THE MISSION-OCD & Psychotic Depression

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

I saw the mission as a new slate. I saw it as a way to leave my old self behind, and create an amazing new self. In my mind I thought, "This is a time to make up for high school, for everything, this is it, you make the rest of your life right now."

I really bought into the mantra "the mission is a mirror of the rest of your life". I bought into it obsessively. Now is that completely true? There are by the book missionaries who have left the church since coming home, or are completely inactive. There are missionaries that really struggled, but come home serve and remain active. There is also everything in between.

Mission OCD Symptoms-

-I’m obsessed with time, if we are in a house for too long, I feel like people we were supposed to meet in the streets we are going to miss, and they’ll lose their chance to hear the gospel, and then it will be my fault, and then I’ll go to hell.  A 20 minute Charla/discussion rule is implemented by the Mission President. It made me beyond incredibly anxious during discussions, all I could think about was that rule, investigator doubts, etc., nothing else mattered, all that mattered was the rule, I had to follow the 20 minute discussion rule. As soon as 20 minutes was up, my chest would flood with anxiety, it was like I was on fire, we had to leave, and so we did. Obviously, my companions were perplexed, and annoyed, you can imagine, lol.

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-I was incredibly organized, had a street contact book color coded in conjunction with a color coded map., and I would rank all my street contacts with stars. Whenever an appointment fell through, which was often, I would hit up the list. It became a discussion teaching machine. 

-Pres. Ballard said (Past LDS Apostle)-“If you guys do 10 street contacts a day, your baptisms will double.” I go completely insane with that, I do waaaay more, lol. I talk to lots of people, and annoy my companions, obviously. Again, this coupled with my color coded street contacting book and map, we end up teaching insane amounts of discussions, all in peoples homes, it blows most people away in the mission, they’re like “How are you doing that, it's so hard to get in homes and teach.” Unfortunately, as soon as I get inside to teach, my heart races and all I can think about is the 20 minute discussion rule. Of course it affects my teaching ability. Without OCD obsessing about the 20 minute rule, I probably could have baptized so so many people. I taught, tons, but investigators doubts and conversion had to fit in a 20 minute discussion box, reinforced by OCD . I’ll just say this, every time I taught, I made it a point to recognize the spirit, and point it out to the people we were teaching, and say, "that’s the spirit you are feeling right now."  I was very forward and blunt about that, that was the one good thing I did during my OCD discussions, and I always made sure to do that. But I'm sure many thought, "That kid is rather intense."

-This one is kind of comical, and Alberto was such a good guy, a strong faith. We teach a gay guy named Alberto Escobar. My OCD goes nuts. It’s hard teaching him, I feel like being around him will make me gay. I have to baptize him, its rough, I feel like me baptizing him is going to make me gay, lol. I push through and do it anyway, and am really glad when it's all over.  After each discussion, I had to constantly assure myself I wasn’t gay, that I didn’t magically become gay when leaving our discussions.

So these are a few examples of what I was dealing with. Undiagnosed untreated OCD in the mission, is like pouring racing fuel on a fire. Unfortunately, the human body, mind, emotions, and psyche, can only take so much. When intense emotional depression coupled with intense stress are sustained for a long period, you break i.e. Psychotic Depression ensues. If I could describe Psychotic Depression, I would say its terrifying and agony walking hand in hand pulling you down to hell.

Psychotic Depression on the mission: 

Phase 1-Depersonalization (I can't put an exact time frame, but it lasted multiple months)

I’m fighting with my comps, constantly, I’m incredibly fatigued from the OCD unknowingly. I wake up one day, and I look around the room, and everything is glazed over, I can’t feel my surroundings, they have no depth, my physical vision, the way things look, is literally altered and distorted, its difficult to put into words, its like describing the color green to a blind person, it really just has to be experienced to fully understand. It is as scary as it sounds. It’s the most bizarre and scary thing I have ever experienced up to that point in my life. I think I’m possessed by an evil spirit because I’ve been fighting with my comps so much (understandable missionary thinking).  Nonetheless, I don’t tell anybody, and am determined to beat Satan, he isn’t going to send me home. I work like a dog that entire time. My color coated street contact map system is like a machine. I’m in the midst of being terrified and depressed, yet I’m still teaching tons of people. This is mental illness, this isn't truth. I should have been in the hospital at this time. I remember looking out the window during a discussion, I look at a tree, I can’t feel it, its glazed over, I’m like, “what is going on?” Depersonalization is so scary, it's agony. Add to that, you don't know what's happening, or why, or if it will every go away, and you're on the other side of the world, a 20 year old kid. Maybe to survive, my mind labeled it Satan, so it could pin the awfulness onto something, and that something I could recognize and fight against.

