Catholics and Mental Illness (An Ongoing Series): Michelle–A Woman with Depression Suffers Alienation in the Church

Posted on July 17, 2013 by GREG

St. Dymphna, Patroness of the Mentally Ill, Pray for Us.

A new post in our “What’s Your Experience?” Series, in which People-of-Faith share their experience of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness as they relate to their parish and their Catholic faith. Today, Michelle writes of her experience with crippling depression.

Dr. Greg, I was amazed when I came across a link for your article on Facebook because I have spent the past few days wondering about “What is my place in the Church?” as a mentally ill Catholic.

I have been thinking a lot about my mental illness lately. I used to be mentally healthy but then I joined the military where I suffered repeated sexual harassment and assault, as well as the expected traumas of serving in a war zone. I left the military and was given a 100% disability rating by the Department of Veterans Affairs for PTSD, Major Depression Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. So as far as I know I was not born with a chemical imbalance but instead my mental illness is the result of trauma.

I left the US Navy in 1996 and was given my disability rating in 1998. I have suffered for 15 years with crippling depression and also with oftentimes relentless panic attacks and severe bouts of paranoia/agoraphobia. In short, I can be ok to a certain degree or I can be a total human wreck. But no matter what, I am “weird” and this is not lost on basically anyone that is either my friend or is in my company for whatever reason.

Lately I have been having very serious thoughts about myself. I wonder how much of my depression is the result of what I call “negative narcissism” on my part: being so self-centered that I am shocked and driven to a huge “poor me, life sucks” reaction when life is stressful, life is challenging, and/or things don’t go my way.

I also wonder how much of my mental illness is self-fulfilling prophecy, due to being told that I am mentally ill to the point that I no longer trust my ability to “handle stress.” In other words, at the first real sign of stress I run away, disconnecting and dissociating by abandoning my daily life and tasks and hiding in bed, hiding behind the Internet (distracting myself) and taking off for a walk with my iPod while abandoning my duties.

These personal musings have come about after these past two or three years spent moving deeper and deeper into the Catholic Faith. To my shock I feel that I have discovered something incredible, and possibly something that will prove to be the key to serious improvements in my mental health: modern psychology offers me exactly what the Faith and the Bible have taught all along. Not only that, but the Faith and Bible offer *even more*.

So at the present moment I find myself deeply questioning my own reactions to stress. I find myself comparing my thoughts and feelings, my behaviors and my reactions against what the Faith teaches is the Christian way of life. I must admit that I find myself seriously lacking in many areas – and I am not saying this with self hate or scruples. I am seeking instead the truth, because although painful to my pride, the truth just might set me free. I doubt that my PTSD can ever be fully cured, but I am beginning to wonder if my depression and the emotional hyper-sensitivity of Borderline Personality Disorder are more the results of a life centered around Me and not Christ. I hope and pray that God will provide me with the tools (and people?) that I need to dig deeply into this idea.

Sadly I have found that the vast majority of those in the Church react to my “weirdness” with the same lack of compassion and understanding as those in the secular world. Sometimes even to the point of cruelty and aggressively destroying me socially via gossip: meaning that some people that get to know me within the Church will actually go out of their way to telephone and visit other people in order to gossip about me and ruin my reputation to the point of me being ostracized by church members, family, and many in the local community. Being socially destroyed by fellow Catholics is shocking to say the least. I am a convert, becoming Catholic in 1998. I did not expect to find the same injustices from fellow Catholics that one practically expects from those that reject Christ.

As for the rest of my fellow Catholics I am mostly met with inertia. In the moments when I am suffering the most there is an obvious need but no one is interested. They’d rather watch TV and they don’t want to be bothered with making the effort to connect and communicate, pray, etc.

I will do my best to answer your questions:

Was your pastor supportive?

No, I have never encountered a fully supportive pastor. I think some of the problem is some are not interested, others dismiss mental illness, they find you annoying and a drain. Perhaps another part of the problem is that some pastors understand the “negative narcissism” I mention above and they expect that you will “get it” a lot faster then you actually do.

Were the people in your parish or bible study or women’s group understanding?

