Matt's Blog

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The Case for Faith in the Service of Love

We live in the Age of Reason. And that’s a pretty good thing. The Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution have made so many things better in so many ways. We should love reason. The thing is though that reason is not a virtue, it is a faculty. Reason basically just means cognition. The ability to think. It’s a tool. It has zero moral significance until it is used to impel action. There is no human behavior other than physical reflexes that occurs without reason first being employed. I think our culture has some very distorted and simplistic views about reason. I believe we are witnessing playout what happens when a culture elevates reason to the status of the highest virtue and basically elevates this human faculty, this tool, to the status of a god. Indeed, there are many in modern society who would like to completely replace God and faith in general with reason. This is an ignorant and catastrophic mistake. I was visiting a dear friend last night and we got to talking, as is our cu

Recovery Plan

I am going to try and outline a personal recovery plan for climbing out of the pit of depression that I’ve been in for roughly eight years. I also will be striving to improve my overall health and wellbeing. Now, I don’t know how complicated and difficult that may sound to those who are inexperienced and unfamiliar in the world of abnormal psychology and mental health/illness, but believe me, it’s no easy task. This must be about the thousandth time that I have tried to undertake this endeavor. And although I have thought, and fought, long and hard over it, I remain stumped by this problem. I have learned many, many things through my research and experience that are shown to help a significant percentage of people to overcome depression and return to good mental health. These treatments and therapeutic lifestyle changes include everything from medication, talk therapy, exercise, nutrition and supplementation, sleep habits, exposure to UV light, and electro-convulsive therapy, yoga, acu

Good Grief

This post has been stewing in my head for a couple of months now, but I still don’t know how to start it. So, I guess I’ll just jump right in. My Sister-in-Law died back in March. Processing that fact will, I believe, take a long time and coping with Her loss has been a very bitter pill to swallow. She was such a powerful, positive influence in the lives of Her family and friends that I know we all are feeling intense loss and grief right now. The compounding anxiogenic circumstances of the current Pandemic and resulting social distancing have made this time of grieving more surreal and harsh than they might otherwise be. For me, it has been a time of juxtaposed acute pain and joyful growth. When she passed, I was already mired in a brutal depressive episode and so I’ve been able to compare and contrast the pain of severe, clinical depression with he pain of overwhelming loss and grief. I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed the last couple of months, but they have been deeply instructive.

Just Keep Going

I don’t know what I want to say right now, so I’ll just let these pudgy digits start flying and we’ll see what comes out. I’ve been super depressed for the last couple of months (seven years really) and just constantly fatigued and in quite a bit of inflammatory pain all over my body. So, I’ve been feeling super shitty, but I’ve been making huge efforts to show up when I need to in order to be a good husband, father, child, sibling, friend, etc. I’ve tried to make it to as many family gatherings as I possibly can and to be engaged and encouraging to my kids. The holidays are brutal for people with mental illnesses and disabilities in general. Every party, feast, and picture fest is torture and requires a monumental effort to get me there. I have such low energy that I have to start thinking about how I’m going to save some up now to allocate to some kind of event or obligation in the future. Days or even weeks before a draining event arrives, I start to feel anxious and pained j

Good Intentions

There’s an old saying of unknown origin that states, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I have something to say about that idea. The phrase is meant to convey the message that your good intentions are useless unless you act on them in a way that transforms your intentions into reality. My first response to this phrase would be, “yeah, but so is the road to heaven.” The idea is that we are ultimately judged based mostly on our actions and not the condition of our heart. This is a terrible message and I say it is absolutely false. Why is it that we don’t achieve everything we want? I mean we wake up every morning believing subconsciously that we will be able to achieve the things we want to that day or else we wouldn’t even try. Even if we have very little difficulty achieving our mundane daily goals we all know on some level that there are challenges in life that we could be faced with that would be impossible to overcome. But we just choose not to think about tho

Battling the Darkness Inside Me

When I was a kid my favorite thing to do was dream about the future. I loved it so much that I did it all day long. I didn’t love the present so much because I hated myself. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun as a kid. But no matter what I was doing there was always a little voice in my mind telling me that it wasn’t good enough, or I wasn’t good enough. Some people might call this “low-self esteem,” but doing so would imply that I thought ill of myself. In fact, I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. A voice inside my head, but outside of myself was constantly trying to convince me that I was nothing. His voice closely resembled mine, but I knew it wasn’t me. My tormentor was just an excellent impersonator. The thing that wasn’t me. Before you start thinking that I’m a Schizo, just reflect for a second. Do you not have this voice? I hope you do, because that voice is commonly referred to as a conscience, and if you don’t have one, then there’s a good chance you