I call it a tender mercy, but a memory comes to my mind. I remember my dad in the front yard after he broke when he was a bishop, saying he couldn’t feel anything, like a floppy disc had been inserted into his head that made him detached and not able to feel his surroundings. It clicks, I had a nervous breakdown, or a better explanation, I’m in the midst of psychotic depression. I just remember DAD as a bishop, described something so similar to what I was experiencing.

I remember playing football on P Day with the Zone. I can’t react fast, I can’t run as fast. They throw a football at me, my reaction time is horrible, I’m moving like molasses. I can’t catch anything, my arms and hands all come up slow and sluggish. It was so weird and bizarre.

Phase 2-Delusions (separate occurrences)

I feel like I’m in a dimension, have a state of mind, or that my mind has been able to work in a place outside the knowledge of God my entire life. It's hard to explain this delusion. I’m sitting at a members house before lunch, looking at a picture of Joseph Smith, and I think “God doesn’t know what I know, he doesn’t know the place or state of mind I’ve always been able to be in my whole life (I’m talking crazy here obviously. I entered the mission chemically imbalanced. At this point, I would say I was chemically obliterated). My heart starts to race, to the point that I think it's going to burst out of my chest. I eat my soup at the kitchen table and try to keep it together. 

I start to open up to my greenie about what is going on (yea, I was training when I was at my worst, lol). I’m sure he’s like, “You’re supposed to be my trainer!”. But in all seriousness, the quiet calm nature of my greenie is what I needed at that time. My greenie comp, My Younger Brother, a few bandmates over the years, these are people that have been so helpful to me, their temperament and personality puts me at peace.

I go in and out of sobbing during the day. Forget teaching my greenie about teaching or Spanish. His training is to just let me vent and talk all day. I am in a very bad place. It's safe to say his training was to be on suicide watch of his trainer.

Phase 3-Fight or Flight (2 weeks, this was the worst!)

The Delusions ended, and a new phase of my psychotic depression took its place. I feel scared to death. Again, it's hard to explain, it's something that is experienced, not explained. But a floating scared terror feeling rests inside me. Its torture. It doesn’t ever go away, it's on the entire day.  I’m not scared of anything, I just have a terror feeling inside me, a fight or flight feeling if you will, it's 100 percent chemical. It's agonizing. It lasts all day long, and gets worse indoors. I’m literally enduring moment to moment, second to second the entire day. 

I tell the DL (district leader) we live with that I’m feeling scared all day, and he says “Well, I get scared of things too, and some spiel about being scared of the future or inadequacy or something” LOL, he has no clue. I open up to my greenie, he is on red alert, we just walk around all day, at this point, it's so bad, even as an OCD missionary, I’m like “Screw Working” we just need to be chill and walk around during the day. I want to rip my skin off its so bad.

The District Leader and his comp, they realize something is way off with me. I kneel down to pray with the DL. As soon as I try to speak, I fall backward and start hyperventilating, the room is like it's spinning, a fuzzy tingling feeling starts at my feet and moves its way all the way up my body. I’m paralyzed, I can’t move. The DL picks me up and puts me on his bed. Lying on the bed it finally stops. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just endured a very severe anxiety attack.

I sit in a chair in the middle of the room and start talking to him. I’m shaking and trembling uncontrollably; my entire body is shaking. Everybody is like “Whooooooa, we need to get on the phone with the President.” The don't say that, but that’s the reaction. We call the mission president, I tell him what’s been going on (about a week prior to my episode with depersonalization, we had interviews, and my President asks how I’m doing, and I remember I just fell apart and started sobbing, he consoled me and we talked, he let me know I was doing fine, little did either of us know I was right on the edge of psychotic depression).

Phase 4- Stale Plain Toast (about a month)

After the fight or flight stage, I feel like stale plain toast, I have no feeling, like I literally can’t express emotion, I’m completely blunted. My parents could die, and I wouldn’t feel anything. I could find a cure for cancer, I wouldn’t feel anything. I remember staring at a girl's butt walking in front of me and my greenie, and I feel no arousal, my penis doesn’t even move. 