Anything but. Even amongst fellow Catholics there is a Status Quo. If you are not able to engage in full time employment, your house is a wreck, you can’t drive, or any other “failing” due to the usual disruptions to life brought about by mental illness these are held against you. And this Status Quo extends even to your personal appearance: weight, style of clothes, ethnicity ~ add to that any cultural differences and it gets even more impossible to meet expectations. Being mentally ill, especially when you find yourself in the midst of a time of real mental struggle, helps you to fail to meet the expectations of the Status Quo. Oftentimes this Status Quo mimics that of the secular world, with its shallow judgmentalism and lack of compassion and patience and the desire to “get something in return” from any given relationship. No one can escape the fact that when you are in the midst of a mental crisis you take a LOT and give very little. It requires a seriously Christ-like heart to continue to love and support a mentally ill person during their particularly dark moments.

Overall, how good a job has the Church done of attending to your needs?

Awful. I have found, after being a member of multiple parishes across the USA and overseas, that if you are mentally ill you end up on your own. Your pastors are always “too busy” helping other people. Your fellow Catholics have a tendency to either outright reject you, or basically ignore you and leave you wallowing in the fallout caused by episodes of mental crisis. On the other hand Protestants are AMAZING. They not only love you and support you even at your worst, they are so Christlike in their lack of judgement and in their service. Christ washed the feet of His disciples, Protestants scrub your toilet and cook your meals and help you to remember to bathe and assist you with keeping up with daily tasks while you are at your absolute worst. Protestants will pray with you, read the bible with you (even when all you can do is sit there, stinking, hair wild, eyes glazed, and listen) and will take you to-and-from their homes, their churches, anything that is needed. By contrast your fellow Catholics don’t even pick up the phone and give you a call. I feel that the majority of my fellow Catholics react more like Secular people that don’t know Christ: as soon as you are an inconvenience, a burden, they abandon you. Even the Priests fail to call you or visit you or minister to you, and they do nothing to ask the parish to reach out to you. Holy Mother Church herself… I’ve never been offered any kind of pastoral mental health help in any form ever. This abandonment by the Church is something that I am struggling to come to terms with so that I can stop allowing this rejection and abandonment to throw me into a poor-me party. Far more then once I have been severely tempted to abandon the Church and join a Protestant church instead.

I hope this helps! I have to go now, time to do something productive. I am testing my “how much is my depression actually self-fulfillment” by trying to force myself to do at least one daily task from beginning to end. Have I become lazy due to self-fulfilling prophecy? Or am I truly incapacitated when a depression wave hits?

God bless!! ~Michelle

Do you have a story of a struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mental/emotional illness? What has your experience in the Church been like? Share your story to help others. I promise anonymity. Please email me at gpopcak@CatholicCounselors.com

No, She Can’t Play That Game Either

Posted on July 16, 2013 by GREG

The NYTimes has an article about the effect of the college hook-up culture on young women and their potential for happiness in life and relationships. It is a poignant and painful look at what happens to a culture when it defines itself by its ability to produce instead of the quality of its character and depth of its relationships.

The title of the article is, “Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game Too.” The implication, of course, is that men have been having casual sex for centuries and its worked out OK for them, certainly women can succeed at the same game. The problem is, it never really worked for men and it isn’t working for women either. The incidence of casual sex is inversely proportional to the strength of attachment you experienced in childhood. The less attachment you had as a kid to your parents, the more likely it is that you will exhibit promiscuous behavior in adolescence. The reverse is also true. The stronger and more secure attachment you had to your parents the more likely it is that you will avoid promiscuity in adolescence (as well as many other high-risk behavior). We can now predict the level of life and relationship satisfaction toddlers will have in adulthood based upon the amount of affection they received as toddlers. Extravagant affection in toddlerhood predicts healthier life and relationship skills in adulthood.

As I argue in Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Raising Sexually Whole and Holy Children, the reason men have historically been more sexually promiscuous was that, traditionally, parents were afraid that attachment would sissify boys. Girl and boy babies would receive about the same amount of affection, cuddling and coddling, until toddlerhood, after which girls continued to receive about the same amount of care and boys would be weaned from much of that for fear of impairing their masculinity. The effect, of course, was to cause men to repress those touch needs until they reached adolescence when they could get all their touch needs met–as long as they met them through manly displays of sexual promiscuity.

