Do The Hard Thing

 "Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning."

--Victor Frankl (neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, Holocaust survivor)

Wim Hof, colloquially known as "The Iceman," has climbed Mount Everest in shorts and sandals, run a half marathon barefoot in the Artic Circle, and been submerged in ice for almost two hours. But for the sixty-two year old Dutchman, these cold weather endurance feats are the least painful of what he has endured. “I can do it all," he notes "because compared to a grieving heart, it is nothing.”

His wife (who suffered from schizophrenia) took her life in 1995 by throwing herself from an eight story building, leaving Hof--a young father of four at the time--to pick up the pieces. Between the grief of losing the love of his life, and being forced to continue living and providing for his children, Hof had no consolation, no answers to deal with the pain and no recourse to relief. He was paralyzed with fear, gripped by anxiety, and swallowed up in emotional agony...and nothing alleviated it.

Until he disrobed and slipped into a freezing lake one Sunday morning.

While his body was gripped and paralyzed by the cold, his fear, grief, and anxiety melted away.

"Instead of being guided by my broken emotions, the cold water led me to stillness and gave my broken heart a chance to rest, restore, rehabilitate."

"The only thing that gave me peace," he recalls, "was the cold."

While I am not a devoted follower of the so-called "Hof method," I have been employing the relatively simple habit of turning my thermostat down in my house to 55 degrees, and taking cold showers every morning for the past few months. It is both the worst part of my day...and the best. The worst, because the shooting pain of ice water stinging your frigid body with no place to hide from it is akin to a mild form of torture. The best, because it did not kill me and I live to see another day.

The author Natalie Goldberg, when she was going through a divorce, approached her roshi (Zen master) and asked him, "Roshi, will I get used to loneliness?"

"No, you don't get used to it," he said, "I take a cold shower every morning and every morning it shocks me, but I continue to stand up in the shower. Loneliness always has a bite, but learn to stand up in it and not be tossed away."

The jury is still out in the scientific community as to the verifiable health benefits of cold therapy and ice baths. Anecdotally, I feel more alert, more alive, and suspect that there are more endorphins flowing through my body after emerging from the shower.

But there is something else, though, beyond the positive physiological effects.

I know the emotional agony and sense of darkness Hof experienced when he lost his wife. But in my case, I was the one standing on the proverbial ledge eight stories up, unable to find a way to escape. The moral guardrail of my religious faith restrained my desire to meet the same fate as Hof's wife, to escape a jet-black depression that seemed like it would never end. In the darkest clutches of depression, the things that would most benefit mental wellbeing--exercise, friends and family, prayer--are the most aversive.

But what if we could will our bodies away from atrophy--doing the exact hard thing we have no desire to do?

If we are convinced we can't survive two minutes in an icy lake, and we jump in anyway, what do we have to lose if we want to die in that moment anyway? If we die, we obtain the wish of our distorted mind. But if we come out of the experience, panting and shivering but very much alive and with a new lease on life...what if that was the spark needed to ignite the will to live again?

Indeed, in the city of Yukutsk, Siberia--the coldest city in the world--men routinely remove their clothes when it is minus 50 degrees Farhenheit to take ice baths outside. Their bodies are acclimated to the cold, and they rarely get sick. And in Russia and Ukraine, the Orthodox faithful celebrate the Feast of Ephiphany in January by plunging into icy lakes. "Epiphany is purification," one congregant of the ritual observes, "My soul is cleansed and I'm charged with a good mood for the whole year ahead."

There is no denying that Hof has attained a level of physical transcendence of the limitations of the body by the power of the mind that is remarkable. But he maintains that he is not unique, and that anyone can push themselves farther than they thought possible and gain mental clarity and emotional control, simply by doing the harder thing.

"As humanity has evolved and developed ways to make our lives more and more comfortable, we have lost our ability not only to survive but to thrive in extreme environments," the Iceman notes. "The things we have built to make our lives easier have actually made us weaker."

Though I'm still soft in a lot of ways, I've grown to love my morning cold shower. I mean, I hate it. But I love it. Every time I step into the stall, I know what is waiting for me: cold, hard pain. And every time I turn the shower handle as far to the right as it will go and pull it back, there is a part of me that feels like I am going to die as soon as those thousands of icy needles fly the wall and strike my naked torso.

But then, I don't. I yelp, and curse, and cry a little. But I don't die. A few minutes, and it's over. I'm still here. I continue to stand up. And I will not be tossed away.

Pain In The Brain: The Effect and Cost of Trauma

I remember when I was attending a Protestant bible study years ago there was a guy who attended who was having all these strange and severe neurological issues. He seemed to be an "anxious-type" person, but he would recount going to doctor after doctor who were "unable to find anything physically wrong" with him. He seemed fixated on the fact that these temporary immobilizations and seizure-type activity were strictly physical and/or spiritual. 

I also recall when I was in my twenties being acquainted with a man in his sixties at the parish I was attending, a (repressed?) homosexual who suffered from fibromyalgia. He recounted to me that he was engaged to a woman at one point in his life; I only surmised he was probably gay, though he never outright admitted it. It was my first time hearing about this disease. A few years later I googled "fibromyalgia is a bullshit disease" and came across a some Reddit threads that wrote/ranted about the kinds of things everyone is thinking but not supposed to say out loud. Namely, that it's "not real."

I don't think that's quite true, but it's also not the whole story either. Emotional pain is real pain, and pain--as any doctor or nurse knows--is not objective in nature. What one person may be able to endure, another may be crippled by it. 

However, I think many people who suffer from this kind of phantom pain/chronic pain/fatigue issues may not realize that in many/most cases, it's not something physical at all that is causing the physical pain. In other words, while many people go to GPs to "figure out what's causing this," they may be better off visiting a psychologist. 

The economic burden of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--if you want to consider that an umbrella term for many different types of trauma--is $232 billion annually in the U.S. [1] I have written in the past and made the case that pornography is not only a spiritual, but also a public health issue/crisis. We are not a healthy society, either physically, psychologically, or emotionally. When you think about how much sexual trauma is out there, a kind of silent corrosion in the spirits of many men, women, and children, and how pornography touches and causes so much second and third degree sexual deviancy and trauma (abuse, exploitation, divorce, etc), you realize that a large percentage of the population are the "walking wounded." Just because a wound is unseen doesn't mean it isn't real. 

Here's the thing though--for many people who grow up from childhood or early adulthood trauma, many don't even realize how they have been affected by it and thus remained unhealed, the latent trauma undealt with. And so it "comes out" in a myriad of ways. For young men, it can sometimes be violence or criminal activity, substance abuse, etc. For women, this can also be true, but additionally promiscuity, self-harm (cutting, eating disorders, etc) can be attempts to deal with the unseen emotional and psychic wounds inflicted. 

"When this response [fight or flight] remains highly activated in a child for an extended period of time without the calming influence of a supportive parent or adult figure, toxic stress occurs and can damage crucial neural connections in the developing brain." [2]

With regards to certain diseases like fibromyalgia (FMS), which seem to disproportionally affect women more than men, it appears that unresolved trauma plays a big part in the manifestation of chronic pain (Non-Specific; Not-Otherwise-Specified/NOS), chronic fatigue, inflammation, etc.  

"Although the etiology of FMS is still unknown, recent studies have shown that physical trauma and psychosocial stress factors may also play a role in the etiopathogenesis. Traumatic experiences such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse are thought to be triggering factors in susceptible individuals for FMS." [3]

This appears to make sense. When we repress events that are psychologically painful, it will find a way out in one way or another--even physically. The mind and body are not separate, unrelated entities, just as the spirit is not separate from our minds and bodies either. When we are spiritually not in a state of grace, when sins we may not even be conscious of remain in us, this can manifest in how we live our lives and prevent the conduits of grace from being opened. When we have trauma--whether realized or unrealized--this can trigger physical responses that have emotional and psychological origins.   

Some trauma and PTSD cannot be avoided--such as natural disasters, war, etc--but much of the trauma we are dealing with as a society today--especially sexual trauma--has its root in human sin. As the saying goes, "hurt people hurt people." Sexual confusion, difficulties with commitment and trust, sexual violence, substance abuse--how much of this can be avoided by adopting a virtue and moral-based way of life that prioritizes healthy minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits?

