Hi all,
I have just joined the forum tonight because I was looking through google for a place where I could ask questions about mental health issues and hopefully find some advice. This seems like a good place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I wasn't quite where to post this as I think it falls under different catergories. Also I'll try to keep this as brief as possible without giving too much of a vague picture. My name is Matt and I have been struggling with depression, once with a manic episode in the distant past (I was originally diagnosed with bi-polar disorder) but it is usually experienced as troughs rather than highs. The depression set in when I was 16 years old (I am 25 now) and it was centered around spiritual issues that got quite dark. From around the age of 12 or 13 I was very serious about my faith as a Christian. I was brought up in the Catholic faith but I didn't really feel it move me very much until I became a teenager. The initial experience with Christianity was one of fear, for I had up until this point thought that everything in the Bible was love-invoking. When I read it for myself through curiousity it scared me as it seemed to sometimes portray God as wrathful or at least as something to be feared. This lead me to try and get my life in order with Christianity, and I went through a deep conversion experience where all my old tendencies seemed to disappear and I felt like a cleansed new being. The strength of that experience was undeniable. I went through years of following Jesus, sometimes feeling joyful and in the presence of God and at othertimes ashamed of my shortcomings. There were often tears of repentance for things I had done.
What happened when I was 16 was that I began to feel a conflict between my faith and the social world going on around me. Most of my friends were not as bothered as I was about spiritual things. The strain was getting on top of me and I half wondered if I could live a life without religion but this hurt me since it had become the core essence of my life. The depression first appeared after a night when I had a gig playing drums with a band. Instead of just being immersed in the emotion and spirit of the music as usual, there was a strange awareness of myself, a sense of pride setting in that I had not noticed before. It was as if it was no longer just the music, but also me wanting to bring attention and acclaim to my talents. With this feeling, a sense of sadness arose, it felt like I was quickly drifting away from God. His presence seemed to be departing. This was a horrible experience where things went from being so peaceful to this overwhelming melancholy appearing almost out of nowhere. I felt like I was falling into a black hole and all sorts of notions and thoughts came over me. I read the Bible but it appeared like a dead book, there was no light and spirit in the words anymore. Then things got worse. An awareness of evil came over me. I felt like a dark presence was engulfing me, one of confusing, fearful and blasphemous nature. I thought I was becoming evil and was getting pulled in to the dark side of life. It's hard to describe but there was things going through my head like 'good is evil and evil is good'; there was just this complete moral confusion where I couldn't tell what was true and what was false. It was a horrendous experience. The worse thing about it was that I was feeling sad before but now I was just feeling blank and numb, and every movement of my body felt excruciatingly difficult and heavy. There was a sense of contraction, like my being seemed to go from being expansive to just being totally identified to the body. The fear and dread just completely ruined me. I was barely able to function at this point, my mental world was just so filled with these horrible notions.
I went through about 6 months of total despair, really wanting to end my life (but too afraid to commit suicide) because I thought it was totally over for me, I had lost all hope in God for I thought he would never forgive me. I kept looking at the bible but all I found in it was discouraging passages about the unforgivable sin and final apostasy. So I just sat about for a long time and felt terrible. After a great deal of despair I finally said to myself "I may as well just try and see if I can live by blocking God and religion out of my thoughts". This seemed to work for a while, I started socialising again and felt some sense of relief. But it was always there in the background.
Since that time I feel I have been pulled in to a search to come out of this dungeon but I haven't suceeded. In previous years I came to believe that there couldn't possibly be any true religion except Christianity. But at this point I began to question this belief and started looking at world religions and philosophies, hoping to find in them some better understanding of spirituality in general. I read hundreds of books and internet articles about Hinduism, Buddhism, Mysticism and higher consciousness. It surprised me because I felt that some of religious experiences that were being described in various texts I had already had glimpses of during my years in the Christian faith. Things like following commandments like "Love your neighbour as yourself" felt like a chore at first, but they opened up to reveal that there was no difference between myself and others. There was just this joyous compassionate openess. I loved it more than anything at the time and I would do anything to return to an almost effortless, natural sense of goodness about everything.
Fast forward to today. I often have recurring depressive episodes where I get down about religious issues but I am writing today to try and describe some serious worries I have been harbouring. I came across a book by the late Mr M. Peck called 'People of the Lie'. He was a psychotherapist and wrote the book to describe several cases where he was sure he confronting real existential evil in people. He described their attributes and ways. This worried me because it seemed to reflect a lot of the ways I feel I behave. He describes coniving lying behaviour and the tendency of evil people to avoid their conscience by forcing all of their shortcomings in to the depths of the unconscious. This hit me because I felt this was about my nature. The dark experience I had 10 years ago seemed to have scarred me to extent that I still feel as if I am a malevolent person, or at least I have bad things still in my nature. It disturbed me to read how these particular persons seem to act good all the time, whilst lacking the inherent real goodness, like pharisees in the extreme. So I am really asking for help, I am so confused and I don't really know whats true about me anymore. I want to change and come back to goodness and God and the spiritual life, but it feels like its so hard to break through out of darkness. I have tried so many times before to find God but I have never felt fufilled. Perhaps some of you reading this may not believe in God; I am not trying to push you back as I once myself went through a long period of disbelieving in any sort of divinity be it personal or impersonal. Again I feel that maybe this not the best place to post such a religiously inclined message.
Right, I have written enough now, thanks very much if you've managed to get this far down! I appreciated you listening.
