Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness
Read Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness Online
Authors: Edward T. Welch
EPRESSION
Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness
Edward T. Welch
New Growth Press, Greensboro, NC 27404
Copyright © 2011 by Edward T. Welch. All rights reserved.
Published 2011.
Originally published as
Depression: A Stubborn Darkness—Light for the Path
(Copyright © 2004 by Edward T. Welch).
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Italics in Scripture quotations indicate emphasis added.
Cover Design: Cause Design Company, Rodd Whitney,
causedesign.com
Typesetting: Lisa Parnell, Thompson’s Station, TN
ISBN-13: 978-1-935273-87-5
ISBN-10: 1-935273-87-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (from the print edition)
Welch, Edward T., 1953-
Depression: looking up from the stubborn darkness / Edward T. Welch. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-935273-87-5 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-935273-87-6 (alk. paper)
1. Depressed persons—Religious life. 2. Depression, Mental—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BV4910.34.W44 2011
248.8'625—dc22
2010039611
In loving memory of my father
W. E
DWARD
W
ELCH
,
(1920–2006)
Who showed me that depression
And love can live together
In the same person
Part One: Depression Is Suffering
Part Two: Listening to Depression
11. Depression Has Its Reasons: Other People, “Adam,” and Satan
12. Depression Has Its Reasons: Culture
Part Three: Other Help and Advice
Part Four: Hope and Joy: Thinking God’s Thoughts
For this second edition I am still thankful to those who made the first edition possible.
Colleagues, counselees, and students at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF) and students at Westminster Theological Seminary
The CCEF board and partners
Sue Lutz and her keen editorial direction
My wife and daughters who took my preoccupation with this work in stride.
This time around I also want to thank New Growth Press for their interest in this material, Barbara Juliani for her wise input and managerial oversight, and CCEF, again, for letting me work there for quite a few years now and for making the development of biblically thoughtful material a high priority.
CHAPTER
1
The Path Ahead
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
For I had lost the right path.
Dante
When you are depressed, how can you take a step, let alone a journey?
When all vital energy is devoted to staying alive and just making it to the next hour, how can you add anything else—like hope—to your day?
These are the “how to” questions that, in the face of depression, seem almost impossible to answer. Pages of homework and practical suggestions could, indeed, fill many books, but they are unlikely to make you feel alive.
What you need must go deeper than practical advice. You don’t need a series of “how tos.” In fact, you could probably write a credible list of “how tos” yourself. You already know many things you
could
do, and you have probably done some of them.
Depression, and the host of feelings and thoughts that get crammed into the word, plead for a “why.” First, why is this happening to me? Then, why love? Why work? Why worship? Why believe? Why live? Why bother? The depressive heart resonates more with “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity” than with “101 steps to combat depression.” A list of “how tos” can’t speak to issues of purpose, hope, and the fundamental questions of existence and belief that depression inevitably raises. It’s not surprising that while Prozac is being heralded as the cure, philosophers are also finding a niche in helping those who are depressed.
So, on the path ahead, look for a partnership between whys and how tos. When the why questions appear, they will be religious— as all why questions are. They will be about God. Depression, of course, does that—it takes you back to the basic questions of life. Ignore them to focus on the how questions and you might find a temporary shortcut to mental relief, but your heart will still be famished.
HE
B
ASIC
I
DEA
Depression is a form of suffering that can’t be reduced to one universal cause. This means that family and friends can’t rush in armed with THE answer. Instead, they must be willing to postpone swearing allegiance to a particular theory, and take time to know the depressed person and work together with him or her. What we do know is that depression is painful and, if you have never experienced it, hard to understand. Like most forms of suffering, it feels private and isolating.
We also know that those who feel overwhelmed by depression share in a fundamental humanness. You will find in them the struggles and maladies that are common to us all. Don’t let the technical, scientific diagnosis keep you from seeing these ordinary problems. Instead, when in doubt, expect to find ordinary humanness just below the surface, in the form of fear, anger, guilt, shame, jealousy,
wants, despair over loss, physical weaknesses, and other problems that are present in every person. Depression is not always caused by these things, but it is always an occasion to consider them.
RE
T
HERE
“R
IGHT
” E
MOTIONS
?
