Anxiety vs Spirituality - doesn't mean I have no testimony.

 I struggle with attending church because of my General Anxiety Disorder coupled with Social Anxiety as well as Major Depressive Disorder.  I have strong faith in God.  I feel his presence but being at church sets off all my warning systems.  Many people downplay what I say with words like, "You can get up on stage and perform for people, how can it be any different being around people?" (Remember stage is scripted, I know everything I'm supposed to do from tons of rehearsal. It's muscle memory)

There are lots of reasons but let's go back to the disorder itself and figure it out. 

The amygdala:

What is the amygdala?

Your amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure inside of your brain. It’s part of a larger network in your brain called the limbic system. When it comes to your survival, your amygdala and limbic system are extremely important. These are parts of your brain that automatically detect danger. They also play a role in behavior, emotional control and learning.

Fear is the main emotion that the amygdala is known to control. That’s why your amygdala is so important to survival. It processes things you see or hear and uses that input to learn what’s dangerous. If you encounter something similar in the future, your amygdala will cause you to feel fear or similar emotions.

However, research shows that the amygdala contributes to more than just anxiety or fear. It also plays a role in the following:

 

·       Aggression.

 

·       Learning through rewards and punishment.

 

·       Handling and using implicit (unconscious) memory, which allows you to remember how to do certain things without remembering how you learned them (like riding a bike or tying your shoes).

 

·       Social communication and understanding, including how you interpret someone’s intentions from how they talk or act).

 

·       Emotions that relate to parenting and caregiving.

 

·       Emotions we connect to memories.

 

·       Learned behaviors related to addiction.    

 https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24894-amygdala

In the case of someone with my disorder, the amygdala works overtime.  It doesn't shut off properly when other parts of the brain are supposed to take over.  This leads to an almost constant state of "Fight or Flight" syndrome.  So, it's not a tiny worry or a little anxiety.  My brain thinks attacks are imminent at almost any time.  Very few situations allow me to feel truly safe.  My home, for example, feels safe almost all the time.  My dear wife, particularly when I'm alone with her, makes me feel safe.  My children and grandchildren do but to a slightly lesser extent and partly due to my constant worry about how to help them be the amazing people I know they can be.

 

So why then does church make me feel anxious and extremely fearful.  I'm old enough to have been in many different congregations and met many good people.  However, many people at church feel the need to display their righteousness on their chest so to speak.  Church is supposed to be a hospital for the soul, but most people see it

as a place for "good" people to gather.  This leads to a subconscious need for people who don't seem to conform to be judged.  Because church has developed their programs and culture around their beliefs, the culture and programs become a litmus test for perceived righteousness in other.  This changes the feeling from one of welcome and love to one of distrust of anyone different.  This can lead to a feeling of hostility towards someone who looks or acts differently.

It doesn't make the Church itself untrue or not righteous, but it does destroy the welcoming nature of the people with in.

For someone who has a mental illness this is like being immunocompromised and walking into an isolated quarantine zone with no protective gear.  You pick up each little sideways glance, each passive aggressive comment even if they aren't directed at you.  They cut like knives, and you feel the need to run.

It's also a place for small talk.  Small talk is essentially social exercises that people do to show that they want to talk to you but only on a surface level.  It makes the person who engages in it feel like they've tried to be nice.  But it's also mostly insincere. 

"How are you?" Is a common phrase used.  But the person asking it doesn't expect a list of good AND bad things in the answer.  They want to hear.

"Fine! How are you?"

They might talk about the weather, which is easily seen if one looks out the window.  It's useless.  And for most people it's harmless chatting and innocuous.

For someone who is stressed to extremes by every social interaction, it's a type of torture because not only are you fighting the urge to run away at every moment, but this conversation is also totally unnecessary and leading nowhere.

A church leader who I have talked about my mental health to and even sent an email several years ago to, stating that I very much needed to be given space, ignores what I’ve asked and forces me to engage in such conversations.  My dear wife has also told him that HE, personally, makes me anxious but he doesn’t stop.

