Despair: This feels like the worst

While you are going through the Stages of Depression, you may reach a point of Despair. Despair can be much more serious than the other stages. It can feel as if there is no hope, as if you will be depressed forever. Nothing seems fun or enjoyable, and everything seems harder to do. Getting out of bed in the morning can be the hardest part of the day.

Despair is a normal part of getting better, but it feels like your're crazy and out of control. It does seem to go on and on. No wonder you start looking for ways to ease the pain, whether they're good or bad for you in the long run. Overeating, or eating junk food for a short time won't harm you right away. But if you are getting out of control with drinking, drugs, reckless driving, anger, or any other self-destructive means, you need to look for help now.

If the idea of being helpless and stuck in your pain has made you think, even briefly, about harming yourself, as I've said elsewhere, get help now. If you can't think of anything else, call 911 and talk to the operator before you hurt yourself. Someone else maybe able to help you understand that your problems really are going to end, and things will eventually get better.

On the other hand, you can get stuck in the pain of despair, just as you can with anger or denial. For too many years, for example, I mistakenly thought the only way I could hold onto the value of my newborn daughter's short life was through the sadness and grief I felt about her death.

I needed to realize that holding onto the grief did nothing for my baby daughter, and in fact hurt many others by my stunted life. Finally, I realized that her life was in fact memorialized when I was whole, and no longer so filled with sadness about her death. I needed to live my life as the mother of her surviving sisters.

You may believe that if you stopped hurting and felt joy, your would dishonor the loss, or you would be saying that a loss was less significant. Of course, neither is true. What you loved is gone, and you have been left behind to go on for a reason. Your job is to find the reason and share it with the world.

You may never discover all the answers to your "whys," but you still have much to give others, no matter what it feels like now. I have seen the comfort I have been able to give countless others, which began because of Elizabeth Joy's very short life and death.

Despair is the most dangerous stage. If you have become unable to cope with your life, and feel so trapped by your pain that death seems the only way to stop it, get help right now, before you make a permanent decision for a temporary problem.