Part 3: Depression - Dealing with Life's Inevitable Losses (Episode 12)

Brent and Janis continue their 4-part series dealing with how to move through the different emotions that we feel as a result of life’s inevitable losses. Today, they look at the natural discouragement that many experience and how to strengthen our lives as we move through depression.

Transcript:

[Brent]: Greetings. Welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us again. We've been talking about grief and loss and that loss is not just the death of someone. Oftentimes we talk about grief as that, but it can just be the loss of an ideal, that I thought life was going to go a certain way and you know, and life has just not turned out that way and so, it can be all kinds of losses. The loss of a job, loss of a relationship, loss of security.

[Janis]: And oftentimes we have cumulative losses.

[Janis]: So, we can have a number of losses at one time that may seem like small losses, but together cause us to have significant grief.

[Brent]: And so, we've been talking about the process of dealing with grief is different for everybody, but there are certain kinds of stages that we see that most people will experience in some way and so, we talked about shock and denial and anger last time.

[Janis]: And that those don't come in an orderly pattern.

[Janis]: They can go everywhere. You can bounce from shock to denial to anger to depression all over the place and sometimes in a very short period of time, sometimes in a day, sometimes over months, but it's not a predictable pattern.

[Brent]: Right, and everybody's going to experience them differently. We're just trying to give you some handles, for ways that we have found helpful for people to let themselves feel what they're feeling. We've talked about the idea that you can't heal what you can't feel and so, it's allowing yourself to feel these feelings and we're in a culture that's a fix-it culture, that tries to want us to be better fast and doesn't really want to allow us for time to really grieve and move through these losses well and so, we're going to talk about depression today.

[Brent]: Depression is oftentimes seen as one of the things that people are going to experience in times of grief and loss. It's just the down blues, just don't want-- It's hard to get motivated, I don't want to get out of bed, you know? And it's-- We're all susceptible to this. It-- Again, we all experience loss, again, we've said the idea that we're all grieving something all the time, that there's something in the human journey that isn't ever going to be quite as we wish it would be and so, we're experiencing these losses and so, we're all prone to depression and depression has what we call a corkscrew effect. It's if you turn a corkscrew in a cork, every time you turn it, it gets deeper in that cork and so, if I'm kind of frustrated and discouraged today, not only am I not having a very good day today, but I don't have any energy related plan for tomorrow to be a better day and so, tomorrow I'm susceptible to be a little bit more down. The next day a little bit more down, the next day a little bit more down and so, we can spiral, depression can spiral.

[Janis]: One of the examples I use with my clients a lot of times is you're just feeling a little down and so, it's like “oh, I should stop and get gas in my car on the way home from work”. But it's like “that just seems like it's too much trouble and there's a lot of bright lights there and so, I can just go home without it” and then you get part way and you're like “oh, we don't have milk for breakfast either, I need to go stop and do that. Nah, I just don't feel like it”. Each of those decisions take you farther down. Then you wake up the next morning and it's like “we don't have milk for breakfast. I'm a terrible person” and so, we go farther down and then “I'm anxious because I don't have gas in my car in order to go to work” and so, each of those little decisions-- You know, I'll often say “you know, getting gas doesn't cure depression, but not getting it when you need it can take you farther down the spiral”.

[Janis]: And so, it's those little decisions that can make a difference and we don't think about that.

[Brent]: Yeah, and if we let the spiral go too far, we can drop below a line that we would call “learned helplessness”. It is simply “I just-- I've tried everything that I know to do and nothing else” and so, it's kind of a paralysis that's -- Now, this would be considered in general terms a little bit clinical depression. I mean, these people aren't getting out of bed.

[Brent]: They're losing their job and most people that we deal with aren't there yet, they're not in the hospital, they're not there yet, but we're all prone to going there and so, how--

[Janis]: Especially in grief.

[Brent]: Especially in grief, yes, and so, how do we push against that? And most people that I've dealt with in dealing with losses, they're going to feel some depression. Now, we don't like to admit it, we-- You know, some personalities just don't do depression, at least they don't think they do, you know?

