A swirling head of emotions, a sharp pain in the back of the throat, trembling hands, emptiness inside, a racing heartbeat, confusion, short breaths, loneliness, and shadow of darkness looming above. All these, my symptoms of a panic attack, with depression weighing down on my insecurities, fears, and struggles. No one would know, I didn’t want anyone to know, and so I quietly hid in my closet enduring this alone. Not even I would understand what was happening, causing me to become more desperate and anxious as these feelings raced through the body I felt I could not control. I just wanted it to all go away. I needed it to stop. I felt hopeless and lost. Tears ran down my face as I tried to control my breathing while trying to remain quiet and hidden. Ashamed? More like embarrassed, because I felt like a sobbing baby who was letting something petty affect them so much, and at the same time so confused why my body was reacting in a way that made me numb and motionless. “At 17 I should be more mature and able to not cry over everything, to be in control of my emotions, and not living in fear when I have my whole life ahead of me. I have everything I need. My life should be happy. I have a beautiful family, friends, and good grades. What was wrong with me?” All this raced through my mind as I interiorly beat myself up for what was happening. This was an ongoing episode I had been enduring quietly on my own for four years. Then finally one day in the kitchen, alone, another episode began and not able to hold myself up anymore, I collapsed on the floor and said, “Lord, I can’t do this anymore, help me.”
That day I finally admitted to myself something was wrong and that I was depressed. The truth is I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t want to label myself as having depression. I felt there was no valid reason, no trauma or childhood experience that should make me depressed. I was blessed to have a beautiful upbringing and loving and supportive family. For some however, depression is not a result of trauma, it just slowly builds as one's self confidence shrinks, and for so many teenagers this is the sad truth. So many adolescents succumb to anxiety and depression as a result of measuring up to social standards, peer pressure, and the internal struggle of self discovery. I was one of them. That day I admitted to myself I could not get through this struggle alone. I admitted to myself I needed help. I admitted to myself that only I could take the first step to begin again. I admitted to myself that there was a problem and that it needed a solution. That day I talked to my parents, and with their abundant love and support, I took the first step in overcoming my journey with anxiety and depression. That journey is one that has had its ups and downs. One where I suffered depression for a continuous eight years until I conquered it and found inner peace, and where to this day I continue to battle seasons of anxiety. That road has been long, but it has brought so much personal and emotional growth. It is a road that countless people travel alone and silently. Many journey it without the support and help they need or seek from loved ones. I was fortunate to have parents that supported me and helped me find wholesome and healthy ways to overcome it. It was the support of my siblings when they later found out of my struggles that helped me persevere through what would be more years of internal battles. It was Christ who guided and helped me carry this cross that felt impossible to carry at times. God helped me conquer this enemy through growth. When we allow ourselves to endure suffering and seek to find and bring Christ in that suffering, we allow ourselves to grow and be transformed. We allow our hearts to open up to an endless love that can only be found in sacrifice. So that day I collapsed on the kitchen floor, God heard my prayer and he answered it. He answered it slowly, little by little, giving me the tools, strength, and wisdom to persevere through this emotional struggle, and He did it by asking me to grow and endure it all with virtue.
Many who hear the words anxiety and depression shrug their shoulders at the word or think of it as a taboo. Some people don’t want to see themselves as having a mental problem, but the fact of the matter is we all go through some level of anxiety or depression, or both, in our life. Some manage to just keep it together while others cannot overcome it without external help. Some cases are more severe than others and require regular therapy and treatment. Each person that suffers either depression or anxiety can have a different level of struggle, but this doesn’t take away from the fact that everyone can use help and support to endure and overcome this emotional and mental struggle. I experienced many of the usual treatments, but it wasn’t just the therapy or the medication that got me through it or eliminated my problems. It was the tools gained through medical treatment and therapy, continuous spiritual direction, significant virtuous growth, and abandonment in Christ that helped me be the one in control. You see, sadly some people fall into this way of thinking that to cure anxiety or depression a pill or a therapist is going to magically fix it all. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Later many are disappointed when after months or years of treatment they haven’t truly conquered the enemy. The anxiety or depression is still there. Yes, they feel better than before, but it still feels like something is missing, and more often than not, one can become dependent on those treatments because it’s the only thing that brings some sort of temporary relief. They help, I won’t deny that having used therapy and prescribed medication myself, but these tactics are just that, temporary relief, they are tools meant to help with the emotional struggle. They are a treatment, not the cure. The true cure comes when you win the war against anxiety and depression, after you realize that you are the one who needs to be in control of your emotions, not controlled by them. You need a battle plan ready to fight each battle you will face when the anxiety or depression flares up that helps you be in charge and control the situation. The cure will come after realizing there will be a struggle you must face seasonally or for a lifetime, but that when prepared with the proper armor, you will win each battle and at the end of your life, you will have won the war against anxiety and depression.