It is common for spiritually mature men and women who feel depressed to think that they are doing something wrong. After all, Scripture is filled with words of joy and happy hearts. When they aren’t feeling happy, they feel that they must be missing something or that God is punishing them until they learn some hidden lesson.
On earth, however, God doesn’t prescribe a happy life. Look at some of the Psalms. They are written by people of great faith, yet they run the emotional gamut. One even ends with “darkness is my closest friend” (Ps. 88:18). When your emotions feel muted or always low, when you are unable to experience the highs and lows you once did, the important question is not “How can I figure out what I have done wrong?” but it is, “Where do I turn—or, to whom do I turn—when I am depressed?” Some turn toward their beds and isolation; others turn toward other people. Some turn away from God; others turn toward him.
AY
TO
P
ROCEED
If you are depressed, the chapters that follow are intended to be brief and, at times, provocative. If you want to help someone who is depressed, the chapters are intended to give you direction and to be used as actual readings you can share with the depressed person. My hope is that the book will encourage partnerships between depressed people and those who love them. Suffering is not a journey we should take alone. There are too many places where we are tempted to give up and too many times we can’t see clearly. So if you are depressed, read this book with a wise friend. If you want to help, ask the depressed person to read it with you, or select particular chapters to read together.
HE
J
OURNEY
OF
A
P
ILGRIM
You will encounter a number of images in the coming chapters, such as darkness or light, numbness or vitality, and surrender or waging battle. Most prominent will be the journey of a pilgrim. Whether we sense it or not, we are walking a path that always confronts us with a choice. Each day we stand at a crossroads and make decisions of significant consequence.
The idea of heading out on a trek is not a pleasing thought when you are depressed, but at least you are in good company, which should offer some comfort. Beginning with Abraham, God has called people to leave a familiar place, set out in a new direction, put the past behind, face unknown hazards, get to a point of desperation, call out for help, and look forward to something (or someone) better.
Origen, an old saint of the church, offered this encouragement.
“My soul has long been on pilgrimage” (Ps. 119:54). Understand, then, if you can, what the pilgrimages of the soul are, especially when it laments with groaning and grief that it has been on pilgrimage so long. We understand these pilgrimages only dully and darkly so long as the pilgrimage still lasts. But when the soul has returned to its rest, that is, to the homeland of paradise, it will be taught more truly and will understand more truly the meaning of what the pilgrimage was.
1
He is right. On this side of heaven we walk by faith and don’t have all the answers we would like. But there is reason to believe that you will find certain hopes fulfilled even on this side of paradise.
2
How Depression Feels
“Hell” comes up often. “Hell came to pay me a surprise visit.” “If there is a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy heart,” observed Robert Burton in the 1600s. The poet Robert Lowell wrote, “I myself am hell.” A mother describes her child’s experience as “Danny’s Descent into Hell.” “A Room in Hell.” “A lonely, private hell.” John of the Cross called it “the dark night of the soul.” “Hellish torments,” recounted J. B. Phillips. “Hell’s black depths,” said William Styron, author of
Sophie’s Choice
and other popular but sometimes dark novels.
1
As Dante understood, there is an intimate connection between hell and the hopelessness of depression. The entrance to Dante’s version of hell read, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Depressive speech is poetic. Prose does not capture the experience, so it is either poetry or silence. Depressed people are eloquent, even when they feel empty at their emotional core, devoid of personhood.
When the doctor came to my room, he said, “I am going to ask you a question. If you don’t feel ready to answer it, please don’t.” Then he asked, “Who are you?”
I panicked. “What do you mean?”
“When you look inside, who do you see?”
It was horrible. When I looked inside I couldn’t see anyone. All I saw was a black hole.
“I am no one,” I said.
The images are dark and evocative. Desperately alone, doom, black holes, deep wells, emptiness. “I felt like I was walking through a field of dead flowers and found one beautiful rose, but when I bent down to smell it I fell into an invisible hole.” “I heard my silent scream echo through and pierce my empty soul.” “There is nothing I hate more than nothing.”
2
“My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run with longing, are in me dried up.”
3
“It is entirely natural to think ceaselessly of oblivion.” “I feel as though I died a few weeks ago and my body hasn’t found out yet.”
4