[Janis]: Right, right, it's “sadness”. They'll say “oh, I'm feeling a little sad from time to time” instead of--

[Brent]: Or they're-- Or it's denial and they just, they're really good at their denial mechanism and they just push on and just believe everything's going to be fine and “I'm going to make it good” and so forth. But unfortunately, oftentimes they will hit a wall of unresolved grief at some point.

[Brent]: And so, we encourage whatever personality style we may have, to trust that this can actually be to pay attention to this, can actually be a helpful thing for us and so, how do we push against that spiral? That downward spiral and consistently push our way back up? And so, the best picture I can give people of this and I've shared this for years, is from a very interesting and quite odd story. From some psychology one-on-one class that happened many, many years ago and the odd thing is that this study was done with chickens. Now, I realize we all live on a little higher plane than chickens do, but-- And I don't even know that chickens deal with depression, but the way these chickens responded to this study, is very similar to how we see humans deal with depression.

[Brent]: And so, what they did-- This was also done before the PETA people were real big and so, they probably wouldn't want you doing this today because it sounds kind of mean. It is a little mean, but just know no chickens were harmed, okay? So, what they did is they took a chicken and they took its head and neck, which are very flexible and they basically bin it down to its body. No, I can't move that forward, but it's like my head's over, you know, my shoulder and so, on my arm somewhere and-- Now, that wasn't the worst part of it, the worst part of it is then they strapped it. They put a little leather strap to keep it there, which sounds mean (it is) and now, the chicken wasn't incredibly excited about this. They put it in a big cage with a video camera watching this whole experience and the chicken that first went nuts, was like running around and scratching and biting and trying to do everything it could to break out of this. But they noticed over time, little by little, it tried less and less often, it put less and less energy into it, until eventually it just sat there. It didn't try anymore, it had learned “I'm helpless, I can't do anything about this” and it just sat there.

[Brent]: Now, they went and took the little leather thing off and it stayed there, which is really interesting. Nothing was broken, it wasn't damaged, there was no harm to its neck, but it learned “my head's too heavy” and then the really weird thing is they took the head and they held it up in place and they let go and it plopped back down again, which is like “whoa”. Again, nothing was damaged physically. Learned that “I was--" That “I'm helpless, my head's just too heavy”.

[Janis]: “Even though I'm capable”.

[Brent]: “Even though I'm capable”

[Janis]: “I don't believe I am”.

[Brent]: “I don't believe I am; I don't think I can do this”, exactly. Now, there is a good end of the story for the chicken, okay? So, for all that are--

[Janis]: The chicken was not broken.

[Brent]: Grieving over the chicken here. Is what they found-- Well, first of all, this is why pep talks don't work very well. For us to just jump in and go “come on! You can do this!” and “everything's gonna be okay!” and “don't let that discourage you!” and “you're better than that!” and stuff. That's like trying to hold somebody's head up in place.

[Brent]: It's too much, we just don't change that fast.

[Janis]: Works for football coaches, but not when you're dealing with [Unintelligible] depression.

[Brent]: Exactly, and good example. If I have a football coach that talks to me with pep talks, I have asked him to do that. By being on the team, I'm saying “coach me!”.

[Brent]: “Yell at me! Help me be better!”. That's different than we're trying to give somebody a pep talk and they've not asked for it, that's the big difference there and so-- But again, back to the chicken. What they found is that they took the head and neck and held it up like a half an inch and just supported it there for a few moments; the chicken kind of engaged. Now, we don't know what chicken think, but evidently in chicken thinking it was “I guess I can hold my head up a half an inch”. They came back a little bit later, held it up another half an inch and supported it there. You're laughing, why are you laughing?

[Janis]: I’m just laughing at the chicken story.

[Brent]: They kept--

[Janis]: We’re talking about depression and you're making me laugh.

