I haven't really heard anyone say this before, so I don't know what the reaction will be. Usually I just hear people say "call a hotline" or "see a professional." Not that those things are wrong; they're very important. Perhaps some wiser people can respond to and improve on what I'm about to say. But something occurred to me when I was going through something very similar.

I was beginning a career that required me to travel, but my wife got into a great med school. So I quit my job, and since I had decent experience and training, I figured things would work out. They didn't, not for a long time. I lost my motivation, I couldn't bring myself to look for anything else, and I fell into a pretty deep depression. I never thought that sacrificing myself could actually mean losing myself. I had graduate loans that were beginning to become a burden on both of us, but between depression and a disability it became incredibly difficult to find work again. I thought she might be better off without me. Some nights I couldn't sleep because I would be afflicted with thoughts of the least distressing way for my wife to find out about how I'd done it, or I'd think of ways to compose loving goodbye notes and apologize and try to let her know it wasn't her fault.

Then it occurred to me that an illness had formed inside me. And if I went through with it, my illness wouldn't be cured, it would spread. It would be released from my being and infect everyone who knew me to varying degrees. It would spread to everyone I knew who heard what happened, not just to those I was closest to. Sure, maybe they could fight the illness, maybe they're in a better place, but the closer they were to me, and the more susceptible they were to this particular illness, the more harm it would do. So although I could end my own suffering, I would cause a great deal of suffering for many others.

So I chose to fight through it. But I found that fighting depression is a losing battle. How do you fight a void? How do you fight emptiness? If all I thought about was fighting depression, in some twisted way, all I was thinking about was myself. I was still being self-centered, even though it felt like self-loathing. People fight depression with no results for years. They try pills, they try therapy, sometimes things help, sometimes they don't, sometimes they just accept the idea that they always will be depressed and they just decide to live with it, like some shitty relative that they could never ask to move out.

So I realized I needed to focus on something else besides "fighting depression," which was a losing battle. I needed to focus on following Christ, and serving and loving people. If I could shift my focus away from myself and my future and my thoughts and my problems and my finances and my job or lack thereof, just for a little while at least at first, I could at least I could begin to think differently. I could think about other people maybe for once. How is my wife doing today? I bet she'd like it if I came and visited her, or if I did something a little extra for her around the house. I wonder how my Mom is doing? I've been avoiding her, but I bet she'd like to hear from me in spite of the fact that I feel like I'm letting her down. Have I even asked her how she feels? When was the last time I asked her anything about her life at all instead of treating her calls as another chore? In this way, Christ is curing me of my illness, instead of the alternative, which would be taking matters into my own hands, taking my own life, and allowing the illness to spread. Or even allowing the illness to spread in smaller ways by walling myself off slowly and changing who I really am, or who I could be to people who might need someone just to be with them.

So, is what Christ doing with me "working" any better than what other people have done with pills or therapy or anything else? Well, the truth is, I am in therapy, and it's important. And I do take pills, well, for my debilitating cluster headaches anyway. I haven't tried any for depression. But I really don't think those things on their own would be enough if that's all I was doing. And I think that's what I see you expressing in some of your comments. You want something more, and that's why you posted something here. Good, there's something more. Don't miss it.