed with the grief, I saw fear.

Their question – “What if?”

The question and the fear are real. Made even larger in all of our minds because this is our tiny community’s fourth young adult to take his own life in the past 3 ½ years.

My first inclination is to fix our community. Fix all of the problems in the school, the churches, and the community organizations. Because, really, aren’t we all responsible for these young lives? Let’s point fingers and blame each other. Set up more programs. Fix it.

But then I thought of my own struggles with anxiety and depression. Pointing fingers and blaming others have done nothing to help me. Thinking I have any control to fix my community is futile.

The only person I have any control over is me. Not my husband, not my kids, not my extended family, not the people in the church, the school, or the community organizations. I only have control over me.

But my actions can change my community. I will engage with my community. I will build relationships. Connect with friends. Build trust. And hope.

I will live an authentic life. I will speak well of people. I will share my faith.

I will make the difficult phone call when someone is hurting. I will show up. Not to fix, but to love.

I will reach out to a trusted friend when I find myself sinking into depression or when anxiety hijacks my thoughts. I will name my emotions, try to understand them, and accept them instead of burying or numbing my emotions. I will seek counseling when I need more tools to move through depression and anxiety.

My hope in living an authentic and wholehearted life is to encourage both the young adults and the parents that there is hope. You are not alone. I struggle, but by being courageous, leaning on my faith in God, learning to know myself and gaining the tools I needed through seven months of counseling, I can live my life. Not someone else’s. My life.

My 3:00 a.m. Worry Time

3:00 a.m. – my worry time. I have learned 3:00 a.m. is also known as the “Witching Hour” or “Devil’s Time.” Hmm, sounds about right.

I awake from a deep sleep with anxiety. Sometimes a worry will pop into my mind without me even thinking it. If not, I will find one. Then I lie in bed and worry, like a dog with a bone.

Prayer seems like a good way to handle it. If I just pray about whatever I am worrying about, the worry will go away. Right?

Wrong. When I pray, I find I am just worrying over the problem in prayer. I don’t turn it over to God. I tell Him what He ought to do and how He ought to do it. Along with a deadline. Please, Lord?

When I am done praying, I don’t feel any differently than when I spent the time worrying.

My daughter recently moved across the country. I am happy and excited for her! But, I am a mom. And now I find my daughter on my mind when I wake at 3:00 a.m.

When I realized my prayers of worry and control were doing neither her nor me any good, I remembered some words a friend told me after a fearful time in my life.

In 1995, my husband, John, was accidently injured while working as a lineman for a rural electric company. A hot wire came in contact with the guy wire John was tying off on the ground. 7200 volts of electricity went through his body. The ER doctor met me at the door of the emergency room and told me they were monitoring his heart and kidneys for damage. John had a couple of bad burns on his fingers where the electricity entered his body. Thankfully, he recovered without any lasting damage. But I didn’t handle it so well.

I could no longer believe that God would protect my loved ones. I struggled when John returned to work. Would he walk through the door that night? I talked to my friend, Betty Johnson, about my anger towards God and my questions of why He didn’t protect John.

And I will never forget what Betty said: “Gayle, God never promised complete protection for your loved ones, but He does promise to be with you through whatever happens in life.”

God will be with me. He will never leave me alone.

Because of this, I can pray, “I trust you, Lord.”

This has become my go-to prayer when I begin to worry. I whisper the words, “I trust you, Lord” when I feel fearful. It is what I pray when I want to control a person or a situation.

I have learned that worry and fear are about control – ironically, the outcomes over which I usually have no control. How silly I am to think things should happen the way I think they should. Or that people should act the way I think they should.

Now when I wake up at 3:00 a.m. with worries, I have a routine:

Capture the thought. Rather than letting my thoughts go like a runaway train, I capture the thought, the worry. I make myself aware of it. Then I ask,

Is it rational or irrational? Once again, this is awareness. If I realize the thought is irrational (out of proportion, making something catastrophic or making leaps in logic); I stop it. I tell myself it is irrational and I will no longer think about it.

Do I have any control or not? If the thought is rational, I ask myself if I have any control over the situation or not. If yes, I can decide on one action to take during the day and leave it at that. If not, then I pray

“I trust you, Lord.” I trust that God, in His infinite wisdom, has a plan. I trust that He is in control. Not me. Him. And no matter what happens, I will still trust in God’s love, kindness, and mercy.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5)

P.S.  This routine also works during the day!

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

Where I do some of  my best thinking - the drive home from therapy

After writing Reconnecting with Community two weeks ago, I prepared to post it to the blog. The cursor hovered over the “publish” button and I hesitated. The post was very personal. It could make some people in my community feel uncomfortable. I read it over again to be sure that I wrote authentically—without an agenda, without trying to control an outcome.

Yes, it reflected who I am and what I value. I hit “publish.”