[Brent]: They kept doing that little by little by little, until eventually it was back acting like a normal chicken again, but it had to happen in half inch steps.

[Brent]: And we have to give ourselves time to recover, time to move through this, time to come out of this and we have to give other people time to come through this and so, what do we--? What do we do? How do we help ourselves do this? And so, what we do-- I mean, what I do with my clients, is I have them make what I call a “pleasant events inventory”. I have them go back to things in their life. I can say “you can go back to high school or college or last week. I mean, you know, I want you to think of things that you've done that when you did that thing, it really brought you joy” and I say “don't worry about whether you think you have time to do it now or whether you have resources to do it now, don't worry about that. So, if you if you played tennis with a friend in college and you really loved it and they moved out of town and you haven't picked a tennis racket up in 20 years, put it down anyway if you enjoy doing that. It could be listening to your favorite music walking in your neighborhood, you know?”. We're talking about simple things; we're not talking about vacations. I've some people come back with a trip to the-- You know, the mountains, you know, backpacking with friends. That's not what we're talking about, we're talking about simple easily repeatable kind of things, something that you could just decide to do.

[Brent]: And I have them make a list of those things, as many as they can come up with and then we sit down and we look at half inch step. “How could you start with that? One of those things or two of those things?” and so, maybe they came back and said “well, you know, I used to go to the gym like four or five times a week and I always felt better about myself and stuff, but I've just gotten out of the habit. I've got young kids now, I just don’t have time to do that” and well, we're not going to start with five times a week at the gym for an hour, that would be trying to hold their head up in place, okay?

[Brent]: We're going to start with-- What's a half inch step? “Could you do 10 push-ups, you know, a couple of times in the morning? And then walk down to the stop sign and back?”. We might do that twice, something that they could do, that they could make themselves do even if they don't feel like it. We can't depend on feelings, okay? Because we're dealing with depression. “What could you do that even if you don't want to do it?”; “But I could walk down to the stop sign” and what we find is as they're able to take one of those steps, it actually gives them some strength and energy to want to take the next step. That gives them some strength to want to take the next step and we simply slowly start adding those things in place in their life, until eventually, pretty much every day they have something to look forward to.

[Brent]: They're building a life that positively reinforces itself, meaning as I do something, it encourages me to want to do the next thing and so, even if I'm having the worst Friday on the planet, but on Saturday afternoon I go do this with this friend, then it's like Saturday comes and grabs you by the leg and pulls you into Saturday and so, the idea is we got to keep moving with depression, you've got to move through it. We don't just get over it, we move through it and how do we just keep ourselves developing this and now, what we found is that not only is this really helpful for people that are going through loss, a significant loss at the moment, but it's actually developed a really good healthy practice for them of good self-care. Because they're going to feel more losses, we all are going to have more losses in our life. If we understand that we're all dealing with some kind of loss all the time, then it actually is a healthy productive way of do taking care of ourselves, so that we're finding some strength in our own life, so that we can give out and care for the world in whatever way we do that and so-- But we have to start real small and you know, sometimes it's they're not getting up and getting dressed, right?

[Brent]: You know, in the mornings and so--

[Janis]: And when we have somebody severely depressed, one of the first things we do is say “you know what? You need to get up every morning by a certain time” and I'll tell them “Get up without thinking and get in the shower, you can cuss at me in the shower all you want, but just know I'm going to ask you ‘did you shower?’ every day”. So, when we get that far down, we need that nudge and oftentimes, it's helpful to have somebody not that's preaching at you, but that you have given permission to kind of--

[Brent]: Nudge you.

[Janis]: Nudge you in this process.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah, and so, it's how do I take charge of me, again, develop a lifestyle pattern that positively reinforces it and I'm not dependent on my circumstances to change or people to change? We have no control over those things, we can't make the loss of a job or relationship or whatever it is, we can't just flip that overnight.