It seems so obvious from an outsider looking in that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to chronic pain, and that one would benefit from seeking psychological healing in the hard work of therapy to deal with these unresolved wounds. But it's not always easy to see when you're in the midst of this pain, and so one may not even realize that their physical pain is more than just physical. Healing in this way can be a long road, and slow progress as well. We often want 'quick fixes,' pills, or diagnoses to make us feel like our pain is legitimate. My wife is an ER nurse and from the stories she tells me of those who come in, I'd say three quarters of those seeking treatment for various ailments have trauma at the root. We see the symptoms, not the causes. Sometimes the more comprehensive approach involves going deep and to the source, under a trained professional, to heal.

How Do You Talk Someone Off The Ledge?

 

Though I have thought about staffing a suicide hotline as a volunteer, I don't think I could do it. I wouldn't know how to answer that question were it posed to me on the other end of the telephone line, "Why shouldn't I kill myself, right here, right now?" I'd probably end up saying something like, "I don't know...from what you've told me you have every good reason to. It doesn't really make sense to go on living. I mean, you shouldn't, but I can't tell you why you shouldn't." And that wouldn't be good.

Suicide is the "out" when you feel like there's no way out. When everywhere you turn, you hit a wall. It's an out we shouldn't allow ourselves, sure. You shouldn't get the abortion. Have the baby. You shouldn't throw in the towel with your marriage. Stay married. You shouldn't end your life. Just...I don't know. Just don't. I'd be so unconvincing.  

But for the person in it, what is real? Are they seeing through all the bs of unfettered optimism: "People care about you!" Yeah, prove it. "Your life is worth living!" Why? Are they seeing life as it really is with the blinders off? Or is it skewed, darkened, subject to temptation?

Maybe in a pinch, I would just let someone speak. Listen to them. Sometimes people just need someone to really hear them. We're always getting sold to, manipulated, exploited by advertisers, tugged by manufacturers for our attention, talked down to, talked at...but never really heard. Maybe someone on the ledge just...wants someone to listen. Again, I don't know. I'm afraid if someone wanted to kill themselves I'd probably say something to the effect of--"it's true. People really aren't there for you the way you may need them to be. It gets worse before it gets better. I don't know how you're ever gonna pay off that debt. Life really does just suck sometimes." People who are suicidal often have an acute bs meter, when you are blowing smoke up their ass. Then again, I've never been trained in this kind of counseling. I'm just speculating. 

The thing that sucks for people who know the system, who find themselves feeling hopeless, is you are even more trapped when that hopelessness veers towards suicidal ideation. Because you can't say that, of course! Because then it's a whole mess. No one wants to take responsibility for that. Better safe than sorry ( *dials 911). Then the cops show up, social services. What a mess. So, just better not to say anything. But that's hard too! What a heavy burden, what a condundrum--damned if you do, damned if you don't! 

People are so lonely. I mean, I do see faith as an innoculant of sorts. If anything just to put a fence up, give a hard "no" when you have no other reason not to pull a trigger or tie a slipknot. Sorry, not an option. You gotta suffer. I'm glad I had that. So many people don't. But faith doesn't cure loneliness. It doesn't put a rose tint on life all the time. It helps you make sense of things just enough to give hope which keeps us alive. In it's truest form, it helps us grow, love, thrive, work miracles, raise the dead. But yeah, it can be a real grind, and you have to go on faith that it's worth going on when things get bad, I mean real bad, like no way out bad. 

But yeah, I wouldn't know what to say to someone on the bridge. They're there for a reason, and it may be a valid one...though they shouldn't be there, and there may be a more valid reason for climbing down. Maybe just listen, and don't feed them trite bs. I don't know. Maybe the devil is whispering in their ear to take the step. But maybe they've been stripped of the blinders, too, and are seeing their reality and the reality around them for what it really is--hopelessless burdensome, and very, very lonely.

The Burden of Oppression, The Deceptiveness of Despair

 When I experienced my first major depression in my early twenties, nothing--and I mean nothing--really helped me. Not prayer, not scripture, not words of encouragement. There were only two dim lights that kept me floating on the surface of the water of the living: planting seeds and watching them grow in a little window greenhouse from Home Depot that a friend bought for me; and reading from Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Nothing made sense those days--but that book, and growing those little seeds, made sense and was within my diminished capacity to function, respectively.  

Solomon's book was an admirable weaving of painstaking research, clinical denseness, and raw personal experience. Nothing makes sense because depression is a scrambling of the airwaves, the way you would catch a word here and there but unable to string together a cohesive sense of meaning from the narrative. 

In one section of the book, the author recounts his desire for passive death (admitting that he lacked the resolve for a deliberate suicide attempt) was so strong at one point that he sought out anonymous homosexual encounters in an attempt to infect himself with HIV. Not that that was my cup of tea, but at the time the thwarted logic made complete sense to me, and a part of me nodded in admiration at this creative 'solution' to the problem of a mental suffering that can be so intense that if one hasn't been through it, such an objectionable action would make no sense. If you have experienced that despair, though, the question is not so much "Why?" but "Well, why not?"

The seedlings were another flicker of hope for me. My friend J (recounted in The Day That Cost Me My Friend) drove me to Hope Depot and helped me pick out the little greenhouse with the little prepackaged potting soil pods. I couldn't control anything in my life, or care for anything or anyone, but I could take care of those little seeds in the upstairs bedroom. It gave me a shred of hope that I, too, might not shrivel and die, but come alive again someday. Some day. 

These early years when my illness was in its virgin bloom were the days when it took grit, spit, and grinding the enamel from your teeth just to stay alive. Because there's no good reason that you can see, so you have to trust others who tell you that truth, like your family and close friends, and the Church. The fight against your own mind--who has become a shadowy sparring opponent--is a difficult one, because you have to outwit it, correct the faulty logic, rather than strap some TnT to it. For those who don't, can't, or won't, the specter of madness writs large. 

Today, through medication, healthier habits, and remaining in a state of grace, the good Lord has largely nullified these wild fluctuations in mood, temptations to destruction, and self-abusing tendencies. He has quieted my mind and lifted my spirit so that I can serve Him in spirit and truth. The blips are still there, but largely leveled out which allow me to function as a more or less normal human being.

When a tempest does stir up the dust, however--and sometimes severely so--I am largely caught of guard. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason, and sometimes it may be that I have laid my guard down, left a hole unguarded in my spiritual fence. Sometimes, as of lately though, when I have spending more time with the Lord in prayer and adoration, the tempest blows in from the outside. It's my first thought to suspect mental illness, though, and sometimes rightfully so. Any good exorcist would do the same, to rule out the psychological. 

Over the years I have gotten slightly more adept at differentiating the things of the mind and the things of the spirit, when they are, in fact, distinct. I have noticed that historically, at least for myself, depression comes on slow and steady, like a front, that stays for weeks or months at a time, like a wool blanket that won't dry out after being submerged. Mania can creep up on you, but thankfully there are pretty clear diagnostic criteria to identify it. Sometimes, the malaise doesn't fit a psychological mold, which can be confusing, because the symptoms are similar. 

When I consider the spiritual (rather than the strictly psychological) elements at play, however, things start to come into focus a little more clearly, make more sense. I often have to rely on some of my more spiritual trusted friends to help diagnose such problems in lieu of a spiritual director (which I don't currently have), and the writings of the saints. St. John of the Cross said that the Devil is mightiest and most astute enemy, his wiles more baffling than those of the world and the flesh; he is "the hardest to understand" and no human power can be compared to him. (Spiritual Canticle, 431)

I will share that this is not the first time this has happened. As I wrote in Bring Me My Weapon, the temptations to suicide have come from the outside-in, rather than the inside-out, in brief but strong temptest of spiritual oppression that rendered me materially impotent. Days before undertaking spiritual combat manifest in "Night At The Masoleum", I was afflicted with a stomach pain so acute and unexplainable I thought I was having a burst appendix and went to a GI doctor who could find nothing wrong (I later read that such physical afflictions in this part of the body have been attributed to the devil oppressing various saints throughout history). Right before the night I set out, the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come.

