Healing

This post is going to be a little bit different than others I've posted. It's going to go into my beliefs. Please respect that these are my beliefs, even if you completely disagree. It's ok for you to disagree. That's the beauty of this world...we all get to believe whatever we feel is best. 

This is a topic that I've thought about a lot lately: Healing. There are a multitude of reasons I've been thinking about healing. A couple posts on Facebook started me thinking about it and then spending the summer sick added another layer. I think I'm finally ready to delve into this topic. In order to do so, I need to explain a few of my beliefs.

1. I believe that the atonement of Jesus Christ has the power to heal all of us perfectly.

2. I don't believe God will heal all of us in this life, despite His ability to do so.

3. I believe that after we die, all of our physical ailments will go away with our bodies, but we will continue to exist as spirits.

4. I believe that the resurrection promised in the New Testament is a literal event that will occur. Some day all of our spirits will inhabit perfect, eternal bodies. This is

regardless of our actions in this life. It's universal to all children of God (meaning all humans).

5. I don't believe that God plans all of our suffering out, that not every trial is sent from Him. I think it's more like Him playing a giant chess game. He is the master chess player and can see what's coming down the line and allows certain things to happen in our lives for reasons that are incomprehensible to us most of the time.  He knows the end game, but he doesn't cause all our suffering.

6. Being the ultimate chess master, God will bring things and people into our lives at opportune moments to help us through the difficult times.

So what does all of that have to do with healing? Well, this summer I saw two Facebook posts within days of each other that were polar opposites. One was a woman who insisted that all depression could be healed in this life. Another was a person who was afraid the depression would never end, even after we died we'd have to suffer forever. Both of these posts made me sad because I don't believe either of them are true and the idea that people will be hurt from these beliefs is hard.

I am a firm believer that God does not and will not heal all of us. I am a firm believer that some of us have our "cross" to bear. The Apostle Paul complained of an ailment that wouldn't go away. He was super amazing and literally saw Jesus, but he couldn't be healed. It was his cross to bear.

A few years ago I was miserable. My bipolar disorder seemed like a very, very heavy cross. I would have given anything for it to be taken away. Repeatedly I felt impressed that I would NOT have my bipolar disorder taken away. That I would be bipolar until the day I die. This means I will have depression episodes. This means I will have hypomanic episodes. I will probably also have anxiety and mixed episodes as well. This is my cross to bear.

Does that mean God has done and will do nothing for me?

Nope! Not even close.

Last year I was lead to the right doctor who was able to recognize where I was at and put me on a medicine that has helped me be mostly stable for over a year. That's the longest I've been mostly stable since I was a child. I consider this to be God

helping me and giving me temporary healing. As a clergy member once told me, medicine is a gift from God.

God has also brought people into my life who could help me in other ways.

My brother in law was my mentor and life coach last year. His efforts in my life helped me believe in myself and were a big reason I decided to do the Year of Happiness. I am a happier person because of his kindness. I grew so much under his tutelage and feel like I have skills to help myself that I would never have obtained (or at least not anytime soon) otherwise.

I also found the most perfect (for me) counselor in the world. I feel like I'm almost a different person than I was before I started working with her. I found her and went to her as a direct result of inspiration from God. I was NOT going to go to a counselor in my city. I wanted a counselor close to school so I could drop in without it messing with my school schedule. God shut doors left and right as I tried to find a counselor in the Valley. No one accepted my insurance or they didn't meet my needs. I was about ready to give up and went to my counselor as a last resort (it's not because she had a bad reputation or anything. I just knew her from another place and thought it would be awkward. Plus my husband went to her and I thought that might be awkward. But mostly she wasn't in the Valley like I was so sure I needed). God knew better than me and opened the doors for me to find my counselor. I have released things that were holding me back and healed in ways I didn't think were possible because of this woman who was sent from God.

On top of all of that, I've done a lot of inspired self-growth this last year. Though my own efforts to help myself, I have discovered things about me that help me be happier. A Year of Happiness is truly what this year has been and will continue to be.

So God has "healed" me, even though He hasn't healed me.

The good news is I know I have an end-date. I will not be bipolar for eternity. When I die, the physical component of it, the chemicals that mess with my head, will go away. I will be free from all the ailments of this world, including my bipolar disorder. Just because it's a "mental health" disorder, doesn't mean it's not physical. Chemicals are what treat it, after all. The idea of an end point is freeing. Very freeing. I don't know when I'll die and I have no desire to do it any time soon (see, I'm doing ok). But the day will come that I will die and when I do, my disorder will go away.

Now, this doesn't mean that everything is going to magically be perfect. When we die, we carry with us our personalities, our habits, and our behaviors. This means if I don't counter the lies that my brain tells me all the time, I might die and still feel like a failure at first. The chemicals will be gone, but my thoughts are still there.

The good news is two-fold.

First, we're granted a time to sort all of that out without our physical bodies getting in the way. It'll be like being on the best depression medicine. I'll still have the same thought patterns, but the chemicals won't be there to back up the thoughts. I can sort through things so much easier and actually figure out the truth.

