How do we understand “with hardship comes ease” when the hardship feels lifelong?

Assalamu alaykum,

I’m writing this from a place of real pain, not to argue against Islam or to disrespect Allah. I’m genuinely struggling and trying to understand.

I have a long history of treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. I’ve tried medications, therapy, and other treatments, but the suffering has remained. Living day to day with mental illness can feel unbelievably heavy. It affects how I see myself, how I interact with my family, how I function, how I worship, and how much hope I can even hold onto.

I often think about the verse:

“So truly, with hardship comes ease. Truly, with hardship comes ease.”

I want to believe this deeply. But I struggle to understand what it means for people whose hardship does not seem to lift.

Where is the ease for someone who lives for years, or even decades, with severe depression and anxiety despite doing the “right” things — making du’a, seeking treatment, trying to be patient, trying to keep going?

Where is the mercy when the suffering is constant, and when it doesn’t only hurt the person going through it, but also affects their spouse, children, parents, and everyone around them?

And this question feels even bigger when I think about people suffering from famine, genocide, displacement, and war — people who do not even have clean water, food, medicine, safety, or a tent to sleep in. Where is their ease? Where is their peace and tranquility in this dunya? What amount of du’a changes circumstances that, for many people, may not change in the way they desperately need?

I am not asking these questions to deny the Qur’an. I am asking because I am trying to reconcile these verses with the reality that some people seem to live and die in immense suffering.

How do Muslims understand “ease after hardship” when the ease may not come in a visible way in this life? Is the ease sometimes only in the akhirah? Is it internal? Is it the ability to endure? Is it small moments of relief inside a much larger suffering? And if someone cannot feel that relief because of mental illness, what then?

How does one hold onto faith, hope, and trust in Allah when peace and tranquility feel completely absent?

I would really appreciate sincere, compassionate answers — especially from people who have personally struggled with severe mental illness, grief, trauma, or long-term suffering, or from those who have knowledge of Qur’an, tafsir, and Islamic theology.

Jazakum Allahu khayran.