I write this because this malaise can be hard to make sense of, and you can't talk about it with just anyone either, esp when the temptations (again, which seem to come from outside of the self) to things like suicide would cause a lot of--well, complications, esp among friends who feel it would be their responsibility once told to call the police, EMT, etc. So, you keep it in and try to grit through, but that often makes it worse. 

But like I mentioned above with the book and the seeds--worldly things that helped when nothing else would for a psychological ailment--spiritual issues (if they are truly spiritual, and not psychological) are aided by spiritual remedies. So, things like oppression is countered by personal and collective prayer, confession, fasting, reception of the sacraments, Mass, etc. For that I am grateful that my wife reached out to our friends and community of faith to solicit prayer. I do think they helped lift what felt like a strange and curiously onerous oppression, in which the past few days the temptation to despair was so great, that I would catch myself thinking and saying "I am Judas," and that I deserve his fate. 

It was only after these collective prayers, I think, that the fog kind of cleared a little enough to see that maybe these were not truths but lies, and to try to get to the source of where they were coming from. That is when I found the story, that I had not heard of until now, of the exorcism of Anna Ecklund in 1912 by Capuchin Father Theophilus Riesinger (think a kind of Fr. Ripperger of the early 20th century). The exorcism of Ecklund was a wicked grind and a brutal trauma of the power of evil for those who witnessed it. But this line in the story really stopped me in my tracks:

"When asked what business the spirits had with her, a voice claiming to be Judas Iscariot finally replied, "To bring her to despair, so that she will commit suicide and hang herself!"

Wow. Now, this was a case of full blown possession, but as many saints through history have recounted, oppression can occur by various demons as well. It made sense--if I had been going regularly to Adoration multiple times a week, Mass, confession, First Fridays, First Saturdays, daily rosary, etc--that maybe this was the Devil's way of mobilizing his entourage to knock one off the path. "He is the hardest to understand," St. John of the Cross wrote. Maybe part of his strategy is to attribute his actions to the self of the person afflicted (the mind, depression, etc) to hide himself there. Then with a Judas-spirit, one attacks the good (the self) like a spiritual auto-immune disease, the accomplish the work of evil (self-destruction, despair). Once he's found out, though, and exposed to the light of reason and a sound mind, well--like it says in scripture "Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7).

Despair is deceptive, but oh so affective when combined with a darkening of the mind and spirit, and firm resolve. This is when suicide is a dangerous and imminent reality. I don't think this was the case for me, but like I said, the storm came in quick and intense, and I think now I'm just drenched but breathing. The thoughts however, were of the same essence and breed, emanating from the same wretched family. As Padre Pio may have said at one point, "wake up and smell the sulfur." Despair is deceptive, because it can never get us into bed with it without making us drunk and lying to us first. 

When I received my diagnosis in my early twenties, it was one of the biggest reliefs, because the scariest Viet-Cong type enemy is the one you can't identify. Once you do, you can treat it. I imagine it's the same in the spiritual life, once you know what' causing the malaise. I just got back from Adoration and Holy Mass on my lunch break, and prayed binding prayers for myself; thank you to all who stripped the façade by their prayers as well. Despair is deceptive, but once recognized and unmasked, a hearty guffaw and a get-back-to-business attitude will send it scrambling away naked as the day it was conceived. I feel bad for Judas--but not enough to keep him company for all eternity.

We Are Being Split Like Atoms

 Now that June is here, I'm reminded of God's supreme grace of giving us the privilege of being used. Because God is so great and so good and so loving and merciful beyond our comprehension, the most we can hope for is to be used "as a little pencil in his hand," as St. Mother Teresa said. What do I mean?

I'm currently writing from a motel room in New London, Connecticut. Four years ago, on June 15th, 2017, my friend Joseph Sciambra (who Christ ransomed from the ravages of the gay porn industry and a life of homosexual hedonism) was soliciting a call for volunteers to join him in the lion's den of San Francisco Pride--to reach out to the gay community to share the saving power of Christ so that he might "save some," as St. Paul writes (You can read my aftermath story of flying out to San Francisco and back in 24 hours and joining him in the lion's den of Pride if you want, here.)

Joseph is not your typical "preach to the gays" figure. As a man who left the gay lifestyle, he has some street cred. He also knows that he was truly ransomed from Hell (he recounts demons flying over his hospital bed as he was near death with the adverse health effects of his hardcore gay lifestyle) by Jesus Christ. He came back to the Catholic faith of his childhood. He gives credit to the traditional priests he found in the SSPX who gave him unfiltered Church teaching without pulling punches in a sea of California wonky 1970's Novus-Ordo-ism. He found in them the masculine archetype that had eluded him (and that he longed for) his entire life. And the Traditional Mass seemed like the last vestige hope of an ability to retain his faith which seemed all but corrupted by modernism.

To tragically complicate matters, he was also a victim (by his own admission) of sexual abuse as an adult at the hands of a traditional order. Though I don't know the details (Joseph is a friend whom I have met in person, but whom I have fallen out of touch with over the past year or so), I can speculate that he thought he had found some trustworthy spiritual guides who, in fact, were no better than the gay predators in the modern Church. Just different vestments.

Attorney Elizabeth Yore, an child-rights attorney who advocates for child victims of trafficking and sexual abuse deems such abuse at the hands of clergy "spiritual murder," which I do not think is too strong a term.  

Though I can not speak from the standpoint of abuse personally, from a purely psychological standpoint, it's  a perpetual cycle of suffering on two levels--when one steps foot into a church or attends Mass, they relive what they have gone through at the hands of clergy. And so the very person, place, and thing that can bring healing is tainted like a poisoned well which you suddenly cannot drink from. 

Secondly, beyond egregiously betraying trust, it warps ones sense of the Fatherhood of God, since priests--for better or worse--act in persona Christi though fallen, unworthy men themselves.  Many victims of clergy sexual abuse tragically commit suicide as an escape from the psychological and spiritual torture. 

As someone to whom Joseph is not simply a Catholic (though from what I have gathered he has left the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy) social media figure or champion, but rather a brother in Christ whom I have a somewhat personal relationship with, albeit from a distance, I feel I have a warrant, however weak, to write what I do here. 

I also do so because it piggy backs with the internet brushfire revolving around Steve Skojec's recent "Crippled Religion" critique of traditionalism as a kind of cult, and his own self-professed crisis of faith in the institutional Church (Though I do not know Steve as well, I have corresponded with him in the past and have written for his site One Peter Five). 

What these two men share in common is both laudable and a liability--they share publicly in a seemingly transparent and emotive manner, they produce content related to and revolving around traditional Catholic expressions of faith, and have established an identity related to the aforementioned. They also talk and write about things most people don't want to talk about. While the latest heterodoxy in the Vatican is old news by now (shocker) and little change on the horizon, both have shifted gears from what I have seen to a more personal airing of the problems not just within the institutional Church, but with the church (little c) herself; ie, the body members, and shifting to a lexicon of victimhood in their writings.

Again, I can't really fault them, at least not completely. What did Gandhi say? "I would be a Christian, if it weren't for Christians." Though it has not been my personal experience, I'm sure you would not have to look hard to find off-putting traditionalists obsessed with the length of one's skirt who make a past time of judging other's behavior at Mass. A caricature or stereotype? Maybe. But there is always some truth in stereotypes. As for the focus on their self-described victimization by both clergy and at the hands of those members within the church--those people that may be sitting next to you in the pew at Sunday Mass--well, here's what I'm seeing from my vantage point.

I was speaking with a friend on the phone this evening about my twenties--probably one of the most difficult and tumultuous periods of my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type 1 at the age of 23. Initially, I found solace in the diagnosis; it explained why I was the way I was, why I did the things I did; it was "not me, but the sin that lives in me."