Second, the atonement of Jesus Christ is big enough for all of this. All of it. When He heals us, which He will at some point before (or maybe during) our resurrection, it will ALL be made right. I don't know how it works, but I feel the truth of this strongly. All of our hurts and pains and sorrows will be healed. My soul aches for that day. I've had small tastes of it in my life and cannot wait to be inundated with that love and healing. We will spend eternity without these things holding us back. There will be peace.

I know some of you will think I'm crazy for these beliefs. You think I'm deluding myself. These things are mere coincidences and death is the end. Again, you're welcome to believe that. If I hadn't had the experiences I'd had, I don't think I'd believe in God either. But I have had these experiences. I have felt God in my life. I've felt His love for me the same way I feel my parents' love for me. When things have been at their worst, I have been lifted up and given just enough to hang on to so I could make it another day. I had no more inner strength. It didn't come from me.

God will heal all of us. I know it's true as much as I know anything is true. The atonement of Jesus Christ will take our pains and sorrows caused by mortality away and make us whole. While He won't remove the consequences of our actions, He will heal us from everything else. And if we repent, He'll heal us from our sins as well. He will balance everything out and make it right.

One of my favorite scriptures is found in the Book of Mormon. It says "I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul" (2 Nephi 33:6). I truly glory in MY Jesus. I'm grateful for Him and love Him. I cannot wait for the day I can see Him in the flesh and be healed.

~Beans

A Beautiful Messy Life

I'm sorry I haven't written for a while. Life has been really good and really bad all rolled up in one.

The bad: I have been dealing with a depression episode caused because I'm less stable, and if it can, my body defaults to depression. I'm working with my doctors on this. The issue is Latuda causes high prolactin levels in me, hyperprolactemia, or something like that. So I have to go on a medicine for that. The problem with this, is the medicine to treat the high prolactin levels also messes with my Latuda. So I'm less balanced. We're changing my meds for the high prolactin levels, and we upped my antidepressant to see if that would help. Good news? I'm not depressed right now. Bad news? I'm irritable a lot of the time. I hate being irritable. I get grumpy over some of the dumbest things. I've had to call myself out for being judgmental about things that are dumb. I'm not so over the top that I can't do that, thank goodness. I don't think I'm particularly irritable for most people. I'm just really irritable for me and I don't like it.

Also, I might be failing a class because of the depression episode early in the semester. If I do, it puts me behind a year. That's the joy of having a mental illness. Yippee?

The good: My life is on an upswing. I don't even know where to start. I made it to the final interview stage of a paid internship that is pretty prestigious. That was cool. I didn't do the interview because I discovered that where they want to put me isn't where I want to go. There's no way I would have turned them down without the other two pieces of my life that are going well. First, I was offered an internship at Barrow Neurological Institute in their spine lab this summer. This is unpaid, but super amazing. I will be getting a lot of good experience at a really prestigious institution. I'm thrilled by this. The other piece is my massage business is kicking off. I do more massages a week than I've done since I moved to Arizona. I'm feeling hopeful about the short term financial outlook for the first time in a long time. It's wonderful.

I haven't been working on my Year of Happiness as much as I thought I would, but I'm doing exactly what the project was intended to do: finding things in my life that bring me happiness on a day to day basis so I can be happy even through the hard times. My life is beautiful.

Don't worry, I haven't given up on the actual goals. I'm still going to work on it. I've knocked a few things off the list. I've tried a new food (Thai food). I've taught a massage class--actually a whole series of them. Those are the two that I think of off the top of my head, but I think I've done more. Anyway, I'm still going to work on it. I'm currently looking for an opportunity to give a talk about mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder. That's the next biggest thing I want to do. Also, I'm finding ways to write my book even when I can't write. I'll go into that some other time.

I'm so glad that I decided to do my Year of Happiness. Even though I'm not focusing on it all the time and I've not done some of the things I've said I'd do, it has made me look for the little things in my life that bring me happiness. My little tender mercies, so to speak. Even through my depression episode (which granted, could have been a lot worse) I was able to find things that make me happy. My whole attitude toward life has become more positive. Even when I'm irritable.

My life is beautiful. It's also incredibly messy. It's not exactly what I want, but it's better than I imagined. I truly have a beautiful messy life.

Friendship and Mental Illnesses

Today I've thought a lot about friendship, what it means, why friends are important, and whether or not I'm happy with my friendship situations. I've also thought about how mental illnesses affect friendships. It's been a day of introspection.

It started because of a situation at school.

We were divided into large groups where we were supposed to discuss the problems with the current methods of treating certain kinds of congenital heart defects. My group was supposed to discuss the imaging aspect of it. At first, we were in large groups and it was great. Not everyone was talking, but there were people talking and contributing and I felt fine. No one was excluding me, even though no one was paying particular attention to me either. It was comfortable. Then they had us divide into smaller groups. This is when it got rough for me.

