mental health

My No News in May Challenge. Want to join me? Wait. Hear me out.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 23 Comments

So I am sinking into a deep depression and have lost a lot of motivation off and on for the last year. You know why. Todays news is depressing, demoralizing, and creates insane amounts of division. Prop that on top of other life stressors and many of us have the making of a good ole’ fashioned mental breakdown.

Of course we are in control of how we allow the things we read and hear affect us but we are also responsible for what we allow in our ear and eye holes and I don’t know about you, but I’ve allowed too much in off and on (not consistently) for more than a year now.

I’m ready for a break during which I hope to accomplish some other goals in life including, reading my Bible more, praying more, finishing writing book two in my series, planting my garden, reading more, closing out my children’s school year, visiting some local parks, picking up drawing again, and searching for UFOs. The last one is a joke, but who knows. With all the free time I’ll have on my hands, I may just do that.

It isn’t that I like news sites or visit them because I’m really invested in what is happening in the world. It’s a way to distract myself, procrastinate, and, quite frankly, it is easy to become addicted to what I call panic or drama porn. Our thoughts are inexplicaply drawn to the negativity of life and where can we find the most negativity today but on a news site.

We can easily fall down rabbit holes, even without meaning to.

Anyhow, I digress. The point of this post is to try to hold myself accountable and to see if anyone else would like to join me in a news fast for the next month. This is not a total news fast. I am keeping myself at one hour a week which can be broken up however I like but for now I think I will allow about 8 minutes of news a day. This will include quick scans of one site and no more sinking into rabbit holes or checking Twitter (which I don’t even have an account on. What in the world am I doing? The place is a sink hole of depression and the worst society has to offer, in my opinion.) or any other social media accounts related to news.

You can keep yourself to more hours a week if you want, but I am curious to see if less news will make some of us who are susceptible to all the different messages overwhelming our brains feel less anxious. Join me if you like, cheer me on, or just ignore me. I’m okay either way but I hope by posting here I will feel guilty if I allow myself to be sucked into a media/news-induced hysteria. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll post some updates later in the month and in June. I’ll see if I utterly failed or at least had a little success.

Faithfully Thinking: Here is Your Reminder To Close Some Tabs

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

I looked at my computer screen the other day and I had six tabs open on my browser.

I was switching back and forth and my brain was trying to switch at the same time. It was really causing me a lot of stress. A lot of self-inflicted stress.

In a few hours my brain was mush, my thoughts were jumbled, and I was feeling jittery.

As I started to physically close the tabs in my browser, a thought hit me.

We need to close a few tabs in our life the same way we close them in our internet browsers.

Sometimes we need to shut off the news, shut of the TV, shut off the radio, and close the lid of our laptops. We need to turn off the phone, with only emergency contacts alowed to call us.

Then we need to walk away.

That’s right.

Walk away.

Walk way literally or figuratively. Either way we need to find silence, calm, peace and that might mean shutting off more than our devices. We may need to shut off the many voices in our minds shouting for attention.

Only when we close the mental tabs – one by one – can our brain find peace.

Sometimes we can’t close the tabs.

The windows popping up are out of our control.

Broken down cars, sick family members, finances, people we know passing away.

Those are the tabs we have to deal with, yes, but there are many times when we open more windows than we need.

Things like researching more than we need to about a variety of issues (health, politics, homeschool materials, recipes, diets, books, movies, etc.) being glued to social media, constantly updating news feeds, inserting ourselves into another person’s personal business, watching stupid shows, taking on more in life that we can possibly handle, saying ‘yes’ when we should say ‘no’.

It is the extra tabs we’ve opened on our own that we need to close.

Closing those tabs can be as easy as closing our eyes, taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and focusing on what is happening right now, in the moment. Shut off the television, the devices, remove ourselves from the craziness of our households for a brief time and find a quiet place to regroup. Regrouping could involve listening to a sermon and taking notes without distractions, listening to music or simply sitting in the silence and listening for God’s voice. That last one is a little scary, right? Sitting in the silence? Alone with your thoughts? Yikes. But being alone with our thoughts is often what is needed to slow our thoughts down.

Here is a tactic I learned from Emily P. Freeman (author of The Next Right Thing) to keep myself “grounded” to my surroundings:

Close your eyes and say outloud or to yourself your name, what day it is, what year, what time, where you are, what you hear, smell, feel around you, and what is the next right thing you need to do out of that that whole list that is swirling around in your head. Then take a deep breath, hold it a few seconds, and let it out again.

Example: “My name is Lisa Howeler. Today is January 28, 2021 at 3:06 p.m.. I am at home in my living room. The sun is bright and warm on my face even though it is cold outside. I can hear the television and smell woodsmoke from my woodstove. Right now I need to cook dinner. I will worry about the rest of my list later.”

Repeat it all more than once if you need to.

This helps — when I actually do it. Don’t be like me and just tell people to do this. Actually do it yourself.