But as someone who relishes in being 'special' and set apart, for a number of years I attached myself to the label of my mental illness--not as an excuse for bad behavior, but the lens with which I saw everything through. A kind of 'critical race theory' of the malaised-mind, if you will. It was kind of like a welfare trap--as someone who was 'mentally ill,' I explored the possibilities of going on disability (I had to take leave of absences from work due to my illness and hospitalizations, for one thing, and I wondered if I would ever be able to work full time as a result). Not much would be expected of me. I could live at home with my parents and volunteer, not do anything too stressful, take my seven or eight pills a day that would keep me in a catatonic state and out of jail. It also garnered a kind of sympathy, like a #metoo cancer of the mind. Mental illness was becoming somewhat mainstream in Hollywood with films like Silver Lining Playbook and A Beautiful Mind, and actors "coming out" as having this or that diagnosis to "break the stigma." 

But here's the rub--you can't be both sick and well. Diseases of the mind are complicated and the factors multi-faceted. Additionally, not everyone beats it. Some become consumed by the darkness and swim towards the light by way of suicide. Some never work and are truly disabled. My fate could have been written in either of these books. But it wasn't. I'm still not sure why, but I have to have faith there is a reason for it.

Victimhood--whether of one's own brain chemistry or events or external circumstances, makes a claim on your life and forces you to make a choice: will this be your focus and identity, the lens with which you view all of life? Or will you choose something different, something not pre-determined? How you respond, and how you fight to reclaim what has been taken from you--has real implications. What do you say to the 14 year old that was raped and became pregnant through no fault of her own who is considering abortion? How do you respond to the Iraq War veteran that says he wants to run a marathon even though he has no shins or feet? What are you going to tell someone who is thinking about leaving the Bride of Christ because of what they have suffered at Her hands?

A few nights ago I watched an absolutely humbling interview Matt Fradd did with an Irish guy my age whose sister was murdered on her wedding night when she walked in on two men burglarizing her room. To add insult to injury, the two men got off scot-free, where they were tried in a kangaroo court in Mauritius (where the murder took place). The young Irish man and his father had recently come back to their faith through the inspiration of his sister (a practicing Catholic), and they made the conscious decision not to be consumed by anger and revenge. They took Jesus at his word that they were to love their enemies and pray for them. He knew, by grace, that Christ had died for him, forgiven him, and that he has no warrant to lord unforgiveness over these lowlifes--they would be judged, as would he, for their sins. 

During the interview, the young man (Mattie was his name) was not bitter or angry; he exuded confidence in grace and profound gratitude for the gift of faith, and his ransoming from sin and death. Ireland has devolved into its pagan roots with breathtaking speed in the past decade or so, in large part from the massive betrayal of faith at the hands of the clergy. Like adolescent children, they have rejected it and thrown it back with a splash in the face of the Church. Yet this young man is like a latter-day Saint Patrick: working at the local level to revitalize the faith among the young; praying fervently and living out the beatitudes. He's just a normal guy like you and me. A victim, yes. But not just a victim. He knows grace and has been transfigured by it, and is now getting to work. 

In Dom Scupoli's seminal classic The Spiritual Combat, he cites distrust of self as the fundamental quality necessary to advance in the spiritual life. It comes before all else. And that is what I am seeing lacking in those who have latched on like a bulldog to the tempting chinese finger trap of victimhood. Perhaps it is difficult because of the gaslighting that can often happen to victims at the hands of abusers--they are encouraged to question and even doubt themselves or their experiences. And so when they emerge from those shackles, the tendency to completely trust their experiences as the pen ultimate lens in which everything is viewed comes on strong. If an abuser says to distrust yourself, then by God, I'm going to trust myself on this one.

But in the spiritual life, without a healthy distrust of self--of our motives, our loyalties, our misguided certainties--we cannot really die to ourselves in the way our Lord calls us, and we struggle to trust things outside of the lens of our own experience. In contrast, everything becomes about the self ad nauseum. If someone gives a healthy rebuff in a kind of charitable tough love, we recoil and lick our wounds and avoid them. If someone tries to push us to see past the things that keep one immobilized by our perceived dis-ability, we say they don't understand and are being insensitive to our plight.

Although I couldn't read it (because it was deemed an 'unsecure connection' online), Joseph's latest blog post on his site titled "The Latin Mass Will Not Save The Church" filled me with a kind of sadness just by the title. It one way he is right--the Latin Mass alone, or liturgy alone, or traditionalism alone will not save the Church. "Without charity, I am a resounding gong," the words of St. Paul come to mind. But as someone who has been edified by Tradition (capital T) and the Latin Mass, while not having any preconceptions that it is a cure all for anything, I felt it was more of a straw-man title argument. I'm not sure if others are making this argument--that the Latin Mass will save the Church--but I certainly am not. But it has given me tools in my toolbox, a strong community of charitable normal people--not a bunch of caricatures, but flesh-and-blood brethren. It has given us a strong foundation to build our faith on--not an unshakable one in its own right, but a liturgical cornerstone, with Christ as it's chief mason. 

My faith is stronger than ever, though I have been through some doozies the past few years that have shook me and put me close to the edge. In these times, I reflect on my wedding vows--when love fades, the will steps in to steer. And when the will shudders, grace has a way of surprising you. And grace, for it's part, has never failed to deliver. Mother Teresa spent twenty years without the loving consolation of the Savior she loves so dearly. She was a victim soul, but not a victim. She continued to exercise her will, to smile when she was barren inside. Was this "faking it?" Was it inauthentic, phony? I'd take offense at that. For her focus wasn't on herself, wasn't inward and self-ruminating and angry, but joyful and self-emptying. She kept the blinders on like a horse, and she kept it on the cross. This is how we persevere and the only thing left standing when the #metoo adulations fall by the wayside and fade into the distance. 

But Satan is working overtime these days. He is splitting us like atoms--from the root branches over Trump and COVID and now this and that scandal in the Church, tribalism, gossip, factionalism, uncharity, judgment, slander...among the members of THE BODY OF CHRIST! He will take the good down with the bad, and even more so. He will leverage doubt and that feeling of "finally, a chance to breath!" when we are sitting and vulnerable and lead us gently from the Way. To say "there is no choice but Christ" is not gaslighting or victim-shaming--it is the charity of a hungry brother who knows where the bread is and is sharing the news with everyone he knows. He should not be ashamed of the Gospel even more than St. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel, and when he acts in charity and truth and real--not faux--compassion: he may just save your soul. 

I'm thinking of that young Irish guy in the pagan wasteland of Ireland. I'm thinking of the Mother Teresas, but also the moms who invite you to her kitchen table so you can cry on her shoulder over tea. I'm thinking of the brother who won't let you off the hook to be honest with your wife who you've cheated on. I'm thinking of those true, real, no BS Christians who have been fed and want to feed others. They have made it their work and their suffering to be saints, come hell or high water, indult or no indult, who have transfigured their crucifixions into resurrections and been healed by the blood of the true Victim who poured Himself out for us. They will not be gaslit. They will not be focused on themselves alone. They will love and do so in charity.

I know they are out there. I have met them, and they fortify me and give me hope--not token hope, and not a hope that can't be betrayed somehow down the line. They're not strawmen and they are not caricatures. They are flesh and blood brothers and sisters who are sticking it out and staking their claims on the promise. And the are not fools...unless you count them fools for Christ, which is a badge of honor. Though we are all as Catholics being splintered like a ship run aground with the in fighting and the fracturing and the distraction planted by Satan himself, these folks are the shards I find myself picking up on shore, piecing together, to form the life raft I hope to save my soul by, the souls of my family, and anyone else we can pull aboard. I will not give into anger. I will not be distracted. And I will be used.

"The Spirit of God Left Him:" When Mental Illness and Demonic Obsession Meet

Last night as I was helping my son prepare for his first Confession, and we were going through an examination of conscience in his St. Joseph First Communion book, I realized I have been a little sloppy in my own EOCs. I have a bad memory, and yet I don't write my sins down typically. I go through a general Examination of Conscience in my head, but not in fine detail. When I do go to Confession, I don't withhold anything intentionally, but cover myself with "for all these sins and those sins I can't remember, I humbly beg pardon, penance, and absolution" on account of my forgetfulness.