My mission president really didn’t know how bad off I was, he had no idea what was going on, nor did I. Again, I kept saying I had a nervous breakdown, which I did, at least I assume I had, but in reality, I was in the midst of what I now know is psychotic depression. 

I sit with the mission presidents wife and relate my experience about my childhood buddy. We do a test for OCD (When I opened up to my greenie, I remember telling him the weird things I would do in High School. In my mind, I was in a state of complete weirdness, that I honestly thought I was making up or doing to myself somehow, because I didn't know what was going on, why, or if it would ever stop. But I made a connection with the only other weird stuff in my life, all the OCD symptoms growing up, so I thought, there has to be a link).

I answer yes to almost every single symptom question. I talk with the mission psychologist on the phone, it’s a blur. I’m prescribed Wellbutrin, and my Mission President says the medicine will allow me to push, but hold me back just enough to keep me from being OCD.

This is completely inaccurate, and to no fault of his own, it stems from complete ignorance about my situation and mental illness in general. He had no clue what he was talking about, and I had no clue either. It was the blind leading the blind. Do I have resentment about this, sure I do, but again, he had no idea.

Anyway, I was in the midst of psychotic depression. I didn’t need Wellbutrin, I needed an incredibly strong anti psychotic. I needed cognitive therapy. I needed 3 times the Wellbutrin dose I was given. I needed a tranquilizer. I needed to be on a close suicide watch. Also, a pill doesn't cure OCD!!! That is asinine!  Medicine is an aid in overcoming OCD. Often a productive life can be achieved, if the medication is coupled with cognitive therapy. But it also depends on the individual, and it also depends on the severity of the OCD, each case is different.  My mission president had no training or understanding of mental illness at all! I suffered so incredibly much on the mission. I do hold some resentment toward  my mission president, but, he had no idea what had happened to me, nor did I.

I stay a week in the mission home, and then he puts me back in the field. He says, I let you stay here a week because you had a nervous breakdown. Again, he doesn’t have a clue, but I don’t either. I go back out into the mission field. I have no cognitive ability. I introduce myself and my greenie multiple times to the same person and have no idea. I’m crying uncontrollably during the day. After a week, my mission president realizes how bad off I am, and sends me home.

On the plane ride home, I remember looking out the window, and not feeling anything. The plane is taking off, and I see the lights of the city below me, it's beautiful, and should be a very emotional moment, I’m going home from my mission. I don’t feel anything. I have the emotion of waiting in line at the DMV. I’m thinking, “what is wrong with me?”

There are hard feelings about the mission. Most of them are gone, but I still harbor some resentment towards my mission president, and authority in general. Authority, Religion, and OCD don’t get along well in my head, and my President was indeed an authoritative religious figure I had to answer to and perform under. I’ve always felt like my president really doesn’t know me well. I was in a tiny box called the mission and my OCD had no room to breath. I was incredibly stressed. Yes, I was very hardworking, but also fanatically OCD rule oriented. I was incredibly intense in the mission. I wasn’t healthy at all. The gregarious extrovert that I truly am, was completely buried under OCD scrupulosity in the mission field. I was a ticking time bomb.

Honestly, I'm pretty irreverent, I’m loud, I can be too vulgar, I’m aggressive, I’m blunt, I’m gregarious, I’m extroverted, and I’m a jokester. I’m a spectrum of good and bad behavior, character strengths and character weaknesses, like everyone. But socially at least, I lean toward "loud extrovert". Some might even call it "hyperactivity".

My president knew me as Elder OCD, that's who I was on the mission. The week I stayed at the mission home, I learned about my mission president. He was the son of a school superintendent. I could tell. He was very rule oriented, very by the book. He was 100 percent in the box, and I think he really struggles with any individual who lives outside the box, or whose life is rather unorthodox, he can’t understand it, he can’t relate to it. He is all administrator, rules, policies, and hierarchy, 100 percent.

Here I am, with this mental affliction, and I can’t work in that box in any way. The box my mission president and so many other men in the church work in, ESPECIALLY the leaders. I’ve tried. A standard career, the mission, etc., anything with structure, rules, and authority, completely wrecks me. 

So here I am, a drummer, working and performing in a scene and environment, that in no way my mission president could understand, and who I’m sure wouldn’t approve of. I want to be in a successful rock band and promote concerts, and be an active member of the church. I’m a drummer. This is literally, the complete opposite of anything my president would do or even encourage. 