The people to my right huddled together. They all knew each other and even though there were more of them than the allotted amount, they didn't care. They were friends and they were going to work together. The people across from me put their heads together. The people to the left of me grouped up. I was an island in the sea of groups. No one acknowledged me. No one seemed to notice that I didn't have a group. No one seemed to care that I existed.

If I were in great spot or a hypomanic spot, this would have been no big deal. I would have shrugged it off and forced my way into a group, whether they wanted me or not. Unfortunately, I'm not in a great spot. I'm in a funk. I'm mildly depressed, but not enough that I'd consider it a depression episode. It's not worth adjusting meds over, but I am seeing my counselor tomorrow. Anyway, I didn't have it in me to force my way into a group that possibly might not welcome the intrusion. So I worked alone. And I fought back tears the entire time and wondered what happened to get me, friendly Beans, into a situation where I felt completely unwelcome.

Now, if this was the first time something like this had happened since I started my major, I might still have been able to shrug it off. But it's not. I feel like an after thought for my peers. They either don't acknowledge me, or brush me off for their "friends". Most days, if I don't put myself out there, I don't talk to anyone at school. And I'm getting tired of feeling like I'm forcing my way into people's lives who clearly don't care if I'm in it. I have two and a half friends in my major (the half is a boyfriend of my friend, who pretty much only acknowledges me when he's with his girlfriend). Only one of those has potential to be more than just a school chum. Only one of those have I ever talked with about more than just school. She's great, by the way. I've known her for 5 months, so it's not a deep friendship, but it has potential. That one friendship makes school not seem like a dismal island of loneliness every day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with anyone at school. Friendship making is a two way street and during my time at the university, I haven't put much into it. Mostly because I've been battling my mental health. I didn't have the energy to try and make friends when I could barely get out of bed or when my anxiety was overwhelming me to the point I could barely function. That's no one's fault. It's just how it is. This realization caused me to do some serious introspection.

The reality is I have lots of really good friends. Some I talk to regularly. Some I barely talk to at all. Some I've known for years. Others it's been a short time. But I know I'm loved.  Evidence of this is a blanket sitting on my bed that a friend made for me over Winter Break. Even thinking about that blanket makes me smile and feel loved. I'm truly a blessed person.

Yet my mental illnesses have limited my friendships at times. I'd be a liar to say otherwise. This has been due to me not putting in enough effort and because other people don't know how to handle my mental illnesses. Here's two examples:

1-My efforts weren't enough:

After my mom was diagnosed with cancer and then after she died, I isolated myself. I was in a bad depression episode that was situational compounded with my mental illnesses. During this time, I made zero efforts to be anyone's friend. I was so locked up in my pain that I had nothing to give and I didn't want platitudes. Because I gave nothing back to people, I lost a lot of friends during that time, or the friendships were significantly weakened. I'm not going to say it was my fault, because that implies blame, and I don't blame myself. But there's no one else to blame either. I didn't reciprocate friendships and after a while, people stopped trying.

2-Other people don't know how to handle my mental illnesses:

When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I pretty much immediately told people. I spent a large chunk of my life hiding things and it was a terrible time period. I never want to go back to that place, so I chose to not hide my mental illness. Some people didn't know how to handle this. No one outright unfriended me or anything, but many people distanced themselves from me. I think they didn't know how to respond. I think some of them were afraid of the disorder and didn't realize I'm the exact same person I was before the diagnosis; I just now have a name for my problems. Bipolar disorder is scary in today's society, though I feel like the stigma is lessening. I don't blame them. What you don't understand is scary and people don't understand bipolar disorder (this is one of the big reasons I started this blog). 

Here's the thing: mental illnesses affect friendships. Similar (though not as drastic) things have happened during other depression episodes, where I've shut people out and it damages friendships. I've also  watched people get physically uncomfortable when my mental illnesses come up in conversations. Even good friends sometimes don't know how to respond. They can't relate and it becomes awkward.

On the other hand, sometimes it's been good to have mental illnesses in terms of friendships. Some of the best friends I have bonded with me over our shared experiences fighting depression or anxiety or hypomania. Those friendships have been deep because we understand each other in a way most people don't get. It can be really nice.

Sadly, I think a lot of the time mental illnesses negatively impact friendships, such as my examples listed above (though those are just the start!)

Either way you look at it, friendships are not the same when you include mental illnesses in the picture. They just aren't.

In some ways, I'm a better friend because of my mental illnesses. I'm more understanding, more compassionate, less judgmental, and a better listener. In some ways, I'm a worse friend. I'm not always there for people when my disorders act up. I can't always do things with people when they want and sometimes have to cancel plans. If my depression is really bad, I may not pay much attention to people for a while.

I honestly don't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that. Maybe they are in a spot that they need a more consistent friend, and that's ok. I can't be everyone's friend. But I thank my lucky stars for the friends I have. Even if I don't talk to them often, I appreciate them. I cherish their friendships and look forward to the next interaction.

School may be a bit lonely sometimes, but life is not.