Before he was called to be a leader in our church, he never spoke to me.  But it seems that he decided that I was a special problem that he was going to fix himself.  My first interview with him he began with methods of guilt and manipulation mostly by telling me how much the congregation needed me there.  Making sure that I knew that I was letting them all down when my fears kept me from attending.  I desperately tried to explain what it was like in my mind to him, but he just kept circling back to how much everyone else needed me there all of the time.  At this point he decided to up the pressure by bringing my wife in and trying to tell me how much I was letting her down.  This was my private interview with my church leader.  He was tearing me down for my brain being broken and my difficulty being able to overcome it.  To finish he began to tell me that if I came more to church and read my scriptures and prayed enough, I would be cured.  This was his real point.  He was saying all along that the only reason I had these problems was a lack of Faith.

Faith is what saved me from unaliving myself in 2013.  Faith is what keeps me from succumbing to those depressive thoughts every day.  I knew who I was but now I knew that this church leader would never consider me worthy.

In the months after I struggled worse than before and actually came to a point where I needed to be given some space so that I could build up the strength to try to make it to church.  I wanted to be there but I needed to feel as invisible as possible to do so.

I composed an email to this leader saying that I needed space.  I CC’d a few other leaders.  It was sent late at night so it wouldn't be seen until morning.

Sure enough, the leader in question showed up on my doorstep unannounced the next day with his counselor.  This was my safe space.  It felt like an invasion, or an ambush.  It was the opposite of what I'd asked.  I hid in my bedroom with the lights off and the covers over my head and my dear wife turned them away.  After that he began to try to create special mini meetings with just him to try to teach me and rebuild the testimony that he believed that I had lost.  He'd do this and then say, "No pressure."  Anytime you say, "No pressure." You're too late.  You already put the pressure on.  So, I went long stretches not able to attend because now I wasn't just afraid of the regular people talking to me.  Now I was afraid of him.  He is trying his best but somehow can't see what he's doing to me.

During a period when I began to develop a tic from one of my medications, I made it to church.  I was sitting by my wife.  He saw me and shot straight over to me.  I politely shook his offered hand.  He tried to build me up by saying how strong I was to be there. Over and over.  Extending the interaction as long as possible.  All the while my leg began to bounce (my tic) harder and harder.  I had to put my hands on it to try to keep it from jumping so high.  My wife added her hand to mine to try to help too.  All I needed was for him to say “Hi” and shake my hand and go but in his mind he needed to have a full conversation right up until the start of the meeting.  I know that from his perspective he NEEDED that so he could feel like he was doing his job.  But it took none of what I'd said to him into account.  It showed no empathy for what I go through every day.

To him and others, I'm not active in church. 

To them, that must be due to a lack of spirituality on my part.  They don't see me getting ready every Saturday evening.  Showering, shaving.  Making sure I have clean dress socks and a clean and ironed shirt.  Sometimes I pull my clothes out and hang them off my dresser to make it easier the next morning.

They don't see me lying there trying so hard to sleep each Saturday night.  Almost never being able to do so because of how fearful I am of being among the people there.   Even the kind ones make me afraid, but this particular ward is also full of many people who have looked down on me for being a stay-at-home father.  Their kids have treated mine terribly since we were put into this ward.  And the kids likely learned this from hearing their parents.  As they've adjusted the boundaries, we've been isolated geographically from anyone who lives near us.  We are at the end of a tiny peninsula of land that ends with us.  Just our side of the street for several blocks.  On the opposite side of the street is another Stake entirely.  Our backyard neighbors are in a different ward. 