Life is hard, and my struggles are real, and it’s been such a battle to remain active all these years. Through it all I have stayed active, not obedient, hardly, but active, open with my bishops.

My mission president has no real understanding of what happened to me on the mission. He has no idea what has happened after the mission, and he doesn’t really know the details before my mission. He makes me uncomfortable, even to this day. But I know he knows how hard I tried, and how sorely I wanted to be a good Elder. Unfortunately, all the hardships, failures, and rejections after the mission, have really jaded me.

I honestly think most GA’s and Apostles are similar to my mission president. I would be happy if I never met any of them, it would make me quite uncomfortable. OCD and scrupulosity, it just can’t handle authorities on that level. It’s too intimidating, and whether it’s accurate or not, my experiences have created a notion of what I think they are like.

Which brings me to God. Growing up, because of OCD, he always seemed ready to punish and send me to hell. I wonder what he’s like. Is he the pound on the pulpit type? Is he the calm gentle type? Is he the incredibly disciplined no funny business personality type? Is he the fun loving lenient type like my bishop in Orange County? I don’t know.

I go home after 17 months in the mission field.

Phase 5- Home, recovery, heavy meds and I can’t tell if they're doing anything

I’ve spent the last 6 months in an agonizing hell, and all I had was a dose of Wellbutrin the last 2 weeks of my mission. I feel like my leg was blown off by a grenade and I was given a band aid.

I just endured the most terrifying and agonizing trial of my life. I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know if it was ever going to end. I was obviously terrified. I endured all of it without any hospitalization or medication. I felt like I went through open heart surgery, without anesthesia. Am I angry about this, sure I am, but again, it was the blind leading the blind in my circumstance. My mission president had no idea what I was going through, and probably still doesn’t understand what happened today. I do hold some resentment toward him. But he was in complete ignorance to my situation, had no training or personal experience with my issues.

And what's crazy, I was working and teaching during this hell, tons of people we were teaching. That’s how effective my street contacting/color coded map system was. I was so OCD about being a good Elder, nothing was going to keep me from not finishing and being successful.

And why? Because I wanted to have a good life when I got home. I wanted to be blessed. There was a terrifying demonic psychiatric hell storming inside me, and really up until the fight or flight stage of my craziness, I didn’t say anything to anybody. 

People could look at me from the outside and think I was fine. I was in the midst of depersonalization, my visual perception of everything was completely glazed over and flat, so weird, and SCARY! Is it ever going to end?!!! I was suffocating in it, in this awfulness I couldn’t escape, this detached dark surrealness, a blanket over my reality that I couldn’t do anything about, I couldn’t escape it. 

Yet there I was picking up my greenie cracking a smile in a photo. People think you’re fine, because they can’t “SEE” that there is anything wrong with you, they have no clue!! People make HORRIBLE judges, because all their judgement is based on personal experience and knowledge, which is so incredibly LIMITED.

I thought Satan was possessing me, trying to end my mission, and I was hell bent on beating him and continuing my mission, working hard, hitting numbers, he was not going to beat me, that’s what I was thinking, I was not going home! 

I had this mindset because I wanted so badly to be blessed and have a good life when I got home. This “your mission is a mirror of your life” mantra was ingrained in me. My mission was incredibly difficult, and you know what, my life has been incredibly difficult too, so I guess there is something to the mantra.

This has a lot to do with holding onto anger. Sure I made the ultimate sacrifice, but this disorder has been the hindrance in me finding any success in a career or dating. It's the fight like a dragon starve like a church mouse cycle. All work, all pain, little to no reward. I get mad, and wonder, what is the point?

I came home in September, I served for 17 months. Eventually I work at BYU grounds. I’m a zombie raking leaves. It's in the fall. I came home in September. (My second episode at 31 was also during the fall. The fall is beautiful, but can cause some eeriness in me. I don't like the fall.)

I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m confused. I remember after being home a few weeks, I was walking with my dad on BYU campus to go watch a devotional. I remember feeling so uncomfortable and sheepish around all the kids. I felt so inadequate, strange, less than all of them. I felt like an infant if that makes sense, completely vulnerable.

Through meds like Depakote and Fluvoxamine, the help of a psychiatrist at LDS Family Services, low stress levels, and the incredible loving support and understanding of my parents, a year later, I started college.

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Visual Aid- My Psychotic Depression Episode, an abstract hell-

Visual Aid (Another way of looking at it)- My Psychotic Depression Episode, an abstract hell-