The Evolution of a Battle with Anxiety and Depression - Part 1
The unspoken truth about addressing anxiety and depression in your life
My first title to this post started with, “How to…” and so I let it sit in my drafts for weeks on end. I’m not here to tell anybody how to do anything, I’m writing purely to scratch my own itch and fulfill the promise of the daily reprieve of alcohol by partaking in a few imperative practices each day. I genuinely don’t feel like I have the right to tell anyone “How to” do anything in their lives.
But, when I reflect back on these last two years, there has been an absolute insane shift in my life pertaining to two maladies that inflict so many of us. I was stricken, driven mad and obsessively contemplating my death, by anxiety and depression as I fought through my isolated battle with alcoholism.
Anxiety and depression partner with alcoholism like meat and potatoes. It just works in the most classic of ways. Yet, similar to the act of an alcoholic consuming alcohol, anxiety and depression are the the result of a fundamentally deeper disturbance within someone’s psyche. This is proven true by a simple test. Instruct someone that you know dealing with anxiety or depression, “Just stop being anxious/depressed”. I bet you it will be just as effective as telling an alcoholic, “Just stop drinking.”
Based on my experience, those suffering with anxiety and depression beat themselves up in a similar manner as I did when dealing with alcohol. Shame infused thoughts dominate your mind. “I shouldn’t feel depressed right now, what is wrong with me?”
And so the cycle continues for many, just as it did for me. In dedicating my life to the daily reprieve from alcohol, I also began discovering a freedom from the issues that had been crippling me with anxiety and depression.
To actually attempt to be a helpful post regarding this topic, I am going to detail the state of my life the day that I entered rehab pertaining to anxiety and depression. I will explain what practices I picked up along the way that helped or hindered and then give you a snapshot of where I am today.
But first, let me be completely clear about something. For years, I clung to an extremely regimented and delicate routine with the aim of eradicating the symptoms of anxiety and depression. I obsessed over anything that I could do in life to help rid me of the burden of the suffering that came about from anxiety and depression. Do not read this post as a step-by-step guide for how to alleviate suffering.
My complete salvation, and the escape from the madness that anxiety and depression brought to my life was when I discovered that God could be brought into my life, engaged with on a personal level, and that He had a plan for me and cared for me. This is the foundation that everything else has been built upon.
This is what is different for me now compared to before I entered into rehab. The list of practices that you will see, in a coming post, while incredibly helpful were largely the same activities I had been performing prior to entering rehab. The biggest change, and the thing that puts these practices into hyper-drive, is my personal relationship with God.
I am still a work in progress. While I can say I have seemingly eradicated symptoms of depression from my life compared to two years ago, I still work through and deal with moments of anxiety. Progress, not perfection, is the name of the game here.
What this means is that I can still have momentary flashes of nervousness before a big presentation, anxiety over a situation in life, yet I am fully capable of falling back on the knowledge that I have established a personal relationship with a loving and caring God and I can be forgiving of myself in the moment for having those anxious feelings.
I can now traverse through momentary slip ups, or periods of time where I don’t feel like my best self, and I can balance being loving, forgiving and encouraging to myself to get through those time periods.
Before, I would just drink and inject even more anxiety and depression into my life. Everything felt so futile and worthless. Now, the opposite is true. It’s true in such an unbelievable manner that it’s difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t been stricken with genuine and intense feelings of nihilism that dominated their life.
The illness of alcoholism has puzzled experts for decades, if not longer. There is so much that is not understood, but as I listen and pay attention in the space, those that ‘get it’ say something akin to, “it seems there’s no real solution to the problem of alcoholism that works quite so well as a total and complete spiritual experience and transformation”.
I have found this to be the case. An often cited section of the AA Big Book states it as such.
What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities. ‘How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.’ These are thoughts which must go with us constantly
-Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 85
The moment where everything transformed for me was when I realized that I had been trying to make sense of a higher order entity that couldn’t, nor shouldn’t, be understood by myself, a mere human. It occurred in a flash one evening in rehab, and a cascade of questions started running through my head that ultimately allowed me to return to a real, personal relationship with God and have that daily reprieve from alcohol, anxiety and depression.
The questions that I asked myself, and worked to honestly answer were:
Am I trying to make sense of something and use reason to justify something that is impossible for me to understand?
What is the downside if I tried to connect with God on a personal level?
What if I opened myself up and pretended to have faith that there was a God and viewing life through that lens?
Who am I to declare that there is no God?
After one evening of thorough investigation and contemplation, everything changed for me. The practices, covered in the coming post, became amplified, as everything was to be built on a sturdy foundation of faith that there was a plan, and I was here to serve out my portion of that plan in the very best manner that I could.
I let go, and I trusted God.
That’s all I’ve got for this week, all the best,
Kyle
That personal relationship with God is so important! I’m so happy that you have that relationship now, Kyle.
Back in my late 30’s I went through a very dark time of depression and anxiety also. I too, started my faith walk with our Lord. My relationship with Him has continued to grow ever since and as that relationship grew the depression and anxiety lessened until they were finally gone.
I’m so proud of you and Alyssa and so happy that you know who to turn to!