My grandfather served on several stake realignment committees and explained that the first thing they try to balance is how many Melchizedek Priesthood holders are in each ward.  Then families and youth etc. are considered.  So, 1.  Me.  They drew a tiny peninsula around my side of the street because they wanted one more Melchizedek Priesthood holder in their ward.  My wife who goes with the flow usually and doesn't complain, she has cried because of how isolated we feel.  She wants to move but because of how long it took us to climb out of the debt we incurred from my failed business, housing prices are simply too high for us to responsibly move.  Plus, we have 8 and a half years left of our mortgage.  I'm 50 and Tina is getting close.  Taking out a new 30-year mortgage would be financially irresponsible.   This is where we're staying.

 

Recently my wife told this leader that HE makes me anxious.  Still, the next time he saw me at my son's play at high school he rushed to talked to me.  I answered his how are you question and tried to walk back to my family, but he pursued me.  More small talk.  One question was so unnecessary.   He asked, "Are you excited to see your son?"

 

What was I going to say?  It's obvious I was because I was braving the crowds just to be there.  If I had replied, "No, I came to watch him fail miserably." He'd have been shocked.

 

He was asking me questions because he needed to feel like he was doing his job as my church leader.  Fulfilling his needs.  I finally managed to break away, but he didn't stop looking over at me.  You could see in his eyes that he was compelled to try again. 

He did.  He walked over to my 2nd son and shook his hand.  My son now attends church at a young single adult ward. After briefly talking to my son, he turned his attention back to me. And forced me to endure several more minutes of circular small talk about the play.

I was in full panic attack mode.  The whole play I clung so hard to my wife's hand.  I was afraid that I might have hurt her I squeezed so hard.  Most of the time I tried to make myself small and put my head on her shoulder.  This made it difficult to see the play.  Luckily, I had done this play before and knew when to look up so that I didn't miss my son's parts in the show.  That's why I was there.  But my night was destroyed.  By a man who had an agenda.  A man who never spoke to me before he made me a special project or goal.  I believe that he may think that he alone is capable of curing me or that somehow his position in our church makes it so he has a special relationship with me that no one else has.  But one thing he doesn't have is empathy or the ability to listen. 

 

Even at this moment I have been up all night writing these things down.  Trying to work through them.  I've shaved and showered, my clothes are ready, but I don't know if I will be able to find the strength to put them on. 

 

I took a sleeping pill, but my anxiety and fear are so strong that it has been completely ineffective.  It's 5 am.  The dread gets worse as each minute rolls by.  If I make it, will I be able to get in and out safely or will I be cornered and put on the spot.  Who will stare at the strange stay-at-home dad (A bad thing in the culture of our church) and wonder what's wrong with him.  The same ones who said, "Oh, it’s great what you're doing with your kids staying home" but ignoring me and my boys for play dates unless my wife called them to arrange it.  Ignoring me in the PTA when I signed up for committees and only calling me when the trucks for the fundraisers needed to be unloaded or the book fair needed to be set up.  Making me just a donkey.  Fighting to finally let me help with the book fair itself.  Many of those people are in this ward.  You can see it in their eyes when they see me.  Then there are the ones who are nicer but only want that on the surface small talk.  That's OK if they want to just wave or say “Hi” but they extend it into a conversation about nothing that makes me feel like I'm lighting myself on fire.  And since the ward leader says I'm needed so badly what he's really asking is for me to light myself on fire to keep the rest of the congregation warm.  Maybe, when they ask how I'm doing, I should tell them.  "I'm completely stressed out, there are too many people here.  It feels like being trapped in a room full of bees and I’m one mistake away from them swarming me and stinging me to death."  And then watch as they suddenly become uncomfortable having to listen to my struggles.  But that's not right.  That's impolite to ruin their day.  Or the worse thing is for me to finally be pushed too far and instead of retreating in "flight" mode I become angry and berate someone in front of everyone, losing all control and ruining the spirit of reverence that should be at church.

