Joy Farrington considers how to deal with oppressive thoughts and feelings

Joy Attmore

I rolled over and, before I had given them permission, my eyelids opened to the morning sunlight that filled my bedroom. The same heaviness that had rested on my chest at the close of yesterday's day remained firmly in place, quickly reinforcing to my awakening mind the belief that today didn't hold anything special; there was no purpose in the day ahead and I should just try and return to the unconscious world of dreaming.

My morning routine did little to shift the cloud that I felt was around me and I mentally ticked the boxes of gym, food and Bible time without finding my heart too engaged or stirred from its melancholy. There was nothing within me that was feeling motivated to do anything other than retreat. To simply retreat from life, from people, from having to answer the same repetitive questions and give the same hopeful responses; to retreat from having to try so hard every day, this seems the most favourable option.

The word failure dropped into my mind and the tendrils of my thoughts quickly snatched the edges of it, holding it in place, forcing me to look at it. I felt like a failure. As my mind began to wrap itself around this idea, I looked back; back over this past year and the long season of transition and waiting that I have been in. I must have failed, I must have got things terribly wrong for everything to be taking so long, for things to feel so hard. The thoughts closed over me and I remained there, stuck in my own self-diagnosis of woe...

This is a pretty honest description of what my mornings were beginning to look like on a regular basis just a few weeks ago. I found myself surrounded by a heaviness that I could only seem to identify as depression, as much as I didn't want to. I struggled a lot with depression throughout my teens, and although I was never clinically diagnosed, it was a very real and dark part of my life for a season. The thought began to cross my mind that maybe I was depressed, maybe it had returned, maybe some of life's recent circumstances had triggered that old darkness again. I didn't like this idea and so chose not to entertain it, however the thoughts were still present.

In true Joy style I pulled out my journal, laid on my bed and scribbled down in words that no one will read, that I didn't have to filter or spellcheck, everything that was laying heavy upon me, filling my mind and worrying my heart. Several pages later I felt somewhat lighter and better able to communicate to humans what was troubling me!

Following my long writing session I spent some time talking it all through with my fiancé, Phillip, giving voice to all of the emotions and thoughts that had been chasing each other around the hamster wheel inside of me. I found relief filling my eyes with tears as I listened to him affirm me and gently encourage my heart with the truth.

Depression is a very real thing and something that effects the mental health of many people on a daily basis. In writing this I am in no way wanting to or attempting to say that depression doesn't exist, or that it's just something people need to get over and stop moaning about, but sometimes it is something that we can be active in working to prevent.

As I sat listening to Phillip responding to my outpouring, I realized that he was right. Actually, I wasn't depressed and I am not depressed now. Sometimes what looks and feels like depression is instead more like oppression; the feeling of being heavily burdened by our worries, circumstances, troubles or anxieties. The bright side of identifying something as a burden is that burdens can be taken off, given away and surrendered so that we can walk free again.

I had begun to self-diagnose myself with a label that I had carried around as a teenager, 'I have depression and there is nothing you can do about it to make me feel any better.' That is what I had once believed and because I believed it, it was reinforced and solidified in my life at that time. Since then however I have been completely set free from depressive thought patterns and self-harming behaviour; they may be a part of my past, but they are not who I am and will not be a part of my future.

Following my heart to heart with Phillip I've tried to be a little more proactive with my thoughts, emotions and the close link between the two. On mornings where I wake up and can't seem to find the purpose in getting out of bed for the day I have a choice to make - to carry that weight or to let it go. I've tried to do a lot more letting go again recently.

This evening I went with a team from Pure Creative Arts (a non-profit that I work with in Liverpool, www.purecreativearts.co.uk) to speak at a workshop for young people about self-harm. I talked about how I had struggled with this as a teenager and had once believed that I would never be free of it, that I would always be a self-harmer, but how now I am completely free from this cycle and mind-set. Following the session, a young person disclosed to me her own struggles in this area and I was able to sit and talk with her for a while about ways to help her.

We were created to live in freedom, not bound by feelings of depression or weighed down by burdens, but truly living and thriving in the life God has given us. Today the joy of that freedom has felt more tangible than ever, as I continue to experience it in my own life, and get to witness freedom coming to others. As the name of a friend's organisation says so succinctly, let's Campaign Against Living Miserably (C.A.L.M www.thecalmzone.net).