Growing in virtue is such an important armor you should possess in your toolkit to fight anxiety and depression. I like to look at it all as a continuous war, because for many this can be a lifetime struggle. When you see that anxiety and depression is just an enemy disturbing or causing mischief in what should be your peaceful and happy internal kingdom, or rather an imbalance or corruption in the hormonal and mental powers of your body, you become motivated to prevail against this disturbance and bring order into your realm. As mentioned before, virtue is not the cure, but it can play a significant role in how you address managing your level of anxiety and depression in a way that is wholesome, healthy for your physical and spiritual wellness, and brings more peace and order into what feels like a tumbling building. When mitigating emotional disorders with virtue you can make wiser decisions on treatment plans and therapy options that are healthier for your mental and physical health, while also aligning with your morals, lifestyle, and faith. With each person suffering different levels of anxiety or depression comes various treatments, medications, and therapies, it can be overwhelming, and at times pressuring, to follow the most common practices. Being able to use virtues helps you create a personalized treatment, or battleplan, that helps you tackle your level of emotional imbalances in a way that keeps your priorities, comfort level, and internal peace front and center.
The first virtue to help navigate this journey is humility. It takes a lot of humility to acknowledge that you have a problem. Not necessarily that you are the problem, but that there is a problem occurring within your body. Anxiety or depression is caused by a hormonal or chemical imbalance within the body, for some this could be due to an underlying health issue or disease, for others it could be a reaction to a change in environment or diet. Essentially your physical health is affecting your mental health, which tricklings down to affect your spiritual health. It’s important to remember that our physical, mental, and spiritual self are all connected, and what affects one can affect another. That is why managing your anxiety and depression with virtue is so crucial, it allows you to prudently create a battle plan that is built up of various tools, each designed to target a specific part of your body. Prescribed medication, vitamins, personalized diet, or exercise to tackle your physical health, psychological therapy for your mental health, and spiritual direction for your spiritual health. David Issac defines humility as when, “A humble person recognizes his own inadequacy, qualities and abilities, and presses them into service, doing good without attracting attention or expecting the applause of others.” With humility we first become able to recognize there is a problem and that we need to address it. It takes humility to recognize you need to ask for help and that asking for help is okay. It takes humility to accept that you cannot battle this emotional war on your own and that you are not the only one going through this struggle. It takes humility to accept you may continuously battle these emotional struggles throughout your life. A very hard part of humility can also be recognizing what are some of your own shortcomings, vices, addictions, or attitudes that can be contributing to your emotional or mental disorder and impairing your chances of finding joy and peace. Humility is also being able to love yourself despite all your shortcomings and emotional struggles. The hardest part for me after realizing I needed help because there was an emotional problem affecting my body, was learning to still love myself and see myself as God sees me. I have personally seen how self hate continues to be the main reason people cannot gain control of their anxiety or depression. This lack of self confidence, this hate towards yourself, this feeling that you are not good enough is what keeps so many lost in that cloud of darkness. But let me tell you, when you finally start to love yourself and see yourself as God created you, so uniquely and beautifully made, you will finally be able to have full control of your emotions. The therapy will help, the dieting will help, the regular exercise will help, confession and spiritual direction will help, growing in virtue will help. But loving yourself is what will make it possible to overcome this personal struggle. It took me years to learn to love myself, to build up my confidence, to see my good qualities and attributes, to not succumb to pressure and stand firm in what I felt was right. It took sacrifice, change, and determination to see me and to love me.