 

I can't let that happen. I can't destroy the atmosphere with my broken mind.  So, we'll see.  Maybe in the hour or two left I'll finally sleep and gain enough strength to make it.  Because despite all of this, I still have faith in the gospel.  I still believe in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.  I want to take the sacrament.  I want to hear the words over the pulpit.  I just need to do it as unnoticed as possible.

Getting some stuff out, I bet no one will ever see.

I've got to write down my thoughts about my wife's family.  Mostly their father but all of them.  Their father is a sensitive subject.  They grew up with all of these rules of when he allowed himself to be available to them.   For example, it was considered a sin to talk to him while he was watching or reading the news.  It also was unforgivable for him to be interrupted during a sporting event on television.  From the talks I've heard with my wife's sisters he was especially dismissive of their needs and concerns.  Yet despite his disconnect with his children he was still so controlling that he could often be cruel in the way he laid down the law and criticized his children for their flaws.  He's judgmental but since he knew little of what their actual situations were, he was simply jumping to conclusions and putting people down.  He does this with almost everyone that I've seen since I married into this family.  His children often apologize to each other, their spouses, and their children for his behavior.

It usually goes like this...

"How could your father say something like that to me or to someone else?"

"Dad, was being a jerk." (I've heard them use the term 'Ass' on occasion).

 

 "But that's just dad and he'll never change." 

It's almost a mantra.  This repeated meditation that they do to keep sane.  I don't know which is worse.  That they feel their father is a jerk, or that he's incapable of change.  It breaks my heart.

As for me.  I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Social Anxiety.  Being around my father in-law is much like jumping into a hornet’s nest while doused in gasoline and letting him light the kerosene on fire.  It wounds me everything.  He talks down to me.  He asks me what I'm up to but proceeds to not listen as he is simply waiting for an opening to let loose his next criticism of me and my life.  He does many of these things at vulnerable times as ways to say I told you so.

One example:

In 2003 my wife became pregnant.   It was planned, in fact we spent many hours fasting and praying that this was the right choice.  We felt very strongly that this was what God wanted for us.  Things started to go wrong though.  My wife experienced bleeding that was excessive and upon receiving an ultrasound it appeared to come from a dying portion of the placenta.  We were at a different OB/Gyn than usual because we were told our preferred provider didn't deliver babies at the hospital that our new insurance covered.  After hearing the new doctor's recommendations, we talked about our options but also decided to get a second opinion as to the best treatment plan.  When we went to my wife's old doctor with all the records from the newer provider, he felt the diagnosis and treatment plan should be something different.   He also knew that after my first child was born the next 2 babies' placentas looked NOT great each one a bit smaller and starting to die around the edges almost as if the stretching of the poly hydramnios from our first child had damaged the uterus and it had trouble sustaining a full-sized placenta.  We also learned that he could deliver at our hospital but since it was far away from his practice, he only did it for established patients who were in our situation, so we switched back to him partly because he was well known for handling high risk pregnancies.

Still our baby decided to have complications at about 24 weeks despite the progress that his treatment plan gave us until then.  They did some injections; we began to go in for daily exams and non-stress tests.  Then at about 24 1/2 weeks gestation we were sent to the hospital for a stress test that included Pitocin.  At first things seemed fine but the nurse saw things on the monitors that made her excuse herself to call the doctor for a possible early delivery.   While that happened, my wife felt something wrong and then the blood started coming.  It wasn't long before she was in the operating room having an emergency C section.

No one predicted these events.  They couldn’t, they were a convoluted and intricate set of coincidences that brought this to this point. 

Our son lived most of his 6 month life from mid-January 2004 to July 31st 2004 in a hospital.   At the end when my wife and I knew he was only taking more and more steps backward and almost none forward my brilliant wife asked to bring him home on Hospice care for whatever time he had left.  We were broken.  My father in-law came with his wife to the hospital while we were making the arrangements to bring him home and we were put in a special room with our son that was designed for families in our situation.  We'd explained the facts to them multiple times before, we talked about it again in light of our decision to bring him home on hospice care.  It was like he didn't hear our words or care about our feelings.   He stopped mid conversation.  Looked away from my wife and glared down at me.  His eyes accusing me as he said, "You shouldn't have gotten her pregnant so soon after the son before."  He wanted me to know that my son's dying was purely my fault.  And he chose that moment, when I was at my lowest, to tell me.  You could tell that he'd been waiting for his chance to say it.

