Seeing My Childhood from an Adult Perspective

The last post was about reclaiming happy childhood memories. I said I have many happy childhood memories. That is true, but there are some uncomfortable ones mixed in, and now that I am an adult with more understanding those create a confounding variable for my childhood. So I can look back at good times while still understanding how the foundation for abuse was laid, and that does tarnish the whole thing somewhat.

Some of the first memories I have that I can see were problematic are ones about the division between “the church” and “the world.” Anyone who didn’t go to my church was worldly. Anyone else remember that? Even Christians of the wrong denomination were worldly. As early as kindergarten I was hearing that my classmates were worldly and that I shouldn’t go along with them. Once we went to a barbeque fundraiser at the local community center, and my grandma escorted me away when a local dance group did a performance wearing tutu-style dresses that showed knees and shoulders. There was a girl in my class in the group and I remember wondering if this girl who was always nice to me was going to hell. We were eight or nine, and it was apparently bad for a bunch of kids at a community event to be dancing. Or like when I went to a friend’s birthday party, and my Mum wrote our phone number on my hand so I could call her to pick me up if people started singing or dancing. My friend’s uncle brought his guitar and we did a silly song/dance thing about some childish subject. It was so fun I forgot to feel guilty until after. We were seven or eight. I could keep going, but you get the point. I won’t even get started on the relatives we had who smoked.

Then there were the memories at home. My older siblings explaining to me what to say if CPS came. My Mum coaching me on what to tell the doctor, and listing off the things we can’t talk about at school. Mum explaining that parents are allowed to lie but kids have to tell the truth, even when we get punished for telling the truth. Or Mum explaining to me that age=morality, so if my older siblings lie and I call them out on it I’ll get punished for accusing them of lying because I’m younger. Or Mum explaining that girls can’t lie. Or the non-stop refusal to answer questions. Do people only have sex when they want a kid? Where does debt come from? Why isn’t the women’s lingerie locked up in a case at the store like the guns? Why does the government let bars operate? Who let that billboard company put a bathing suit ad up? You get the point, for some reason a lot of the stuff had to with the female body, particularly boobs and bellybuttons. This was before cheeky bikinis but during the 1990s Britney-crop top era.

As I hit the teen years the pressure changed. Suddenly I was somehow a sinner because girls wanted to talk to me. Not even in a flirtatious way, we just hit the point where suddenly young teens sit around talking about personal stuff instead of playing in the sand. Maybe I talked for five minutes to a girl my age who was wearing tight rip-off jean shorts and a white tank top and I’d get grilled for fifteen minutes about it. I joined a soccer team, and when I’d get home my Mum would ask me which of the girls wore shorts. Hint: all of them, it’s soccer. So from 12 years on I had to keep a mental list of what every girl I talked to wore for when I testified before the court of Mum. Real healthy.

And then the career stuff started. “don’t get a good job! That’s pursuing the love of money! Don’t get a worldly job! Jesus was a carpenter!” At some point the marriage pressure started. It wasn’t “you must get married now!” or “marry this person” but more of a general “you will get married young, so don’t get an education that keeps you from earning money young. And don’t look for someone compatible, just find someone else willing to get married young. It will all work out!” I think I might do a whole blog post on my family’s views on marriage.

I feel like fourteen-sixteen years old was a watershed period for me. A fourteen year-old boy is not an adult, but around then I started thinking more independently, and I started forming good relationships with people outside my family who helped me expand my thinking. So I can’t really include memories from after that.

Here’s the thing. I eventually got my head out of those thoughts. When I was sixteen I went to a church youth event where the keynote speaker spoke about creating a positive marriage with a strong foundation based on mutual support and common values, with a good dose of financial stability. He also stressed that being single is not sinful, nor is it sinful to just be around girls in a positive environment. I remember walking out of that service feeling like a load was lifted off my shoulders, because at that point I had people in family saying you had to be married by the time you were twenty or so, and I was getting close to that. In other situations I talked to older guys that I respected about how they found their way in career decisions, and that helped me have a more realistic idea of what to do than “take the first trades job you find and trust that the Lord will fill your vessel.” Because working a minimum wage job and cranking out babies with a random wife always works out.

But some of my siblings didn’t have that same exit. Some of them thought they were destined for hell because they were single adults, since we are supposedly saved through marital sex. What verse says the vagina is essential for eternal salvation? So some of them figured if they can’t have marital sex they’d just have extra-marital sex and hope God counted that. They were so desperate for salvation they didn’t care about consent. Same thing with money, they were afraid to make too much money, but saw nothing wrong with theft from family members to get by. Because stealing from Christians is more godly than earning money from companies owned by sinners. And then the classic “you go to hell if you take medication” which brought its own challenges. Like hallucinations and violent outbursts and social problems.

I wonder if the most harmful part of this upbringing was the desperation to protect the family reputation (and legal status) by never telling outsiders about what was happening Because if people had felt comfortable getting help maybe the abuse would never would have happened. I have memories of key points where someone could have gotten help, but they apparently twisted around the situation. At one point my mother was having issues with paranoid thoughts and she told me she was going to talk to our pastor about it. I sort of thought that meant she’d get help. Years later I found out that when she said “get help” she meant get him on her side against me, not talk about her untreated mental health issues. So instead she complained about me living in sin. The sin was that I got a job at a company that hired both men and women, my Mum wanted me in a single-gender company to preserve my purity.

To my pastor’s credit, he explained to my Mum that having female co-workers is not a sin, and that it’s not a church leader’s role to pressure young men to change jobs. I don’t know if they discussed her paranoid tendencies. You’d think that would be the end of it, but that started several years of my Mum warning me to not talk to my pastor, her “seeking help” made things worse. Welp. I also remember my siblings saying they’d rather go to prison than admit to struggling, or that they would go to hell if our pastor found out they were struggling. Because apparently he decides that, not the all-knowing God they professed to believe in. Of course, if you get arrested for certain things people find out eventually, it’s hard to quietly slink off to prison without anyone talking. Especially if the girl’s parents tell people.