You can do this.

And so can I.

Right?!

I’m going to go close some more tabs and I encourage you to do the same. Let me know in the comments below which tabs you closed in your life.

Maybe you should pay attention when a friend starts posting depressed social media updates after all

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

This weekend a person in our small county killed three of his family members and then himself. He’d been posting depressing cries for help for more than a month on his Facebook account and people who knew him said he was suffering from PTSD, possibly from his time in the service.

A veteran suffering from PTSD in our area is not new and it’s also not unusual to be reading yet another story about one of them killing themselves or someone else. Almost as common as the obits of young people dying of heroin overdose in our area are the obits of military veterans, of all ages, dying at their own hands.

Comments about this latest case ranged from “what a freaking psycho, I don’t care if he had PTSD or not” to “why didn’t someone help him?” and “how can I help someone who has PTSD to keep this from happening?”

There was a lot of hurt, a lot of anger and even more ignorance about mental health showcased on social media following the murders and suicide. I think one of the most common misconceptions about mental illnesses like depression is that the depressed person is always going to show they are depressed and they are always going to reach out for help, before they do something drastic. Depressed people don’t seek help most of the time, period. What they might do is try to send messages to those around them to let them know how down they are getting. They throw out a lifeline, but many times those lines are never picked up

Hurt people hurt people. Period. The first time I heard that phrase I was angry. I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to think about how or why the person who hurt me was hurting inside. My exact words were “screw that. I don’t care how hurt they are, it never excuses what they did.” And it’s true. Being hurt doesn’t excuse you from hurting others. What that phrase does is explain that people aren’t always simple jerks when they do something that devastates another person. It’s more complex and deep than the person simply being a horrible person.

I also notice in this world that when someone is labeled as “depressed” or “needing meds” it seems to coincide with the feeling they aren’t worth dealing with, worth associating with, worth reaching out to. I guess we feel that if we can’t “fix” a person then we shouldn’t even bother dealing with them at all.

I can’t tell you how many times I posted on Facebook while depressed, hoping someone would pay attention and call me. Was it sad? Yes? Did I feel like a loser trying to get attention? Yes. Did anyone ever call and check on me? No. I sometimes got a comment of “so sorry you’re feeling that way…” but I can not remember even once a friend picking up the phone and saying “What is going on? How can I help?”

The bigger question – was I ever suicidal? No! Thank God, I never have been. Never. I can assure you of this. I’m a Christian but I still fear death, especially if I did it myself. I’d doubt God would smile on that. But if I had been suicidal, there wasn’t one person who would have stopped me. Why? I don’t know. Because they didn’t think I really would? Because they didn’t want to deal with me? Because – they really don’t care if I am here or not? I don’t know. What I do know is that it seems people don’t care until the person is gone and then they feel guilty, when they might have been able to say something before they read the obit or the news story.

Certainly this guy who killed his family was sending messages on social media in the months leading up to the murders and his suicide. And it was clear by comments made after he died that most of the people in his life wrote him off as a freak and never tried to actually help him.

Comments made on the man’s social media page after the crime are why the depressed and anxious continue to live their lives in the dark no matter how many celebrities suggest they “reach out” and “seek help.”

Help?

Or judgment?

Help?

Or mocking?

Help?

Or being told you’re not a good Christian because you’re depressed?

Most of the time depressed people, especially Christians, will not seek help because we know we won’t get it. We will be handed Bible verses to show us we are sinning. Pressure will be placed on our shoulders with statements like “I can’t wait to see what God is going to do with your life through this.” Well, that is just great. Not only do we have to survive a traumatic life event but we also have to somehow use it in the future to help others.

Maybe waiting until the crisis is a little more under control before declaring that the person in pain will eventually share their pain so one day the rest of the Christian community can dissect it and judge it like you’re doing.

Christians who deal with depression are tired of the stigma, tired of being looked down on and really tired of being ignored and walked away from. We know the authority we have over the dark. We get it and we try our best to wield that authority but some days we are tired and other Christians reminding us that our weakness is a sin because the Bible commands us to always rejoice and never be anxious is simply not helping.

Maybe if someone had paid attention to that young man’s pleas for help – no matter how subtle they seemed (though I don’t think letting people know in a Facebook post that a murderer doesn’t go around telling everyone of their plans, they just do it, is subtle.) he and the rest of his family would be alive today. But then again, maybe they wouldn’t because as much as I hate to be judged, I can’t imagine judging the family that remains. Most people who are depressed don’t hurt others or even themselves.

I’m sure that man’s family could have never imagined he’d do what he did and they may have even tried many times to get him help. In fact, I have a feeling they begged him to seek help many times. A person has to want to seek help.

It’s sad to think, though, that maybe one reason he didn’t seek that help was the fear of being treated just like he was in death – like a “loser” who “couldn’t get it together,” and “didn’t deserve to live.”