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Dealing with Depression By Jay Adams

 This is cassette number five, side two.
Probably as frequent a problem as you will have with some people as any other will be this question of dealing with depression.
Depression.
Now, not everybody has the same kind of problem because of various life situations.
I suppose we could say that women and preachers, and people like preachers, are most likely to get depressed.
You might want me to explain that, I'll try as we go along, but you just keep that in the back of your head for a little bit.
What is depression anyway?
It's kind of a debilitating mood on the one hand.
A feeling of guilt and unworthiness in which one's conscience becomes very active, in which he begins to berate himself and continue to say that he has failed, and in which he increasingly becomes less functional in life, to the point where ultimately he may not be doing anything at all, except feeling very blue, very down.
The whole physiology of the body might be affected to the point where it slows down.
Various bodily functions themselves just simply operate at a lower level.
Well that's the effect.
Many people come in who say, I'm depressed, but notice I'm talking about something under
that rubric that's pretty serious.
A lot of those people who say I'm depressed use the word in another way.
They mean I'm feeling down, I'm feeling blue, feeling discouraged.
I'm not using it in that way today.
There are then two uses of the word depression.
A more popular usage to mean I'm down, feeling low, not making it today, something's wrong.
And a more technical use of the word that means I'm ceasing to function in life.
I'm sitting around and saying, well, I'm just no good and things are so bad and the world
is so glum that what's the use anyway?
It's that kind of what's the use anyway attitude that characterizes depression and all the
things that go with that.
How does this kind of depression get started?
What is it that triggers it?
How does it continue to progress because it is a kind of progressive thing?
What feeds it, keeps it going, and what may be done in order to keep depression from beginning
or what may be done to retrieve people from a depressed state once they have landed in
it?
These are the kinds of things that a counselor needs to be in touch with.
The first thing we need to recognize is that anything can be the cause of depression.
Anything that gets a person down a bit.
It can be an ordinary illness that debilitates you from normal work, say for a week, and
when you come back to your work, you find that everything is piled up and you're still
not feeling the very best, there's a prime situation for getting on the skids that lead
toward depression.
If at that point where everything that faces you that has piled up looks so big, so huge,
so enormous, so hopeless, and you feel so weak and so unable, and you say, oh, I just
can't face it today, and at this point you follow your feelings, something we were talking
about on a previous tape.
If you follow your feelings rather than following your responsibility before God, before your
employer, before your family, whoever it may be, you have taken the turn that leads
toward depression.
Depression is always unnecessary.
In these situations, depression could be avoided if the individual who was down or blue or
discouraged or who was a little bit weak or whatever handled the situation biblically.
If instead of following feelings, he reminded himself of his duty before God and others
and said, regardless of how I feel, I will pile into this work and at least make a small
dent in it today.
He would not get on the skid.
He would not start that inevitable downward spiral, but he would begin to reverse his
blue and down feelings by the effort that would lead him to solve the problems in front
of him in a responsible way that honors God.
Paul once put it this way in 2 Corinthians 4.
He said, we're afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing.
He said, we're persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.
There is, you see, a kind of getting down, a kind of blueness, a kind of confusion or
perplexity that is the lot of every one of us.
But Paul never allowed in those situations, these discouragements or setbacks or whatever
they may be, to so get him down that he refused to move ahead in his Christian responsibilities
to handle the challenge in front of him, whatever it might have been.
And because he did not allow it to get him down, he never became depressed, he never
moved down into despair, as he puts it, where he said, what's the use?
Of course, depression very quickly comes when a person knows that he is guilty from the
beginning.
When the cause that gets him feeling blue in the very beginning is not an innocent cause,
such as a financial loss that he couldn't have had anything to do with, or let's say
the loss of a loved one, or something of that sort, which of course is a setback in
our lives, a jolt to us, something that gets us down and gives us pain and gives us a certain
amount of sorrow or heartache, whatever it may be.
But you see, often we get ourselves down by our sin and our own recognition of our sin,
and this is a very prime situation for sitting ourselves on the top of the slides that will
lead us into the depths of despair.
In Genesis, the fourth chapter, we read about Cain, that first man that we mentioned in
the previous tape, who murdered his brother Abel.
And it's interesting to see the various stages that led to that act.
You remember they both came bringing offerings.
God accepted the one, did not accept Cain's offering.
And then we read in verse 5 of Genesis 4, that Cain became very angry when his offering
was refused, and his countenance fell.
Now this anger of Cain's, something we were talking about before, was mixed here with
a debilitating or depressing kind of discouragement and setback in his life.
