Overcoming Depression-2

        

—The Story of a young woman who battled depression

Beginning in my early teen years‚ I battled depression a lot. In my late teens and early 20s, it just got worse. It seemed that every attack of depression I had was stronger in intensity and lasted longer than the previous one, till my last attack of depression lasted over four weeks. I was never able to pinpoint the exact trigger for my depression, or find any pattern in determining how or why it would come on. It would seem to come on with no warning, and I felt like ten thousand tons of bricks just fell on me and I couldn’t get out from under them no matter what I tried. I would usually try to keep up on my work and struggle through, despite how I was feeling, and tried to ignore it.
 
But as the attacks increased in frequency and severity, I found it impossible to carry on with business as usual, as the way depression would manifest itself was very strong. I felt like my personality would completely change, and the things I enjoyed or normally liked to do, I had no desire for or interest in. I would be extremely listless for weeks at a time. Apathetic is probably the best description of my feelings about things. My depression got to the point that it was pretty physically debilitating. All I wanted to do all day was sleep‚ because then I didn’t have to think about anything and it was the only time I was happy. My attention span on a day-to-day basis was extremely short. I would have great difficulty focusing on anything or being productive. I tried to stay away from people as much as I could. It was pretty rough.

For years‚ I just sort of weathered these attacks of depression I experienced. They would always eventually pass and the clouds would lift—whether in a few days or a few weeks—and I was always very grateful when that happened. It took me a few years to figure out that what I was going through was actually depression. After I found my efforts to make it “go away” were unsuccessful, I eventually convinced myself that my proclivity to depression was hereditary, and that it was actually a physical chemical imbalance of some sort, and that I would have to battle it for the rest of my life—as a sort of continual besetting weakness of some sort. However, I soon found out that this condition wasn’t beyond God’s healing power.

A close friend, whose counsel I highly value, was understandably alarmed by my fatalistic approach to the very bad attack of depression I was having. He explained to me that depression was a mental sickness, and just like we would ask for help if we were suffering a debilitating physical illness, we should be willing to ask for help against a mental sickness also.

This was sort of a new thought for me. While I was still feeling quite oppressed by that particular attack of depression, another friend and co-worker talked with me and explained what he’d learned in fighting against depression and discouragement. The main point that he stressed to me was that depression can be overcome, and that I needed to fight against it and not just passively accept it. Then he prayed with me and asked God to heal me, and from that moment on, the cloud and weight of depression that I felt left me. I was completely delivered from the hold depression had in my life.

In the four or five years since, I have not had a similar attack of depression. That is a great miracle, considering I would often have them every few months or certainly every six months. I have still had to battle with attacks of discouragement from time to time, but I have been freed from the grip that depression used to have on me. I am so grateful, and I credit it all to the power of prayer!