When you walk into a messy room, surrounded by all the chaos, you feel overwhelmed and disoriented. The same is true with anxiety and depression, it's the messy chaos of your emotions. Through the virtue of orderliness that emotional mess can be cleaned up when you implement a routine that allows for strategic emotional cleanup. After recognizing there is a problem and that you need to find ways to fix it, create a structure that allows you to implement, and later maintain, stress relievers that help you control the chaos. Identifying healthy stress relievers is important because these are the things that will allow you to calm down when your anxiety or depression flares up. These calming relievers should be things that make you happy and sooth you, that distract you from the problem by requiring focus on the task at hand. Some ideas can be baking, cooking, listening to music, writing, painting, drawing, cleaning, and pampering yourself with a bubble bath or favorite movie. When you find yourself being triggered by a stressful circumstance having go-to relievers can be a game changer in your journey to overcoming and controlling your emotional struggles. It’s also good to try to have regular down time where you can enjoy some of these activities, even if you don't have a major stress trigger. Having routine hobbies is a great way to keep anxiety and depression at bay because you are regularly performing activities that relax your mind and body, force your mind to focus on a task and not little annoyances, and provide you with personal quiet time for reflection. When seeking to organize the emotional chaos, it can be hard to know where to start or better yet, what is triggering the anxiety and depression? This can be the place to seek outside help such as psychological help and spiritual direction. I did both, and to this day spiritual direction has been my personal favorite because it continues to help me organize my anxiety in a way that I can discern how to best manage the situation in a way that brings me closer to Christ and allows for interior growth. We need to be able to let things out, it’s healthy and also gives us the opportunity to organize our feelings in a way that can’t be done when we keep everything bottled up inside. Having friends and family to talk to can be a huge help because we can receive perspective and advice from others that can help us to manage our emotions. However, weekly therapy sessions were a huge help in the early days of managing my depression and anxiety. Professional help can be a very useful way for us to understand the root cause of our emotional struggles, why we’re triggered by certain things, and acquire healthy coping tools to navigate our emotions. One of my favorite techniques has been writing a letter to myself, or a person I might be struggling with, and pouring everything I feel into that letter. After I’m finished, tearing it up and throwing it away which has helped bring closure and relief in many areas of my life that have brought me stress and anxiety. Ultimately, through orderliness we can ensure that there is structure in our battleplan, that our tactics to tackle anxiety and depression have a priority and set time in our routine so that we can address and help our mental health.
The next two virtues are fortitude and perseverance, these two go hand in hand. It takes courage and endurance to navigate the journey wholesomely. We live in a society that seeks instant gratification and when suffering with anxiety and depression, seeking treatment that brings instantaneous results can be a very dangerous thing. This is where it can become easy to become enslaved to addictions that actually make the anxiety or depression worse, have negative side effects to your overall health, affect your relationships, lead you down a path of recurring sin, and at times even lead to life threatening situations. On a less extreme note, focusing on one form of treatment will only bring temporary relief or improve one side effect. For me it was finding healthy and natural ways to battle my anxiety and depression where I could create a personal game plan of tactics for when I would have panic attacks or could feel the stress and anxiety flareup. When I was first medically diagnosed with anxiety and depression, my doctor put me on medication, but we both agreed that it would only be temporary to help with the chemical imbalance I had. Off the bat, he recommended I implement an exercise routine, with a minimum of 30 minutes, into my schedule because this was going to provide healthiest and best physical relief. His hope was to get me off the medication as soon as possible. I agreed, I didn’t want to depend on a pill, not to mention I knew it wasn’t going to fix everything. The medication helped, at the state I was at it helped put me in a better place to begin implementing this new exercise regime. I started jogging every day for at least 30 minutes. When I felt the anxiety flare up or the onset of a panic attack I dropped everything I was doing and jogged. The adrenaline would kick in and I felt like my body was able to catch up to my heart rate that had gone up due to a stress trigger. I could feel every toxin that was released through my sweat and when I would stop to catch my breath I could just feel this instant physical relief. That’s what exercise does to anxiety, it releases the stress that builds up when your mind triggers your flight or fight response that singles your body to release the hormones and chemicals that makes your heart rate go up and your muscles tense. In eight months I was off the medication and to this day, jogging and routine exercise helps me keep my anxiety and depression at bay. It is my go-to stress reliever for flare ups and panic attacks.
Finally, the last two virtues that aid in managing your mental health are patience and optimism. Easier said than done, I know, but I also know that these two virtues do make a difference in making the journey more bearable. It’s extremely hard to be optimistic when you're depressed or stressed. However, one of the things I learned through my therapy sessions and spiritual direction was that I was worrying about a lot of things out of my control, disappointing or losing a relationship, and worrying too much about a false sense of not measuring up to unrealistic expectations that no one had set for me except myself. I compared myself to others very easily and was quick to see I didn’t possess the skills or attributes others had, particularly those of the people closest to me. I set myself up for failure by never seeing the good I did, for never recognizing my own talents and skills, or seeing myself as useless. I had a fear of a relationship deteriorating and found myself wanting to force a friendship that had passed its season. I was holding on to the past rather than looking to the future with an open mind and heart. I was surrounding myself with negative mentalities and opinions. The worst thing for a depressed person is to be in a depressing or negative environment. Through therapy and implementing new stress relievers I was able to start eliminating the negativity that was causing harm. But it was optimism that helped me to create a lifestyle that was rooted in always finding the good and beauty in a situation, even in the darkest of times. David Issac explains optimism as, “ The degree to which we practice this virtue will depend on our ability to identify positive elements in situations which clearly present difficulties.” We can always turn something bad, but when we try to be optimistic we can find even the tiniest bit of beauty within something that seems horrible. Everything that is good and beautiful is from God, and even the bad can be turned anew, if we give it the chance. Personally, I think optimism is one of the secret ingredients to managing depression or anxiety with virtue. Issac sums it up so well here, “An optimist has confidence, based on reason, in his own abilities, in the help which he can obtain from others and in the ability of others; thus in every situation, he can identify, first of all, the positive elements and the opportunities for improvement which it offers and, secondly, the difficulties and obstacles in the way of such improvement; he takes advantage of everything favorable and faces up to rest in a sportsmanlike and cheerful manner.” Don’t let depression and negativity win and control how you live your life. Do not let it take you away from relationships, plans, or personal aspirations. Do not let it be the excuse you cancel plans or the reason you stop doing the things you love. It can be hard when all you feel is like sitting on the couch eating ice cream, but the best thing to do is to continue to live life, to surround yourself with those who love and support you, and to place yourself in positive environments where you look for the beauty in the moment. The best way to grow in optimism is to continue to live life.