His countenance fell.
It's a Bible expression meaning that he became upset, down, discouraged.
And then the Lord in mercy came to Cain, warning him, right at this point, he said, Cain, why
are you angry?
He's not asking for data, he's putting the pressure on it, you notice.
Why are you angry?
In other words, you have no reason to be angry, Cain.
Why has your countenance fallen?
No reason to be discouraged, Cain.
If you do right, will not your countenance be lifted up?
And if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but
you must master it.
Here was Cain's opportunity.
Here was God warning him before he went the next step and plunged into that heinous act
of treachery leading to murder against his brother.
God said, get out of this blue funk.
He said, you have no reason to be angry, you have no reason to be down, discouraged.
You see, here was a man who had brought it upon himself.
God says there's no good reason for it, and if you don't, you're in a situation where
sin, like a hungry animal, is lying at the door ready to jump on you and master you.
You'd better get control of this situation and master it.
Well, that's the way depression comes.
If we do well, however, notice God says, it can be reversed.
Do the right thing, and your countenance will be lifted up.
It's that aspect of it that I'd like to sort of look at with you as we discuss this
question on this tape.
If you do what God says, your countenance will be lifted up.
That is, that outward look on your face in the bearing of your body, that outward appearance
that you have which gives evidence of your inner feelings.
When he says that your countenance will be lifted up, it means that you'll feel better
and give evidence of it.
You see, that's the problem in depression, whether we begin with something we had no
control over that gets us down, or whether we begin with something that we brought on
ourselves that gets us down, our countenance down.
In either instance, right there is the time.
We wake up to the fact that we're down, and that all the feelings within us say, I can't
assume my daily responsibilities.
When you find yourself saying, I can't, I can't, I can't, you're on the road or very
close to getting on the road to depression.
The one way to keep from walking that road, which is quite slippery, is to say, well,
I can't.
But the Bible says that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and by
his help and by his grace, even though I feel all together differently about it, even
though I feel that it's impossibility, I will move ahead in faith believing that he will
give me the strength to do this day's work somehow, even if it's not a full day's work
as I normally would give it, I will do what I can do this day.
When you move ahead to do the right thing, the responsibility that God has placed upon
you, whatever it may be, you will find that you have turned off of the road that leads
to depression, and at that crossroads you have taken the road that leads rather to happiness
and satisfaction.
Now let's take a typical kind of situation.
I said that women and preachers have problems with depression.
Back in the days, and most of you are still aware of those days because they haven't disappeared
even altogether now, but back in the days when women did a lot of ironing, we're already
getting response.
Back in the days before double knits and all that sort of thing and never irons and always
pressed and that kind of thing, back in those days when all those shirts and everything
else had to be laundered in iron and women did it, there was the very touchstone for
depression with a woman.
When she'd come in, we wanted to discover at what stage in the slide she was at that
moment, and so we had a series of routine questions that we asked, and they went something
like this, and they were right on target almost every time.
She said, I'm depressed.
We said, how's your ironing?
That was the first question.
And I've had more than one woman say, how did you know?
And the next question, if you've got a positive response on that, was have the kids started
making their own lunches for school?
She said, you've been in my kitchen.
And if you've got a positive response on that, the third question was has the green, hairy
stuff started growing in the refrigerator yet?
And if you've got a positive response on that, then you ask the last question, and that was
have you started lying around on the couch popping chocolates watching TV most of the
day?
That's exactly how the progression goes in depression.
Now, you see, you deal with a woman who says, yes, I'm lying on the sofa.
I'm popping the chocolates.
I've even gotten past the TV.
And the first thing you say to her in your first counseling session, the first bit of
homework you give to her is, all right, before next week, I want all of the ironing done.
She says, I can't do it.
I just can't do it.
You say, oh, yes, you can.
She says, I can't.
Yes, you can.
I can't.
Here's how you can.
First thing you do is you take the ironing board, you spread out the legs and sit it
up.
Next thing you do is you take the cord with the plug in, and you plug it into the wall,
the iron.
After that, you pile your clothes up next to your ironing board, and you take one off
the top, and you lay it on the ironing board.
When the iron is hot, then you take a motion, one side to the other, like this, preferably
on a shirt, since that's one of the roughest.
And you keep doing that until your pile is gone.
That's how you do it.
She says, but I don't feel like it.
You don't have to feel like it.
You just have to do those motions, whether you feel like it or not.
It is precisely because you followed your feelings that you are depressed.
And it is precisely by doing your responsibilities that your countenance will be lifted.