But last night I decided to join my son in writing down my sins, and using a more thorough Examination of Conscience. I said we would burn the papers in the outdoor fireplace together after we finished making our Confessions and received absolution (which we did). There is something about writing down sins, and confessing them with the lips, that makes it real in a way, something I think many Protestants miss out on without the benefit of the Sacrament. The taste of holy shame on our lips as the words are spoken, like a burning crimson ember, turns to sweetness when the Lord extinguishes it with a breath in absolution. Then we are filled with the Holy Spirit to begin our lives anew, white robes and all, ready to die and ready to live.

In digging deeper last night than I normally might, I unearthed some sins that I may have confessed and been forgiven of, but which still haunted me because I did not perhaps lay them out in as much detail as was warranted, given how shameful they were (I should mention that I do not struggle with scrupulosity, OCD, or feeling unforgiven).

Of course, those sins are for the Lord's eyes only, and I do not plan to go into detail about them. But it was from a chapter in my life in which, I believe, I actually went through a mild form of demonic obsession that coincided with a period of acute diagnosed mental illness. In fact, I speculate that it was not being in a state of grace that opened up a spiritual wound which got infected, and my mind was leveraged against me during this period by demonic forces.

I am very careful in sharing my own testimonies of God's grace and redemption, my particular struggles, and trying to do so for the glory of God. Not because I am afraid to share some personal things, but because I don't want to generalize what I have experienced as a proscription for others. My situation is unique in some ways and ordinary in others; I would hope relatable on some fronts, and maybe particular to my circumstances on others.

This can be a very difficult area in which to tread because of symptomatic overlap. It needs to be stated that mental illness is usually in its own diagnostic category (psychiatric) and that spiritual issues should be dealt with spiritually (via the sacraments, confession, consultation with clergy and spiritual directors, etc).

It is when spiritual malaise and mental malaise intersect in a kind of Venn diagram of illness that it can be very difficult to discern root causes and treatments. Some fundamentalists will put forth that mental illness is a sin problem, not a mind problem; Psychiatric professionals would purport that there is no spiritual element to strictly neurological or psychiatric conditions. I think both are not entirely accurate. There are spiritual elements at play, as well as biological/neurological/psychiatric. The intersection is where it gets muddy.

A passage from scripture that has always stayed with me because of it's frightful imagery appears in 1 Samuel 16:14

"Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him." 

And later in 1 Sam 19:9-10:

"But an evil spirit from the Lord came on Saul as he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand. While David was playing the lyre, Saul tried to pin him to the wall with his spear, but David eluded him as Saul drove the spear into the wall."

We know, that when we commit moral sin, the spirit of God departs from us, as it did to Saul. We are spiritually naked and out in the wind, so to speak, vulnerable and in danger of damnation. I was very much in a state of mortal sin prior to the onset of my first severe psychiatric episode. When the episode itself hit like a tidal wave (acute mania followed by psychosis), the spiritual vulnerability was leveraged in obsessive religiosity.

But it was not the holy kind. In fact, there were unmentionable instances of blatant blasphemy that I was driven to, not unlike Saul being driven by an evil spirit to pin David to the wall with a spear. I cannot use the illness itself to release me from the hook, though it may have mitigated culpability to an extent. But because I was not in a state of grace (my choice, my will, my volition), I had made a home for demons to dwell and force my hand against the Lord God, my Savior himself. Part of me would say today, "I did not know what I was doing." But that was the scary part. Who was moving my will? Who was forcing my hand? Who was throwing the spear? There was no grace in me--I was spiritually dead. And so in that vacuum, a nest was made.

In recounting my past sins of such blasphemy--which I had confessed before but which now seemed so grievous that I'm not sure I confessed them in the amount of detail that should have been warranted--I was able to verbalize in shame, feeling the burn, and rooting out the vestiges of straw and bark from the nest itself. I may not have been in my right mind, but I was not in a right spirit either, and that I had brought on myself through disobedience. The danger was acute. I was driven to the brink of suicide in the ensuing crash following these psychic highs, in which I had visions of "a black man, a shadow figure, a faceless one, wearing a hat and calling me to another side" from which only God's merciful grace (of which I had not merit to) kept me from crossing over to.

Part of "tripping into" this state of moral desolation in which the spirit of God is not living within a person (mortal sin) is so commonplace today, I fear for the vulnerability of the mind of those going through it, including my own. Which is why I am so careful, and so grateful, to have been shown (by grace) what needs to be avoided, and what needs to be embraced, to be in a state of grace. Because I truly believe that a state of grace is what fortifies my mind against unwelcome guests, the same spirits that afflicted Saul and drove him mad. I have had no symptoms of psychiatric malaise, despite a severe and verified clinical diagnosis, in almost ten years, and I attribute this in part due to that indwelling grace that was not killed off by mortal sin.

But I am acutely aware, too, that I need to be vigilant about the scummy buildup of venial sins on my soul that can make me and others more susceptible to mortal sin. Again, this is not a matter of obsession or scrupulosity, but tempered periodic soul scrubbing by the Divine Physician himself every few weeks in the Church's gift of the Sacrament of Confession. As I have stated in past conversations and writings, I still attend to the psychiatric preconditions necessary to stay healthy (medication, exercise, diet, sleep, doctor's visits, etc) to keep that "control group" in check. If I'm psychologically healthy and spiritually in trouble, the one can affect the other. Both are within my power, to a degree, due to the grace of baptism (the will) and knowledge (knowing what I need to do to stay healthy) so we don't have a repeat episode of what happened fifteen years ago. I don't every want to go through that again, while never wanting to forget the abomination of desolation that was my soul when not in a state of grace, and a nest of demons living in my inner being compelling me to act contrary to the virtues by the forcing and misappropriation of my mind and will. It is so very dangerous to give them any footing in the soul, which is why I try to be vigilant in staying close under the mantle of Our Lady and with the Cross every before my eyes. I know what's at stake, and the mind is an existential battleground where war is waged, a war against my very self, which I am not strong enough to withstand on my own. Without grace, I am doomed. If the Spirit of God leaves me, I am indeed a mad man in the making, hunting down the pious servants of God with deranged eyes, seeking to pin them to the wall with jagged spears, to crucify the saints and betray Christ himself. I can't afford that. So, I hope you will forgive me for treating the stakes very high in this battlefield of the mind. May God be praised, may His Holy Name be praised, that He extinguishes the burning ember of shame and we might taste the sweet fragrance of divine forgiveness, and be welcomed back into His friendship, restored to a right spirit, and a sound mind.

To The Hills

As my parents said when they were married, "divorce is not on option," I continue to say the same to the spectre of suicide that darkens the doors at the lowest point wondering if I will invite him in. My door is shut and barred. Yet reluctantly typing the word even I can anticipate sirens going off somewhere, emails composed, phones picked up, areyouallrights? offered. All things to be grateful for, even though there is no reason to worry about this.

Women are twice as likely to suffer depression than men, yet one fourth as likely to take their own lives. Women make more relational versus unilateral decisions, and feel more free to change their mind, and rely on interdependence and friends. Men value independence and decisiveness, and regard seeking help as a weakness to be avoided and success--even in suicide--an admirable 'seeing of things through.' 

I have head about the false (but in the moment, very real) peace and lucidity that comes when a person decide to ends their life. It is a counterfeit gleam of hope in an otherwise pitch black night. And it is mighty hard to understand how something as perverted as suicide might be regarded by a person in the throws of despair. The one thing to look forward to when there is nothing else. A coveted relief. "Ya gotta give 'em hope," the spectre procures. Even if it is a lie. 

But when that's not on the table, you have no other choice but to fight, even when you're strung up on the ropes. It's exhausting. I want to sleep til forever, and forever never comes. You just keep slugging through. 

My wife is in my corner. She can hold the bucket while I spit out my teeth and shoot water in my gums, and rub my wrist between her palms like she was trying to start a fire. I love her to life. But it's a wearisome pummeling. She holds me up, elbows locked under my armpits, takes me off the pole and binds my wounds. I scan the crowd for the Lord, to tell me what to do, to even just see his eyes, but he's nowhere to be seen. I'm sure he's holding me up, and sending angels, but I can't see anything; I can't see straight. I know He's there, I just don't know where. I'm too tired to call for him even, but lift my eyes to the hills and wonder from where does my help come. (Ps 121:1)

I heard a song the last time I was getting pummeled like this. I welled up for days every time I hear it. It's for the wives, the husbands, the loved ones who can't touch you without burning...the ones who you force to sit outside your bedroom door just so you know where they are, and they do, even when they can't come in, know they can't come in. But when the heat dies down and you're not yet consumed, they will test the walls, and step quietly across the embers to make their way to you. I will throw back my head, sleep the sleep of the dead, but I will wake up, and my eyes will see the love before me through the smoke and fog.

