When faced with the big questions in life I find it helpful to turn to the bible, and of course the top 40 hits.  When I was asked about Depression and how a believer can deal with the terrible numbness and isolation that comes with it; I thought of the Psalms and The Main Ingredient. 

Depression is not sadness or grief, but the prolonged numbness and despondency that come with diminished ability to process information as well as disturbance of appetite for food and relationship along with big changes in sleep patterns.  It can be reactive to environmental stressors, to wearing oneself out with bad lifestyle choices, or it can, and often is, the result of a genetic predisposition.  Regardless of the cause, the experience and the recovery path has been very similar across the centuries.

The limited understanding that we have developed about the brain in recent decades has narrowed the physical mechanism of Depression to the interaction of a few chemical that are vital to the speed and effectiveness of nerve connectivity.  In brief, if stress has eaten your endorphins; or you did not have enough of them in the first place, you will be depressed.  In recent years psychopharmacology has made great advances to make better use of the available endorphins in a depressed brain to allow reserves to build more quickly than stress can deplete them.   Prior to the 1980’s the available medications and other treatments were very invasive.  Before that the only potentially healing alternative was to drop out of normal life and seek a less stressful environment for an extended period of time.

Above I said that the experience is similar regardless of the cause.  Forgive my tongue-in-cheek reference to the wisdom of the Main Ingredient and attend to their 1969 story of reactive depression:

<em>Ok, so your hearts broke. You sit around moping, crying, crying
you say you’re even thinking about dying
Well, before you do anything rash, Dig this…

Everybody plays the fool sometime;
There’s no exception to the rule.
Listen, baby, it may be factual, may be cruel,
I ain’t lying, everybody plays the fool.
Falling in love is such an easy thing to do,
And there’s no guarantee that the one you love is gonna love you.
Oh, lovin’ eyes they cannot see a certain person could never be;
Love runs deeper than any ocean,
And clouds your mind with emotion.
Everybody plays the fool, sometime;
They use your heart like a tool.
Listen, baby, they never tell you so in school
But everybody plays the fool.
And when the music starts to play,
And your ability to reason is swept away,
Oh, heaven on earth is all you see;
You’re out of touch with reality;
Love runs deeper than any ocean,
And clouds your mind with emotion.</em>

Now, compare the poetry of Rudy Clark to that of Psalmist in Ps 42:
My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “where is your God?”…”Why are you so downcast oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God; for I will yet praise my savior and my God”

There are many examples like this in the Psalms of poets’ expression of deep distress, fear, and frustration with a God that seems distant, distracted, uncaring, or non-existent.  This is the common experience of Depression; that we are cut off from all positive and meaningful contact.  It feels as if there is no meaning, no comfort, no hope, and even no God.

Depression has been described many times as a wet blanket over all of ones perception.  Now, do an experiment; take a wet blanket and place it over the antenna on your car.  How does it effect the reception on your radio?  Really, not a sound?  Well isn’t that odd that all radio stations within range stopped broadcasting at the very same time you placed that blanket over your antenna?  Yes, you are right, I am being foolish.  But this is where we all have been at one time or another.  Our ability to feel God’s presence, the love and acceptance that gives us hope, is cut off by Depression.  We are foolish when we then jump to the conclusion that God has died.

We have all played the fool the way the object of the song did.  We are better for having loved and lost.  The biblical definition of a fool is one that ignores the truth, ignores wisdom.  Ps 14 says, “The fool says in his heart that there is no God.”  To follow the example of the Psalmist, and many others who have come through the dark night of the soul that is experienced in Depression we can follow the following steps and, once recovered, repeat them regularly for a healthier life:

First things first.  Acknowledge that you are depressed; after it has gone on for over a month and it involves the symptoms I mentioned above you are no longer just sad, grieving, or having a run of very bad days.  Share that fact with someone and make a plan to get help with your healing.

Have someone partner with you in your healing.  Let’s face it this is a brain problem.  You are not stupid, but your brain is not working at optimal levels; borrow someone else’s.  You’ll need to work with a physician to look at your fuel, rest, and your ability to work and care for others.  You will also want to evaluate the utility of an anti depressant medication to allow your brain to heal.  This is not the time to act tough and pull your self up by your bootstraps.  If your arm was broken you would not tough it out, you would proudly wear a cast and have people sign it.  If there is a chemical part of your brain that’s broken then take the pills (and have someone sign your forehead).

The first part of the plan you make for healing from Depression has to be physical.  Once you have begun to deal with the physical you will recover sufficient energy to work on the spiritual affects as well as the thinking and feeling that were negatively impacted.  Depression impacts every area of life, so must the recovery intentionally deal with physical, thinking, spiritual, and emotional aspects (usually in that order).

It works this way because irrespective of how the system went down (how you became depressed) it comes back up by recovering physically and practicing a mental focus on the truth.  Focus on realities such as God’s existence, and the fact that you do have people who care about you, and you will get through this illness and enjoy life again.  Even though you cannot currently verify these things with your emotions they remain true.  The road to healing is through the mental focus you choose; don’t pressure yourself to feel any particular way.  This is not a fake it till you make it strategy.  It is a focus on what is truly real; Romans 12:2 says “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind”.  This is particularly important to note because the author, Paul, had explained in the previous chapter how his change strategy by the assertion of his very strong will and his very strong emotion resulted in abject and repeated failure. Practice believing the truth, act on it when you don’t feel like it, and in time your world will change.

Long before Glasser wrote Reality Therapy or Control Theory; and well before Albert Ellis invented Rational Emotive Therapy Paul had the concept down.  A couple of thousand years before that the Psalmist was practicing it in the midst of his worst day.  He admits that he wants to die; he has been sleepless and feels that God has forgotten him.  At that point he rejects the notion that if God doesn’t respond he must not exist.  He has the clever notion that God is constant and there is another explanation for the fact that relief has not yet come.  That’s when he says “”why are you so downcast Oh my soul, why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in the Lord for I will yet praise him.”  He doesn’t feel it yet; he is practicing the truth trusting he’ll feel it later.

Everybody plays the fool sometime, there’s no exception to the rule.  Im just trying not to make a lifestyle of it.