Understanding and Overcoming Depression
Page Three
Some Christians become depressed because they are members of a spiritually abusive group.4 Characteristics of spiritually abusive systems include a preoccupation with power, a primary focus on performance and on how things appear on the surface in order to make a leader or group look good, an emphasis on controlling people through rules, and a powerful unspoken rule that you cannot talk about problems. Effects of spiritual abuse on others can include developing a distorted image of God, a preoccupation with spiritual performance, a distorted or shame-based identity of yourself as a Christian, and having a hard time with grace, personal boundaries, authority, personal responsibility, and trust.
How Depression Develops
Depression can have physical, spiritual, and/or emotional causes.
Physical Causes. Some people appear to have a higher genetic predisposition to becoming depressed. They are more likely to become depressed even after a relatively minor loss or stress. Others may have a lower genetic predisposition but develop depression if exposed to traumatic loss or extremely stressful conditions. Some have glandular problems, such as a thyroid disorder. Some people develop depression in winter when there is not enough sunlight. Others develop depression due to lead poisoning, head injuries, strokes, or other medical conditions.
Psychological Causes. Robert's mother died from multiple sclerosis when he was six years old. Her death was so painful for Robert and his father that they never talked about it. They tried to push their feelings deep inside or distract themselves by getting lost in work or school. This left Robert particularly vulnerable to feeling abandoned or left alone. When his college girlfriend suddenly broke off their relationship. Robert's unresolved feelings of grief, hurt, and abandonment welled up and left him feeling depressed. He was already away from the little security he had left at home and his girlfriend's rejection was too much for him to handle.
Childhood losses and emotionally traumatic events can make us vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed or depressed if we encounter a similar event or loss later in life. Children are emotionally vulnerable and they typically cannot resolve severe emotional pain, so they shove it out of awareness. But since it isn't resolved, the painful feelings or expectations of being hurt or abandoned just lie there waiting for a trigger. When an adult experience of rejection or failure stirs up those buried feelings, the person isn't just dealing with the adult pain. His or her childhood feelings of depression, abandonment, and fear are triggered as well. This is why adult depression can seem irrational or inappropriate to observers in light of what they know about the adult's actual life. To observers, the depressed person seems to be a fine person and have a lot going for him or herself. But internally, the depressed person is being flooded with unresolved childhood pain.
 Depression can be understood as a
melding together of sadness over
losses and unresolved anger in such a
way that neither emotion can be
fully experienced and resolved.
The loss of a job or meaningful responsibilities, freedom, status, or security, can all trigger feelings of depression. Sometimes childhood losses make someone more vulnerable in these situations. At other times, the loss itself may be severe enough to cause the depression.
Robert was also struggling with unresolved grief, another common cause of depression. Since his father was too upset to talk with Robert and share their sadness over losing their mother and wife, Robert never resolved his grief. Instead, he was left with a lingering expectation that those he loved and needed would ultimately abandon him. The depression he felt was the delayed depression of a sad boy who lost his mother.
When most of us lose a loved one, we go through a normal process of grieving and gradually come to grips with our loss. We may initially deny the loss. Sometimes we may bargain with God to try to bring our loved one back. At other times, we may experience anger and perhaps some guilt over losing our loved one or our lacks in the relationship. But eventually we reach a point of acceptance and healthy sorrow at our loss. Then we are able to hold onto our memories of our lost loved one without being depressed because we have grown stronger in the process. In time, we are able to start moving on with the next phase of our lives. It can be difficult for children to process losses and grieve in such a healthy way, however. This is especially true if adults around them do not model appropriate ways of grieving or do not discuss the loss with the child in a healthy manner.
Repressed anger usually plays a role in depression. In fact, depression can be understood as a melding together of sadness over losses and unresolved anger in such a way that neither emotion can be fully experienced and resolved. The role of sadness over loss is relatively easy to understand, but the dynamic of anger is more complex. It often works this way. The child is angry at the parent for abandoning him or her through divorce, death, workaholism, or physical or emotional separation. But it seems wrong to be angry at a dead or departed parent, so the child represses his or her anger. But shutting his eyes to the upsetting feelings doesn't make them go away, so the child eventually ends up directing the anger that was originally targeted at the parent toward him or herself. Instead of thinking, I'm angry at you for leaving me, the child thinks, I must be a bad person for my parent to have died or left. This kind of depressive self-hatred and self-blame cannot be resolved until the mixed feelings toward the parent are faced and resolved.
Anger over other things beside loss works in much the same way. Children naturally feel angry if they are punished harshly, ignored, criticized excessively, unable to please their parents, compared unfavorably to siblings, overprotected, motivated by guilt or fear, or abused verbally or physically. Anger can be a useful protective device in situations like these. But anger can also be frightening to a child.
What if I yell at my father and my father gets angry back? What if he punishes me? What if my parents won't love me if I'm angry? What if they give me away or abandon me? To avoid these frightening imagined reactions to their anger, many children unconsciously push their anger from awareness. But as in cases of loss, the repressed anger doesn't disappear. Instead, it is turned upon the self. Instead of saying, "I hate Mom or Dad," the child with repressed anger ends up hating himself or herself thinking, I'm worthless. I'm no good. No one should love me. Can you imagine a person telling someone else, "You're worthless." "You're no good!" "You deserve to die." No,but that's the way seriously depressed people talk to themselves all day long. They repeatedly take out their anger on themselves until they resolve it or find acceptable, direct ways of expressing their anger.
 Continued on Page Four
|