I will keep fighting, it will not be a TKO, I will take it blow by blow and if I have to play dead I will until the spectre in his pride prances his way out of the ring. I will keep everything to myself at work, dab eyes quick and unnoticed, hold it together. I will grocery shop, I will make conversations, I will live. Then my bride and my coach will pitch me up, load me into the wheelbarrow back to the locker room. Stitch by stitch, suture by suture, night after night, til death do us part. I can't pay them anything in my weakness when I'm pummeled like this. The only thing I can offer to retribute is to stay in the fight.

"I'm afraid of the space where you suffer Where you sit in the smoke and the burn I can't handle the choke or the danger Of my own foolish, inadequate words I'll be right outside if you need me Right outside
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?
So we left you to fight your own battle And you buried your hope with your faith 'Cause you heard no song of deliverance There on the nights that followed the wake We never though to go with you Afraid to ask
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?
Lay down our plans Lay down the sure-fire fix Grief's gonna stay awhile, There is no cure for this We watch for return, We speak what we've heard We sit together, in the burn
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?"

Crista Wells "Come Close Now"

When You Start To Slip

Last week I submitted an article to my editor for my monthly deadline, and he didn't want to run it. He had good reason. The salacious and jarring title, "I've Hated Our Dog All Her Life. And Now She's About To Die" should have been a tip off, as it was out of character and not fitting for a Catholic publication. It was a reflection on regret, how burdensome a life lived of not forgiving and treating others poorly can catch up to you, and a warning not to live that way. In my case, it was not being nice to our dog all her life but merely tolerating her, seeing that ugliness in myself, and being filled with sorrow that is in her last days. I knew what I wanted to express, but it came out all wrong. I am no St. Francis. I am no saint, period.

I totally understood, and submitted another article in it's place. What was weird was I didn't see anything wrong with what I sent him initially. Why would anyone want to read such a thing? Why did I write it? He used the word "depressing" at one point to describe the article, and it jiggled a little synapse and tipped me off to the fact that I was probably, once again, going through a depression myself.

I had taken a break from Facebook from the past week, which has always been a good time of refreshment and refocusing. It's also been a busy month, so I could use the time for better purposes. This week, however, rather than refreshment, I have felt an incredible loneliness and isolation. Life goes on, the film continues to roll, whether we're in the movie or not. We leave a job to retire or move on, and someone steps in to fill our roll, typically seamlessly. We lose someone we love, and we still have to wash the dishes and clean the gutters.

The startling thoughts--like second-cousins who smell an inheritance, or long lost relatives coming for a visit on their drive cross county--tasted blood in the water, and started to circle. "Who are your friends? Who can you really turn to? No one, that's who. You have no one. You are alone. If you died tomorrow, who would notice? Matter of fact, why don't you think about that. Your family would take it hard, but they'd get over it. They'd forget about you to. Nothing stays constant. Love is not forever. People move on." Et cetera.

Having worked with an competent Cognitive Behavioral Therapist years ago, who was treating me pro bono at a local clinic when I wasn't working, I recognized the thoughts and was able to rely on that training some to detach and objectify them. My thoughts are not me. I am not my thoughts. Present the evidence. Disprove their assertions. Thank them, and decline their invitation to consummate.

Have you ever been in a relationship or marriage in which you didn't trust the other person? Didn't know whether they were cheating on you, or lying to you, or putting on a smile but secretly inside you they don't like you very much? You can't quite put your finger on what it is that's off, but it's not comfortable, like living with an impersonal stranger in a co-dependent arrangement. You can't trust your mind and you can't live without it either.

That's what your mind becomes during depression: an uncomfortable stranger, someone you live with but don't trust. You need it to function, but it doesn't have your best interest at heart. Your thoughts become fuzzy, skewed, like driving while wearing someone else's glasses. Somewhere along the way, the inner-narrative has changed, become more negative, more condescending.

Grief is triggered by loss, typically, and it is a natural response. Depression, on the other hand, can be triggered by a myriad of events, both external and internal. It is not natural but foreign, not the natural state of being, but a substitute teacher. It could be a betrayal, a feign slight, a misspoken word, an overblown reading in-to canceled plans. And yet, in the throws of it, you are quite convinced that the veil has been drawn back and you are seeing things as they really are; reality has been inverted. Rather than life being a generally pleasant, worthwhile state with occasional downturns, the gray pall is actually what life is, throwing you a bone with a few scraps of ephemeral pleasure just to keep you from throwing in the towel completely.

I'm not a tough guy, but I have worked up some grit over the years. The cycles of depression in college would have been enough to warrant dropping out of school today, but I refused to. Even in grad school in my mid-twenties, when it hit and I was virtually immobilized as a result, barely able to eat or speak or move, my mom would drive to my apartment and pick me up, take me to my summer seminar class, and wait outside for me to finish to take me home. I did end up taking a leave of absence for one semester, but graduated with a 3.8 GPA after five years of part time study. At one point, in a state of mania, I sent the entire theology faculty a rambling grandiose email loosely related to my thesis. The chair of my department was kind--he recognized I was sick. But I made it though, and I prided myself on the fact that my illness did not get the best of me in school or in taking my life either.

But it wears you down. Now with a family, responsibilities, and work, it's like trying to wade through molasses. I just want to lie down and close the door. But I can't. I can't talk to anyone at work about it--whatever people tell you about the "stigma" going away is not always true--and so to take sick days and try to explain what's wrong is not always prudent. In up cycles, I take on a lot, and can sustain it normally, but in down cycles it becomes burdensome and exhausting.

The hardest is when it comes to friends. I don't feel like I have people who I can rely on. I hate needing people in my life, and yet I am so dependent on them for my well-being; I'm more social than I give myself credit for.

And yet, I too have not been a good friend. I know from dealing with depression that people who are depressed can be exhausting to try to help. No amount of convincing that are loved or that things will get better will change their mind in the thick of it. All you can do is love them and sit with them in the dark. But loving takes work, and I don't have it in me always in my selfishness and bravado. Until you are the one that needs a friend. But who has time for that? And who knows what to say? So, it's a Catch-22 of isolation. And so you go in your room and close the door and lay down and just...stare.

But you have no choice but to keep going on, fighting the force working against you. Once during one of the most difficult times, when I had had to resign from a job because I was a liability in my illness (I was working as a counselor at a juvenile detention center), I was driving home after informing my supervisor, feeling like a failure. As I drove, a line of Sycamore trees emerged lining the road, and I could feel a weight on the accelerator and having to put all my energy into not veering right, into the trees. It was if I was wrestling the steering wheel with someone else. I arrived home exhausted from the struggle and collapsed on the couch.

My dad knows. He has been through it, and walked with me through it. At my parent's house ten years ago, during an especially dark and heavy bout of it, He would take me out for walks. It would take me 2 hours to walk half a mile. I shuffled like an old man, the hood of my canvas Carhartt jacket pulled around my face, my beard long, my hair long, my boots scraping the sidewalk like a derelict. He was patient, and waited for me ahead. Little things like that were good to do. They gave some purpose to an otherwise existence devoid, in my mind, of purpose.

When you need it most, prayer can sometimes be the least comfort. It is not a Dark Night of the Soul. I hate when people refer to depression in that way. Dark nights are for saints who put God above all else and can't live without Him. At my most depressed, I am good for nothing, totally helpless. If I am abandoned, it only confirmed my suspicions that nothing lasts. But that does not draw me closer to God in such desolation, or if it does, I will only see it in the rear view mirror, one day. In the moment, all I can do is stare, grit my teeth, tell my thoughts to go to hell, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But at least it helps to know that I am in it, and trust the evidence that chances are, it will pass in due time. Like everything else that doesn't last.