[Brent]: It is what it is. We can't make people change, we can't make people treat us differently or care for us differently or find-- You know, we have somebody's dating and they broke up with somebody and find the next person or the right person, you know? We can't control all that today, but I can keep moving, I can stay in the game and keep walking this out and--

[Janis]: And when it's death of a loved one, sometimes we just have to do those things because somebody told us it's the thing to do.

[Janis]: Not because we do think we're going to get better. Because oftentimes in those early stages, it's “I don't know that I'll ever be okay again. So, I'm going to have to take your word for it, that I do need to get up and get dressed and I do need to go for that walk even though I don't want to at all”.

[Brent]: Yeah. Yeah, we certainly realize that there's going to be that consistent feeling oftentimes with significant losses, “I don't know how I could ever feel okay again”. It is what it is, it's an understandable feeling. That is and that way to validate that is “oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, that's got to be really scary to feel like you're living where you're going to be forever in a not okay place. So sorry” and-- But if we can each of us take those steps forward, just take charge of it and take the next step and then, we usually just start adding more and more things, you know? So, it might be instead of walking down the stop sign, we walk around the block, you know? We do push-ups and sit-ups three or four times a week, you know, whatever it is. We might ultimately end up at the gym again.

[Brent]: But it's letting ourselves slowly develop into that kind of a lifestyle and the-- You know, the old adage says “get a life”. Well, this is how do you build a life, how do you take the reins of your life and take charge of it and-- But we got to think half inch steps.

[Janis]: Well, it's just like what we talk about in building a healthy marriage, it's positive small habits that help build a good relationship and for our own lives, we need to do small positive things, whether we're in grief or not, just to move us towards a better place. But when you're in grief specifically, the only way to heal is to just keep walking, whether you feel like it or not. I don't mean just walk physically, but I mean just keep going through the process and those little things like, taking a shower, washing your hair, putting on clean clothes. Even though there's part of you that's like “I don't care. I don't care about any of this”, just those tiny things will keep you from going further down into depression.

[Brent]: Absolutely. So, take charge of what you can take charge of today and--

[Janis]: Little by little.

[Brent]: Little by little, and so, the moving forward and all of these stages we've talked about so far, you're going to go in and out of them. I tell people “Don’t be surprised if you don't start feeling this next stage”, which is acceptance, which is just a really bad rotten crummy thing “this happened, but I'm gonna be okay”. That you start feeling little bits of that and then next Monday, you wake up mad again, but process that well or two weeks from now, you dip into a bit of a depression. Keep moving forward in the steps you're going to take and eventually, we can live in this place of acceptance.

[Janis]: And one of the hard things about when we're going through those phases, is sometimes we wake up one day and it's like “I feel a little bit better today” or you go through the day and you're like “oh, I didn't think about my loved one for this period of time” and then guilt settles in. It's like “oh, how could I be feeling okay when this person's dead?”. It's hard, but it's allowing yourself to have those pockets and to have those experiences without guilt. You don't have to feel guilty about that, that's part of the process. Doesn't mean you don't love them, it doesn't mean that what happened to you isn't a terrible thing, but you will experience some of those positive moments, as well as some of the negative moments.

[Janis]: I mean, I always say that grief is sneaky. You think you're fine or you're like “you know what? This is a pretty good day today” and you see something or you hear something or you smell something and it triggers you back into a darker place. Well, the opposite can happen as well, you feel down and all of a sudden, it's like “oh, that was enjoyable”, but we panic over that. You can love for someone and still walk through the process; it doesn't mean you don't love them as you start to get better and better.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah. Another thing we find people experiencing is mourning, which is just the emotional kind of catharsis of this and oftentimes, it just comes in tears. Can't tell you how many people have apologized for crying and I say “quit it, don't you dare apologize”.

[Janis]: Not quit crying, quit apologizing.

[Brent]: Quit apologizing, not quit it, yes. We are uncomfortable with tears in our culture, we want to get people “oh, don't do that”. How many-- ? You know, that's how-- “Oh, don't cry”. We hand them Kleenex and “you'll be fine, this is not-- You don't have to-- