Depression

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 13, 2014

So many people suffer from bouts of depression. What helps? How does one be a friend to someone who is depressed? What causes it? How is it different from sorrow?

Sermon:
A Few Thoughts About Depression

There are lots of us who have moments of feeling like life is too overwhelming to be handled. Nothing will change for the better, we will never find what we seek, there will be no true sweetness or love for us. Happiness is a thing we cannot grasp or remember. For the fortunate ones among us, this feeling lasts a day or two and then it lifts.

For others, it stays, and it can take lives. The voices inside that watch and criticize multiply and feed on the spirit. There is no spark of hope to light the path. The mind is in a deep pit and there is no way out There is no energy to make choices or even to take care of routine necessities. Some keep functioning in their jobs and families, but inside it feels like a toxic wasteland. It hurts, mentally and physically. The body can ache as the soul twists in pain. Some people sleep all the time, some sleep fitfully. Every morning at three-thirty they wake up for an hour before being able to fall back to sleep Some people eat everything in sight, some stop eating. Sometimes depression looks like a long angry spell, and sometimes it looks like collecting things you don’t need. Hoarding is a kind of depression, including the hoarding of animals.

Depression is not sadness, although feelings of sadness can be present in depression. In sadness, you grieve the loss of someone you loved or a dream you cherished. You cry, you mourn, you feel awful. It’s healthy and appropriate. Some people think that if you are completely well-adjusted and mentally fit, you will be able to go through any situation in full serenity and peace. Not so. In many situations, sadness is the appropriate emotion to feel. If you weren’t feeling it, there would be something wrong.

Depression is not anger, although feelings of anger and resentment can be present in depression. Anger is meant to alert us to a situation that is harmful to us. We look around to see what needs to change, what needs to move. If we have to stay in a situation that is harmful to us, we may develop depression.

Low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority are also part of depression. I would like to say, though, that low self-esteem seems to be part of the human condition. Most people feel like everyone else knows something they don’t know, like there was a life handbook given out and they didn’t get one. Many people feel inferior when they compare themselves to others. The thing we don’t notice is that we are comparing our insides to their outsides. In depression, though, feelings of inferiority and regret grow into deep shame and feelings of worthlessness. You feel there is something wrong with you. There is a deep emptiness inside.

Depression has been around for a long time. King Saul, in the Bible, is described as suffering from periods of deep melancholy. The music David played for him on his harp helped alleviate the King’s pain. For some music is healing, for others it can be the beauty of nature. Many therapies have been tried throughout the ages. Hippocrates recommended a vegetable diet and abstinence from all excesses. Others tried entertaining stories, dirty jokes, exhortation and confrontation, counting your blessings, looking at people were are less fortunate than you, etc.

These days there are lots of cures to try. The biomedical discoveries about depression and its causes are coming thick and fast. Lots of things can mimic depression. Hormone imbalance, food allergies, thyroid mis-function, sensitivity to cyclical changes in the light as seasons change, certain medications, head injuries, diabetes, hypoglycemia, and other things.

If you don’t have any of those things, if you truly have clinical depression, you have an illness like any other illness of the body. There is no shame in it. There is no reason to be embarrassed. It happens to people. Like many illnesses, there are causative factors in the environment and in the mind of the sufferer. When you have a heart attack, the doctors give medicine and now they complement that with talk therapy and changes to your diet and lifestyle. Depression is that way too. The medicine is there, and it is good. If one doesn’t work for you, try another one. Each one works in a different way, and one will be better than another. Changes to diet and lifestyle are important too. Alcohol is a depressant. Nicotine can make depression worse. Some artificial sweeteners crash the level of serotonin in your body. Serotonin in necessary for the feeling of wellbeing that we enjoy. Exercise is an element in the cure of depression. Sometimes depression can be alleviated by walking thirty minutes a day three times a week. The problem is people who are severely depressed can’t make themselves do that.

The various anti-depressant medications are highly effective, unless a person is using alcohol at the same time. The problem is people have a shame reaction to them that we don’t have as much to heart medicine or diabetes medicine. We still feel like it’s a weakness of character. Like if we could just pull ourselves together we could beat this thing. Mind over illness in a powerful thing, and it works as well on depression as it does on arthritis and cancer. Sometimes yes, mostly no.

Talk therapy can do some good. What do we do in talk therapy to help with depression? One approach is called “Cognitive Therapy.” That theory holds that it is mistaken ways of thinking that lead to depression. You work with someone to become aware of some ways you might be thinking that sap your spirit. Another thing therapists do is talk with you about your anger or your sadness in which you may have gotten stuck. They will ask about depression in your family medical history, as it can run in families. There are lots of different therapies, and each of them seems to work with equal effectiveness.

How do you help someone with depression? Cheering them up isn’t the way. You can acknowledge their suffering as you would with someone who is battling any illness. You can’t ask them to snap out of it. They can’t always beat it with their will. Some people seem to feel it’s noble to struggle with it unaided, and it is as noble as struggling, medicine-free, with high blood pressure or multiple sclerosis. How do you help someone? You can encourage them to treat it as a lifethreatening illness and get on some medicine. It might not work, but it might.

If you do try medicine to complement your talk therapy or exercise, be aware that not every medicine works for everyone, and you may have to try several before you get it to the best point. Also, medicines tend to “poop out” after several years, and you need to switch.

If you think about suicide, please consider that it may be a helpful urge to kill off a part of your life. You should try making huge changes before you kill off all of it. Maybe a few relationships need to go, a few expectations. Maybe you will need to accept that you’ve disappointed someone or lost everything. Life comes up through cracks in the pavement, past rocks and on the precarious sides of cliffs. The pain is great and you think there’s no hope anymore, but that’s the depression dementor doing its work, and they lie. Talk about it. Get support. Get sober. Let go of the shame. Hang onto moments of joy.

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