Mommy, I’m Sad: A Depressed Person’s Spiritual Development

 Jesse Harmon

RELIG 381

Professor Tousley

April 28, 2014

Mommy, I’m Sad: A Depressed Person’s Spiritual Development

            When I was a child, about 5 or 6, I remember playing outside one day.  At certain times of the year in Hocking County, Ohio, where I grew up, there would be these little black and brown fuzzy caterpillars that come out.  When you touch these fuzzy caterpillars, they quickly curl up into a tight ball in self-defense. I decided that I was going to capture one of these fuzzy caterpillars and keep if forever.  When I caught one, I put it into a container and took it inside.  I brought some sticks, grass, and leaves for the caterpillar to climb on.  I put those in the container as well.  I played with it for a while, then left to go do something else.

A few hours later, I came back to play with the caterpillar again.  When I opened the container, and tried touching the caterpillar, for some reason it didn’t move or curl up into a ball like it was suppose to.  I got upset at it because it wasn’t moving.  The fuzzy caterpillar was dead, but I didn’t know it then.  Only a few years later would I realize what death was, but that fuzzy caterpillar was my earliest encounter with death that I can remember.

Fast forward to 2001 when my grandmother on my dad’s side died.  I saw her lying in the casket with her teal skirt, teal jacket, white blouse, and salt-and-pepper wig (she died of lung cancer).  I went up anxious to see grandma, but knowing that she wasn’t alive anymore.  When I saw her there, I told myself, “This is what peace must look like,” (or something like that).  Ever since then, I’ve been looking for that kind of peace, even as I delve into several episodes of severe clinical depression. 

Depression happens twice in females than it does in males.  The average onset of depression happens around the middle 20s.  Although millions suffer from depression, only twelve percent of people seek treatment (Ebmeier 153).  Recent developments in depression studies show that depression can be linked to genetics (Ebmeier 153), and I believe it’s not some contagious illness that gets passed around from person to person.  In my experience, my bouts of depression were met with positive support from my friends and peers.  Although some people say it can be contagious socially (McGrath), I don’t believe this.  My experiences with depression have been met with concern, care, and contemplation on other people’s life.  My mother suffers from depression, and so do I.  When I get depressed, it doesn’t mean she gets depressed.  My father doesn’t get depressed, and my sister doesn’t get depressed either.

Depression, to me, comes in waves.  I will have a few years of feeling severely depressed, with several years of feeling completely normal.  So far, I have had three bouts of depression.  The first came right around the time my grandmother died.  When she died, I guess I told my mom that I wanted to kill myself (I don’t remember this).  I went to see two counselors, and I got better.  Parker says that people with depression are more likely to see counselors in times of distress (Parker 113).  I had another bout between 2007 and 2008 when I was a sophomore in high school.  It was at this time that I tried completing suicide (I use the word “completing” because I think it gives a much more in depth emotion of what suicide actually is.  Instead of simply doing suicide, I was hoping to do it and be successful at suicide).  There were a lot of unplanned life changes going on in my life at that time, and I wasn’t taking them too easily.  The pastor that I had known for several years had just been forced to retire because of illness.  My dad was starting to get sicker and sicker with his liver disease, and a transplant was eminent.  I was only fifteen years old at that time, and according to Fowler, I was starting to transition between Fowler’s Mythic-Literal stage of faith, and his Synthetic-Conventional stage of faith (Stages two and three respectively). 

Because of my change in Fowler’s faith stages, and my pastor being forced to retire from ministry, plus my father’s illness, as well as school issues, I was in great distress.  It caused me great grief.  Even Parker believes that a change in Fowler’s faith stages, plus unplanned life changes can result in severe grief (Parker 113).  Parker says, “When these kinds of crises occur during stable stage periods, the task of the counselor could be envisioned as one of determining the current faith stage,” (Parker 114).  This could have been used to help me deal with my depression, had my counselor at the time known what was going on.  I don’t remember if she had ever brought faith and spirituality into the context in our sessions.  Research says that religion can play an integral part in helping patients seek help when they are having trouble handling unexpected life changes (Bussema 117). 

Spiritual support needs to be a very insightful and impactful part of counseling.  It needs to be present, unlike my former counseling sessions.  I would go to see the counselor and talk about what happened during the week, but I still left feeling a little empty.  Bussema says that spiritual support, much like the social support I was receiving, could help with stress-reducing efforts.  He says that there are two things to remember: The first is cognitive mediation.  Cognitive mediation is the, “…positive interpretation and appraisal of the meaning and implications of life events.”  The second is emotional support, which Bussema describes as, “…perception of being valued, loved, and cared for by God,” (Bussema 117). 