Any help or advice would be kindly received. Cheers. M.x
I have just joined the forum tonight because I was looking through google for a place where I could ask questions about mental health issues and hopefully find some advice. This seems like a good place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I wasn't quite where to post this as I think it falls under different catergories. Also I'll try to keep this as brief as possible without giving too much of a vague picture. My name is Matt and I have been struggling with depression, once with a manic episode in the distant past (I was originally diagnosed with bi-polar disorder) but it is usually experienced as troughs rather than highs. The depression set in when I was 16 years old (I am 25 now) and it was centered around spiritual issues that got quite dark. From around the age of 12 or 13 I was very serious about my faith as a Christian. I was brought up in the Catholic faith but I didn't really feel it move me very much until I became a teenager. The initial experience with Christianity was one of fear, for I had up until this point thought that everything in the Bible was love-invoking. When I read it for myself through curiousity it scared me as it seemed to sometimes portray God as wrathful or at least as something to be feared. This lead me to try and get my life in order with Christianity, and I went through a deep conversion experience where all my old tendencies seemed to disappear and I felt like a cleansed new being. The strength of that experience was undeniable. I went through years of following Jesus, sometimes feeling joyful and in the presence of God and at othertimes ashamed of my shortcomings. There were often tears of repentance for things I had done.
What happened when I was 16 was that I began to feel a conflict between my faith and the social world going on around me. Most of my friends were not as bothered as I was about spiritual things. The strain was getting on top of me and I half wondered if I could live a life without religion but this hurt me since it had become the core essence of my life. The depression first appeared after a night when I had a gig playing drums with a band. Instead of just being immersed in the emotion and spirit of the music as usual, there was a strange awareness of myself, a sense of pride setting in that I had not noticed before. It was as if it was no longer just the music, but also me wanting to bring attention and acclaim to my talents. With this feeling, a sense of sadness arose, it felt like I was quickly drifting away from God. His presence seemed to be departing. This was a horrible experience where things went from being so peaceful to this overwhelming melancholy appearing almost out of nowhere. I felt like I was falling into a black hole and all sorts of notions and thoughts came over me. I read the Bible but it appeared like a dead book, there was no light and spirit in the words anymore. Then things got worse. An awareness of evil came over me. I felt like a dark presence was engulfing me, one of confusing, fearful and blasphemous nature. I thought I was becoming evil and was getting pulled in to the dark side of life. It's hard to describe but there was things going through my head like 'good is evil and evil is good'; there was just this complete moral confusion where I couldn't tell what was true and what was false. It was a horrendous experience. The worse thing about it was that I was feeling sad before but now I was just feeling blank and numb, and every movement of my body felt excruciatingly difficult and heavy. There was a sense of contraction, like my being seemed to go from being expansive to just being totally identified to the body. The fear and dread just completely ruined me. I was barely able to function at this point, my mental world was just so filled with these horrible notions.
I went through about 6 months of total despair, really wanting to end my life (but too afraid to commit suicide) because I thought it was totally over for me, I had lost all hope in God for I thought he would never forgive me. I kept looking at the bible but all I found in it was discouraging passages about the unforgivable sin and final apostasy. So I just sat about for a long time and felt terrible. After a great deal of despair I finally said to myself "I may as well just try and see if I can live by blocking God and religion out of my thoughts". This seemed to work for a while, I started socialising again and felt some sense of relief. But it was always there in the background.
Since that time I feel I have been pulled in to a search to come out of this dungeon but I haven't suceeded. In previous years I came to believe that there couldn't possibly be any true religion except Christianity. But at this point I began to question this belief and started looking at world religions and philosophies, hoping to find in them some better understanding of spirituality in general. I read hundreds of books and internet articles about Hinduism, Buddhism, Mysticism and higher consciousness. It surprised me because I felt that some of religious experiences that were being described in various texts I had already had glimpses of during my years in the Christian faith. Things like following commandments like "Love your neighbour as yourself" felt like a chore at first, but they opened up to reveal that there was no difference between myself and others. There was just this joyous compassionate openess. I loved it more than anything at the time and I would do anything to return to an almost effortless, natural sense of goodness about everything.
Fast forward to today. I often have recurring depressive episodes where I get down about religious issues but I am writing today to try and describe some serious worries I have been harbouring. I came across a book by the late Mr M. Peck called 'People of the Lie'. He was a psychotherapist and wrote the book to describe several cases where he was sure he confronting real existential evil in people. He described their attributes and ways. This worried me because it seemed to reflect a lot of the ways I feel I behave. He describes coniving lying behaviour and the tendency of evil people to avoid their conscience by forcing all of their shortcomings in to the depths of the unconscious. This hit me because I felt this was about my nature. The dark experience I had 10 years ago seemed to have scarred me to extent that I still feel as if I am a malevolent person, or at least I have bad things still in my nature. It disturbed me to read how these particular persons seem to act good all the time, whilst lacking the inherent real goodness, like pharisees in the extreme. So I am really asking for help, I am so confused and I don't really know whats true about me anymore. I want to change and come back to goodness and God and the spiritual life, but it feels like its so hard to break through out of darkness. I have tried so many times before to find God but I have never felt fufilled. Perhaps some of you reading this may not believe in God; I am not trying to push you back as I once myself went through a long period of disbelieving in any sort of divinity be it personal or impersonal. Again I feel that maybe this not the best place to post such a religiously inclined message.
Right, I have written enough now, thanks very much if you've managed to get this far down! I appreciated you listening.
Any help or advice would be kindly received. Cheers. M.x
