Video Transcript: Anxiety and Depression

Welcome back to mental health integration. In this section, we're going to be  talking about anxiety and depression. Most specifically, we're going to be talking  about how to deal with them wrong, which happens a lot, but I think owing an  explanation to why and how they get dealt with. Wrong is really important, so  we're going to jump into that and start working on understanding how we can do  damage, so also how we can minimize the damage that we do. We talked in the  previous weeks about how one of our roles as state leaders is to do no damage  as a counselor, it begins with do no harm, but we can do a lot of harm on  accident. I've actually never met a pastor who meant to do harm to another  individual. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. I've just never met them, but  it's easy to do on accident if we push into something that is actually kind of a  triggering event without thinking or knowing that it is. So we're going to cover  how that can happen today and make sure that you don't fall in that hole. Starts  with a shame. Is who I am, we covered at length. No question about that anxiety, then, is about what I do. What does the future look like? What does it hold?  What's going on now? When you're working with anxiety, it's really, really easy,  actually, to put somebody in a bad spot. And it's really easy to do, because  there's so many great Bible passages that you can just throw out and are true,  and at the same time, can hurt somebody. We're going to look at a few of those  now. Matthew 6:25-34 this is in the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, I tell you,  do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what  you will wear Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your  heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they can any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life. And why do you worry about  clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I  tell you that not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of  these. If that is how God clothed the grass of the field, which is here, today and  tomorrow, is thrown in the fire, will he not much more clothe you. You of little  faith. So do not worry, saying, What shall we eat, or What shall we drink, or  What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your  heavenly Father knows that you need them, But seek first his kingdom and  righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do  not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has  enough troubles about of its own. I have heard this quoted more times than I  want to count. Can you add one day to your life by worrying about it? And the  answer from a person with anxiety might be, of course, I can't, but the question  remains, is this really going to help? Is this going to help push them into the  space that they need to occupy? Let's keep going in. Luke 10:41-42 Martha.  Martha of the Lord, answered, You are worried and upset about many things,  but few things are needed or indeed want only one. Mary has chosen what is  better and it will not be taken from her. We talk about Mary and Martha. Martha 

is the one who's dealing with anxiety. She is so worried about being busy and  making sure that everything's taken care of and making sure all her steps are  done, and Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet. And in churches here, it's often  referenced, are you being a Mary or a Martha? Are you sitting at Jesus or are  you trying to do all of this stuff and just make all the stuff happen. And we  associate Martha with anxiety. She's trying to do so much she's worried about  what's going to happen. And we associate Mary with peace, that she is at peace and she is where she needs to be. And so it can get referenced. Are you being a Mary or a Martha when someone's going through depression or anxiety, and it's  meant again with good intention. No one ever says, Are you? Have you read the scriptures like God's taking care of you? No one. Ever says these things in order to condemn somebody and make them feel terrible. It just can't happen. If  anything, it's always said with good intent. In my experience, people are trying to help. Let's keep going. Luke12:22-31 Then Jesus said to His disciples,  therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or about your  body, what you will wear For life is more than food and a body more than  clothes. Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap. They have no storeroom or barn, and God feeds them. Yet, how much more valuable are you than birds?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life. Since you cannot do  this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the wild  flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet, I tell you, Solomon, not even  Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of these, if that is how God  clothed the grass of the field, which is here, today and tomorrow, is thrown in the fire. How much more will he clothe you? You of little faith. And do not set your  heart on what you will eat or drink. Do not worry about it, for the pagan would  run after such things. And your Father knows that you need them, but seek his  same kingdom. And these things will be given to you as well. You We even see  Jesus the second time we've looked at Jesus. Say you don't need to be anxious  about this. God knows, and he will take care of it. Why don't you relax a little bit? Why don't you just be here and be present. Finally, in Philippians 4. Rejoice in  the Lord always I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all  the Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by  prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the  peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and  your minds. In Christ, Jesus, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything,  by prayer and supplication, we can so often want to help so badly and in that it's  not like there's malintent, we can just accidentally step on a very, very, very  simple landline. And this is the landline. How many of you can make your  anxiety going away by trying? Okay? I want you to think about it. I want you to  focus on not being anxious. Go does it make it better or worse? The reason this  is such an important thing is because the very act that we're trying to push  someone into while we're trying to help is actually a triggering event, right? You 