Anyhow, back to talking about how these memories mess with good memories. Until I was maybe fourteen I didn’t know that things could be different. It was just normal to protect the family secrets. It was normal to go to school and have fun with kids and then come home and get questioned about it. So normal that it didn’t even get me down. I’d be in fear for a few minutes waiting for Mum to investigate, I’d try to act casual as she gave me that suspicious “I don’t believe anything you say” glare, and then when it was over I’d run outside and forget about it.

I had plenty of innocent, childish, non-sexual fun with girls at school and then lied to my Mum about it. And yes, some of them were good-looking. I think I had my first crush in grade 2 during a gym class baseball game when a girl did a victory dance and I couldn’t look away. We were young and clueless, get over it. In middle school I hung out with an awesome girl a bunch. Nothing sexual, no relationship, not even random “I like you” boners, I just liked being with her. Her looks were incidental, even if I was sufficiently aware to know she was good-looking. It was around late spring in grade 10 when I had several classes in the un-air-conditioned part of the school that I really started to notice my classmates. I still occasionally remember English class when I watch the music video for Complicated by Avril Lavigne. Fortunately, by the time I realized I was a raging heterosexual I was old enough to not let my parents find out. And guess what? I got through public school without ever holding a hand, kissing a girl, or feeling anyone up. The fact that I was a horny teen, as God created me, didn’t mean I was necessarily going to commit fornication or licentiousness. I just happened to know some nice people who also happened to have boobs.

Pardon me for maybe saying “boobs” and “boner” too much, I feel like Christians need to get at talking about bodies, sex, gender, etc, instead of vague references to “the sins of the modern age” or “youthful indiscretion” or whatever catch-phrases your church used. Clitoris, orgasm, butthole, consent, two-way communication, boundaries, credit card, Chrome Incognito, pornography of varying degrees of legality and harm, erectile dysfunction. There, a few more things to mention.

But now when I look back I see how others suffered. I was mostly clueless and mostly happy. I know other people who nearly killed themselves or ended up in prison or homeless on drugs or divorced because of what they went through, the constant condemnation and pressure of their upbringing broke them. So when I remember my happy childhood I also end up remembering the eventual result, both for me and my family and friends.

I think I might have to do a post on what it’s like watching people come out from that mentality. But in a way I wouldn’t like that, it would be me talking about someone else’s experience based on what little I know. I’d have to be careful.

Reclaiming My Good Memories

One of the many sad elements of abuse is that people can lose a part of themselves when good memories are corrupted by abuse. I grew up in a mostly happy family, and I was to young and clueless to see the groundwork for future abuse being laid. And I was so used to what mistreatment I experienced it didn’t really get me down. So I have many happy memories, especially of typical experiences with my siblings. We had a big house, a big yard, no money, and lots of free time.

But then the same people I had a good childhood with turned on me when I became an adult. They often used our connection against me, emotionally imploring me to be nice to them and enable their violence, or in a hurt voice asking why I would threaten to call the cops on family members. Or talk about how in a loving family we make all decisions together, so if I wanted safety for myself and my younger siblings we should “have a family vote”, as if the right to control access to your own body and spirituality is a family voice. Read between the lines on that.

After my family kicked me out for refusing to be an enabler and for refusing to join their collective abuse I went for about six years without seeing some of my siblings. Then, over a period of about three years, I sort of integrated back into the family. Sort of. I’d go to family events and discretely stay across the room from some people, or make sure I was never alone with others. I suspect my family has no idea what is going on. They probably think that because I’m around again the violence and abuse have ceased to matter.

I can be around them again because they’ve chilled out. Medication can, in the right context, be an amazing thing. When my family members finally admitted they had serious issues and saw a psychiatrist they improved rapidly. When someone isn’t hallucinating or flying into a violent rage at the slightest insult (like someone getting to the washing machine first) they become more capable of living a normalish life and rebuilding relationships. But some things can be medicated away because they aren’t medical symptoms. Messed up ideas about teenage sexuality and semi-arranged marriage don’t disappear as psych meds tinker with neurotransmitters. People can learn restraint and get to the point where they can keep their mouths shut, but that doesn’t necessarily eliminate harmful behaviour. Problematic actions can keep happening. Like trying to negotiate memory, where someone asks me a question and after I say three sentences about what I experienced they try to argue me into remembering their memory instead. Or the usual “are you sure you remember that correctly? You are bipolar, maybe you’re making this up.” Sound familiar?

Anyhow, back to losing good memories. For years after I was kicked out the family I couldn’t think about my childhood. I could have mental images of good times, but the sight of my siblings’ faces in the memories brought up painful memories, and it was easier to just cut out a part of who I was. And that sucks. We’re formed by who we are. I’m still the same person now that I was when I was a kid, and I do the same things. Sort of. I have expensive woodworking tools and buy tropical hardwood instead of using old tools from my grandfather and garbage-picked wood, but it’s the same interest. My current bike actually has brakes, but I still love biking in all weather, just like in childhood. Seriously, biking in the rain is beautiful. You get the point. But I lost a part of who I was when I cut out those memories.

Rediscovering them has been painful. Part of the process has been realizing that the people who screwed me up also helped form me, they are a part of who I am. I was a little kid playing with my older siblings’ stuff. They took me places. I wanted to be just like them. I loved them. That’s part of why the abuse hurt so much. If a random drunk on the street had attacked me and yelled at me about rape I could have brushed it off. But bit by bit I have realized that my siblings were different people then. They hadn’t yet discovered r/incel, they hadn’t gotten into far-right politics, they hadn’t gotten involved with other people of a similar mentality. We were all innocent then.

Realizing this has helped me reclaim something that nobody has a right to take away. Those are my memories, I made them and I own them. Oddly enough, it has helped me partially reconnect to my siblings. Things will never be the same. People toss around the world forgiveness or healing or reconciliation in this naïve belief that if you yell forgiveness enough you can eradicate trauma and restore the pre-trauma relationship. That doesn’t happen. Violence and abuse end relationships, you can’t restore the relationship. In some instances new relationships between those people can be formed, other times they are gone forever. This can’t be forced, it must be done on the initiative of the abused as they heal. If they heal in that direction, not all do.

I’m at a point where childhood memories no longer cause me pain. I can remember happy times without what came after corrupting it. but it took me about a decade to get there, and a lot of bike rides and canoe trips to process stuff where nobody could see me. Mentally processing trauma can be a very physical event.

Anyhoo, do what you want with this. I say don’t let abusive people take away your memories, reclaim them if you can. But if you don’t feel ready to go there, then don’t. Look after yourself.

Damn it, I cried writing this. My eyes hurt.

I might at some point come back and edit this to add a picture that somehow represents my childhood memories, but I’m trying to avoid too much identifiable material. So maybe just imagine a little boy on an old 1980s bicycle flying down a muddy farm path and then coming home and walking through the house dropping mud everywhere.

The Vaccine Gave Me My Brain Back

In my previous post I wrote about the effect that long-haul covid had on my mind. As of right now, I feel about 80% or 90% cured from LHC. I still have less energy than before, and there are times that parts of my brain selectively turn off for a few seconds, but I am functional. I credit most of this to the vaccine. Within days of receiving my first vaccine I felt my covid brain fog lifting, and within a week I was wondering if I could declare myself cured. I have accepted that I might never be back to normal, covid may permanently reduce my capabilities. But still, I am way better off now than I was during my long-haul covid crisis.

Here is how my major mental symptoms have been alleviated. As far as I can tell, other than low energy and minor vascular issues like enlarged veins my physical symptoms are gone, so I won’t really discuss physical symptoms here.

Social anxiety: covid wrecked my already fragile brain’s ability to handle stressful situations. Many, many times my mind would go blank any time I ended up talking to someone I didn’t know, in a situation where I had to think on my feet, or when I had to think things through while also engaging in a discussion. At time all my brain’s defensive systems would go off, and I’d start to slip into a near-paranoid state where I’d disconnect from the world.

Just think of how common those situations are. A while ago I absentmindedly walked off with someone else’s cart at the grocery store, and when they said “excuse me sir, I think you have my cart” I stood there with no idea what to say, even though I fully understood the situation. Or in work meetings I would write out what I had to say, and if my boss asked me an unexpected question I would often struggle to answer it. Now my brain seems able to generate answers on the spot. Even if I ask for a moment to think, I can think quietly in my own brain without alarm bells ringing. If I go into a public place like church I am not having to try to avoid conversations.

Multi-step processing: if you wonder what this is, imagine something that you think of as one motion but is actually multiple, smaller motions all combined. Think of all the different movements involved in getting out of bed. I knew a person who forgot how to get out of bed temporarily from severe depression, his brain just couldn’t handle all the steps. Jordan Peterson has also spoken about having to re-learn getting out of bed. For me, at the worst of covid brain fog I struggled with anything that was more than two or three steps. That is not good when I work as a data analyst, most of the things I do in my job involve multiple steps. The most complex calculations I do take up to twenty steps. I was struggling to the point where I was thinking of seeking out disability leave. I eventually realized, after some trial and error, that I could first write down the steps I needed to take, and then work through them step-by-step, so if I blank out I just look at my second screen and remember where I am.

Now I am able to do complex, multi-step calculations again. I still do sometimes write stuff down for convenience or to make it easier to document what I did, but it is not necessary for performing my job. There are times I still struggle with little things, but they do not get in the way of me living my life. I made a mess in the fridge one morning because my pre-coffee brain could not figure out how to move a plate of leftovers out of the way, and I dumped food all over the fridge while getting the eggs out. A normal mind might have realized that I could just put the place of food on the counter while removing the eggs. But my messed up mind decided to rotate/pull the eggs out from under the plate and that obviously didn’t work.

https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20150923/researchers-pinpoint-brain-region-that-manages-multistep-tasks

I googled this issue because I was unsure of what it is called. I refer to it as multi-step processing, several websites call it processing multi-step tasks. I found this WebMD article which explains how easily that ability is damaged.

Energy: I suspect I am back to about 90% energy. Even six months after I got my negative covid test I was having several-hour naps during the day, that is totally gone. Right now I feel like my winter slump is coming on early, but I have enough energy to get almost everything done. I haven’t vacuumed in a while, but that’s fine. Not vacuuming is not even close to the same as being afraid of ending up homeless because I can’t work.

Traumatic memories: this is one area where I’m not sure I can say I am close to healed, nor can I definitely blame this issue on covid. Before I had covid it was easier to push those memories out of the way and try to live a normal life. They’d come up again when I was alone, but I could be mostly functional during the workday. They’d come up at lunch sometimes, I feel like any alone time is a trigger for a flood of painful memories and paranoia. So I had been living alone and working from home for weeks before having covid during a stressful time. But I feel like covid broke down a berm that held back the worst of the memories, to the point where they overwhelmed me at times. And I don’t think that getting the vaccine has made it easier to deal with them. Every weekend I think that this will be the week I start up therapy again, and every weekday I come up with excuses to not call. Maybe I’ll call tomorrow. I finally found a good therapist who specializes in helping men who have been abused, most therapists struggle with that demographic.

Words: there are still times that I struggle to find words for what I am thinking. But my inner voice is back. When I was in the worst of the covid brain fog I could barely even know what I was thinking. Now I’m just temporarily disconnected from the external world. And I’ll be honest, I’m fine with that. I don’t need to always be able to speak, I’m fine being alone occasionally. Today I was helping a student and trying to explain how to alter a supply and demand graph. I was struggling to put all the words together to explain the relationships between supply, demand, quantity and price, but then I got out Microsoft Paint and visually explained it all. If I had been in deep covid brain fog I may have looked at that familiar diagram and not had any idea how to even describe it to myself.

My second vaccine is a rather annoying speed bump in this story. I felt so good after my first vaccine I thought that I might be fully healed/cured/fixed. Within a week my brain was back, it happened so quickly I could barely believe it. And then my second vaccine knocked me out for about four weeks, it was like having covid again. I even had the fake heart attack at week 3. I think it took a month or two for my energy to come back after the second vaccine. At one point I wondered if I would have been better off not getting the second vaccine, I worried it had reversed any improvements I had. Fortunately, I have recovered from that relapse, and I am feeling decent. I suspect my winter slump is coming on early, but that is to be expected. I’m still bipolar, even if the long-haul covid is slowly becoming part of my past.

Long-Haul Covid Vs. Bipolar

Warning: this is a long post that is potentially not interesting to you unless you have experienced long-haul covid, either in your own life or in someone you know.

Google “long-haul covid” or “post-covid” or “long covid” and you will find that a significant portion of people who had covid will experience symptoms long after the viral infection has gone away. Some people have fatigue and mild cognitive dysfunction that lasts a few months, others are still totally without energy or sufficient brain function over a year later. Some people will probably be permanently disabled from it. For me, it felt like the virus knocked body systems out of whack, and the body has difficulty returning to normal. I jokingly told myself that the virus erased my backup point so my body didn’t remember what normal was like. Thanks to the vaccine I am now at a point where I feel 95% cured, with just the occasional lack of energy reminding me that I was really messed up for most of 2020 and parts of 2021.

What I found interesting was that long-haul covid often felt like a bad winter’s depression. I had covid in April 2020, and summer 2020 felt like winter. My brain didn’t work right, I was often quite tired, and for the first time I had regular twitches. At times the typical covid symptoms like heart pressure and difficulty breathing would come back and get me wondering whether I had covid again. Even after the recurring heart and lung symptoms went away I had the fatigue and the so-called “covid brain fog.”

I think that having long-haul covid would have been scarier if I wasn’t bipolar. Years of difficult mental health issues have made me fatalistic. Sometimes I wonder whether I am too fatalistic. Life can feel like me skiing down anything other than the bunny hill. I can’t stop what is coming and I can’t get off the track without potentially hitting a tree. So instead I just steer as much as possible to get to the bottom alive. So when I was dealing with difficult covid symptoms my experience with bipolar made it easier to accept that I was borderline functional.

While there were times that I wondered whether I actually had covid, the long-haul symptoms were sufficiently different from bipolar depression that I knew it was long-haul covid. Here is a comparison of my main long-haul symptoms with their bipolar equivalents to show how they are different.

Facial Twitches

For much of summer and fall 2020 I had facial twitches around my eye or mouth, and my limbs would often randomly tense up for a bit. Occasionally I got the urge to tense my whole upper body, or just my right shoulder. Lucky for me I worked from home, I would look weird in an open office. I once got “Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga stuck in my head and my face began to twitch to it. If you want to see what my face twitches look like, google “What’s With Ethan’s Eyebrows?” and watch the video where Ethan Klein talks about his Tourette’s. I was going to post the link, but WordPress kept trying to embed the whole video in a way that messed up the neatness of my post.

Facial and body twitches were a new symptom for me. At times I have had minor eye twitches, especially on my right side, from stress and lack of sleep. But I never had constant and unstoppable twitches until I had covid. I think that I get a bit physically shifty when I’m going through a depressive episode, and I can get jittery while nearing a manic state, but those times did not include facial twitches.

Fatigue

Winters, from about November to February, are a time of low energy for me. I’ll often feel tired and groggy until mid-morning, regardless of how much sleep I had or how late I woke up. And then in the evening my energy would often drop again. So I could have perhaps 6-8 hours a day where I feel like I am able to do stuff. But when I had covid I would sometimes get aggressive bouts of complete tiredness unlike anything I had experienced before. I could be feeling fine, and then within about ten minutes all my energy would disappear. I could fall down in bed and not move for two hours. I’d feel so tired that just rolling over to find a more comfortable position could take some mental preparation. After about two or three hours of this my energy and brain function would suddenly start to come back. It felt like sunrise, where I could start to see the tiredness going away for a few minutes before my energy suddenly popped up over the horizon. Luckily I worked from home during this phase. I could not schedule these crashes, so if they happened during work hours all I could do is hit my bed and ride it out and then submit sick hours or work later into the evening.

Brain Function

A key feature of my bipolar depressions, which usually happen in winter and sometimes early summer, is that my brain slows down. Imagine that you know what you want to say, but you need to actively remember the specific words and grammatical functions needed to express your thoughts. It’s like the connections between different parts of my brain slow down when they should be firing almost instantaneously. This particularly hampers my ability to perform tasks that include multiple steps. I’m a data analyst, which often involves doing multi-step calculations in Excel or Microsoft Power BI. At my worst, I would first think through the calculation, write it down, and then work through it step-by-step while referring back to what I wrote. When I have normal brain function I can work through the process making it up as I go. I can have similar issues when writing. Sometimes my words can flow onto figurative paper, other times I need to first write down all my thoughts, then arrange them in order, and then work through them one by one.

In the past decade or so (since I entered the adult world) I have had about four really bad depressive episodes that brought me to the point where I was on the edge of losing basic functionality. I only once dropped a course because I couldn’t handle it, but there were multiple times that I wondered how I would finish the semester. Three of these four episodes were in winter, when I always struggle. One was during the summer when I had a bad case of pneumonia. My worst covid brain fog time was during the spring and summer, when I usually feel good. I had no other illnesses that could have caused it.

I should point out that I have managed to get a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree and then a full-time job while experiencing these symptoms. I use the term “borderline functional” to indicate that I can still get stuff done, even if my brain takes longer to do it.

Words

I have at times struggled to put my thoughts into words. In class discussions I would have a clear idea in my mind, but I couldn’t find the words. Other times I knew that I said something wrong, but I couldn’t figure out how to express that and then correct myself. With covid, I had this symptom far more aggressively. I could have an idea in my mind, but the word part of my brain would simply not work at all. I could sit in my seat and have no English, French, or Norwegian words coming to express my thoughts. For example, when I went to the hospital the triage nurse asked me what my symptoms were, and I sat quietly in my seat for a minute saying nothing.

Other times I have said something that was intelligible but did not reflect what I meant to say. I once made a dumb joke in a work meeting, and I felt like I needed to indicate it was a joke. I meant to say “pardon the exaggeration” but I instead said “pardon the arrogance.” Those two phrases are not substitutes. I had a similar thing when I tried to say I didn’t have a formal education in data science or stats but had instead taken multiple data and statistic courses. I bungled my words and said “I have no education in data or statistics” which is incorrect. When I have something to say in a work meeting I now write it down.

I am getting very used to replaying conversations in my head to listen to what I said to determine what I meant and see how far off I was. It can be embarrassing, but hopefully it pays off in the long run.

Social Situations

Social situations are always hard in depressive states. The NVLD side of me kicks in then and it is very hard to read what others are non-verbalizing, so it can be hard to initiate conversations, and even harder to be a contributing member of a group conversation. But the social difficulties I got from long-haul covid were something else entirely. It was like a part of my brain was simply inaccessible. I could think of trying to contact someone, but I had no words or idea what to say. The thought of entering a free-flowing conversation was almost scary. I know we were supposed to stay home and avoid gathering, but I wonder if I overdid it and used it as an excuse to not talk to people.

Learning and Producing

You may have noticed that I like to write and read. I did very little of either in my year and a bit of having bad long-haul covid. I am working on expanding my Master’s thesis into a book, and I got almost nothing done in 2020. I love my research and I love writing, but I could not get my brain to cooperate. Same thing will learning French, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the words and grammar to stay in my memory. Even in the deepest bipolar depressions I could learn and produce.

The near-total loss of my ability to write and produce was scary. I think most people would choose normal energy or social skills over research and writing, I’m not sure I’d do that. When I sit at my computer and write, or read books or do research, I am at peace. It’s where I am meant to be.

Next:

My next post will be about getting my brain back after the covid vaccine. A lot of long-haulers have experienced major improvements from getting the vaccine, and I am fortunately one of them. That was originally going to be today’s topic, but I thought I should first do a deep dive into what I experienced before talking about being partially healed.

Understanding, Responding, Caring

In addition to being bipolar, I am also diagnosed with a Non-Verbal Learning Disability. Apparently there are multiple types of them, I don’t know which one I have. I used to think that NVLD was on the low end of the autistic spectrum below Aspergers, but I later found out that is not on the spectrum. NVLD can manifest like mild Aspergers, so schools often treat them the same way, even though they are not technically related. So I was often lumped in with the Asperger kids, which was an interesting experience.

The defining characteristic of these disorders is struggling with finer social skills, like picking up on non-verbal social cues. People often use facial expressions to manage conversations, like looking bored to indicate they don’t care or having a fixed expression because they are just humouring the person talking. Other people express disagreement by slightly tightening their lips and squinting, like they ate something sour. Go read just about any website about NVLD and you’ll read that people with NVLD often miss social cues, or don’t read the situation right and behave in socially inappropriate ways. NVLDers also tend to be literal people, where they take words at face value without factoring in the tone of voice or the intent behind the words.

To an extent these descriptions are true, but I feel like that description fits the outward appearance of NVLD and does not fully explain what is going on in the mind. There have been many, many times in my life that I have picked up on non-verbal social cues and understood what they meant. But I did not respond to them, or I didn’t care enough about them to acknowledge them. That creates the image of me not getting them, but there is a very big difference. I can choose to not respond to the cues for my own reasons.

There are several reasons why I don’t always respond to non-verbal or tone-of-voice cues.

Certain parts of my brain are working slowly that day. My brain has to work twice as hard, because I need to use one part of my brain to think about their words, a separate part to figure out the cues, and a third part to formulate my response in clear English that responds to the entirety of their communication. If I take five seconds to respond, that can really throw off a conversation, especially with impatient people who can’t wait five seconds, with people who take advantage of silence.
I need a verbal response. This particularly matters in the workplace, where I need clear directions from my manager so if someone else asks me what I am doing I can verbally quote my manager. It also matters when making agreements. In the rare case where a matter may end up resulting in a call to the police or in legal action it also really matters because it is much easier to quote words in court than to re-enact a facial expression. So I may be picking up on every cue, but I need to help the person put their thoughts into words for my sake and for their own sake. This can be hard with defensive, proud, or emotionally sensitive people who feel upset when I don’t immediately “get” what they mean. Tough luck, words matter.
I don’t care. Maybe someone is trying to mess with me because they are upset with me or are trying to take me down a notch, but I don’t care enough about what they think to waste my brainpower on coming up with a response.
Protection. A typical tactic of abusive or manipulative people is to use a lot of non-verbal cues and different tones of voice to communicate their real thoughts while using words that sound innocuous. By responding only to their words I do not get dragged into their web, and that gives me the ability to get out of the conversation without them inflicting any damage. This particularly matters with people who like to misquote their victims.
I don’t feel like expending the energy. Figuring out how to respond to multiple types of cues that often present conflicting intents is mentally hard. If I am tired, in a depressed state, or focussed on something more important, I am not going to waste my brainial energy on coming up with an appropriate, cue-informed response. God loves every person and each human being has an equal, inherent value, but that does not mean that every single word that comes out of someone’s mouth has an equal value, so sometimes I preserve my energy by not responding to low-value words.
I’m nervous and socially awkward. A lot of these situations I discussed are in charged situations, but it can happen in nice, safe, and friendly conversations as well. This particularly happens around very nice people or with good looking people. A warm smile or a genuine laugh or a real compliment can really throw me off because my brain is not skilled at responding to positive emotion. It can be a pain sometimes and gets in the way of forming strong, beneficial relationships with good people. On the bright side, a lot of people can see past social awkwardness to the person inside.

The brutal part of being NVLD is that the ability to respond is tied to overall brain function. I am bipolar, and I usually spend November to February in a depressed state, which involves low energy and slower brain function. I also tend to have a lesser slump in the early summer, but it’s not as bad. During my depressed state I can get locked in my brain, where I understand what people say and pick up on their cues, but I simply don’t have the brainpower to respond to both of them, or even to one of them. This is particularly problematic in fast-moving conversations, like a class discussion or a heated argument. I might understand everything but respond to nothing.

I should point out that over time I have gotten better at responding. As a kid I often told people what I thought they needed to hear based on which cues I chose to interpret, but that does not work well as an adult. From around the age of 18 or so I have been on the watch for people who are skilled in social communication and I’ll pay attention to how they response. Over time I have gotten more and more used to responding like an ordinary human when I can. It is possible. You could call me fake or superficial for imitating how others respond, but I see it as neatly packaging my genuine thoughts in more digestible form.

Purpose of this Blog

I have conflicting thoughts about writing about my mental health. In one sense, what goes on inside my brain is private and is not anyone else’s business. But I have also seen so many people struggle with the self-inflicted stigma of mental health and with so many fears and insecurities that I feel like I need to do something. So I figured I would start blogging about what being bipolar is like. I like writing, and feel that writing can be a form of therapy, so I am sure this blog will be good for me. I might even manage to help someone else.

My faith in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring people to peace with myself has transformed my life, and it hurts when I hear people portray genuine Christianity as something unattainable for people who have mental health struggles. The help that I have received through my church has helped me in ways that are hard to describe, but I have also seen that among Christians there are plenty of harmful ideas about mental health that need to disappear. This blog is not for retribution or scoring cheap shots, but I hope to help people come to a proper, Biblical understanding of what mental health is and isn’t, and to understand what it actually means to be a Christian.

Over the past decade or so society has placed a higher priority on addressing mental health, which is good. One issue that I see with how we discuss mental health is that we don’t always distinguish between legit mental health disorders and the mental struggles of people who have no formal disorder. Someone who has genuine, overwhelming depression is even close to the same as someone who is having a bad week at work. Helping someone who has a legit disorder requires a different toolset and mentality. Understanding what people with actual disorders go through is almost impossible, so I’ll try to describe what it is actually like to have a dysfunctional mind.

And finally, I think I have some funny stories. Humour is a beautiful thing that can be used to understand serious issues, and I have every right to laugh at myself.

Helping or Harming?

Like other types of health issues, mental health issues can limit someone’s ability to participate in activities. Church activities are no different. A church is a spiritual community of those who share a common faith and who have fellowship in that faith. But it is also an organization engaged in many activities that are wholly dependent on active and willing volunteers. Churches also have active social lives and are a ready-made community of friendly people for all members.

One of the saddest realities in Christianity is that many people mistake all of that activity for the core purpose of a church. This is done by many non-believers who view churches as anachronistic semi-charities that used to serve a core function in society, or who consider religion the opium of the masses. But it also happens within Christianity when people measure the value of a church member by the services that the person can offer the church. This is wrong, it is flat-out wrong. Go read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 “The body is bound together through each member’s connection to the Head, which is Christ.” They are not bound by what the connections that they have with each other, or what value they think each person offers.

1 Corinthians 12:23 “And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor…” Those who seem less honourable are given more honour. Why is that? I have often wondered about that, and I’m not sure I fully understand why. I can obey without understanding (lydighet uten forståelse!), but I still wonder about it. Here are two possible explanations.

We equally honour all members because they were all chosen by the Head. It is natural to honour the more prominent members, and we are commanded to honour the leaders and the elders who have been placed over us. There are also many ministries that easily receive honour. I’m sure parents are very thankful for the young people who run activities for their kids. It is very natural to honour the kitchen crew after a good meal. So if there are members of the body who do not have a noticeable role, then we need to go out of our way to ensure that they receive the honour that they must receive so that the Head is honoured.
We honour the whole body when we honour each individual member. If we only honour 99.997% of the members, then the body misses out on .003% of the required honour. This is one of those situations where only 100% works.

So what shall we do when our fellow co-member are treated poorly, overlooked, or neglected because they cannot contribute as much as others? Part of helping someone who has a health problem is to identify what has caused it. From what I can tell, there are three sources of unbiblical ideas that prevent the members of the body (i.e. our fellow church-goers) from receiving the honour they deserve.

Internalized doubt: a person feels less valuable because they cannot contribute as much as they want to. I think this is a common experience for most people at some point in their life, but it is a particular struggle for people with chronic or lifelong health problems. They can feel like they will never be what they had once aspired to, and that their health issues have undercut their heavenly calling.

That can be a dangerous place to be. It is very easy to sink into a generalized despair and a feeling of worthlessness. If you look around and see how others are able to do things you can’t then bitterness is always nearby, and once someone let bitterness in their entire spiritual life can be destroyed, and it is very hard to come out of bitterness. I can say from experience that it is far easier to keep bitterness out than it is to get rid of it once you let it take root.

This mentality can very quickly lead to these people slowly disappearing. How do we help those people? Simple. Honour them as a member of the body. Recognize their heavenly calling, and that they said yes to Father’s drawing to the Son. Recognize their faithfulness. Make sure that they remember that God loves them and only wants the best for them. Show them unconditional love. Draw them into what church activities they can be along in instead of finding ways to exclude them. We don’t often go around specifically saying “Brother X, we honour you as a part of the body..” but letting someone know that you want them at activities is honouring them. And never, ever, tell them (or say it behind their back when you think they can’t hear) that they are lazy, or unfaithful, a burden to others, or that they chose to have their health problems.

Matthew 18:6 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

This is a warning directly from our Saviour, the Son of God. If you flippantly say something negative about a person who is going through struggles and they hear it, you add to their burden instead of honouring them for bearing their burden in faithfulness. You can say it with good intent, or just in the moment without thinking, but you put them at risk of stumbling. Think about it. Seriously. When you speak to people, do you give them strength to bear their burden, or do you add to the burden?

Social Attitudes: Most Christians are also active members of the society in which they live, and they are exposed to the trends that exist in modern societies. It is natural for believers to use their faith to understand what they see in society. That is fine. But when the relationship is reversed and believers use their society’s zeitgeist to understand their faith they are in danger of completely missing out on what the Bible actually says, and they can miss many opportunities to bless and strengthen each other.

So what does this have to do with mental illness? Western society is saturated with stupid ideas about mental illness, and it is very easy for Christians to become contaminated. When this happens, it is normal for them to use Bible verses incorrectly or out of context to support their harmful ideas about mental health. Their standard defence is “but it’s Biblical! Do you deny the Bible?” But these negative ideas about mental illness can prevent people from honouring the weak among them.

Here are two common examples of ideas that can damage relationship in a church.

“You’re making other peoples’ lives difficult with your mental health issues. You should stop.”

I agree with the first sentence. Mental health issues can make other people’s lives hard. That is actually something that a lot of people with health issues struggle with, they can feel like others would be better off without them. That sort of thought pattern can quickly get suicidal if not caught early. Church buildings aren’t free, the money for the land and building and utilities and repairs needs to come from somewhere. If one person can’t financially contribute because of health issues, then someone else has to pick up the slack. Same thing with cleaning and other volunteer activities, what one person doesn’t do has to be done by someone else. But this attitude basically degrades a church to a social club where there is a minimum requirement to participate. Is that Biblical? A church community should be characterized by unconditional love and support. There is a reason why Christian marriage vows include the line “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health…”, that is the highest expression of Christian love.

Yet some people struggle with feeling unproductive, and telling them that they are a burden without mentioning the unconditional love and support they have is only a half-Gospel, and it can really hurt people.

“I was born this way, I can’t help it.”

I technically agree with this idea, but it can be used to destroy someone’s hope for improvement. I was born with a dysfunctional brain that messes with my energy, mood, and my perception of the world. I can’t help that. But if I allow that to hinder my faith, I can very easily slip away from God’s love and from fellowship with those who love him because I tell myself I am unworthy to be among them.

God made humanity in his image (Genesis 1:26). Please don’t take that too literally. I don’t know if God has a beard, and I don’t know if he is tall, short, skinny, obese, Jewish, black, or white. From what I understand, this means we received God’s ability to understand and influence this world, his ability to discern between right and wrong, and the free will that he first possessed. Mental health issues are psychological issues created by our physical bodies malfunctioning, they are not an integral part of the nature we received from God. So when Christians use creation to dismiss mental health issues, to insist that they cannot receive help, or to claim that a mentally ill person is unable to be loved by God, they misrepresent God’s plan for us.

In Ephesians 2:10 we read that we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Just like God first worked to create our world because of his love for us, we can work to help others because we have received the love of God. That is why we were created, and that is not in any way limited by mental health issues. God has created works (good deeds, or whatever you want to call them) that each person can do. He doesn’t expect people to do something totally unsuited for them.

To me, the Biblical approach to mental illness is to understand that is in an illness. There is plenty of Bible verses about weakness and illness. Mental illness is not some curse or a sign of failure or disbelief. So be nice to be people who are struggling. It really can be that simple.

What Do I Read in the Bible About Mental Health Issues?

The Bible says next to nothing about mental illness, yet many Christians have tons of so-called “Biblical” ideas about mental health and psychiatric disorders. I have received a ton of support and care from Christians I know to help me deal with my mental health issues, but I have also been on the receiving end of a fair amount of misinformed and often harmful bull from Christians. That type of behaviour is not specific to Christianity, there are tons of harmful and simplistic ideas floating around our society about mental health. But when Christians use Biblical-sounding language and misquote Bible verses, they double the pain by disparaging someone for a health condition that is out of their control AND they question that person’s faith and heavenly calling.

The effect of that is that someone can see their faith and their mental health struggles as mutually exclusive, where they think that they cannot be a real Christian as long as they continue to have mental health struggles. People can go for years not seeking help from medical professionals, or go for years hiding and suppressing their mental distress, in a desperate attempt to hold onto their faith and calling. Or they can struggle on and on trying to suppress their mental health issues in the belief that Christians “don’t give in” to those thoughts. Or maybe they think that God hates them and is punishing them because they seem so different from the nominally normal people they go to church with. You get the point.

In my sixteen years of being bipolar (diagnosed at 14) I have never felt that God hates me or that I am less of a Christian because of my mental disorder. My health struggles have limited my participation in church activities, but that has not limited my faith. And yet, despite the fact that I grew up in a safe environment and in a church that has a healthy attitude to mental health, I have seen many people in genuine distress and fear because they cannot reconcile their faith with their mental health issues. That hurts to see, and it is often hard to help them when they have accepted and internalized so-called “Biblical” ideas that have not Biblical basis.

So I figured I would share my understanding of what the Bible says about mental health issues. The question “what does the Bible say about mental illness?” is a bit of a trick question because the Bible says almost nothing about that topic. But we can take ideas that people claim are Biblical and refute them simply by quoting Scripture. Here we go, in no particular order or rank. I may later do more in-depth discussions of some of these ideas, but this should give a good idea of why I reject so-called “Biblical” bull about mental illness.

“God doesn’t love mentally ill people.”

What is the condition for God to love us? From what I can see, there are no conditions. Look at the Parable of the Sower. He knowingly sowed seed onto bad ground, which symbolizes God’s love to all people, regardless of their receptivity. God created every person with a purpose and with love. There is no such thing as an accidental person, or someone who lost the genetic lottery and is thus excluded from God’s love.

Romans 8:39 “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Does that mean that a diagnosis of mental illness can separate us from God? God created the biological systems in our body that malfunction and produce mental illness, so mental illness is a part of creation. It is not some weird thing from a different universe or something that modern, secular humans made up.

Romans 5:5 “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

I received the Holy Spirit through faith when I was 22 years old. I remember it very clearly, that summer was a turning point in my life, and since that time I have experienced the many aspects of the Spirit. So go ahead and tell me that God doesn’t love me, I have proof he does. Or did he pour out his love in my heart even though he doesn’t love me?

This blog post would be too long if I addressed every verse in Psalms about God’s love. So your homework assignment is to go to Psalms and find one verse that includes conditions for being loved by God.

“Mental illness is a punishment from God.”

This is a sensitive subject, because there are instances in the Bible that God inflicts people with sickness because of their disobedience. Miriam, the sister of Moses, was stricken with leprosy for questioning why God chose Moses. King Uzziah also got leprosy for disobeying God. In John 5:14 Jesus tells a man who was healed to stop sinning less something worse happen to him. So I will not say that an illness cannot be a punishment from God.

Does that mean that every illness is a punishment from God? Langt derifra. In many cases of healing we don’t get the backstory of the person who was healed, but in John we hear from Jesus that not all people who are in need of healing have their sickness because of sin.

John 9:1-3. As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

That is a verse that I have many times held onto. God has chosen a wide range of people, so that he can through many different situations chosen to display his might. I’m not special in that regard, every true disciple is an example of God’s power in their own situation. But it would be blatant disbelief for me to blame God and reject his love because of my specific condition.

Mental Illness, Medication, and the Holy Spirit.

I have heard several similar statements about how people who receive a diagnosis for a mental illness cannot have the Holy Spirit, that medication prevents you from having the Spirit, or that you have to reject the Holy Spirit in order to see a doctor. So let’s look at what the Holy Spirit actually is.

What is the condition for receiving the Holy Spirit? The first Christians to receive the Holy Spirit were the 120 in the Upper Room. They were instructed by Jesus to wait there until he sent the Spirit. So they obeyed, and through that obedience and through faith that Jesus would send the Spirit they received it.

Acts 2:38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

I see two conditions here. The first is repentance, which includes an upright desire to cease from committing the sins for which you have repented. The second is accepting Jesus Christ, which to me implies also taking up your cross and following him. When that happens, you enter into the fellowship of his suffering (Phillippians 3:10) and you will, sooner or later, see what you must suffer for his name’s sake (Acts 9:16). People who accept that calling and that life will receive the Holy Spirit. Both of these can happen in medicated people and in people who have mental health issues. Accepting you have mental health issues is not a sign of disbelief.

What is the Holy Spirit? He is many things. He is a comfort, a guide, a spirit of power, and a spirit of truth. Read 2 Corinthians 1:3, John 14:26, 2 Timothy 1:7, and John 15:26. The Spirit of God is incredibly flexible and adaptable, and will be whatever we need in every situation. Receiving medical treatment does not limit the Spirit.

For those of you who have never thought about whether or not medication limits the Holy Spirit, you are welcome to wonder how relevant this is. But I have talked to multiple Christians who have had weird ideas about medication. So if you read this and it means nothing to you or it sounds odd that is fine, you are not the target audience.

“Mentally ill people cannot be a disciple of Jesus.”

John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The only qualification to become a disciple is to believe in Jesus. Mental health issues do not prevent someone from believing in Jesus, nor are they a sign of disbelief.

Mathew 16:24 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

If we believe in Jesus, we will also take up our cross and follow him.

“Mentally ill people are a burden to the church and they make other people’s lives more difficult.”

I think I’ll write a post specifically about this, so go read that full post.

“You should pray away your mental illness and have faith instead of going to a doctor.”

Mark 2:17 “When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Let’s address both parts of this verse. Jesus said that those who are sick need a physician. I take this as a statement of support for the medical profession. It is a simple statement of an earthly need. The fact that he then says he came to call sinners does not imply that people who are sick are sinners, he is now making a spiritual allegory.

One of the most common stories in the Bible is the healing story. A prophet, apostle, or Jesus are walking along when someone comes and asks to be healed, or family member comes with the request. They then get healed. They may have been God-fearing people before they were healed, and being healed does not automatically make them a better person spiritually speaking. Being healed could strengthen their faith, but it is not guaranteed. They could have also been great sinners before being healed, and continued to live in sin after being healed. We don’t know.

The same can be said for mental illness. Yes, it can limit what someone does, but they are not a sinner just for having a mental disorder. Many, if not all, would like to be healed, but being healed would not suddenly transform them spiritually speaking.

If people want to seeking healing then I am fine with that, but for myself I instead received faith to obey Jesus and see a physician. My psychiatrist and therapist have never tried to pressure me into leaving my church or abandoning my faith. Instead, they have encouraged me to continue to be active in my church to hold onto that human interaction and social support.

“Mental Illness is a Sin.”

Go read Galatians 5, Exodus 20, or Leviticus and see if mental illness is listed as a sin. See if any illness is a sin. See if having physical or mental limitations is a sin.

There are plenty of other ideas about mental illness that I have heard, but I’m not going to address them all. These are a few that I have struggled with, or that close friends and family members have struggled with. I have seen amazing things happen in peoples’ lives when they were freed from these stupid ideas, but they often suffered under them for years, so I genuinely hope and pray that people can give up their so-called “Biblical” ideas about mental illness as quickly as possible and come to a real connection with God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit. That is the real Biblical goal for people who have mental health issues. Notice how they have the same goal as everyone else? Yeah.