My name is S. Deborah Fryer. I’ve been a Truehope participant since 12 February 2003.
I suffered from symptoms I didn’t know were mental illness for 49 years. My main problems were depression, anxiety, social phobia, obsessive compulsions, fear, negative self-image, dark moods, crying jags, inability to focus, rages and daily thoughts of suicide.
My mental health began deteriorating significantly after I found myself in an abusive marriage. I had three children over 2 years 7 months and slept 4 hours a night for the four years I was married. At age 40, I separated from my husband, and a month later, I went into menopause while nursing my 7 month-old son. Two years later, I divorced my husband. The strress of all this sent me into a downward spiral and into therapy.
I never really felt better in therapy and can see now that constant talking and crying and getting out anger did nothing to relieve my suffering.
I was not formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder although my therapist wrote in his notes that he thought I had “hypo-manic tendencies”. That was when I was 42 and had suffered a major depressive episode lasting several weeks during the months of January and February.
Another major depressive episode followed right after Christmas, at age 47. I was prescribed the anti-depressant Paxil, which sent me into major mania and increased depression, my moods going up and down every two months, culminating in the worst depressive episode of my life at age 49. I felt at that point that I had nothing left to live for, that I was at rock bottom, and that I couldn’t get up any more. At that point, I was no longer able to function and seriously considered sending my sons to live with their father.
That’s when I discovered Truehope.
I began taking Empowerplus on the afternoon of 12 February. I took only 3 capsules, and the next day, I woke up with a feeling of calm I had never in my life experienced. It was a rocky few months, but as I overcame the drug withdrawal malaise, I began feeling stronger, and within 5 months, I was able to secure a 30-hour-a-week job at a local GNC store. I worked there until the following spring when the owner told me the store may have to close due to economic problems.
So I moved with my children to St George, Utah, on Mother’s Day 2004, and by the fall, I had a thriving business detailing homes for general contractors. Over the next few years, I had around 30 contractors on my books, and I had gained a reputation for doing an impeccable job, ensuring that each property was immaculate, requiring no additional cleaning by new home owners.
As the economy went south, I began taking on private homes and managed to stay afloat by supplementing the work with senior care and phone sales for a friend’s business. This last job led me to someone who asked me to write his biography, and the book was published last year. I am working marketing it and am also writing a series of children’s books with a young friend as illustrator.
I am certain that if it had not been for Truehope, I would’ve eventually been committed to a mental hospital. Without the Empowerplus, I couldn’t have worked at GNC (where, in my first year on the Truehope program; I filed 7 years of payroll for three stores and cleaned and organized the entire store and storeroom). I couldn’t have run my own business for the past 10 years, and I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate to write a biography, which took me a year to write.
Yesterday, I began work on a brand new book. It marks 11 years to the day that I started on the road to wellness with Truehope, and it describes my journey on Empowerplus from 2003 to the present day.
My thanks go to Tony Stephan and David Hardy and their families for their sacrifice and dedicated service and to Autumn Stringham for her wonderful book A Promise of Hope. I would also like to thank Catherine, my Truehope counsellor, who has spent many hours with me over the past decade, on the phone, helping me through difficulties and guiding me in the use of Empowerplus and other supplements.
I would like to wish all those currently on Empowerplus, and those considering it, great success and happiness for the future.
From a very happy woman,
S Deborah Fryer
author of With a Brush In my Mouth