And then a funny thing happened on the way to the nursery. Suddenly, moms started going back to work at the same rate as dads. Girl and boy babies both found themselves in daycare as early as 6 weeks. Girl and boy toddlers found themselves both struggling to maintain attachment with parents who were too busy, or too absent, or just divorced and not present. Flash forward to young adulthood, and the narrative of the male pursuer and the virginal female no longer holds. Femininity doesn’t favor virginity. Attachment does. As girl and boy children became similarly detached, they both became similarly inclined to meaningless sexual relationships and the pursuit of accomplishment over actualization. For years, men have paid the price of this inheritance with a poor ability to connect with others and early death. Now women get to share the joy too.

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Read the article. As you do, see if you can’t hear Jesus’ words on the road to Calvary. “Weep not for me, but for your children.”

If you would like to discover how to raise children who have the strength to resist the cultural tide, check out Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Raising Whole and Holy Kids.

Catholics and Mental Illness (An Ongoing Series)– W. A Woman with Anxiety/Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Posted on July 16, 2013 by GREG

A new post in our What’s Your Experience? Series, in which People-of-Faith share their experience of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness as they relate to their parish and their Catholic faith. W. a young woman in her 20’s writes of her experience with a disorder that leads to overwhelming and violent bouts of anxiety and anger.

I’m a young adult, in my early 20s. It was only in college that major emotional wounds inflicted by my father manifested in what certain Catholic psychologists term “frustration neurosis” — a condition in which emotions aren’t repressed but certain emotions are rather totally underdeveloped. An adult suffering from frustration neurosis may react like a child under conditions in which a healthy emotional palette would take completely in stride. It was even more complex for me because I understood so well — too well, perhaps — that my reactions were totally contrary to what they ought to be, and so my frustration manifested themselves in overpowering hysterical “episodes” that were the only medium by which the energy that built up from the stilted emotional growth and my desire for completeness rubbed against each other. These episodes were terrifying — brutal, animalistic, violent, and totally unexpected.
The Lord drew me after Him through the entire process. I consider it a stage of deep purification, for not a single person understood what was going on interiorly until I stumbled — quite providentially, of course — into the path of a spiritual director who understood the ways in the Lord was working on my soul and heart by means of my past and my emotional being. It was very humiliating, very frustrating — and continues to be, to some extent, as this healing takes time, and there are still manifestations. (The particular extremity of my experiences, sometimes relatively public, were totally foreign to my chaplains and those at my university’s ministry. They could only surmise that it was X or Y, depression, for example, but not a single person was able to see everything, understand everything, etc. And the one thing I would say to those souls is that for an individual in my situation what is needed is heroic support — 100x more than they might imagine is necessary. At its worst moments, these kinds of mental illnesses might very literally feel like the end of the world, a black hole, during which faith and hope and charity are strongly tested.)

I think that persons in situations like mine — be it the condition, or the sense of total darkness and desperation that overwhelms them — should remember a few things: The Lord is present always; even Christ, who offered His Spirit into the hands of His Father, did it in anguished darkness. We must offer everything into His Hands and the the hands of His Mama. We must consider this an opportunity for great purification and for an opportunity to imitate Our Lord; there is no greater grace than to understand the passion from within. More practically, I think we must fight to find the right counselor. The counseling world is large, complex, and can be deeply imperfect. I was diagnosed in a multitude of different ways, with many recommendations, and having really no idea what was happening, I did the only thing I could — I laid it out before God, I prayed my fiat, and I waited. It took much humiliation, much frustration, many dark nights before I found the right therapist (and I do think something, somewhere, needs to click to make the arrangement right), but I can say with deep thanks now that I wouldn’t change a thing: I love the Lord with a much purer faith and hope now, and by the time I found this therapist, I didn’t know how to keep anything back. I was in a state of total nakedness and poverty, desperate for healing and clarity, and in the midst of this painful faithfulness, the Lord granted me light.