Encouraging comments began to appear on Facebook and on the blog. The post had value to others. But, as the week went on, I began to feel uncertain about it. What do other people in my community think of me? What are they saying? “Did you read Gayle’s blog? Why would she write that? Why is she dragging up things in the past?” Or, “She sure is good at playing the victim.”

I recognized the feeling of uncertainty as vulnerability (thanks to Brené Brown’s books). I am learning that when I feel vulnerable, shame rushes in to fill the void.

When I saw my therapist last week, we spent time talking about my feelings and my vulnerability. Dr. Anna reminded me (as she often does) that other people’s thoughts and actions are beyond my control. She asked, “How do you know what they are thinking? Does it matter what they are saying? Does it change who you are?”

It was a really good session and made me think. But the Big Realization hit me on the drive home: What I think others are thinking and saying is what I would be thinking or saying if I was in their place.

Those are the things I think about others when I am feeling defensive and hurt. I would play the blame and shame game in my head or even say it to my friends and family. I would think they are playing the victim and it would make me feel angry.

Whoa! The “good girl” inside of me doesn’t want to think I can be mean, insensitive or flat-out judgmental. And, yet, I recognized my thoughts. My thoughts, not what other people are saying. My thoughts.

Then I realized it isn’t necessarily what other people have thought or said that makes me feel shame; it is what I think and say to myself that opens the trapdoor into the sea of shame.

In other words, I judge myself in the same manner as I judge other people.

In Matthew 7:1-2 Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

I always took this to mean when Judgement Day comes, I’ll be judged in the manner I’ve judged others. But, it is mind-blowing to realize I judge myself with the same measure I judge others. And I can never measure up. How can I expect it of others?

It’s the same as “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). If I don’t love myself and treat myself with respect, lovingkindness and compassion, how can I love others?

I went back and read Chapter 6 in Rising Strong again. No surprise there. Brené Brown wrote that the people who didn’t think others were doing the best they could “judged their efforts in the same exacting manner that they judged the efforts of others.” She noticed these were the same group of people who struggled with perfectionism.

Today I showed Dr. Anna what I had written in this post to this point. I hadn’t finished it. I had a week full of revelations that I shared with her, which I’ll be sharing with you in the future.

Once again, my mind opened up more on the drive home and I had these thoughts:

           

• It is easier to judge and avoid connection than to connect and work through conflict.   
• Avoiding Connection = Avoiding Conflict
•  The opposite of judgement is acceptance.

I’ve got more wrestling or “rumbling” (Brené Brown’s word) to do…

A Blue Day

Today is a gloomy, cloudy day. Even Pikes Peak has the blues.
But I don’t. And that makes me smile!

A month ago, the weather would have affected me and I would have been down in the dumps. But, my Vitamin D levels must be where they need to be and therapy is obviously working. I feel normal and engaged in life without any depression today. Hallelujah!

This doesn’t mean I never have a blue day anymore. In fact, I had one a little over a week ago on a sunny day. And I learned something from it.

When we are recovering from depression, a down day can make us think, “Here I go again, back into depression. Will it ever go away?”

My therapist explained that the brain remembers the path it’s been down to depression, and once it has been down that path, it’s easier for the brain to go there. But, it doesn’t have to stay there.

On the day I was depressed, I left my house at 6:00 a.m. to take a friend of a friend to the airport in Colorado Springs. I was a little bit anxious about driving because I hadn’t driven to the Springs airport in many years. Everything went fine and I was home by 8:00 a.m. I sat down and fell asleep, woke up at 9:00 and felt blah. Kate left the house to go somewhere with a friend. I felt a little more blah.

By 10:00, I was just plain depressed. I did the things I know to do to cope with depression. I ate breakfast and lunch. Took my vitamins and supplements. Spent some time with God in silence and prayer. Got outside and took a walk enjoying the sunshine. But, the cloud of depression didn’t lift.

I thought, “Okay. Today I am depressed. So, I’ll just be depressed.”

And that’s what I did. I gave myself the grace I needed to accept that I would be depressed that day. I realized that going to the airport early that morning threw me off and had made me anxious. Kate’s leaving when I’d thought she’d be home had made me feel lonely.

I did what needed done that day and didn’t worry about what didn’t get done. I felt the depression and lived with it. I didn’t make it out to be worse than it was and I didn’t panic because I felt depressed.  Later in the afternoon, I watched a movie, something I don’t do very often by myself. But I enjoyed it and didn’t lay on the guilt for watching it.

John came home from work and Kate came home. I related that I’d been pretty depressed, but I didn’t run myself down for it. Just said that’s the way it was. Hopefully, the next day I’d be normal again.

I got a good night’s sleep and woke up the next morning feeling fine.
    

Looking back, the one thing I would do differently is call a friend and go out for lunch. That may have helped my loneliness and bumped me out of depression.

Accepting a day of depression seemed to take the power away from the depression. If I accepted it, I didn’t have to feed it with feelings of unworthiness or worthlessness. I examined my emotions and understood why I felt the way I did and it is okay to feel that way.