It was vile and cruel.  Did not help and since he had no medical training or real knowledge of what happened to my wife, any of it, this came from a place of hatred for me.  He hated that I was the stay-at-home parent and my wife worked.  He didn't care that I was the one living my life in between the NICU and home.  Trying to maintain the home and take care of my other children and not neglect them while simultaneously trying to make sure my wife had what she needed to continue to work, or that I somehow did this and got my back yard tilled and level and planted grass while doing everything else. 

I was at fault for everything.   I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, he'd never had a kind word for me since my wife and I announced our engagement.  To him we were being rude to allow it to happen so soon after her brother and sister got married.  And for years after he was cruel.  He didn't approve of how I put in my front lawn and stood there making jokes about it and laughing about it with his wife (she didn't really laugh back but just stayed silent).  Many instances had occurred like this through the years but that day in the hospital, I decided that he no longer would have my respect.  I had tried to gain his but realized this was impossible.  I began to keep my distance.  Being near him fueled my mental illnesses in ways that no other being on earth could.  My wife realized the trauma and even though I wanted her to go to her family events, she stopped making me attend unless I felt strong enough to do so.

One year, it fell on my wife (and I) to plan the weeklong family reunion in July.  Everyone was expected to be in attendance for the week or there would be guilt.  This disregards the obligations to spouses’ families or any vacations that each child might want to take with their own small families to create their own traditions.  Many people only had 2 weeks vacation coming to them each year and that meant the Bailey family felt entitled to exactly half of that. 

I helped my wife brainstorm of where to hold it.  What she wanted to do.  Activities she wanted to do with her family for a long time were brought up.  Playing a family softball game was on top of her list for years, so was visiting the local airplane museum (something desperately wanted to do with her father)  but since she's a busy nurse and had such limited time to plan and carry out these things without taking even more vacation time to prepare, she needed to be close.  Close for set up and prep and close to each activity she had planned.  She made a decision and asked her parents to put up the money for the reservations of the local camping area that had a group site large enough.

Her father was livid.  He hated that it wasn't to be journey far away like other years.  He decided to look up the reviews of the area to try to find fault and like any place he could find them, there were always bad reviews on the internet, he found bad reviews despite the good reviews also on the sites.  I had given my wife my opinions because our ward had camped there with no problems on many occasions, I'd attended overnight trainings there as a Scout leader, and one side of my family used the spot every year for their modest family reunion.  Tina tried to explain this to her father, but he wouldn't listen.  He berated her and belittled her and made it clear that this choice wasn't good enough for HIS family.  That call ended with my wife broken and in tears.  This wasn't the first time I'd seen her father do this to her. 

The week before our wedding I was taking her home to spend the week preparing for the event.  While driving I suggested that she ask her father to lay his hands on her and give her a father's blessing using his authority in the Melchizedek priesthood that many men of our faith hold including myself.  She burst into tears.  She began to recount how her father always criticized her so much.  It felt like she was saying that he'd treated her like his love and approval was conditional on how well she lived up to everything he expected from her.  This was one of the biggest reasons she chose to go to a school that forced her to live away from home.  She needed to be away from her father's toxicity.  But the worst happened several months before we met.  She'd had a frightening experience at her apartment.   And she was worried that she might not even be able to have the strength to be there any longer.  She decided to go home that weekend and ask her father for a blessing to help her.  But true to fashion, her father never gave her a chance.  He spent most of the time complaining about her choices, especially about her boyfriend (not me yet) that she'd had through high school.  He was a year younger and still in High School but mostly,

He just didn't like him or the idea of his daughter dating anyone.  My wife never asked for the blessing she needed.  The fear she had about her apartment was nothing compared to the way her father treated her.

