Kathryn J. - Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach

A Catholic Approach

SECOND EDITION

Kathryn J. Hermes, FSP

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hermes, Kathryn.

Surviving depression : a Catholic approach / Kathryn J. Hermes. -- Updated

and expanded ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8198-7225-8

ISBN-10: 0-8198-7225-3

1. Depressed persons--Religious life. 2. Depression, Mental--Religious aspects--Catholic Church. I. Title.

BV4910.34.H47 2012

248.8625--dc23

2012006156

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Rosana Usselmann

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P and PAULINE are registered trademarks of the Daughters of Saint Paul.

Copyright 2012, Daughters of Saint Paul

Published by Pauline Books & Media, 50 Saint Pauls Avenue, Boston, MA 02130-3491

Printed in the U.S.A.

www.pauline.org

Pauline Books & Media is the publishing house of the Daughters of Saint Paul, an international congregation of women religious serving the Church with the communications media.

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Dedicated to those everywhere
who have the courage to walk in the darkness
toward the light

If you have picked up this book, you are most likely wondering if surviving depression is possible for you or someone you know. Perhaps you are grasping at one more glimmer of hope that your or anothers depression might be lifted. It is estimated that one in ten Americans today meet the criteria for recurring depression. Almost half of these meet the criteria for major depression.this link between what they were experiencing and faith that was the most helpful. The book has been translated into at least ten languages, indicating that depression, unfortunately, is a widespread problem.

New causes of concern have arisen in the past ten years or so. People have had to find within themselves strength in the face of terrorism and vigilance before the constant threat of a new attack on our country. The sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, and the disillusionment in the Churchs leaders that accompanied it, has been deeply disturbing. Katrina, as well as other hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters have forced people from their homes and destroyed their livelihoods. Our country is again at war, and some of us are keenly aware of the effect that war has had on our families and on ourselves. Daily we face overwhelming amounts of information and impossible demands on our attention and time. Some of us bear the added burden of a mental illness, psychological vulnerability, the effects of abuse, or depression that is a consequence of a situation we cannot control, the side-effect of medication, or of another illness. From the perspective of faith and the resources that are available to us through spirituality, this book addresses those who are suffering from depressive illness, disillusionment, dark moods, and emotional vulnerability.

I am not a psychologist. I am not a theologian. My claim to credibility in writing Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach is that I have been seriously depressed and have spent a lot of time struggling with God through the years I lived with depression. I know depression from the inside. I know the spiritual anguish it brings. I know the loneliness, the isolation, the fear of losing it, and I believe one truly understands depression not by studying or reading about it, but by living with it.

In June of 1985, I was admitted to Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts for simple outpatient surgery. I went into the surgery a healthy, strong, ambitious, and articulate young woman of twenty-one. I came out of the recovery unit with something terribly wrong. Four days later, I was told that I had had a stroke. I was paralyzed on my right side. I couldnt stand up. I had no strength. I had lost much of my memory. I couldnt use even the most basic vocabulary. Two weeks and many tests later, I was released from the hospital and began an eighteen-year journey of rehabilitation.

Though I recovered much of my strength and coordination within the first few years, for the following twelve years I seemed unable to regain my emotional stability. I quickly found myself in a manic-depressive cycle that became increasingly more pronounced. Violent mood swings sent me crashing between effervescent periods of incredible activity and black nights of paralyzing depression. Twelve years after my stroke I would be diagnosed with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), a bipolar organic disorderwhich brought about another cycle of depression as I began to live with a new label.

During those first weeks after the stroke, I clearly remember thinking: God has given me this stroke and I will accept it with graciousness. This is the will of God and God certainly has some reason for it. And I accepted it with peace... or so I thought. It took six years for me to realize how angry I wasangry at God, angry at everyone around me, angry at the world. At that time, I began regular spiritual direction. The more I shared of what was in my heart, the angrier I became, and the farther away God seemed. I could not understand what possible meaning this cross could have. I spent a year unable to believe God even existed. In this spiritual blackout, I read over and over again the second part of the book of Isaiah, though the words were like sandpaper to my heart:

O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted,

I am about to set your stones in antimony,

and lay your foundations with sapphires.

I will make your pinnacles of rubies,

your gates of jewels,

and your wall of precious stones (54:1112).

As the cycle of depressions came and went, with confusion and despair clouding my vision, I wrestled with God, trying to understand just one question: Why me? Though I never received an answer to that question, was never given a clue to understanding the meaning of my suffering, I was graduallyvery graduallyable to realize that it was no longer an issue for me. I didnt need an answer; I could live with the mystery.

Depression spares no one. Christians become as depressed as anyone else does; priests and men and women religious suffer from depression. Teens in the flower of youthful dreams become depressed. Even children can become depressed. It might seem that people who have faith or a future should have no reason to be depressed. They should be able to pray, dream, or will themselves out of it. It is hard to reconcile depressionwhat many still incorrectly see as a moral deficiencywith faith in the power of God. However, depression is just an expression of our fragile human vulnerability. Ironically, this empty darkness is often the source of immense creativity, the black night that gently announces the advent of the divine.