The Suicide Prevention Hotline Isn’t Enough

National Suicide Prevention Week. To those of us in the mental health community, this week is a mixed bag. Yes, recognition of a struggle associated with  mental illness is validating. However, when dear people, who I know mean well, post a hotline with a phone number that leads to strangers on the other end, I cringe a bit.

In the midst of trouble of any kind, I am not likely to call a stranger to share my fears or to ask for help. I suppose an exception to this rule is a tow truck company when it’s needed, but otherwise I’m most comfortable asking for help from people who love me. Those who have shown me they love me by walking through uncomfortable bits of my life with me are the people I call when my mind wages war against me. And if that war were to ever lead to a battle for my life, I cannot imagine calling for the help of a stranger in the midst of my fight. Asking for help takes a great deal of strength, and asking for help from a stranger can sometimes feel unbearable when your strength is all used up fighting for your life.

I don’t mean this to say the Suicide Hotline isn’t a wonderful thing. It is! Many people are alive today because of the hotline and I’m extremely grateful for their work. But you know what’s even better than a hotline? Community. Getting right into the middle of someone’s mess and setting up camp. Walking with people when they’re healthy and when they’re sick. Seeking out the hurting and loving them because they’re worthy of love, not because they’re a charity case or because you’re a saint. Love is the healing balm we all need. And a life is more likely to be saved when it knows it has value to people around them.

Is there a perfect equation to preventing suicide? Yes, Jesus. And how does Jesus love?

Ultimately, suicide is a choice and only the person making the choice is in control of what their decision will be. They, and only they, are responsible for their choice. However, Jesus saw many healed, and even raised to life after death, through his compassionate love for them. He walked with the hurting and loved them into healing…he didn’t avoid people experiencing pain and anguish. He devoted himself to people daily, in their mess and in their successes. What if we did the same?

You are made in the image of Christ, and therefore you are chocked-full of ways to offer love to someone who is hurting. And who knows the depth of impact of that love? Though love from a stranger on the other end of a hotline phone call is important and needed and Christ-like by nature, community and choosing daily friendship carries value that cannot be overstated. Today, rather than posting a hotline number with a hashtag and moving on with your life, consider posting YOUR number along side the hotline as another option for those friends of yours hurting. Reach out to your friends and ask questions that lead to vulnerable conversation. Take time with people, and show them their value. Being available to love the person in front of you may free up the suicide hotline for someone else, out of your scope of reach, to get the help they need.

Redefining Success in the Face of OCD

I’ve now been in therapy for about a year. I’ve enjoyed it and am not in a hurry to “graduate”, but this week’s session made it clear that the expectations I had for the timeline of my process do not align with reality. Though I didn’t realize it, I had an expectation that I would be “better” by now and moved on with my life, managing depression, anxiety and OCD with little to no effort and waving goodbye to therapy out of the rear view mirror of my life as I zoomed into a more peaceful future.

My therapist (Cris) has begun the process of “graduating” me twice. What is this process like? Rather than weekly appointments, we decrease the number of appointments to every other week or every three weeks. Both times I have attempted to graduate I was rather quickly advised to increase counseling sessions again. Yesterday Cris and I agreed to increase my therapy from every three weeks back to once a week, and I also decided to increase my dosage of Lexapro. Not exactly what I was hoping for, as I thought I was improving for good, recovering and moving on with my dang life.

Cris says treating OCD is like nailing jello to a wall. As you treat one aspect of OCD (scrupulosity, HOCD, ROCD, etc. etc. etc. ), another one, or an associated disorder like depression, pops up out of nowhere. Right now, I’m feeling 85% successful in fighting ROCD thoughts. If I’m convinced my fiance is [fill in the blank with a negative, untrue intrusive thought here, like stupid, unattractive, etc. etc. etc.], I can quickly identify that thought as an ROCD thought and choose not to mentally compulse by following the thought down a black hole of anxiety-filled thoughts, questioning whether or not I love him. I also feel pretty successful over scrupulosity thoughts, though I find another one buried somewhere deep inside of me occasionally. For example (sharing in hopes that those of you who are also fighting this disorder can breathe a sigh of relief), I took a large portion of my tithe in cash to church a couple weeks ago. I stuck the cash in my coat pocket, and forgot to put it in the offering bucket that night. When I realized I had forgotten it, I checked my coat pocket and the money was gone. I had a panic attack, as I was convinced that the Lord was angry at me for mismanaging my money. I questioned if I should replace the money with money from my savings, so the Lord would know I was willing to make the sacrifice and wanted to honor him, and I repeatedly checked the places the money could have been. I was hysterical, and the guilt center in my brain (which is overactive in people with OCD) went a little bonkers. So, though my scrupulosity symptoms have decreased substantially in the last year, they are still capable of popping up out of nowhere. And now that they are more under control (jello nailed to the wall), other issues are becoming prominent.

Most recently for me, OCD has partnered with depression in a big way. I’ve spent the last couple weeks glued to the couch when I’m not working. I feel incapable of cleaning my house or doing laundry, incapable of feeding or dressing myself, incapable of interacting with people. This has been disappointing to me because my depression had previously improved with the addition of Lexapro into my daily life. With all this recent time on the couch it was nearly inevitable that intrusive thoughts would increase, and I’ve spent more time than usual in the last few days feeling distraught and hopeless. I was, once again, afraid to scroll Facebook, for fear I would see a photo of my friends’ children and have thoughts about hurting them. This is the hardest strain of OCD thoughts for me, and I become debilitated quickly. These thoughts, partnered with depression, have now led to increased therapy and increased meds.

…And just three weeks ago we were talking “graduation”.

I don’t have a pretty way to wrap this blog entry up. This is what OCD looks like in the process. In the midst of ERT, CBT, crying on my therapist’s couch and medication, this is what not giving up looks like. And, in my opinion, more people need to talk about it. When I was diagnosed with OCD, I spent hours scanning the internet for blogs and articles written by people who also had “Pure O” (hello, obsession 😉 ), but was disappointed to find very little shared by someone with first-hand experience. There are SO MANY of us in the world, so many fighting “crazy birds” (intrusive thoughts) flying around our brains every single day. And I would have really benefited from knowing that a year into the process of treating my OCD, I could still very much be in the process. So, here I am, sharing what a day in the life, a year into treatment, has looked like for me.

Today, success looks like getting out of bed more than an hour after my alarm went off. But I got out of bed. Success looks like sitting at my desk at work with greasy hair and little makeup, devoting my strength to having shown up and attempting to continue to do my job in the midst of depression. Success looks like sharing what this process is like when I feel weak and disappointed. Because I’m alive, and I’m not giving up. As Heidi Baker says, “If you don’t give up, you win.”