If we can seek to find good in the darkest of times, then you can find hope. When managing emotional and mental struggles, hope is what pushes us along. Hope in a new day and in a life that isn’t dark and gloomy. Yet, it is hope in Christ that we should seek above all else. Hope in his infinite mercy and in his plan for our life. We should always seek to find Christ when we are lost in darkness because no matter how much therapy, medication, or stress relieving activities you have, it is only Christ that can help you persevere through the suffering you will endure as you carry the cross of anxiety and depression. It is Christ that will take that suffering you endure and bring you peace whether it be throughout your life on Earth or only in Heaven. When we push to find the good we will find Christ. Through patience we learn to journey through anxiety and depression with a calm demeanor, to remember that our suffering is not eternal. I had my good days and my bad days, at first it seemed like they were more bad than good. Yet now I find that I have way more good than bad, but it took time to get there. Time to learn to understand what caused my anxiety and depression. Time to implement stress relievers and obtain healthy tools to manage my mental health. Time to see progress in the new lifestyle and process. It took time, sweat, tears, and suffering to see that through it all God was calling me to grow, and to grow closer to him. No matter how bad the depression or anxiety is, remember to be patient with yourself, the treatment and process, with your strategy, and with God. Never lose hope. No matter how long your journey may be, at the end of that tunnel there is light, and you will find peace.
If you ask me what my turning point was, the point when I finally saw I was the one in control of my anxiety and emotions. I would say it was the second time I found myself in the dark pit, in the early months of 2018. Who you are is not defined by another person. It is defined by who you are inside and who God created you to be. Your worth is found in Christ and seeing yourself as his daughter, a beautiful and one of a kind creature. It took heartbreak to put me back into the pit I had worked very hard to climb out of, but I was there for a short time because this time I was prepared for the battle. After a few months of wallowing in my own self pity, which looking back was so petty compared to things I later have gone through, I wiped myself off and started using my armor. The change was fast and I was recovering thanks to the tools I had built throughout the past couple of years, but through it all there was something missing. The truth is there was always something missing. That February at a silent retreat I found it, it was Christ. I had been practicing my faith, Christ was a part of my life, just not a part of my suffering. That was the missing ingredient the whole time. My tactics, my therapy, my new lifestyle all helped tremendously, but it was Christ that completed the recipe. Once I started to bring him into my life and into my suffering the peace I had searched for was found. I began to truly love myself, to see my gifts and talents, to recognize I had a purpose and mission on this Earth. When I truly brought Christ into my anxiety and depression, that is when I gained control of them. Since then, it hasn’t just been my faith and relationship with Christ that has grown, but also has my power over my anxiety. In the past couple of years I have faced many personal struggles, external challenges, and battles with anxiety, and at one point found myself depressed again, but through the growth that I experienced while seeking virtuous ways to manage my mental health, I have been able to maintain control of my emotions rather than my emotions controlling me.
There is so much more that can be said, but if there is one take away from all of this it is that you can manage anxiety and depression with virtue when you seek to allow yourself to grow. Allow yourself to grow in wholesome ways that strengthen your will and help you implement a new way of living that is rooted in bringing peace and joy into your life through the activities and support that promote a life focused on finding the beauty God created. Find yourself in that beauty, and you will also find Christ. He knows suffering better than anyone and he will help you carry that cross that may seem impossible to carry. It is He that will give you the graces and strength to grow in virtue when you feel like all is lost. Allow yourself to grow in humility, orderliness, fortitude, perseverance, optimism, and patience so that you may begin a new journey with these internal struggles. A journey where you are no longer controlled but rather where you control and have the power to decide the outcome. I promise you this, you can overcome it, and you will. Believe in your ability and that you possess the skills to grow and obtain spiritual and mental peace. Remember to use your armor, keep it close and regularly use it for there will be many battles, but in the end you will have won the war, and Christ will bring you rest.
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