Blood, Sweat, and Fears

"If your enemies see that you grow courageous, and that you will neither be seduced by flatteries nor disheartened by the pains and trials of your journey, but rather are contented with them, they will grow afraid of you." --Blessed Henry Suso

I was happy to make it to Confession this past Saturday. I try to go once a month. Typically, I leave the Confessional and am awash with a sense of renewal, so grateful for the love and forgiveness of the Savior, a kind of spiritual high that lasts a good while. This past time I went, however, I experienced relief and gratefulness, but it was not long before I got home that I started to feel really...afflicted. It wasn't doubt in forgiveness, or ungratefulness, or the opposite of any of those consolations received. It was, simply, a lack of consolation that is persisting still.

It's hard to recognize what's going on sometimes in the spiritual life when you are just an amateur Joe Catholic, not a professed religious or someone advanced. You can feel like a baby sometimes who has a fever but doesn't know what a fever is, who is coming down with something for the first time. The difficulties are somewhat compounded by the occasional intersection of spiritual and mental malaise, as it pertains to my particular situation.

Though I have had minimal symptoms in the past eight years or so, I am always cognizant of the fact that I have a clinical diagnosis and that my brain may be especially sensitive in ways other people's are not. It is a vulnerability, can be a target. So I have to guard it by due diligence in as much as I am able, and ask my guardian angel to stand watch when I am not able.

My fear has always been that authentic spiritual experiences (not that I go looking for them; I am referring to those I have had) would be offset or discounted on account of being a person who could be labeled 'mentally ill' and have the medical records to prove it. I could do without a "spiritual" experience for the rest of my life if only I was able to be faithful to God and do His will in all things. But that itself--resting and having the assurance of doing His will--is a consolation that is of supreme comfort.

So, my responsibility as a man, a husband, father, provider, etc, is to stay healthy, physically but especially mentally, and avoid to the best of my ability that which would compromise my mental equilibrium. Being in a state of grace and committed to prayer and spiritual exercises has really strengthened and fortified not only my spirit but my mind as well from malevolent influence. That has not always been the case in the past, as my mind is a vulnerable portal for the influence of the Enemy to get a foothold in. It can be scary, too, because if your mind turns against you, how can you fight? How can you fight your own mind, your own self?

Back to that topic of delegitimization of the spiritual on account of the mental. Like I said, I could go without spiritual experiences, but what's hard is when you're trying to discern between the two. My brother (who is not a believer) asked me one time when we were took a break in a shelter while hiking a snowpacked trail in the Green Mountains of Vermont--"how do you know when you're talking to God and when you're just talking to yourself?" Now this was maybe 15 years ago, but it was hard to answer. Today, too, I go back and forth: when am I flooded by the euphoria of grace and love, and when am I, in fact, gripped in a state of mania? When in the depths of the pit spiritually and when I need to make an appointment with my psychiatrist to help counter an extended bout of depression?

I strongly dislike when people who suffer from mental illness will conflate their experiences in these states with the mystical, calling their depression a "dark night of the soul." Depression may be a dark night, but it is a dark night of the mind not the soul. I have experienced, painfully, the former, but I am not mystic and my dark nights of the soul have been the relatively minor (but still painful) periods of desolation.

Desolation, a temporary darkening of the mind and disturbance of the will and emotions, is permitted by God to purify the souls of his followers. It may be caused by the evil spirit or brought on by a variety of other causes, but it is always purposeful, namely to withdraw a person's affections from dwelling on creatures and bring them closer to the Creator.

Prayer is, well, hard. Harder than usual. That doesn't mean you don't do it. My spiritual affect is lower. Fervor has died down to an ember. You're just kind of putting one foot in front of another. It's best, according to St. Ignatius and other masters of the spiritual life, to maintain trajectory and not make major decisions in such a state. I know it's not forever, that it's a period. My faith sustains me in those periods even when I can't feel it. It is a comfort because it is supernatural, from outside myself, not reliant on myself--unlike in depression, when you feel it will never end and you have no mental recourse to tell you otherwise. For great saints like St. Teresa of Calcutta, that period of spiritual desolation, the withdrawal of comfort and consolation, can last years and decades even. It is a proving ground, a furnace of white hot love that sears in it's seeming absence, especially for someone who has grown to rely on God in all things. When He feels as if He is not there, it can be excruciating.

But without desolation, consolation means very little. Without crucifixion, there is no resurrection. It is part and parcel of what we are called to as Christians. So, we have to go through it. We don't always know how long it will last, but that is up to God, since He uses it for His purposes. Our job is to remain faithful, even in our self-doubt about what we are doing and how we are serving Him, when the Enemy fills our head with negative thoughts and temptations, when he seeks to exploit our (my) vulnerable mind to get a foothold. Double down, even if the rituals of prayer seem like just that. Keep praying the rosary, despite the dryness. Keep going to Mass, every day if possible, when it's tough to get there. Keep the faith, when you don't know if you'll come out the other side.

I know there is a reason for this present period of temptation and desolation. I have something I'm dreading coming up next month that I am responding to out of obedience, to what I feel I am called to do by the Spirit, but I don't want to do it. There are little things, little "yes"s in our life, and there are big "yes"s too, and this feels like one of those big yes's. So, maybe this is God's way of preparing me and getting me ready, I don't know. All I know is I trust Him more than I trust myself, and just want to do His will and be faithful. This too will pass, I'm sure. But it's hard when you're in it--the loneliness and desolation, the doubt, the flat dryness, the effort it takes being compounded. Thanks be to God for it all.

The Real and Heavy Pain of Loneliness

I spent most of my twenties waltzing with loneliness. I loved going out but I also loved staying in. I was an introvert with extroverted tendencies. I never turned down an opportunity to party. But I also relished the isolation of my apartment. It was always a strange dance.

When I was out, I got on well with everyone and liked meeting new people. If I met someone who I felt was interesting, I would talk to them one on one most of the night (as most introverts and ambiverts tend to do). Sometimes my mind would get away from me though, as happens in manic-depression when you're not completely healthy--getting too excited, talking too fast, drinking too much, thinking too much.

When I was in a depression and out with friends, it was pure pain. I was a bear to bear around, sensitive to the slightest criticism, prone to tears, scared of crowds...it was not fun, and neither was I. Mental illness is a huge stress on relationships and friendships. People don't know how to handle you, you push them away when you want them close and pull at them to come close when you want to be alone. You make them walk on eggshells. You make loving you...tough.

When I was in, in my apartment, I was often happy to be alone. I did not feel a compulsive need to go out, was generally comfortable with myself. When I was manic, for my own good, I would shut up in my apartment during the worst of it. I figured, keep it contained. I would write ten hours a day and chain smoke cigarettes and watch movies and do projects and not sleep. I didn't need drugs or alcohol because the euphoria that comes with mania was enough, like something from another world.

When I was depressed, though, the pain was acute and searing. One Friday night after a crash (the crash into depression after a period of acute mania) I curled up into a ball and just laid for hours by the inside of the door, bereft of comfort. The pain was as physical as it was psychic, like stab wounds. It was the closest I had come to desiring death.

These moments are "never real, and always true," as the artist Antonin Artaud once said when asked about one of his drawings. The pain is real, it is not imagined, but it is a defection, the "flaw in love" as Andrew Solomon called depression. It is also a chicken and egg type scenario: the more depressed and inward you draw, the harder you are you love, the more you self-alienate, the harder it becomes to make and maintain friendships, etc. It takes a strong and sensitive person to love someone with mental illness because it is not easy.

But even if you are not mentally ill, being alone without a partner in this life is hard. I think that's important to acknowledge. There is an existential loneliness many people experience, not just on account of faith (we are not made for this world), but also in its absence (the God shaped hole that refused to be filled by anything but Him). "It is not good for man to be alone," the Lord says in Genesis (Gen 2:18), and "two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up" (Ecc 4:9-10).

When I had no job, no car, no mental equilibrium, and had just been hospitalized after getting hit by a car, I was at a low point. But that's exactly when I met my future wife. It was a good proving ground. Heck, if anyone can love and accept you in that state, that's worth it's weight in gold. We had also been praying for our respective spouses before we knew one another, and God in His omniscient ways, knew exactly what we both needed. Although one can be lonely with a spouse in the midst of a marriage, this has not been the case for me. My wife was a godsend, because in my case at least, the Scripture is true: It is not good for man to be alone.

