So I wanted to come on here and talk about something that a lot of people without any kind of trauma or mental health disorder may not understand and how it is actually not biblical.
The title of this kind of gives it away. I know that this sounds crazy. The idea of staying unwell instead of recovery / getting help sounds stupid and doesn’t make sense. I am hoping to kind of bring light to it.
When you live with certain mental health disorders like depression or BPD or bipolar, it kind of consumes your entire life. It takes over all of your thinking. It feels familiar though the longer you have it and don’t remember life without it. That is key.
A big part of this is that you don’t remember life without it. All you can remember is life with it so imagining a life without it can be hard. Imagining a life where you are not so impacted by your trauma doesn’t seem to exist.
This feeling becomes familiar. You almost don’t want to do life without it because you don’t know what that would look like. People who are suicidal don’t completely know how to live without those thoughts because to them, being suicidal or having suicidal ideation means they always have a way or. They will always have an escape plan in place if they feel like that and when that gets messed up, some people genuinely don’t know how to live. This can sometimes make it hard for people to get help.
One of my favorite bands said this about depression in a song they wrote:
Depression's like a big fur coat
It's made of dead things but it keeps me warm
What does that mean?
It’s basically saying that depression is like a warm coat on a cold day. It’s something that gives you comfort and keeps you warm even if it is also slowly killing you. It’s saying that people will continue to choose that coat because it keeps them warm even if it isn’t exactly helpful.
I think about this with trauma in my own life. I recently decided some things and one of those things being I really want to heal. I do not want to live with the weight of my trauma and disorders daily. Jesus said to pick up his yoke which is light and I am attempting to do that.
I have lived with trauma all my life. I started developing trauma when I was really young and it has lasted years. This trauma has really shaped my life and the way that I see the world and the things I do in it. It shapes part of who I am and kind of prevents me from truly being free.
But I don’t know life without it. I don’t know life without flashbacks and nightmares from trauma. I don’t know what my life would look like without the trauma being at the forefront of my brain and constantly keeping me hypervigilant and hyper aware of everything. To me that is really scary and I know that sounds stupid. Nobody wants to live a life where they are always on edge. No one wants to live a life where their trauma replays in their head all the time and they feel trapped. But it’s like a warm coat made of dead things and it feels like a cold day.
I don’t know life without it so to me it is more comfortable to stay in it and not try to do life without it. It’s like a crutch I can always fall back onto. My trauma also keeps me from really living life and doing things that I could potentially want to do.
I have battled with depression since I was about 10. My BPD developed all through my teen years but got really bad around the time I turned 18. I was self destructive because that is all I knew.
I have had a decent amount of time where I am not battling heavily with depression and it’s weird. You go from one thing to the other and in my case it was basically overnight. It wasn’t a gradual change. It was truly scary for me and took a good amount of time to get used to and be alright. That doesn’t make sense I know. But when you have lived with something for so long, living without it seems impossible.
A good example would also be with my tourettes. It’s a nuisance in my life. It makes me frustrated and sometimes in a lot of pain. It makes people stare at me and make unwanted comments. I have had tics since I was 13. Because of medication, they are so mild right now unless I am in a flare up and they are not so mild (which is the worst). But I don’t know if I could or would want to do life without it. A lot of people have asked me if I wish I never had it and truthfully I think the answer is no. It has taught me a lot of things through the pain and tears but also the good and funny moments.
The same goes with my depression. I couldn’t imagine life without going through those years of severe depression. But at the same time I can’t imagine life now with it having been free for so long. So while it was scary to come out of that period of my life that felt so familiar and stepped into unknown territory, there have been fruit.
I can’t say that everyone will see the fruit of living without their mental health disorder. Some people never will. Some people will battle with it for their entire lives. And some people will never know what that even feels like. And some people are too comfortable living in it and don’t want to even see what else life has to offer without it. It can be scary going into the unknown especially if you have basically a fear of the unknown like I do.
But why did I say I think it is unbiblical to actively choose to sit in your disorder and not choose to get help / get better?
There are a couple reasons for this. The biggest reason is that Jesus tells us to pick up our cross and die to ourselves daily, right? Well that is something we are supposed to do then. But how can we pick up our cross if we are so focused on staying in the dark? How can we die to ourselves if we are actively choosing to stay in a state of mind that is unhelpful and doesn’t lead to dying to yourself but your spirit dying, which are two very different things?
I am NOT saying battling with depression or trauma or any mental health disorder is unbiblical or a sin to struggle with those things. I am not saying that if you are putting in the work and not seeing any result yet that you are choosing to stay in it either. Putting in the work while battling with mental health is tricky because it can really be a long time before you see any of the fruit of your labor come out. I am also not saying that struggling severely with mental health is wrong and that you are sinning or in the wrong for dealing with it.
I am saying that if you are not actively choosing to get help / trying to get better, you cannot really do some of the things we are called to like die to ourselves. I think sometimes people with depression can get so focused on their present suffering that they don’t know how to do anything else but sit in it. I know because I’ve been there. I have had multiple times where I have to actively choose to step back, evaluate what is happening, and choose Christ.
This might rub someone very wrong and I will talk to you about it if it does but I also think that sometimes people with these disorders almost make an idol out of them. I think we can put it so above other things, including God, in our minds that we almost worship it by choosing the struggle and comfortability of staying in it instead of fighting.
We are called to put on the full armor of God daily. We are called to resist the devil and flee. If you are not fighting your mental health disorder, then I don’t really think you are resisting the enemy. Just surviving and staying stuck in it is like becoming complacent. You just sit there in it in an endless cycle. Your struggles might be an attack from the enemy and you need things like the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit to beat the enemy and get past it.
I am not saying that these things are a lack of faith nor am I saying that if you pray it will automatically take it away. Yes that can happen, but most of the time it doesn’t. I think we should always partner struggles with prayers. And that includes praying the bold prayers and prayers that are literally just tears because you don’t have the words to say.
Another thing is that if we are the temple of God, are we stewarding it well when we stay complacent in our mental health disorder instead of fighting to get through it? Are you treating it as a temple when you skip those meals or self harm? I think we need to be careful to still take care of our bodies and our souls when we are battling with things like depression.
We need to be willing to fight to be well even if it means leaving the familiarity of your struggles and entering on the unfamiliar grounds of fighting for yourself and letting God do His work in your life.
Hold onto hope and stay strong
Madison Rae <3
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