Back to the reunion planning.  After he broke her again that night, I could no longer take it.  I couldn't sleep.  Instead, I went to my computer and wrote an email.  I discussed how terribly he'd treated his daughter on so many occasions, I mentioned his constant criticism of me. And really let him have it.

A few days later he responded.

He acted shocked that I would dare talk to him this way.  He threw in a few attempts to gaslight my issues with him that I was somehow in the wrong.  He said "no offense" to my family or the time we had spent camping there but this place just wasn't good enough for his family.  (By the way if you have to say "no offense" it's already too late and only makes things worse.)  He finished with what he must have thought was an apology, but it merely said that he was sorry that I felt this way but then listed many reasons why he did nothing wrong and was perfectly justified in his behavior.  So, no real apology, just more gaslighting.

A few days later I decided that I'd overstepped by saying things that rightly should have come from my wife.  So, I replied saying simply that I was sorry because I shouldn't have said what I had. Which was a half-truth.  The things needed saying but they really need to come from his children.  Firstly, to him I'm the lowest of the low in the family.  Not good enough.  But his children are the ones constantly having to apologize for his behavior.

I have since that day gone as close to no contact as I can.  I have panic attacks that are severe if I know that I will be forced to spend time with him.  Some have landed me in the Emergency Room because even my RN wife couldn't be sure that I wasn't having a heart attack. 

He also loves one child far beyond his others.  I have watched him spend days of these family reunions talking only about that one's accomplishment and never have heard him say a thing about each of his amazing other children.  If we go somewhere and he meets strangers, he will count down all his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  But he does so like they are trophies.  It's a bit sick because it feels more like he's saying that he impregnated his wife so many times and look what happened.   They're like trophies of his manhood.  I've almost never heard him say anything about the work his wife did to raise them.  His emphasis is on his contribution. 

 

Sadly, I'm not the only one with these issues.  My wife's closest sister's husband has had to have words with him and one time according to eye-witness reports my wife's father stepped up to this brother in law as if he intended to strike him.

Tina's oldest brother has a wife that constantly complains behind her father in-law's back about his favorite child.  She nicknamed him "The Golden Child" and says he's the one who can do no wrong.  Sadly, her husband (the oldest) isn't that child, and she seems to really want him to be.  Also, she is just as toxic as the father in-law she complains about.  Overly critical, judgmental, talks behind people's backs and she also becomes very passive-aggressive.   It's almost like the oldest son couldn't get the approval he needed from his father and

married a copy of his father for validation.

One of Tina's younger brothers has a wife that has had many of the same problems with this family that I've had.  Those are her stories so I won't go into them, but she also has anxiety issues which have forced her to go no contact with this family as much as she can.

I do everything I can not to put my wife in the middle of this.  I try to encourage her to spend time with them and still have some sort of relationship with them.  Most times she comes home upset about the way her father talked to her or to our children or grandchildren.  I deeply feel that he lacks empathy for others and seems to have an over inflated sense of self-righteousness.

Ultimately, I don't think he will choose to change unless his children finally, calmly, tell him about all these problems.  His daughters need to explain how he mostly ignored them unless they did something wrong because women seem to be 2nd class citizens in his family. They need to tell him that not only is his "advice" (criticism), not been asked for but comes from a place where he hasn't even listened to the problems in the first place and often isn't qualified to give said advice.

They need him to show love with no conditions.  They need a father.  They need true apologies.  Not excuses for his behavior. There's not much time left.  He's getting older.  Worse, he'll likely be preceded in death by his oldest daughter who is fighting stage 4 cancer that will eventually be terminal.  Unless he has some major health emergency beforehand.   Either way there's not a lot of time for him to fix things and he is the common denominator in these problems.