I'll tell you a secret.
The lower that pile gets, the higher your spirits will get.
So she goes back, unbelieving, but tries.
And she comes in the next week, and she says, it's a miracle.
I feel so much better.
And I say, no, that's bad theology.
It's not a miracle.
But I know you feel much better.
Because when you do right, you feel right, God says to Cain.
And as a Christian wife whose responsibility was there in front of you, that's what you
had to do.
It could be a teacher.
It could be anybody else who lets papers ungraded pile upon tests of papers ungraded.
And there's his big pile sitting there, all of his daily chores that he doesn't want to
get to begin to pile up and get ahead of him.
That's what leads a person down to depression.
When he follows his feelings, which say, oh, you can't do it today, put it off to tomorrow,
and he puts it off to tomorrow, but he feels twice as guilty tomorrow because he didn't
do it today, and the pile's bigger, whether it's paper or clothes or whatever the responsibility
may be.
But it's those daily chores that pile up that we're not getting to day by day.
And usually things we don't want to do, that we don't enjoy doing so much.
All the women like to wash, but they don't like to iron.
I've met a couple who like to iron.
I know you may be one of those if you're here today, or you may be counseling someone in
your counseling who's like that, but for the most part, that's a chore that people don't
like to do.
Now you say, why are you picking on the women?
I'm not really.
It's just that more women and men who do not have their hours chalked out for them by somebody
else tend to get depressed because they must be self-disciplined.
See, there's the problem.
When you have people who have a certain responsibility every day that's checked up on that day, they
must produce so much by noon and then so much by five o'clock, and it's all regulated and
laid out and scheduled for them, and somebody is checking it out, those people tend not
to get depressed.
But because preachers and women have the task of outlining their own weeks and their own
days and their own schedules and then sticking to them, they are the ones who tend, like
other people who have this task, to become easily depressed because they can allow more
easily chores to pile up.
So I'm not against you women, I'm trying to explain it to you.
And you see, as you're dealing with people who are depressed, this is where the answer
is going to lie, in getting people to assume their responsibilities whether they feel like
it or not.
You know, we are so feeling-oriented, as I said in a previous tape, in our time that
we can't seem to get past that kind of thinking.
But we need to get something in our minds straight about this matter of feeling orientation.
Let's look at how universal it is.
People today, wherever I go and we have question-and-answer periods or whatever it is, when they write
down their questions, whether they speak them in general or whether I even pick up a book
and read it today, people use the word feel even to include such ideas as think, have
an opinion, or whatever.
They say, what do you feel about such and such a subject?
What do you feel I ought to do?
And you know, that global usage of this word feel is very indicative of our time.
All of us tend to fall into it.
If you check back on these tapes, you'll probably see I did it once.
I think I did.
I try to watch it because I don't like to use feel in that way, because it's misleading
and it continues to propagate something that we must fight against very strenuously.
But you see, when people say that, I often think, they say to me, what do you feel about
so and so?
I often think, I'm not allowed to have an opinion.
I'm not allowed to have a thought.
I'm not allowed to do anything else except emote.
So I often say to them, could I express an opinion instead of telling you that I feel
lousy about it, or I feel happy about it, or whatever it may be?
I do that now and then in certain contexts in order to make people aware of it, and I
try to do it cheerfully because, you know, language, we all pick up.
But we need to watch our language because language is used for two purposes.
That's why Jesus worked on that good young ruler, because his language usage was faulty.
Language is used not only to speak and communicate to other people, but language is used to speak
and to communicate to ourselves, and we are most persuasive when we do that.
And so a man who continues to use the same old phrase, like I can't, I can't, I can't,
I can't, this person needs to be challenged about his language as Jesus challenged the
language of the rich young ruler, because that language is self-convincing.
That language is mightily persuasive, and he needs to reconsider his language in all
situations where clichés are used and people really believe them.
We need to challenge those clichés because people are constantly using them, they begin
to live according to them, they really believe they are true.
Like older persons who often come into our counseling center and who say when we talk
to them about the changes that God requires in their lives, oh well, they say, you can't
teach an old dog new tricks.
Well, they think that brings the whole discussion to a halt.
It usually has with other people.
You gather we don't let it rest.
No, instead we say something like this to them, well, you know, I'm not an animal trainer.
I really don't know whether you can teach old dogs new tricks or not.
But I do know one thing, you're not an animal.
You're a man who was created in the image of a living God.
And when he says that you can change, you can change, and that makes people think.
It makes them reexamine their language, and they need to reexamine their language.
So people who say I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, or who use I feel, I feel, I feel,
I feel, all of this reflects a certain mentality.
And that's why when people say I feel, they are really reflecting a whole attitude and
philosophy and mentality of our age.
This is a feeling-oriented and feeling-centered age.
The touching groups, the let it hang out groups, all of these groups show us the tremendous
interest in feeling as the motivating factor in life.
I saw a bumper sticker just last week that said if it feels right, do it.
And that's about the summary of the philosophy of our age.
You just want to boil it down to that bumper sticker, that bumper sticker could be placed
upon this particular decade more appropriately than almost any other.
If it feels right, do it.
Well we need to see what God says about feeling, about our desires, about our wishes, about
what we want to do, what we'd like to do, what entices us, how our feelings are to be
and are not to be followed.
Do you remember back in the garden when God placed the restriction on one tree?
He gave them all the rest of the trees to eat, maybe there were hundreds, thousands
of other trees.
But he did restrict the one showing that he was in charge of it all, that it was his garden,
and that he was the one who had to be in control and had to be worshipped and honored for what
he had done and what he had given.
And then the tempter came.
And the tempter said, oh come on now, the word of God, he's not really going to stick
by it, he won't stand behind what he said.
I know he told you that if you eat, you'll die, but you're not going to die.
So the devil challenged the word of God, the restrictions of God, the commandments of God
given by his word.
Instead he talked about that tree.
And within Eve, later Adam, grew a desire, a feeling.
You remember how it was described in those early chapters of Genesis, chapter 3, and
in 1 John where you have the commentary on it.
That it was the desire of her eyes, and that it would taste good, and it would make her
wise like God himself.
So she began to want it, to desire it.
Everything within felt oriented toward that tree.
All of her inward feelings said, go, get it, eat it, take it, make it yours.
Over here against that kind of inward desire was the naked commandment, the word of God,
don't eat.
That was the simple choice in the garden, follow feelings or follow the word of God.
That has never changed.
That problem has never changed.
That's the decision before us every day from the time we have to get up in the morning
to the time that we go to bed at night.
Will we follow God's word in what he holds us responsible to do, or will we follow our
desires and our feelings?
And if we can get our counselees to see that and teach them that we must obey the word
of God insofar as we have the physical ability to do so no matter how we feel, and that when
we do obey it our feelings will come in line, when you do well your countenance will be
lifted up, then we will put them on the right track and keep them from this terrible mental
illness of depression.
Now there are various groups of people who can become depressed and various things that
feed depression.
Let's talk for a moment about one of the prime feeding factors in depression.
Not only when you fail to do your task does that spiral downward into depression because
here you have a home with five healthy men, let's say, throwing dirty clothes on that
pile two times a day, and here's your husband and four boys throwing all these dirty clothes
on this pile every day, and you look at it today and you say, oh, I just don't feel like
doing it, so you let it go.
Well, tomorrow it's all that much higher and you feel guilty for not having done it yesterday,
which makes you feel lower, and then you look at the pile and it's higher, which makes you
feel lower, and so you say, if I didn't feel like doing it yesterday, I certainly don't
feel like doing it today, but you feel all the more guilty because you know it's piling
up and you know you ought to do it, but you feel all the less like doing it, and so you
don't do it tomorrow, and it just spirals down and down and down and down.
Now that is part of it that we've talked about, the dynamic of the downward spiral, which
can only be reversed toward an upward spiral by grabbing hold of one end and spinning that
spiral out straight again by saying, look, I'm going to do this no matter how I feel
because I know God wants me to assume my responsibility as a wife or a husband or whatever
the thing may be.
But there are other things that contribute to this bad feeling.
We'll just stay with the woman for a bit because you will be counseling women who have these
problems because they do have to face the question of self-discipline.
Here is the woman who feels bad, so she gets on the phone, and so she spends half of the
afternoon talking to her cronies who also feel bad and who are anxious to get on the
phone, and they begin to talk about those lousy husbands that they have, and they begin
to talk about those problems with their kids that they're having, and about the other women
up the street, and so on and so on, and they hold pity parties either around coffee or
on the phone or grape groups, whichever you prefer.
There is nothing like self-pity and brooding to bring depression.
Self-pity and brooding feed depression.
It's the stuff out of which depression is made.
Not only on the one hand are you not doing the chores that are piling up and that gets
you down, but on the other hand you are feeling sorry for yourself and others are helping
you feel sorry for yourself in pity parties.
You can hold them alone, have your own little soliloquies too, but this doesn't get you
up.
