Who didn’t want to share this one? Me. I didn’t want to talk about it.

This one may come as a surprise to some of you, but I thought it was important to share about my struggle with depression.

How did it all start?

It all started around intern year, but if I’m honest, it was years in the making. At that time though, there was just a series of events that stacked up and then completely demolished me. The stressors of being a resident, having significantly less time than a 4th year medical student, and having laissez faire attitude toward my thought life just caught up to me.

What I mean by my terrible thought life is that I had allowed my negative UNTRUE thoughts to run rampant. They probably came from my well-hidden perfectionist self. All of these thoughts flooded me at once. The thoughts started out as small, singular statements that replayed over some years that didn’t even seem worthy enough to kick out of my head at the time.

In my intern year, the little drops made a little puddle (read Lake Michigan) and I drowned. Little things like, “You’re disorganized. You’re always late. You’re not consistent. You’re not smart,” and so many others made up that lake. All of these things flooded my mind at one time and beat me down and I couldn’t get up for a long time. However like I said before – I had been saying these things to myself for a while and letting the ideas float around.

I just remember being so… sad. Poor Rome would try and ask me what was going on with me and I literally couldn’t even tell him. How could I explain to him that I was tired of me and that I was at the bottom of a lake I had never seen before?

I think one of the lowest points was when I made an appointment to see a counselor because of how I was feeling and then I couldn’t make it to that appointment because I was working late unexpectedly.

It felt like there was no one that would understand and no one I wanted to talk to about it with. I felt really hopeless and small.

I was just tired… and everything felt pointless.

How did you get out?

I reached out. I spoke to some people that really helped me climb out of the water.

Rome was one of them (I eventually explained to him the nature of my aversion to myself), my mom was another one, and my marriage mentor was another one. I am eternally grateful for God putting them in my life.

I was able to share with them without the fear of judgment and initially got some counseling from them.

I was honest. When people at church asked me how I was doing I didn’t say fine. I wasn’t fine. I was the opposite of fine. I told them such (I don’t think they were expecting to get such an… honest answer from me). They prayed with me and for me. They listened to me and didn’t brush me off.

It was a LONG road. It required me to change a lot of things and take time caring for me.

How are you maintaining? 

Through this entire experience I realized that there are some things that I should keep doing to try and prevent this from happening again.

I need my morning time in the word and in prayer.

I speak the word to myself when other thoughts threaten to overwhelm me again. (Will talk more about this in my next post.)

I try to work out consistently because it makes me feel happy and accomplished.

I try to talk to my family to keep me level headed.

I have started writing a lot more again. I’ve found that this is cathartic for me. Being able to sit and give myself the freedom to say what I want is great.

I’m talking to a counselor, who is helping me out with fixing some of those thoughts.

This is such a taboo topic in medicine and in society, but we know that depression is running rampant in medicine.

If you just do a quick google search, you’ll see that our doctors have extremely high rates of suicide. We have higher rates of substance abuse disorders. We know the facts and yet, here we (physicians) are making poor decisions and not caring for ourselves.

I needed healing. God is still providing that healing even as he draws me close to him. I’m thankful.

If you have any problems with hopelessness- PLEASE reach out to a counselor or a licensed mental health provider.

Love you guys,

Lise, who’s feeling better