HI, @paracat--just wanted to check in with you and see how you are doing. How are the pain and feeling kind of down lately?

I am an 81 year old widow in pain 24/7. Thanks to my children I have a roof over my head. I didn’t plan it this way but it is what I have to work with. After a cervical and hip replacement and broken elbow I have a lot of metal. I can walk and drive. I can read and I can write. I have faith that there is a purpose and reason I’m alive. Every morning I thank God for a new day. I am blessed. Consider what you have and find joy in it. God bless.

Hello @jo54

Thanks for sharing your story with us. It sounds as if you have found gratitude to be a way of dealing with difficulties, that is great!

It is amazing how gratitude for what you have makes everything else more bearable.

Teresa

Beautifully said. Thank you I’m in the same situation

@jo54

I agree with your points. Thankfulness, appreciation, having a purpose are very desirable qualities.

That said, I know from experience (that is still happening today), that depression can cause us to lose sight of those things. They're the very signs of depression and anxiety, and other mental illness.

Being a lifelong Christian and a minister all of my adult life, I've heard, learned and taught the Christian principles that are invaluable to living a balanced life. But over the past 12-15 years, living with deep depression, PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation and a few other things, has made all of the things that have guided me for so long seem like so much hot air some of the time. I know them to be true mentally, but believing tends to be a fatality of depression.

During this time of my life, the encouragement others give means a lot to me. Therapists, my wife, pastors and others have cared enough about me to stick with me, not usually giving me advice, but some kind of support.

I believe that the day will come when depression will let up, and my thinking will return to rationality, so to that extent I have hope, which is surely a ways from where I was not too long ago.

Chronic pain for many of us exacerbates depression. They seem to feed on each other. At the very least, it's discouraging.

I'm 67, married for 45 years to my wife who's the same age and is going through her own chronic pain, so we understand how the other feels. She doesn't understand depression, so she gets irritated with me. I get plenty irritated, too.

I suspect I'm not the only one who responds to pain this way. But I know that others handle it differently, even when depression et al are in the mix. Any other coping skills that have worked?

Jim

Jim. I do understand. My husband of 58 years had very deep depression. He also was a minister who felt he had no purpose. I also understand your wife as I felt he needed to get up and move. Now I have constant pain and it’s difficult to move. I carry guilt at times as I was not always sympathetic. I have bouts of depression as I have always been active. I now try to help others. Before I moved I visited asst. living home. I was the healthiest even though I was in pain. It’s a blessing. Even if it’s just a kind word. Don’t be so hard on your self. Relax and it will happen. You may not be close to God and that’s okay but He’s close to you. Your friend Jo

Thanks, Jo @jo54 . I appreciate your encouragement. Did your husband have depression while he was in the ministry? Depression and anxiety and PTSD and suicidal ideation drove me to retirement. Doctors told me that I wouldn't be alive much longer if I didn't retire.

58 years is a good long time to be married these days.

We have a friend named Jo, whose first husband was a pastor. He died young of cancer, so they didn't make it to their 58th.

Gotta go. It's late, and Sunday is a long day. I'll write more about why that is some other time.

Jim

@jo54
Thanks for your post.
It is really inspirational to me.
I’m 56, on disability, I have Lymes disease, bilateral peripheral neuropathy, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and several other debilitating medical issues. I just had both complete knee replacements and my wife and I are financially back to where we were after college. But we do have our faith, family, and commitment before God to stick together.
I thank God for her every day.

Wonderful words of wisdom

@jimhd I am going to offer you what my brother, who had lived with the darkest depression at a much younger age, offered me and I have repeated often over the past dozen years or so in relation to my depression. "I have not woken every day of my life feeling like this and I will not wake every other day of my life feeling like this." In the most fatalistic terms, if I carry it to my death, I will wake again in a new world with a new, whole, pain free body. I don't force that belief on anyone, but it is mine.