Anxiety & Depression

A therapist has diagnosed me with anxiety and depression as “mood disorders”, so my experience of these disorders is not serious enough to warrant medication or mild enough to do nothing. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been the most effective treatment to date, but perhaps talk therapy to unpack my past will be beneficial in the future.

When I feel anxious, my neck tenses, and I can feel my heart beat like a drum in my chest. When depressed, there is a perpetual weight behind my eyes, not heavy enough to let me sleep and not light enough to let me find interest in things. When I experience both simultaneously, the opposing forces paralyze me.

Some factors are built in my very nature. I see some genetic predispositions for anxiety and depression in myself and my family, and thyroid issues sometimes require medical care.

Other factors are environmental. Growing up, there was one way to live out my spirituality, one way to live out my sexuality, and one way to be: Roman Catholic. I add that word Roman, to stress the orthodox nature of how we lived our faith growing up. Not only did we attend weekly Church services, but we also went on retreats, confessed our sins, sacrificed during advent and lent, attended Catholic school, and prayed daily. Any deviance from this straight and narrow path was wrong; and I was often terrified I might go to Hell. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a prominent book in our household, lists a number of “mortal sins”, which can lead to damnation: killing, missing weekly mass, masturbation, sex outside of marriage, homosexual activity, etc. etc. The list is quite extensive. Now, not all Catholics adhere to this, but this is their official position on morality.

I don't consider religion a bad thing in and of itself. People believe a lot of things; but I think it can be a negative influence when it acts as a cage. If religion is a belief system with values you don’t identify with, and you feel stuck, that’s scary. You begin to lose yourself. When other religions/philosophies are seen as deviance from “the truth”, there is little room to grow and explore. The bars of my cage grew stronger during my time as a seminarian. We would study other belief systems, but only insofar as it enabled us to defend our own. For example, we would acknowledge that some do not believe in God. Then we would study St. Thomas Aquinas’s 5 proofs for God’s existence so that we could rise to God’s defense when encountering the wayward Atheist. We wouldn’t actually dive into why people don’t believe in God without the bias of trying to convert someone.

Combine a young kid with an intense spirituality and repressed sex drive, and you get a highly frustrated individual. I grew up mostly interested in girls until I spent years in seminary where I also developed an attraction for a fellow male seminarian. My understanding of how to feel about this came from my religion: God loves you despite your attractions, but it would be sinful to act on them. I remember many a night crying myself to sleep hating that I felt this way towards him since that feeling for girls was the natural way. I thought my feelings were disordered.

Now I know some people truly identify in their hearts with Catholicism, and that’s great. For me, the way I felt about guys became incompatible with that religion. Try as I might, I could find nothing wrong with loving whoever I loved. Also, as my standard of evidence grew, so did my critique of the Bible. I couldn’t read about Jesus’s miracles and believe that they actually happened. Like my boy, Carl Sagan, I came to believe that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

I’m now 28, single, and agnostic/secular Buddhist. I have experimented with girls and guys. I’ve studied many religions and adopted many different spiritual practices in an effort to find what works for me. I no longer hold the opinion that one religion has the truth, nor do I envision a love between straight individuals as the only kind of love that is natural. My world has broadened. I’ve achieved some sort of open-mindedness, but my journey is still only beginning.

A big eye-opener for me is that the experience of anxiety and depression is never-ending. There will never be a day when those emotional states are not a part of me. It kind of makes me think of Batman needing the Joker in order to grow and prove himself. Perhaps having these negative tendencies will constantly give me room to grow and learn.

Anxiety is fear of some future event, and depression is regret over the past.

My therapists, in one shape or form, have all told me to “live in the moment”. My latest session was helpful af: “Spencer,” he said, “we always have the choice to come back to the present moment when we feel anxious.”

I nodded in agreement and he continued, “But in order for this to stick, you have to talk kindly to yourself when you successfully return to the present. Say, ‘there you go, Spencer. There you go.’”

Getting to the present moment is a tricky thing. I don’t like being in the moment. I’d prefer to be writing for a living, living in my dream home, traveling the globe, and feeling good constantly with plenty of positive reinforcement. But I live the corporate life now. I’m single now. I feel anxious and depressed a lot now. I’m overweight now. I struggle with my identity now.

But everyday, through meditation, singing, conversation with friends and family, and general life experience, I grow closer to my ideal of living in the present moment. My brother told me a neat Buddhist story. Some guy is chased by a wolf until he tumbles off a cliffside but luckily grabs hold of a branch as he’s falling. He looks down and sees another wolf. He's trapped. But before his eyes is a delicious-looking strawberry. The guy looks at it and thinks to himself, what a lovely strawberry.