A blue day can be just that—a blue day. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where Anxiety and Depression Meet

Every once in a while, I open up my journal and look back at where I was when I started this journey. Wow, I have come a long way.

Today I thought I’d share one of my early journal entries. I had told my therapist that I feel really anxious when I woke up in the morning. Dr. Anna had asked me to write down an example of how I talked to myself. Easier said than done. It took several days to be aware of what I was saying to myself. But, then early one morning I caught myself.

I get up at 5:45 a.m. to make my husband breakfast and pack his lunch and then I go back to bed, because I am NOT a morning person. But, for some reason, I thought I should be.
 
On May 20^th, I became aware of what I was thinking as I made John’s lunch. And I sat down and wrote it out after he left for work.

5/20

Lots of negative self-talk this morning. I want to go back to bed. But I’ve got lots to get done. I’ll go back to be and get up at 7:00. Yeah, right. You’ll sleep ‘til 8:00. You won’t get anything done anyway. I need a schedule or a routine. You never keep a schedule. You never do what you plan to do. You’ll plan it, but there’s always some reason you won’t do it. You never finish anything. If you schedule something, you’ll talk yourself out of it.

This is one paragraph of it. I remember sitting in shock after writing it. Did I really talk to myself that way? I wouldn’t talk like that to anyone else. There are two pages of this in my journal going over every task I needed to complete that day. No wonder I woke up feeling anxious! This verbal tennis match running in my head occurred every morning before I got out of bed and continued after I got up.

The first thing Dr. Anna did was give me permission to go back to bed and sleep. I obviously need my sleep. Sleep is important if you are depressed (and she said I wasn’t getting too much sleep –another symptom of depression). And, she gave me only one task for each day. My only check-box to mark is “What is your mood?” She also taught me to stop my thoughts. Realizing my thoughts were not normal or good helped me to stop them.

I learned to challenge a thought and ask its value. Is it true or not true? What’s the worst that can happen? What’s the best?

Brené Brown’s book, Daring Greatly, talks about scarcity – the thinking that we are never enough. She quotes Lynne Twist (author of The Soul of Money), “Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.”

I am enough. I don’t do things just like everyone else. I am learning to be myself and be comfortable with me. And the verbal tennis match in my head has stopped.

Related posts:

 A Time To STOP

Life Is Like A 1960's Western Television Series

Forest Gump said “My momma always said, Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get.” Well, I think life is like a 1960’s television western series. Good things and bad things happen in life. You deal with it, and then move on to the next episode.
  

Just think of Ben, Adam, Hoss and Little Joe on Bonanza. They spent their lives protecting the Ponderosa from swindlers, land grabbers, and a crazy con-man who thought he could “row” a boat across the ranch and claim the land as his own on a technicality. They wooed women, fell in love and, ALWAYS, lost their loves in tragic accidents or murder. Or else she really loved someone else. And sometimes the men were caught up in a case of mistaken identity, jailed for a crime they didn’t commit.

In the shows, the Cartwrights lived, loved and laughed. They fought, struggled and persevered. They grieved and learned to live again. Isn’t that what life is about?

Now, imagine if Bonanza was a true story. A person could not go from tragedy to tragedy, drama to drama, or from love to loss to love to loss constantly. Think of the years of therapy and medication the Cartwrights would need to even get out of bed in the morning!

And yet, that is what we often try to do. Something major happens in our life, then a tragedy, and more drama. Rather than taking the time to process our feelings and thoughts, we keep pushing through. We don’t have the luxury to get everything settled in one episode. Or we don’t have the resources.

But, then the re-runs play over and over in our mind. The movie reel never stops. We become angrier, more anxious, depressed or helpless. We isolate ourselves. The re-runs become debilitating. Especially when more than one episode plays at a time.

That is where therapy or counseling helps. We can tell the story to a counselor, but this time we allow ourselves to feel the pain, the hurt, the anger we may have avoided. A counselor can help us navigate through the feelings and move us towards processing the feelings.

And then, the counselor can help us “reframe” our experience. How did we grow from it? What was the best outcome? Sometimes the best outcome is that we survived the experience. But even seeing that can be enlightening.

My family and I have been through a lot of stuff the last few years. Even a thunderstorm with wind and lightning can set my nerves on edge and leave me feeling helpless. On the minor side of events, our old 5^th wheel camper blew over and was totaled in a microburst last summer and then our new one was struck by lightning this spring.

Through therapy, I have been reminded that just because something happened once, it doesn’t mean it will happen again. My mind has stopped replaying the episodes. I no longer drown in the pain, fear, panic, anger when I think about the past episodes. And I trust that whatever happens next is something we will make it through with God’s help. Because we do keep making it through.

Now that I’ve dealt with the re-runs, I am ready to face the new episodes. The good and the bad. Because that is life. Let's ride.