by Rachel Donegan
I have bipolar II disorder. Let’s just get that out of the
way right now.
But I didn’t always have it, nor did I always understand it.
In high school, I remember hearing some news story about a Hollywood actress
who went to rehab for depression, and thinking, “What could you possibly have
in your life to be depressed about?”
Seven years later, mental illness hit me like a freight
train, and there was no going back.
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In December, while on break from graduate school, I went
with two close friends to see David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (which comes out on DVD April 30th).
I’d heard good things about it, but as someone who lives on the lower end of
the financial spectrum, I did some homework beforehand to see if this movie was
worth sacrificing ten bucks on.
It was then I learned that the film was truly a labor of
love. Russell, the film’s director and screenwriter, made the movie for his
son, who has both bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He made the movie
to let his son know he was loved and understood, which is beautiful.
I had to see the movie after that. Russell, Bradley Cooper,
and Jennifer Lawrence all do an impressive and authentic job of portraying just
how complex, isolating, and frustrating mental illness and its stigma can be,
and how essential community is to the recovery process.
I, like Bradley Cooper’s character, Pat Solitano, hate that
I need medication in order to function. I too hate that seemingly harmless
things like songs can trigger emotional collapse, or that sometimes words jump
out of my mouth before I can reach out and stop them. I know the embarrassment
of falling apart in front of a group of people who cannot comprehend what they’re
witnessing. And, like Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany Maxwell, I know the anger,
shame, and betrayal of being judged for a disease that I cannot control on my
own.
During the film, I sat in the darkness of the theater, simultaneously
laughing at the film’s humor and crying over its honesty and poignancy. I kept
returning to the same thought: “Someone
finally gets this…I am not the only one. I am not alone.” Great films and great
stories have that kind of emotional heft and personal relatability, and Silver Linings Playbook fits that
description well.
How does the church get so wrong what Hollywood gets so
right?
Like most people with Bipolar II, I was first misdiagnosed with
severe clinical depression. Out of fear, I kept the diagnosis close and quiet.
The very few friends that I told were sworn to secrecy until I knew how to
handle it.
Slowly but surely I started to open up to the people I went
to house church with about the “black dog,” as Winston Churchill once called
it, of depression. I could tell from their faces that many of them didn’t know
what to say, but they were supportive.
For the next two years I went through cycles where I went to
therapy (at a wonderful Christian non-profit agency), prayed and cried out to
God nightly, slowly got better, and inevitably collapse again. All the while,
my self-hatred boiled under the surface. WHY couldn’t I get better? WHY couldn’t I just be normal? I don’t want
to be “the girl with all the problems” anymore!
My anger at my illness, at myself, and sometimes at God was
overwhelming. “Why?” became the constant question without an answer.
After my re-diagnosis, things seemed to change. Many
friends—both inside and outside of the church—started to quietly, but
collectively, distance themselves from me. I was both puzzled and terribly
hurt. Actions like that just confirmed the dark and horrible things that mental
illness was already telling me: “You are broken beyond repair, and are a
sucking, annoying, black hole of need. It’s not fair that other people would have
to deal with you. It would be so much better for everyone if you weren’t
there.”
But then I realized something: the church is much more
familiar with how to handle episodic suffering than chronic suffering. We know
how to show up at visitations and funerals with casseroles in hand. We can send
“Get Well Soon!” and “In Sympathy” cards with ease because physical illnesses,
relatively speaking, are short-term problems and are more accepted and
understood than long term ones.
Many people in my life could handle my depression when they
thought it was temporary. But when it comes to long term suffering, the church
fidgets and uncomfortably looks away. In his TEDTalk from 2011, the late Roger
Ebert said about long-term illnesses: “It is human nature to look away from
illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.”
There are still too many forms of brokenness that make the
church squirm.
My bipolar disorder won’t disappear anytime soon, because
without a major medical breakthough, I’ll most likely have it until the day I
die. My specific type is marked by rapid shifts in mood, ranging from
hypomania, where I am boiling over with both exuberance and anger and will post
twenty tweets in three hours, to severe depression, where I won’t want to talk
to anyone and getting dressed is a marked achievement. There is no “cured” per
se, just “stable.”
Neither Hallmark, Family Christian, nor Lifeway makes an
“I’m sorry you relapsed” or “Please don’t give up” mental illness card. Plus,
many within the church still believe that mental illness is born from either
spiritual weakness or sin and that psychiatric medication is immoral and
ungodly. To those people, I have only one thing to say: without counseling,
medication, and my fiercely loyal friends, I would not be alive. There is zero
doubt in my mind. Just be thankful you don’t have a mental illness.
In the past week, the story of Rick Warren and his son’s
suicide has been nearly impossible to avoid. For me, the story especially hit
home. Like Warren’s son, I’m twenty-seven, and I also have bipolar disorder. I
confess I read Warren’s letter to his church and thought—if his son had access
to the best help in the country and didn’t survive, what hope is there for me,
who can barely afford medication and therapy?
The suicide rate for those with bipolar disorder is a high
20%, and treating mental illness is a hard, slow business. Since everyone’s
brain chemistry is unique, it generally takes four to six weeks for medications
to begin to work, if they’ll work at
all. It can take several tries to find the right medication and balance. The
side effects can make you anxious, lethargic, or violently ill; during my most
recent medication switch, the new side effects made me feel like I had the
flu…constantly. Often, you have to get much sicker before you can get better.
So what can Christians and churches do aside from helping
people find treatment? This isn’t a complete list, but here’s some suggestions:
Do not claim to have
all the answers. Be a good listener when you can. Unless you personally
have a mental illness, don’t claim you completely understand. You don’t. That
simply makes those with mental illnesses feel even less heard and understood.
Be as patient as
possible. I have weeks where I’m excited to go to church. But there are
still weeks where I’m too wrecked with anxiety to even get out of my car, and I
drive home filled with shame and embarrassment. Sometimes I have to cancel
plans at the last minute because I’m not having a good mental health day.
Recovery is not a straight line; like my therapist says, it’s often two steps
forward and one step back. And that’s okay.
Ask how people how
they are doing. Asking means you
care. Asking lets a person with mental illnesses know they are not invisible. Asking
means their suffering is not unnoticed.
Little things make a
tremendous difference and do not go unnoticed. So many times just getting a
random text or email has helped me considerably.
Remind people with
mental illnesses that they are loved, they are not alone,
and that life is still worth it. I started having some emotional turbulence
near the end of writing this article, so I took a walk in my apartment
complex’s park. The grass itself was a patchwork of weeds, but within that ugly
mess were violets. Thousands and thousands of violets—so many that from a
distance, the grass looked purple. In the middle of their darkness, the church
can help people with mental illnesses find the violets, the little good things
that are still present.
So often I have to remind myself that even if I cannot
control my emotions or my mind, Jesus is still in control of my life. Jesus is
in control, I am not, and this is always a good thing. He’s still there. And
always will be.
Rachel Donegan is a proud survivor of 17.5 years of private Christian
schooling. She loves college football, poetry, red velvet cupcakes, and
long walks on the beach. Her dream of dreams is to be best friends with
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. You can follow her on Twitter @rachdone.
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