If you’ve struggled with mental health for awhile, you know what I’m talking about.
Simon Biles sure does.
She said “I can’t” because of her disease, and many said, “You can’t? You selfish sociopoath.”
And there are many who say to you, to me, “You can’t???” when we turn something down for the sake of our mental health.
I’m going to put this in a Christian context.
It’s Sunday 10:45 AM, and some pastoral leader flags you down just when you’ve almost made it to the Blessed Outdoors and your Escape Car.
Leader: Brother, I was meaning to talk to you! I feel like the Lord’s really calling you to help us out with the Sound Ministry. Can we talk?
You: Oh, you need someone? Thanks so much for thinking about me. I’ll think about.
But you already know what you should say: “I can’t.”
Because you already know.
Because you already know that making it to that 10:45 AM Sunday morning moment where the leader asked you, where you actually moved mental heaven and earth to be there, enduring the meet-and-greets and laugh and pats — well, the river Nile turning blood had nothing on that.
And so you come back a few days later, and if you’re wise and have lived with this disease awhile, you’ll tell him, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I get too depressed to maneuver sound knobs,” and he will give you a “You can’t?” look.
And of course, that will make things even worse for you, because you think, all over again, “Yes, I can’t, and that’s what makes this disease so hard. I can’t. Everyone else can. And they can so easily. But I can’t right now.”
Now there’s one phrase that’s even worse, and that’s when you get the question, “You can’t even?”
This is the hardest, and I’ve heard it a few times and you usually only hear it, explicitly, from those closest to you.
It’s when you’re in a terrible depressive/anxious spell and you’re being honest with someone you trust and you summon the strength to give the weakest, “I can’t,” about the most embarrassingly small thing imaginable.
“I can’t bring the garbage in.”
“You can’t even bring the garbage in? You can’t just step outside for five seconds, grip the handles to a container with helpful wheels, and push it about ten feet? It takes, max, three minutes, and then you can just crawl back into bed, tiger.”
“Yeah, but I just can’t.”
“You can’t even do that?”
And they say it, from a mix of genuine surprise, but also disbelief, and if the conditions are right for it, some amount of contempt.
(Note: my dear wife has never done this to me, but I think it’s a common reaction from spouses whose loved ones suffer from mental health issues).
Now here’s what extra sucks.
When a Christian gives you the “You can’t even?!” it also might come with some kind of lecture about how you’re not living in the power of the Spirit, about how you’re living in a spirit of fear.
And if you have the Holy Spirit and if Christ lives in you (Colossians 3), and you “can’t even?!” bring in the garbage, what are you even?
Here’s the thing.
We know this.
We know how ridiculous we’ve become to the world. We feel like an adult in a crib.
That’s how I’ve often felt, “I’m an adult, living in a crib.”
Or, “why am I alive when I can’t live?”
As Matt Bellamy sings, “Free me from this world/I don’t belong here/ It was a mistake imprisoning my soul/Can’t you free me from this world?”
That’s the way many of us have felt, still feel, and when someone sends a “you can’t even?!”, our depression begs God, even more, “free me from this world,” and of course, that can stir all kinds of suicidal impulses (click here for help if you struggle with suicidal ideation).
Now…. when people give you the “you can’t even?!” treatment, it’s up to you and your personality on how to deal with it.
Maybe you want to talk to them, address the hurt.
Maybe you want to talk to a therapist.
Maybe you’re like me, and you think about when Jesus was rejected and alone, because that’s very much how you feel. Of course you’re not on the cross, and of course it’s not as bad, but rejected is rejected. Despised is despised.
Jesus, as our great High Priest, knows exactly what that feels like, and sometimes I will lie in my room, in the dark, and just say, “Jesus, you know.”
Brennan Manning once told a story of a dying man in a nursing home who began talking to an empty chair, imagining Jesus sitting there, and I’ve started the practice, too, and when someone tells me “You can’t even?!” I just look at that chair and imagine Jesus, patiently listening, and he will nod and say, “I know,” because he knows what every human frailty and rejection feels like.
Now here’s something important.
Since you and I have been through this — on the receiving end, we have to make sure we do all we can to never, ever put someone else through it.
And I’ll tell you how it can happen.
Let’s say you’ve broken out of your depressive or anxious spell, and are doing quite a bit better.
Life is hard, because it always is, but you’re now somewhat like the rest — you can do the normal things and sometimes feel quite good about yourself when you do the abnormal ones and imagine it’s because your faith is so strong that you’ve really got the hang of wielding the Spirit around.
“I’m just living by faith.” “I’m taking it on faith.” Etc. etc.
I’ve noticed, in my own life, that if I’m doing well enough, for long enough, I sometimes, internally, express shock that anyone could actually feel as helpless, hopeless, and paralyzed as they say.
It’s amazing how quickly I can forget, and it’s amazing how spiritually arrogant I can become.
I’m tempted to ascribe the “I’ve just finally learned to live by faith” mantra to my strength when actually I’m just feeling really well, mentally, which makes it much easier to live by faith or, at least, to trick myself into thinking I’m living by faith.
If you’ve been doing well for awhile, you might know this feeling, too.
“Yes, yes,” our arrogance will say, “We know depression and anxiety are real and really awful,” but if we’re well for long enough, we viscerally forget how disabling our mind can turn us.
If someone is paralyzed, it’s a constant reminder, and we won’t ever “you can’t even?!” them.
But since we can’t see anxiety and depression, OCD, PTSD, we don’t know the torment.
Current Joys‘ frontman, Nick Rattigan, once had a particularly good description of how bad his anxiety got.
I think everybody has anxiety, like, “I’m anxious about this test” or “I’m anxious about whether I’m going to get this job or not,” but there’s some people that have anxiety on a completely different scale.
Like, every time you leave the house, you think your room is going to catch on fire and you’re going to kill everyone in your building and you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison, and then that thought doesn’t leave your mind and you can’t get it out and it just gets worse and worse.
In the past few years, I’ve sort of spiraled into that level of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and I think one thing that constantly grounds me is being able to write music or play music so I just kind of use it as a vessel to communicate that anxiety.
When I first started having anxiety, it was constant panic attacks and these crazy intrusive thoughts… There’s a lot of physical pain attached to it and I had no idea what was happening. I felt very alone and scared and was afraid to talk to people about it because the thoughts that I was having were so crazy, so I think it’s just an important thing to communicate.
If you’re doing poorly right now, you get that completely.
If you were doing poorly recently but are now better, you get that mostly.
But if you’ve been doing fine for awhile, you will start to wonder, “Well…Yes, I know you feel that way, but…”
And if you’ve never felt like that, you will struggle to even grasp how a Christian could ever feel so afraid, so terrified of everything about life when we’ve been told that we have the Holy Spirit, God himself, inside us.
And those Christians, far from being the “blessing and encouragement” they think they are, will be ones you want to remove yourself far from — for your sanity and health.
So my message to you and me: if you are living in that non-life of “you can’t even” — Do all you can to find a psychiatrist and therapist, and say, “I can’t” until you truly can, despite the potential sneers.
Don’t worry about the garbage. Let it pile up until every fly in the United States has found the container and made generations of new little flies with fly love-making.
And even then, don’t worry about it. Let the flies enjoy their new home for awhile. It’s terribly hard to move with little ones, anyway.
Just try to do this.
Just try to get yourself to a psychiatrist and therapist and that might change your life.
And while you wait for that appointment, remember, that Jesus was also mocked and rejected by the ones closest to him, and he also heard, from the cross, “You can’t even save yourself?!”
“Can’t even” is a hard thing to hear from the ones who hate us, even harder from the ones who love us.
But Jesus lived his whole life, hearing it in some fashion or another, and as you wait for your doctor’s appointment, hang out for a moment with Jesus, your brother, and know that he has felt exactly as you.
He is your savior, always your savior, but also your friend. Always both, always for you.
(Photo: Pexels, free. It’s a man with an expression of shock. Just imagine it’s that Christian who can do all things through Christ, at all times, and is living by faith, and who loves life because that’s his personality. He will shoot you that shocked expression if you turn down the things he loves and thinks every Christian should and can do. Great guy. Truly! I mean that! God makes everyone, someone! But avoid becoming ensnared by his alpha Christian optimism at all costs, if you’re depressed.)
