How My Catholic Faith Helped Me Cope with Bipolar Depression
When my mind is overwhelmed with anxiety, I find peace in the pews
On an early November morning, a little more than five years ago, I was overcome by the rush of a familiar feeling. Sunday was my day to go to the gym for a two-hour workout, but on that day, I just wanted to stay inside the house with the curtains closed. I couldn’t face the world. But I couldn’t not face the world, because my mom would suspect that my bipolar disorder was flaring.
While she was busy preparing for her Sunday visit to Christ the King Church — her own weekly routine — a solution began swimming with the other thoughts racing in my brain. I grabbed my cell phone from my bedside table, called my middle sister, and told her that I planned to go to church with Momma.
My sister was skeptical, and rightly so; despite being raised Catholic, more than a decade had passed since the last time I’d attended service at the Cathedral Basilica on Colfax in Denver. It wasn’t atheism that stopped me, though — the contrary, in fact. In the first few years after I’d abandoned the church, I’d become infatuated with praying vigorously in contained spaces, where the noises of the outside world could not float into my space. My closet had been my preferred place of supplication. I’d kneel…