Blessings, W

Catholics and Mental Illness (An Ongoing Series)–Spouse of Man with Bipolar I Disorder

Posted on July 16, 2013 by GREG

A new post in our What’s Your Experience? Series, in which People-of-Faith share their experience of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness as they relate to their parish and their Catholic faith. In this post, Kate, the wife of a man with Bipolar I shares her experience with how priests, the Church, and her faith have been intertwined in the drama of her life.

My DH has been diagnosed in the past year with Bipolar I. He is 42 years old and a cradle Catholic. I am 39 and a convert to the Faith. We have seven children that are homeschooled.

My husband’s first mental break occurred when he was an undergrad at Franciscan University in the early 90’s. He relates the story that he was in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, alone, begging God for help. A priest entered the chapel at the sounds of his pleas. My husband begged him for help as well, anguished. The priest called 911 and he was hospitalized for a week. He then graduated and moved on, but he still talks about that day and that he wishes the priest would have just prayed with him.

Several years later, he was able to join the Army. We met and married shortly after that. We had many years of ups and downs along with infidelity. We were married for 6 years when he sought help and was diagnosed with severe depression and put on a combination of Zoloft and Wellbutrin. For several years, this was adequate to maintain him. Through all this, he was able to earn two Master’s degrees and become an officer in the Army. In February of 2012, things took a turn for the worse. He was suicidal and homicidal. His medicines were changed to include depakote and Celexa, but he only spiraled further out of control. He was hospitalized. They continued the same drug regimen and he was sedated and restrained almost daily for the first week until they changed the meds to include Lamictal, naltrexone and Seroquel. Through the help of a few close church friends and one priest, I was able to conceal this hospitalization from everyone, including the children. After three and a half weeks, he was discharged on Good Friday. From there, everything changed. After a year long process, he was medically retired from the Army two weeks ago. He still cycles, but not to the extremes as before. I am hopeful that with medication, therapy and time, he will become more stable.

We have a lot of help from a few friends and our priest (who has since deployed overseas), but we are both embarrassed and feel the stigma of mental illness. One of our fellow parishioners discovered his diagnosis and posted on Facebook a long discussion on how we shouldn’t ‘hide’ behind a diagnosis and he should just change. Our priest, who was new to our parish, was aware and said nothing.

Through it all, he remains faithful. He remains hopeful that God will assist him. Praying the Litany of the Hours gives him a schedule that he finds calming. Even with the hectic life raising children, we try to at least say Evening Prayers together before bed. I find solace in turning to the intercession of St Dympna and Our Blessed Mother.

The most difficult thing for me, as a woman of Faith, is my husband’s role as the head of our home. When he cycles into mania or depression, I have to find the balance of taking care of things that he can’t without taking away from his role, and maintaining his authority with the children. I consider myself a strong woman, but discovering myself over the years as a submissive wife and honoring my place in our covenant has been so rewarding. That being said, I am trying to gracefully maintain the order of our home without the detriment to my DH. How does one stay true to the vow to honor and obey when their spouse is in full blown mania?

The Church, as all of society, has a long way to go in dealing with mental illness. I don’t know what I expect or what should be done. I do know that we should be able to sit in the pews on Sunday without feeling looked down upon or have our ideas/efforts dismissed because he is bipolar. Priests have many responsibilities handed to them. I think it is easier to deal with the visible problems because mental illness can be so hard to identify. I am hoping and praying that now that we are done with military life, we will find employment and return to OH, where we have friends, relatives and priests that know us well and can give us support that we need.

I look forward to looking into your readings on mental illness and continuing the discussion. I just thought you might like to hear from someone like me.

Blessings, Kate

Six Types of Atheists?

Posted on July 15, 2013 by GREG

According to the University of Tennessee, in what is, reportedly, the first-ever attempt to classify different types of atheism, researchers have identified 6 types of atheists. If you are an atheist, what flavor are you? Is there a category they didn’t think of? If you are close to someone who is an atheist, do you recognize them in these types?

1. Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic–The true believer (er, non-believer) who seeks to develop his non-belief through reading and other intellectual pursuits related to atheism.

