Tag: Disorders

Shy to a Fault

All my life, I have been shy to a fault.

People don’t realize it; when I share it in workshops or in places where I speak, people literally laugh and say they don’t believe me. I am so animated when I speak or present, it’s hard for people to believe that when I am done, I crawl into a shell.

I have always done it.

While there is nothing wrong with being shy, I write this to ask any of you who are shy not to let it compromise your life and your possibilities, as I have.

I have not made friends with people as a rule. I have not fostered and cultivated professional relationships. I have not mingled with people of my profession much, getting to know them, and allowing them to know me.

For the years I was a pastor, I basically went to church, did my “church work,” and go home. Oh…I did raise my children, and did quite well at that, I am pleased to say. But I did not build relationships. I did not diversify the palette of my life.

My therapist ( yes, I see one regularly) said that I made my world too small. Isn’t that a wonderful description of what being shy does?

Where in the world does the shyness come from? Is saying I am shy another way of saying I am insecure, or not confident?

I can remember once I went somewhere to preach. I got there early, with a friend, and was led into a roomful of women I didn’t know. I looked around, and the woman was whisking my friend to another area of the building. I wanted to die! There were all these women whom I did not know. They were well-dressed and articulate …and it felt like their heads were blowing up into huge balloons right in front of me; it felt like the balloons were coming toward me! I could not run out. I told myself that …and so I made myself walk to the balloons and, in talking, was able to stick a pin in them so that the big heads shrunk down to normal. I found that I could talk with these women; I found out that I had much to say and that they listened, but I will never forget the terror of those few moments.

Since then, I have been practicing not being shy. Some people from my former church would see me in a crowd, “working the  room,” and would encourage me. That meant a lot. Someone knew I knew this particular weakness of mine, and saw that I was trying to meet it … and, in effect, beat it.

But the bottom line is that I have hurt my life and my career by being so shy. I told/taught my children not to be like me, and thank God, they have listened. I have gone to the best schools, but didn’t connect with people. They, too, have gone to the best schools and have connected with people, have good friends all over the country, and are nurturing the relationships they have made even as they make new connections.

I told you I raised my children well.

I write this because this morning I wept for a few moments as I dealt with seeing myself “face to face.” Sometimes, I like what I see. This morning, I did not.

But the little weeping spell is over. I decided to write because someone else, a young person with lots of gifts and talent, is hiding under a bushel somewhere.

Please come out. The world needs you.

A candid observation …

Girl Talk: Being Unafraid to Face our Spirits

I was looking for some information over the internet for a book I am writing when I somehow landed on an article about a young, 19-year-old Stanford University student who died after attempting suicide.

The article said that the parents were not saying what, exactly, caused her death, but the same article said that in a memorial statement, the family acknowledged that she had attempted suicide. The writer of the article said that even though it appeared the actual act of attempted suicide didn’t kill her, it appeared that after that attempt, from whatever injuries she sustained, the attempt ended up causing her to die.

I am not using her name, because she could be so many of us women, who are depressed but who will not face our depression, or talk about it, and because the communities that surround us really do not have patience for those of us who suffer from depression.

After my divorce, I realize now that I was depressed – for years. I could not and would not admit it, nor talk about it.  After all, I was a single mother; my children were small and I had to hold it together for them…and to add insult to injury, I was a new pastor. I figured that the congregation was probably already struggling to deal with the imperfect woman who could not and did not hold her marriage together; had I let on that I was depressed, I am not sure they would have kept me on as their pastor.

And so I suffered silently. I am sure I was not nearly as effective as I could have been – either as a mother or a pastor. I remember thinking that my own mother had told me that she had once suffered from a nervous breakdown. I didn’t know what that was exactly, but I wondered if it was hereditary.

My mother never talked about that time of her life, and she certainly never discussed it with me, except for one time when she got angry that I had put on an application that she had once suffered from the nervous breakdown. She was furious, and yelled at me for being so “stupid.” I didn’t know it was a sin to have a nervous breakdown, and a bigger sin to tell someone about it.

I did wonder, though, during my post-divorce years,what I was going to do, what a nervous breakdown felt like. I didn’t go to a doctor; I didn’t take medication. Only once I began to come out of the fog, years after the divorce, did I sit down a few times and talk to a counselor.

I call denying our emotional pain fear of facing our spirits. Our spirits really do a good job of telling us when something is wrong and when our spirits tell us that, it is a cry from within to do something before it’s too late, but there’s still such a stigma about mental illness, and still such a stigma about admitting that emotionally, we just don’t feel so good. I cannot understand why we are allowed to feel bad physically, to be ill, sometimes terminally, physically, but are expected to be on our jobs continually when it comes to our emotional and spiritual health.

I thought about this young Stanford student, who was apparently a good student and a well-respected athlete. She grew up in Santa Barbara, an amazingly beautiful place, so I assume she didn’t have much economic hardship to worry about. Her case reminded me of another Stanford student I read about some days ago who had never bounced back after her mother committed suicide. Within two years, this young woman was dead as well; she had taken some time off after her mother’s death to recuperate, and had recently returned to school, and was now…dead.

Ironically, this girl was a proponent for mental health education.

I guess all people need to face their spirits, but we as women are so good at ignoring ours while we try to take care of everyone else. We are good at dressing up and pretending we have it all together, when that’s not even close to being the truth. And in the end, we suffer, as do those around us who love and care for us.

Was I mentally ill post-divorce? I can say, now, that yes, I was. I am fortunate that there was something enough inside me (maybe my spirit working overtime to save me in spite of myself) so that I didn’t commit suicide. I never considered it, but that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t have considered it. Whenever someone is depressed, the capacity to go to a place that is scary and cold is there.

I hope that the family of both these Stanford students will recuperate well, but will also become unafraid to talk about this menace called mental illness, or, more specifically, depression. We are not required to have it together all of the time. If we would listen to our spirits, and do what we need to do to effect spiritual balance inside of us, perhaps there would be fewer suicides, and fewer people living lives of absolute hell.

A candid observation …