can't make your anxiety by better by trying to make it better, like you can't focus  on it and it goes away. Instead, anxiety gets better by focusing on solving the  problems right? Anxiety is about the future. Anxiety is about what is going on.  Anxiety is about what I can do. Anxiety is about not having confidence.  Sometimes, sometimes it's just a neural break in our mind. Sometimes it's that  we need to get out and move a little, right. Our brain builds cortisol that just gets  out of our system by exercise. There's all of these things that we can do to help  anxiety, but one of the things that doesn't help is focusing on it and trying to  narrow it down. By focusing on it, if anything, we intensify the anxiety. We make  it more anxiety producing, and we actually put this person in a situation that is  almost untenable because they're trying so hard to not be what they are right  now by being it. They used to give the example when you're in Driver's Ed, when you're driving, if you see something on the side of the road and you want to  make sure you don't hit it, don't look at it. Instead, look at the road in front of  you, because if you're focused on the road in front of you, you will drive on the  road in front of you. But if you're focused on the thing on the side of the road,  you will drive to the thing on the side of the road. I have not actually ever hit  something on the side of the road because I was focused on it. But I think it's an  ample sort of description of this. If you're focused on trying to solve the anxiety,  it gets bigger and it gets worse. If you're focused on the solution, how do I solve  the problem? How do I make sure that my body is in a place where it's going to  process this as well? As possible. How can I try and make sure that I am taking  care of my brain and everything else, to make sure I can I can exist, and I can  be as healthy as possible? Then it's much easier to turn the ship on that anxiety. So what about depression? So we've talked about how anxiety we need to be  able to turn this ship. What about depression? But the fruit of the Spirit is love,  joy, peace, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control  against such things. There is no law, okay. What does this have to do with  anything? Have you ever heard someone who's trying to say you need to make  the fruits of the Spirit happen in your life? I have been through more than one or  two Bible studies where we've said these are the things you need to focus on  bringing into your life, love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,  faithfulness. Work on promoting these in your own life. Grow them, build them,  and you'll be more like Jesus. This is what we want. Grow and build these,  right? But does it work if you're depressed, I want to bring you back to the story  of the dandelion. Sometimes it's just about sticking around and making it  through. But a lot of the times, we continue to focus on the external factor, on  the outcome. Proverbs 12:20, deceit is in the heart of those who plot evil, but  those who promote peace have joy. Shouldn't you? Have joy? Try to be happy.  Just do it. Try to be happy. God says deceit those who plot evil, but those who  promote peace, they have joy. Don't you have joy again. Be joyful in hope,  patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. From Romans 12:12, you should be joyful. 

This is the way you're supposed to be do this. Come on. You can see how these passages are true. You should be joyful in hope, patient and affliction, faithful in  prayer. But it's not something that you can just make happen. It's something  that's much deeper than that. Again, Romans 14:16-18, Therefore, do not let  what you know is good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a  matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy  Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and  receives human approval. We even talked about this in a previous section, that  the kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy, but it's not something that we can  just make happen again. Until now, you have not asked for anything in my  name, Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete. Not just some joy,  your joy will be complete. Now, as someone who's had depression, can you  make it better by trying? I think this is even harder than asking somebody who's  anxious to calm down, they can't calm down. This is anxiety. This is how it  works. If I could just calm down, that would have worked by now, I've tried that a lot. Same thing with depression. I have tried to be joyful. If that would have  worked, I would know by now, because I've tried really, really hard. Instead,  what happens is often spiritual abuse. What is the impact of blame? What ends  up happening when we quote these passages to people, which happens often,  especially in certain situations where people who aren't necessarily trained in all  of these things jump in. I've seen this happen in prayer ministries before. I've  seen this happen in biblical counseling spaces before. Is we end up assigning  blame to someone, and when we do that, we say, you are depressed. That is  bad, and it's your fault, because you can't get better. And in doing so we lop so  much shame onto them, we just load it on. You are defective, and if you could  really get through this, you wouldn't have these problems in the first place. This  also brings up a judgment on things that already people are struggling with. We  talk about how their image of God and their image of self and their image of faith is falling apart, and then when we blame them, we say that you don't believe  enough. I've personally heard this, and I can't tell you the number of people who I've talked to over the last decade who told me that their church told them that  they were defective, or that they didn't believe enough, or that they couldn't do it. These are real diseases. There's nothing about clinical depression that's caused by your brain chemistry that is any less severe than diabetes or cancer. It affects who you are at a chemical level in ways that you cannot fix. You are trying so  hard, so hard to be joyful and so hard to be good, and just can't do it. At some  point, the smile wears off because it's just been too long and too hard, and so  for someone to say in judgment, this is your fault when they haven't been in your shoes, there's a lot of people who say, Okay, this faith thing might be somebody  for somebody else, but it's not for me. I don't need this. Once again, none of  these passages are wrong. There's nothing unbiblical about any of these. Look  at these again. We're quoting from Matthew, from the Sermon on the Mount. No 