Pargament’s 1997 model of purpose of religious coping is the following: The first is Spiritual: this is a sense of personal connection with God, who gives, “…meaning, purpose, and hope,” (Bussema 118).  The purpose of the spiritual function is, “…to provide a sense of meaning and purpose that affords the individual a sense of hope for the future and a source of comfort in the present,” (Bussema 121).  The counselor or pastor who is counseling a patient needs to realize that the patient needs to realize that even though times are tough and the future is looking bleak, there is meaning to life (Jesus Christ) and that there is a purpose to life (spreading Jesus’ gospel).  Fowler’s stage three is a good example of where spirituality may end up.  People in stage three are more likely to express their faith in ways they couldn’t before (Bussema 121).  I guess I wasn’t exactly ready to express my faith to others while seeing my former counselors.  That’s why they probably never brought it up, because they knew that I wouldn’t have been able to express it.

 Also, there’s hope.  Hope is one of the most important things I remember from my counseling sessions.  Even when times are tough, hope is one thing that needs to be overemphasized in counseling sessions.  There is always hope.  There’s hope in friends, family, plants, trees, rocks, water, etc.  In everything there is hope.  Another thing that is always there is love.  1 Corinthians 13:7 says, “[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  This is completely true.

Pargament’s second point is that of self-development.  People who have depression need help in dealing with life’s issues and need to feel good about themselves in order to be in more control of their lives (Bussema 118).  This self-development function is used to, “…[aid an] individual in feeling good about [himself] or herself, and thinking about positive contributions,” (Bussema 121).  People who’s religion were an important part of their lives were more likely to see their self-development as independent of the faith stage (Bussema 121).  There were points where I have been completely out of control.  Take 2013 for example.  The year started out with a bang.  I was happy, healthy, and losing weight (I’m overweight).  Then September and my final year at university came along. 

For some reason, there were suddenly a lot of unexpected life changes.  My baby sister, who was seventeen at the time, became pregnant.  I had just come out of the closet to my friends and family.  My church was splitting apart over whether to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and join the North American Lutheran Church.  My pastor had just left the church as well.  My feelings for a certain person weren’t being reciprocated.  I realized that I will be graduating from college soon, and needing to live in my own.  I decided to seek counseling in alcohol.  I was an emotional mess.  I started seeing a new counselor who was more specialized in my areas of need.  Although he is atheist, he is able to understand my faith and how important it is to me.  He is really the first counselor I’ve had that has been able to talk about faith in a non-judgmental way. 

Resolving is the third tier in Pargament’s model of purpose of religious coping.  There needs to be a sense of resolve within the person; a sense of compromise, peace, and comfort.  Without inner peace, there is inner war.  Now I’m the kind of person who says that peace is not the absence of something, but the presence of something else.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as peaceful as my grandmother looked while she was lying in her casket, but I have felt peaceful at times.  I remember holding onto a friend for dear life one time because I was so upset.  This person was has been so supportive of me in my past year and I could never thank him enough for the support.  Although the resolve function is independent of the faith stage, there is a sense of, “…comfort and trust [that] is often more important than the sophistication of their belief system,” (Bussema 121).

Pargament’s fourth point is sharing.  There needs to be a, “…closeness, [and a] connectedness to a community,” that, “…meets intimacy needs,” (Bussema 118).  My friends and colleagues have been so supportive of me these past few years that it has almost been overwhelming.  Bussema points out that only twenty-nine percent of people that were surveyed for a study stated that, “…religious commitments led to the experience of support from the formal religious community.” People even felt estranged from their religious community, and that they had a very “individual faith,” (Bussema 121). 

Restraint is the final point that Pargament makes.  Emotions need to be taken control of, and they need to not get out of hand.  That was one of the problems I had.  I couldn’t keep my emotions under control.  I would burst out crying at random times during the day because I felt so bad.  I would get angry at absolutely nothing because my emotions were taking over my body.  Bussema found that out of seventeen people surveyed, only two of them reported that their religious beliefs restrained them from doing undesirable actions (Bussema 121).  There was a lot of anger geared towards God himself because they though God gave the disability, or at least let it happen, to the people.  The people surveyed often tried to “pray away” the disability, and with phrases like, “Why Me, Lord?” one can only imagine the doubt and hurt that people with depression must face.  People felt embarrassed, guilty, mistrustful, abandoned, and unworthy of God’s eyes because of their disability, (Bussema 121). 

So what problem did Bussema find?  People were too focused on themselves, and not on others, and especially not on God.  People were caught up in themselves.  But to their defense, they were trying to make sense of the chaos that depression causes.  However, instead of seeking professional help and using the rational mind, people used their emotional minds and irrational thoughts (Bussema 122).  There were reports of people trying to hold onto their religious desires and beliefs, which led to confusion.  What’s the solution to religious doubting questions like, “How can a loving God allow such a thing to happen to me?”  Have a childlike faith (Fowler’s stage 2), and avoid the hard theological questions (Bussema 122). 