2. Activist– The evangelists. It isn’t enough to reject God. They need to convert others.

3. Seeker-agnostic– They embrace uncertainty. They’re pretty sure there is no God, but they are open to the possibility.

4. Anti-Theist– Antagonistic to religion. Equates religion with ignorance.

5. Non-Theist– Not concerned with religion at all. Just don’t think about it. Apathetic.

6. Ritual Atheist–Doesn’t believe in God, but thinks religious rituals serve a healthy role for personal growth and social stability.

Read the article.

Catholics and Mental Illness–What’s Your Experience? (An ongoing series)

Posted on July 15, 2013 by GREG

St. Dymphna, Patroness of those with mental illness, Pray for Us.

Dear Dr. Greg,

I’m writing in response to your series entitled “Catholics & Depression, Anxiety, & Mental/Emotional Illness. What is Your Experience?”

As a Catholic Christian woman who has struggled to cope with mental and emotional illness for nearly 25 years, I am grateful for the time, energy, and expertise you shar

e through your blog Faith on the Couch. Your ministry to those of us who exist on the emotional and psychological margins of society is, as I see it, a brilliant example of obedience to Pope Francis’ recent teachings.

It would be easy for me to go into great detail about my story, the journey I’ve been on for so long, but I am not sure if most of it would have any relevance to your questions. Having said that, I will try to summarize my history into bullet points of the kind of treatments I have undergone/sought for the major depression and anxiety disorder I have been diagnosed with:

Drugs – tricyclics in the early 90s, then when those didn’t work, MAOIs. Trials of almost all the SSRIs. Currently I take Wellbutrin 150mg daily, and have for a number of years gotten varying degrees of relief. Lorazepam as needed for anxiety, which happens to be about every third or fourth day.
ECT – during the mid to late 90s I had (to the best of my recollection) several regimens of ECT. As evidence by the fact that I am writing to you 15 years later, they worked.
Hospitalization – both inpatient and outpatient partial hospitalization during the worst of the illness in the 90s.
Psychotherapy – currently I see a (Christian, but not Catholic) psychiatrist every other week for an hour of therapy, which at this point consists of me talking to her about whatever issue is causing me the most emotional turmoil in my life at the moment. We spend a lot of time challenging my thought processes. I met this young doctor when she was just beginning her practice and have been with her for 8 years now.
Seeking help in the Church – most of the help I have sought has been in the form of the Sacrament of Confession. There was a newly ordained priest assigned to my parish several years ago, with whom I had spoken outside the confessional a number of times. At first my visits were of some benefit, but when he got transferred to another parish it was more difficult to get an appointment with him. Then his willingness to see me in person evolved into a brief phone call. Recently transferred again (typical diocesan activity with our young priests) and due to his ever-increasingly-busy schedule, I no longer feel he has time to help me. I currently have no priest with whom I can discuss the spiritual aspects of this illness. Several times over the years I have requested and received the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. It would have been good to hear a priest voluntarily suggest it, but the fact is that I requested it every time. I was left with the impression that I just wasn’t “sick enough to qualify”.
To combat my strong tendency to isolate myself when I am feeling particularly depressed, a year ago I joined a prayer group at my church. This group of 15 women meets every other week to study St. Faustina’s book Divine Mercy in My Soul and to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. There are a few women in the group who are supportive, but my deeply-seated difficulty trusting others has caused me to withdraw from regular attendance. My emotional meltdowns are unpredictable and embarrassing, and the group setting causes me discomfort.
I have come to the conclusion that, for me, it is far too easy to place unreasonably high expectations upon people in the Church. It has been rare for someone, priest or laity, to do or say something that effects a permanent healing of my body, mind, and spirit. I recognize that the fact that I am writing to you means that I have not completely given up hope in some kind of healing from God through His people, the Church. I beg your prayers.
The most helpful books I have ever read were written by the late Conrad Baars, MD and his daughter. Born Only Once struck me to my very core and has a permanent place in my library. Feeling and Healing Your Emotions provided the comfort of a meaningful explanation of the emotional wounds that have probably been a part of me since childhood.
I have one Catholic
female friend who I can occasionally call upon for support and encouragement. She is the mother of six children and one grandchild and so I try not to lean on her heavily, because she is quite busy.

Again, I am grateful to you for existence of your blog that I can turn to for support. Thank you for listening to me.