one's going to go, Oh Jesus. He didn't know what he was talking about. Talking  about the Martha and Mary from Luke, about Jesus, when he talks about  anxiety, Paul, when he talks about rejoicing in the Lord, these aren't things that  we can look at and say, Well, the Bible is wrong. It's not it's just being taken and  applied to a situation where applying it is actually very damaging. Those  scriptures are all true. But when we talked about post traumatic growth, we  talked about stress tolerance windows. We talked about how you need to be  emotionally regulated, and in that space you make meaning, and when you can  make meaning within your stress tolerance window, you have post traumatic  growth. What's happening in this case is these are true statements that are  being given, but they are outside someone's stress tolerance window, in a place  where they cannot emotionally regulate. They are absolutely true and they  absolutely cannot be heard well. And because they can't be heard well, because they're outside of that stress tolerance window, they can actually hurt somebody  because they're being pushed as you need to do this. You need to make this  right. You need to be the right thing. And they can't do it. As a church, our job is  to help people experience the love of Jesus, walk in relationship with him and  learn how to share that with other people, so that they can all experience that as well. That starts by being like Jesus, who listened when he went to the woman  at the well. He listened when he went to his disciples. He was there and he was  present. Jesus looks really, really, really blunt and outspoken to one group of  people in the Bible, and those are religious leaders, and it's because they are  precisely the people doing damage to people, and he is the one setting the  prisoners free. And because he is the one setting the prisoners free, and the  Pharisees and the Sadducees had been in many ways. Building people up.  They'd been telling them they weren't good enough. They'd been loading them  with shame in actually an effort to try and get God back to overthrow the  Romans. They desperately wanted their land back, but in doing so, they actually hurt the people around them, and Jesus called that out. So with that, I want to  go back to a passage. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,  kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control against such  things. There is no law. The reason I want to go back to this is because in this is  translated perfectly, but the fruit is singular of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,  forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. The  fruit, one fruit of the Spirit, when we talk about these things manifesting in our  own lives, this is actually God doing the work. This is the fruit of the Spirit. This  is from our connection. We talked about abiding and we talked about Jesus. Is  the vine. We are the branches. Here is this connection, and in that there's fruit.  Here's some fruit, the fruit of the Spirit is this is our connection with Jesus, and  he is going to bear that fruit. It's coming through Jesus, through us. We're not  trying to produce this. We're doing this when we are in relationship with Jesus.  And as that fruit grows, it is one fruit. These are not individual traits that we are 

trying to work on. This isn't our New Year's resolution. This is the one fruit that  Jesus is building as we're connected to the spirit and as we continue to know  the spirit, this grows in us and expands and as that expands, there's no  judgment in that. There is peace because we're with Jesus and we trust Jesus.  There is love, there is joy, there is forbearance and kindness and goodness.  Because naturally, as we sit with Jesus and abide with him and his spirit flows  through us. Those things naturally grow in us. So we've talked about how to do  damage. I want to speak for just a moment on how to not do damage. Your Bible is true. Take it as true, but there's a very, very simple question that you can ask,  and the question is, Is this helpful right now? It might be true, but it might not be  the right time to say it when you're dealing with a mental health issue, there are  a lot of things that people don't need to hear at the time that they have that  mental health issue. Believe it or not, when someone is going through a  depression, they do not need to know that they're actually going to have this  great experience where God is going to use this to bless other people. Paul  talked about his sufferings and how there he was comforted, so that we could be comforted, and that our sufferings were for our His sufferings were for our  comfort. When someone's going through a depression or breakdown or OCD or  any of these issues, they don't need to know that at some point they will, but  oftentimes at the beginning, it is hard and brutal enough that they just need to  know that they can make it and that somebody is there with them. Anything  beyond that is not helpful. Anything about how God is going to use this for good, not helpful. It hurts too much. It is outside that stress tolerance window. But if  you can see where that stress tolerance window is, and you can meet them  there, then, over time, the rest of those things will be able to be spoken, and  they are no less true. They just cannot be heard at that time. From 14 to 16, I  was going through bipolar disorder. At 17, I was thinking about being a  psychology student because I wanted other people to have hope like I had  hope. It was outside the stress tolerance window. Then it was right. It inside the  stress tolerance window. It didn't change that it was true. It was true the entire  time. It's just that I could not hear it yet. And everything that you have to say, all  of these passages, they are all true. It's just that they are outside of what  someone can handle, and if they're outside of that, they can do severe damage  to somebody. They can be taken as spiritual abuse, because you're saying  you're not good enough. You don't do this thing well enough. And an answer  from them might be, I do not have the margin to do that yet. I do not have the  capacity to do that yet. I would like to, but I don't have it. So with that, do your  best to do no harm, to invite people into the love of Jesus, to help them  experience who God is. And do that within their stress tolerance window, so they can take the love that you're giving them. And if you do that, they will be able to  absorb it as much as they can, and as they move forward, they will be able to  accept and hear the things that you really want to say, but you know, you don't 

have permission to yet. In the next section, we're going to be talking about the  theology of suffering. That's because there is so much that we've talked about  about how people view God and how that relationship breaks, and a lot of it  comes down to our expectations of God and our expectations of suffering. So I  will see you in the next set when we start talking about that.