My loneliness these days is not acute in the slightest. When I feel it most it feels like a dull headache, a heavy thud, and it is in the context of faith--although we have friends and support systems, partners and confidants, we all ultimately answer to God alone. We walk to Calvary alone. I know my God is with me, but even sometimes He can feel absent, not to mention those I used to be friends and party with and even those I used to worship with, though new friends have stepped in. When you start to really follow Christ, things in your life tend to prune and be culled. It is often during these times that consolation comes the way it came to Christ by way of Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus shoulder his cross on the way to his death.

Those who are in Christ still experience loneliness; it is a human emotion, a human experience. It can even work to our benefit spiritually, if it makes us more reliant on God and to love Him more. Christ experienced it as well in a way, in the Garden of Gethsemane, being sorrowful unto death while his friends slept in his hour of need.

But we can also do much as Christians to help be Simons to those who are in danger of collapsing under the cross of loneliness, to be Veronicas wiping the bloodied holy face, to be Johns and Marys at the foot of the Cross. We can visit those who are shut in, befriend those who could use a friend, write letters to prisoners...the options and opportunities are endless to bear one another's burdens. There are many who suffer, and there is much we can do, even if it is little things. We may not be able to take off the heavy blanket of loneliness in their lives, or even in our own, but we can rest knowing that He never leaves us nor forsakes us, even when He feels far from us. For the person of faith has the assurance of being a beloved child of God, who need not be anxious for anything, who can rest in the bosom of the Savior, remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child 

And have no compassion on the son of her womb? 

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. 

“Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; 

Your walls are continually before Me."

(Is 49:15-16)

Want To Know What Acute Anxiety Looks Like? Step Inside The Panic Room, And Watch Your Step

My daughter's dance demonstration was tonight. It's a once a year event that is a big deal for little girls. I left work and drove an hour in rush hour traffic and made it with ten minutes to spare before it started.

It seemed to me like organized chaos. My wife was one of the "helper moms" for a pack of little girls and was there already. I sat down and took over feeding the baby and tried to keep track of my other son. A bunch of stranger girls took the stage and were doing their choreography. It was four sets or so until my daughter had her time on stage. I tried to relax. But something wasn't right; I could feel it.

When you have an experience of acute anxiety and the corresponding physiological reaction--shortness of breath, muscle tenseness, panic, and a feeling of the world closing in on you--it leaves a psychic impression, I think, one that lodges itself in your subconscious as a kind of minor trauma that your body and mind can recall. I recognized the beginnings of it, because it wasn't the first time.

A few years ago we were visiting my brother and sister in law for Fourth of July in State College. As we crested the hill to meet them at Beaver Stadium and I saw the massive wave of cars and crowds, I tensed up, and words started coming out of my mouth that weren't making sense, kind of like turrets. I knew if I drove into the sea of cars into the parking lot, we would be stuck and not be able to get out, and that was an irrational nightmare for me. I had to pull over and do a U-turn straight back to our hotel and apologize later for leaving them without an explanation besides, "I'm sorry...it was too much." I was mortified and embarrassed, since I seemed to be the only one with this problem. I went to the hotel and didn't say a word and went straight to bed.

My family understood, because they know me. I don't like crowds--I loath the Big Apple, I don't go to concerts or festivals, and even large family gatherings, graduations, banquets, and weddings are sources of stress because of this involuntary reaction. I suppose it is a kind of claustrophobia that feels like you are being electrocuted with low-voltage wires.

But that was a few years ago, and I had kind of forgotten about it, though I still am aware of the triggers. I didn't expect to experience the same thing tonight at the dance demonstration. A psychologist friend of mine told me once, "Rob, your brain doesn't work like other people's brains." I started to tense up. There was too much going on around me--crowds of parents, little girls in tiaras everywhere, trying to keep track of my own kids, stimulation everywhere I turned. I had left my anxiety medicine at home--I hadn't needed it in so long.

This afternoon at work, right before leaving for the recital, I was giving a campus tour to a young man with autism and his parents. Like me (in some ways), his brain didn't seem to work like other people's brains. Over the course of the tour he would notice inconsequential things and bring up the most random questions (like the flow of traffic at certain intersections and if the shuttle bus came at certain intervals) and act inappropriately at other times. His parents were very sweet and you could tell they loved him and were tired in their 70's. In all honesty, I was tired myself and a little short on patience and understanding and was glad when the uncomfortable tour was over. I felt guilty--I got the feeling he did not have many friends as a result of his autism--a long loneliness. I've gone through it with my friends at my lowest times--you can taste the alienating character in depression and anxiety, because no one seems to have the right words to say, and it's self-isolating. You want to be loved, but make it hard. This is the fallen human condition, in many ways--desiring love and sabotaging it so it can't be given a chance. You know patience wears thin, and people can only do so much. It's just a matter of time, really.

Back to the recital. My muscles were clenching, and my hands were trembling. There was too much going on, much too much, and I was breathing heavy. I hated my wife for making me come. I managed to catch my little girl's first act and was a proud of dad, but the feeling degenerated quickly into panic--I had to get out, and had four more sets after intermission until she was on again. It was like trying to breath through a straw. I had no idea where my son was, though he was just walking around with his cousins. Everything was amplified in flight or fight response and I knew the turrets speech would come soon enough if I didn't address the situation. Anxiety, like many other mental disorders, is a hard thing for people who don't experience it to understand. My wife encouraged me, with great understanding, to just leave with the baby, that it was no big deal.

I didn't know what else to do, I felt like I was about to be buried alive. I paced back and forth from the auditorium to the lobby and back again three or four times, and then took the baby and left, telling my wife I would see her at home. She understood, no blame at all. But as I left the parking lot pushing the stroller to my car, salt burned my eyes. I could taste the shame--my mind had gotten the best of me, much to my embarrassment. "Your brain doesn't work like other people's, Rob." I missed the last part of the recital. My daughter was fine with it, she was very laissez-faire about her performance. But I knew my anxiety had gotten the best of my this time with this defection of duty. I hated every minute of being there, and I was free now, but steeped in shame for not being able to handle what normal people handle without even thinking about it.

I made it home 45 minutes later, fed and changed the baby, and just kind of stared out the window for a while. The hardest thing is the triggers, the things I know that set me off, are ridiculous: parking garages, crowds, too much stimulation, the fear of losing my children in public on my watch, sporting events or concerts. I was out of the danger zone back at home, but what does that mean for me as a man when called to face those things in the future, when it's time to step up and enter into the fray?

"Always real, and never true," the artist Antonin Artaud wrote to describe depression, which could just as easily be used to describe the experience of anxiety and panic attacks. It lives in the mind wearing a ridiculous oversized coat. It is embarrassing and cuts checks in the currency of shame. It threatens friendships, because people don't know how to respond, because, hey, parking garages and baseball games and crowded beaches are things to be enjoyed, not terrified of. It's not normal (that ubiquitous word that is the bane of anyone suffering from mental disorders).

We all have our crosses, the things that make us sweet blood under duress. I have hithchiked across continents by myself, made friends with ex-cons straight out of prison and stayed with their families, bungy jumped off the highest vertical drop in the world form a gondolar suspended over a canyon in New Zealand, and biked over and down the Rocky Mountains cross-country, descending for forty minutes at forty miles an hour on a bicycle without thinking twice about it.

But I'm scared to death of the most innocuous things at the same time, like a crowed dance recital, or the Lincoln Tunnel, or the beach on Memorial Day weekend. It makes no sense.  I missed my little girls' second act because I couldn't keep it together. I know she understands, but I'm still ashamed. The tranquilizer I took when I got home is starting to take effect, and I'm getting sleepy and my central nervous system is slowing down. I'm feeling calmer now that I am removed from the situation. I will make some tea and settle down for the night.

Just when you think you're living a normal life, every now and then you get the rug pulled from under you. A good place to be for finding God and remembering the words of St Pio: Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry."