Beyond the Door: A Journey Through a Lifetime of Mental Illness

By Harris Tucker

My whole life has been plagued with a mental illness: a silent killer, a shameful secret, a broken mind. As a form of healing and therapy, I began to blog my thoughts and feelings. My lifetime with mental illness has provided me with vast knowledge and experience that I would never have learned or gained otherwise. Follow my journey as I struggle to make my way along this winding road, one blog at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228874805

Harris Tucker

In 2012, Harris Tucker experienced a life-altering mental breakdown, like none other he had experienced in his life. It would forever change the lives of himself and his family. Harris was born in a small, rural town, Triton, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. He now resides in Conception Bay South, NL, with his wife Lisa and their two children, Logan and Lauren. He has devoted his life to his family, his art and his writing. Follow him on his journey as he continues to advocate for mental illness through his blogging at www.harrislisa72.com Follow Harris with another of his loves and therapies, his art! His paintbrush has guided him through many dark days, often shedding rays of sunshine to light the way."Art by Harris" can be found at www.harrisartisticdesigns.com

Book preview

Beyond the Door

Harris Tucker

Beyond the Door

Copyright © 2022 by Harris Tucker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-7479-9 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-7478-2 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-7480-5 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

1.A Broken Mind

2.The Cold, Hard Truth About Mental Illness, Depression and Suicide

3.Words Matter

4.What is Depression?

5.Depression

6.My Survival Guide to Depression, Anxiety

and Panic Attacks

7.Does Mental Illness Change Who You Are?

8.Relapse Prevention

9.What I Have Learned About Depression

10.A Condensed Version of My Story

11.The Church and Mental Illness

12.Do Not Be Anxious About Anything (Philippians 4:6)

13.Bitter or Better?

14.My Mental Health Update

15.Mental Health and Stigma

16.Diversity in Mental Illness and Cerebral Palsy

17.Inside My Broken Mind

18.Cannot Relate

19.‘More needs to be done for mental health’

20.I Love Mental Health and Cerebral Palsy

21.The Do’s and Don’ts of Depression and Anxiety

22.The Reality of My Diagnosis

23.I Know a Man Who Can

24.Discouragement or Courage?

25.The Biggest Threat to my Mental Health

26.Exhausted

27.Before God Intervenes

28.Finding the Light

29.When Your Perfect Life Isn’t So Perfect

30.How Do You Get That Lonely?

31.Oh Me Nerves!

32.Writer’s Block

33.My Prayer for Today

34.My Prayer for the Future

35.It’s Not All About Me

36.When God Says No!

37.Some Days Suck!

38.Mental Health and Wellness Exhibit:

Excerpts from a Speech

39.Break Down Some Walls

40.Life After a Mental Breakdown

41.Writing–Therapy?

42.The Aftermath of My Depression and Anxiety

43.Surviving Christmas?

44.Mental Health and Spirituality

45.Dear Dad in Heaven

46.’Tis the Season To Be Jolly

47.Fate / Fear

48.Come Morning

49.This Recovering Mental Illness

50.What the Church Doesn’t Know About Mental Illness

51.Suicide

52.Depression, I Hate You!

53.Who Am I Today?

54.How Are You?

55.Hope in a Hopeless Situation

56.Where Did My Normal Go?

57.Our Story

58.A Mental Breakdown

Conclusion

Introduction

Major depression and anxiety disorder have plagued me for my entire life. I remember it’s ugly existence from a very young age. I was a teenager when I had my first mental breakdown. Antidepressants were not prescribed for, or administered to, persons under 18. Because I was 16 at the time, medical help was unavailable. I lived in outport Newfoundland, where counselling services were not an option. So, I was left to fight this ravishing beast on my own. With nothing but family support, I fought to get through each day.

When I became of legal age, when a person takes on the rights and responsibilities of an adult, I was prescribed antidepressants. I have remained on them up to the present day. I cannot remember not taking medication for depression and anxiety.

For the most part, medication kept my depression and anxiety at a level where I was a fairly high-functioning person. I owned and operated my own business for 28 years. I lived a fairly normal life, by which I mean society’s accepted standard. However, I suffered several relapses, which required my medication to be tweaked, and I always bounced back.

However, in 2012, I experienced a relapse unlike any other, rendering me completely non-functioning. This continued for three years or longer, during which time I did not rebound. I lost interest in everything–nothing brought me pleasure. I could not escape this hellish existence. I tried everything the medical field could offer, but because I was deemed treatment-resistant, nothing worked. I existed, which was the extent of my recovery.

In 2017, I started to blog my thoughts and feelings. Through this writing process, I began to find healing and therapy. My lifetime with mental illness provided me with an unlimited amount of knowledge and experience that I would never have learned or gained otherwise. I determined to blog this knowledge and experience to help me, as well as others who were living with this disabling illness. By speaking out, I hoped to help dismantle the walls of stigma that still surround mental illness, break the silence and educate others about this illness.

In this book, you will experience the raw truth of what is actually inside the mind of this suffering, mentally ill person. The chapters, which are dated, were written at the time I felt inspired to write them. Thus you will have an idea of what I was feeling at specific moments in time. You will read my very thoughts, experience my pain and feel my emotion. I invite you to travel this journey by reading the blogs as they happened.

Along this journey, you will meet my family: my wife, Lisa, our son, Logan, and our daughter, Lauren. You will encounter some of the pain our family experienced when our one-year-old daughter was diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. It was a life-altering diagnosis that changed our lives forever. Life would certainly be a struggle–we would encounter many challenges. As with any incurable illness, whether mental, physical, psychological or neurological, they all affect one’s life forever. We have to learn to find meaning and purpose in life, in spite of the diagnosis. That is not easy to do, but we have to face each challenge head on. I can do it and you can do it; one minute, one hour, one day, at a time!

1

Broken Mind

Life could not be darker than what it has been these past three years, prior to making my first entry in what was then a family blog. Little did I realize that this website, http://www.harrislisa72.com, would become my prized form of therapy and healing, my way back to life, one blog at a time.

The website was called Life and Times of the Tuckers, with the inscription, Living with depression and anxiety. Raising a child with cerebral palsy. The ups and downs of life: the rain and the sunshine!

It became my best friend, my sounding board, my emotional release, my outlet, but most of all, my therapy.

My first entry was not intended to be a blog, but my story that I had shared at church.

I realized, after that night of telling my horrific story of my mental breakdown, that by sharing publicly I was helping, not only myself, but others who fought this illness.

And then, I posted onto my website my story, A Broken Mind, and it went from there. It seemed like my pen wanted to write, and the more I wrote, the less pain I felt.

So, let’s begin by reading my very first blog post. Remember, this was written from a Christian standpoint. Also keep in mind that, only a few months prior, my brain had practically shut down. I was numb and felt nothing but sadness. I could not concentrate. I experienced memory loss. I could not focus on a conversation. I had no desire to read or write. Now, here I am writing a book, nothing short of a miracle!

January 20, 2017

Life can be great! I had a successful business for 28 years, a loving wife, a beautiful home, and a precious baby boy. However, despite this, in 2012, I was diagnosed with a mental illness. My specific diagnosis is clinical depression and major anxiety. I was told there was no cure, and our lives would be forever changed. I have a disability, not a physical one where I am confined to a wheelchair, but a mental one, locked inside my head.

It has robbed me of who I am, and I fight every day to get that me back. It changes who you are. At the acute stage of my illness, which I remember little about, Lisa, my wife, described me as a walking corpse, a mind in constant torment.

Statistics show that Lisa and I are in a minority, because most marriages don’t survive my illness. I have to thank Lisa for sticking by me; many spouses would not. Thus far, we have survived, with many struggles and obstacles, and try to do our best to keep ourselves together, which is a challenge every day.

Statistics show that, every 40 seconds, a person commits suicide due to depression. It is time that we, as a society, end the stigma and begin talking about this illness as just that…an illness. It’s time for us to see the person, not the illness, because that person is still there somewhere, albeit locked inside, struggling to get out.

Many times, I felt there was no hope, no help, and no way back, just a black hole. When someone gets to this point, it is then they feel the only way to end the pain and free their caregivers of their burden is to hope for peace through suicide. It is not our place to judge, for only God has that right, and only God knows our hearts, our innermost thoughts.

Thankfully, I was never suicidal. Borderline, yes. I’ve had many days when I was so sick that I wanted to die. I prayed to God to let me die and end this hellish existence. But I am still here, and for that, I am forever grateful, because things could be much different.

In the first years of my illness, I spent most of my time sleeping. I could not function. There was no drug, or cocktail of drugs, that would alleviate my symptoms. I was so zombie-like that I was closely monitored for dementia. A lot of my symptoms pointed in that direction. But it was later determined not to be dementia, but the severity of my depression.

When all drugs failed, my last resort was electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). This is where your brain is shocked with an electric current to induce a grand mal seizure, hoping to reboot your brain. After seven treatments, I was only getting worse, to the point where treatments had to cease.

I am not saying that ECT is ineffective, because for others it can be a miracle-working treatment that can bring them out of their severe depression. But, I was at another dead-end. I cannot imagine the fear, frustration, hopelessness and helplessness that my wife and family must have felt at this time. The medical field was baffled, having used up every possible resource to help me get back my life. This cycle of trial and error continued for another year.

Even in my despair, God continued to bless us. Our precious Lauren was born amid all this chaos and turmoil. She was a ray of sunshine to brighten the darkness. However, on her first birthday, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. We were faced with another life-altering diagnosis. We were told by her doctor that she had big problems. He did not know if she would walk or talk. Nor did he know how much she could see. Lauren had a long road ahead of her.

We knew we were going to need all the support we could get, to help us through this devastating and life-changing ordeal. It was time to call on family for support.

We fell apart. How could this be happening with everything else we were dealing with? God, where are you? God, why? So many questions–so few answers. I could not understand why God would entrust this child to me, a family already struggling to take care of themselves. Now, here I was, with this awesome responsibility of raising a child with special needs. I felt so inadequate, but I had to believe that God knew what He was doing. That is where my faith had to come into play, but, at times, my faith was so small.

Every day brought new challenges as, in my weakness, I tried to help strengthen our little girl and be a good Daddy to both Logan and Lauren. All day, everyday, I pushed myself to the limit.

Right now, mornings are the most difficult time of day. That is when your serotonin levels are at their lowest. I have to train my brain to realize that this too will pass, and my day will get a little brighter. I am, and was, like someone who had brain surgery, or a stroke, and have to learn how to do life’s tasks all over again. It has been a long journey. From learning how to wash dishes, to zippering my coat, to going into a store or any other public place. Normal everyday tasks, that come naturally to others, seemed insurmountable to me.

Your brain is no different than any other organ in your body. The challenge is the stigma that society puts on this illness. I am no different than someone with diabetes, hypertension, liver disease, kidney failure, heart attack, etc. Things can go wrong with your brain, just like something can go wrong with your heart. However, society has put mental illness into a category all by itself. But that is not where it belongs. It is my hope–which is why I speak and talk and write about my illness–that one day the stigma will end and people with mental illness will feel free to talk about it openly and not have to hide in shame. This is not an illness of weakness, but of strength. I have come so far, but my battle is not over. I speak for all those who struggle with this disease. I also want to speak for those who don’t have a voice, as well as those who have lost their battle with this illness and have found peace with the angels.

I have asked God "Why? so many times. I could be such an effective father, husband, provider and friend without this illness. But God has not taken this from me. Every morning, I have to pray and ask God to see me through the day because, if He does not, I will not make it. I cannot fight this battle alone. I believe God is walking beside me, even when I find it