It just shows you how big the problem is, and the more you explore the problem the bigger
it grows, and so you feel worse and worse and worse.
You spend the time instead of productively in this unproductive self-pity, which in itself
is sin, and you know it's sin, and you know it's wrong to talk to another woman about
your husband so you feel guilty about that, and you feel guilty about having wasted the
whole afternoon on the phone, and so on and so on and so on, and the whole thing just
comes together into an awful mess.
This is the sort of thing that needs to be dealt with, and that's why a counselor who
is dealing with a person who has been prone to depression will not only tell this party
to start working hard on doing the daily chores, but will try to help that person schedule
his life in such a way that there is no time for pity parties or self-pity brooding sessions.
The Bible says, Fret not!
So much fretting goes on.
This is brooding and self-pity about the wicked who have all these good things and about other
problems and so forth.
The counselor will want to see in a case where a person is feeling sorry for himself or for
herself that this matter is replaced by the biblical alternative.
Take a case like this.
Here's a husband who has been unfaithful to his wife, and let's say that the counselor
works with the two of them.
Let's say that you are the counselor, and you have brought these two to a place of repentance.
He, first of all, for his sin against her, and she for some of the bitter things and
nasty things that she did.
True, she was upset, but she shouldn't have gone as far as she did in return, and they're
really at a place of reconciliation.
They really want to be reconciled to one another and to make a go of this marriage, and she
has forgiven him.
Now, first of all, you need to know what forgiveness is.
Forgiveness is not a feeling first, just like love is not a feeling first.
Forgiveness is a promise first.
Many people misunderstand that, but when God forgives us, he promises, I will remember
your sins against you no more.
That's the promise in forgiveness.
And it's her job to keep that promise, whether she feels like keeping it or not.
And so here is this man who has sinned against her, and both of them are trying to make a
go of their marriage, but they come back to you, and she says, I just can't help but think
about what it was like when he was in her arms.
I just can't help but think day after day about what he did to me and to his family.
I just can't help myself because I find myself sitting there and all these things pouring
into my mind for hours on end, and I cry and weep, and I'm not much when he comes home.
I'm bitter toward him and all that as a result, but I can't help myself to stop all this self-pity
and this brooding.
See, that often happens.
She needs to be told that forgiveness first is a promise to be kept.
And the promise involves three things.
It involves saying to the person who has sinned nothing more about the sin.
I will remember your sins against you no more.
She doesn't keep exhuming the old bone and beating him over the head about with it.
But secondly, it means not talking to others about what he did, not getting on the phone
or going to the coffee clutch and saying, you know, John did this to me, and so on.
Not talking to others, remembering his sins to know others against him.
But most important, it means not rehashing them and brooding over them yourself.
When you promise I will remember your sins against you no more, I forgive you.
You're saying I'm not going to keep dwelling on them in my own mind.
She says that's just where the problem is exactly.
But you can't just stop doing that.
You must replace it with the biblical alternative.
That's what you read about in Philippians, the fourth chapter, where Paul talks about
what our minds ought to be focused upon.
He says whatever is true, verse 8, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever
is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's anything excellent,
if there's anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.
See, that's what she needs to do.
Not just take her mind off of the things that are wrong.
She can't do that.
She'll come back.
But every time they begin to come back, say this is wrong, I've got to put my mind on
the productive things that God wants me to think about.
And if nothing else, you can assign her as homework the task of writing herself a think
list of things to put her mind on at a time like this.
So that when the temptation comes, she says, Lord, and doesn't pray a long, long, long
prayer, but only a brisk one at this point because the prayer itself can be turned into
a non-prayer and merely turned into a pity session in which she rehearses it all to God
like she does on the telephone to a neighbor.
A brisk prayer in which she says, God, help me not to feel self-pity and get back on this
thing, but help me to put my mind on productive, worthwhile things like Paul says.
And at that point, she can turn to her think list and go down the list until she can get
something she can work on.
I'm going to plan all the things for our vacation.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
She gets out the pencil and paper and she puts her mind to that.
Anything worthwhile has to be put into the place of the thing that she promised not to
do and which one she does do means that she hasn't really kept her promise to forgive.
And if you don't know what to put on the think list, you can tell her that's your first job
to think about.
So depression is a very, very crucial issue to settle.
But remember the whole key to depression, to keeping away from it, is to not follow
your feelings, but to follow God's responsibilities given to you.
And the thing to get you out of it is to do what you need to do no matter how you feel.
Those are the key words, not to follow your feelings, but God's responsibilities.
Do what God tells you to do instead of saying, I don't feel like it.