What can help protect the human mind against depression?  Halloway suggests that spirituality might be equal to psychoanalysis in helping ease depression.  “Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this,” Holloway quotes Dr. Myrna Weismann, a study’s author and a psychiatry and epidemiology professor at Columbia University. 

The brain is an extraordinary organ.  It not only controls, but is controlled by our moods…A thicker cortex associated with a high importance of religion or spirituality may confer resilience to the development of the depression illness in individuals at high familial risk for major depression, possibly by expanding a cortical reserve that counters to some extent the vulnerability that cortical thinning poses for developing familial depressive illness. (Halloway)

Those at a high risk, but said that religion and spirituality were important, generally had a thicker cortex than those at high risk who did not care as much about religion and spirituality.  People who had higher risk of depression had thinning cortices than those with a lower risk of depression (Halloway).

But does a thinning cortex really matter when someone is feeling depressed? I don’t think so.  Take me for example.  I’m a very religious person whose views on God and faith are fairly conservative, and yet, I suffer from depression.  Maybe my conservative Christian ideals are fighting against my liberal American ideals.  I’ve talked a lot about this with my counselor, who as I said before, is very open and willing to talk about faith.  Good says that counselors who ignore the faith factor are missing a very important piece when it comes to counseling.  Many counselors have an irrational fear of an “unscientific or invalid branch of psychology,” (Good 6).  They either have no training  or don’t see the need involve spirituality (Good 30).  Others, however, seem to latch onto this new branch of counseling and “continue towards a healthy integration of spirituality into their practice,” (Good 6).  Cognitive-behavioral therapy works, and adding this new branch of spirituality to it, the affect of counseling will only increase.  Notice how I said spirituality, and not religion.  In our context, both have separate, but not unrelated meanings.  Spirituality is the core set of beliefs (Becker), while religion is the place, community, or group that has a similar set of beliefs.  Religion includes rituals, practices, or other aspects that bring the community together, even if the community is physically apart (joining in with thousands of years of Holy Communion is one aspect of the Christian religion). 

In ancient times, spirituality and medicine were one in the same.  Only in the fourth century BC did the era of modern medicine begin with the Hippocratic oath, which states that physicians are suppose to utilize every tool necessary to save lives.  However, when Descartes came around, medicine and spirituality divorced (Good 7).  Now, church and medicine are two separate entities that need to be brought back together.  For the last decade, this has been happening.  Many people have thought that since we have medicine, we don’t need spirituality intermingled with medicine (Good 8). 

However, research has suggested that spirituality can be a strong backbone when it comes to healing the mind because there is a link between spirituality and health (Good 12).  And even if it didn’t, there are cases of people feeling good about themselves because they believed God healed them from cancer (Good 13).  Religious involvement creates what Good calls a “buffer” to stressors on physical and mental health (Good 13).  There have even been research that shows that daily prayer, Bible study, and devotions can help decrease the rate at which Alzheimer’s develops in patients (Good 14). 

Nearly one third of all youth get an anxiety disorder by age eighteen, and nearly fifteen percent get depressed.  This can be caused by many factors, one being mistreatment during the childhood years (Brynne).  I, myself, suffered from bullying in school.  My parents never abused me and always loved to me.  I attribute my depression partially to the death of my grandmother, as well as to the bullying I experienced in school.  Even Martin Luther battled with depression (Veith).  “There is a sense in which depression is tied up with psychological and physical factors that ought not be confused with one’s spiritual state (Doing so is often part of the problem),” Veith wrote.  We can ask this question, “Is there anything about religion and spirituality that make depression worse?” 

I believe that my conservative faith and liberal American ideals are constantly at war, and this war is called depression.  My heart believes one thing, but my mind believes the other, and sometimes, I can’t tell the two apart.  I start to focus on myself more than anything else, including God.  “…the gospel says we’re not saved by ourselves but entirely by Jesus.  We translate that into: I’m not saved by my works [external acts]…instead I’m saved by my faith [internal devotion to Christ]…Do you see what’s happened?  We turned our faith into a work.  And faith is the last work a depressed person can summon up!” (Veith). 

St. John of the Cross once stated that what we now call depression is the “dark night of the soul.”  Mystic priests, like St. John of the Cross, considered the “dark night” to be a spiritual test, and not necessarily a negative thing.  It is a way to grow spiritually and an occasion for transformation (Orlaff).  I thought about this before researching this project.  In the past I have tried using my depression to strengthen my spirit and faith, and I think I’ve been successful.  I’m now feeling better than I have ever felt in the past year, and I’m glad that I’m kicking this depression habit with yoga, breathing techniques, thinking exercises, and staying social with friends and family.  Of course, I have relied on God throughout the whole ordeal.  Yes, I’ve doubted in the past and I’ve gotten angry with God and blamed him for doing this to me.  However, I believe that God was man enough to take my anger and pain, and put his arm around me anyway and help me out.

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