I would like to start this post with a request. The subject I would like to discuss may be upsetting to some. In fact, you may totally disagree with my view and if so I respect your opinion. However, I ask you not comment negativly in the comment section. I would be happy to listen to your ideas but please message me privately. I have many precious hurting people that I would like to write this for. Having studied mental health, psychology, and working with patients affected by diagnosis related to mental health I sat under some very wise and supportive professionals. Unfortunately, during my Junior year of college one of my favorite professors made a decision that left everyone confused and grief stricken. We later found she had been diagnosed with depression and bipolar. I will never forget the first day back to class after her funeral. My psychology professor and her colleague gave a wonderful explanation to how we were feeling....I would like to give it to you as hopes that it may somehow support and encourage you as it comforted me . Right now you are shocked, trying to make sense of what has happened and picking up pieces to a puzzle that will never be solved. You want answers but there will be none. You would like closure but that is also impossible. So what you may choose to do is try everyway to justify that maybe you had a hand in allowing this to happen. However, I ask you please not to venture down this road. Instead, please understand that the choices made were a symptom of the diagnosis. Just as the inability to naturally raise or lower ones body temperature while battling the flu, it is also a lack of the inability for someone battling a mental health related condition to just snap out of it. You may start by saying if I had only done this or that but (please do not give yourself that much credit). If you truly think about that statement it can be rather selfish. In some ways you are saying that person chose to live or die based on you. It is a heavy burden and one that is far from truth. I have known people who have had major impacts on people and even they were unable to convince the person they impacted the most not to make an undesirable decision. You may say if I had been a better friend or paid close attention to the signs this may not have happened. But again please understand. For someone who suffers from this condition choosing to give up is not a new thought. It is a symptom of what they are battling. Please take some comfort in knowing the person you lost was not the person you knew. Conditions that are connected to our mental psyche can cause us to momentarily change our behavior. Please forgive me as I share an example. I can handle a few nights of little sleep but there will come a point when I will break. Usually I either giggle and laugh annoyingly or if it gets really bad I lash out and become sad. I bring up things that bothered me from the past...petty stupid stuff and the bad thing is the whole time, I am trying to internally stop myself but it is no use. If I am in this state and determined to pick a fight with my husband whom I love more than anything and anyone on earth then I am going to pick a fight. Why? Because my mind is not in its usual state and my view of reality is skewed. Now imagine someone dealing with a lapse of judgement due to the symptoms of a condition that affects their mental faculties. The truth is once a decision is made usually it will not be unmade. No one can really change the way one copes unless you have been professionly trained and even then the patient has to agree to it. Many times it also takes assistance with medications. Just like insuline assists in helping a person with diabetes. What about ones Faith? Let me throw in my view on divine intervention. Yes I do believe that God may choose to miraculously heal a situation. I also believe in spiritual warfare. However I do not believe someone who makes this decision is not a believer. If that were the case we all would be doomed. Again remember choosing to no longer live is a symptom of many mental related conditions. Just as a symptom of eating carbs to one with diabetes would be a potental of a dangerous rise in blood sugar levels. Or a stressful situation may raise someone who suffers with hypertention raises ones blood pressure. And so on.........I do not believe that Whether a request is answered divinely, through man made effort, or not at all is an indication of whether we or the person struggling has enough faith. I have asked God for many requests that went without a response. If it truly has to do with the amount of Faith one has then I am admitting that I must not have much. Right now you just have to get through it. Do not try to understand it...you cannot. Begin to accept it and do not feel guilty for accepting it and moving on. Acceptance is not agreeing with it. It is not forgetting that person or letting them go. It is the final thing you can truly do to honor and support that person. The outcome of the decision made is what robbed you of someone you truly loved. It took a special person from your life BUT it did not take your life. So live your life. The outcome left you with a hole in your heart but it did not take your whole heart. It took away someones son, brother and friend so stand in the gap for him and love the people he loved. You are still there to lovingly support them in his place the way he would have. And when the anger hits and it will, remember your anger is really towards the diagnosis and decisions he made due to that diagnosis and not necessarily at him. Choose to remember the person you knew before they were affected by that condition because that is the closest glimpse of who they truly were. The person I choose to remember got in trouble for flipping golf carts. The person I remember flicked a guitar pic at the crowd like he was a rock star the first time he played on the worship team. The person I remembered drank my extra large sweet tea while I was in the bathroom because someone dared him to drink 4 packets of taco bell hot sauce !!!! Then he had the nerve to pay me for it in WENDYS BUCKS. That is who I remember! That is who he was! Scott Isley, Jonathan Clark
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:23:16 +0000
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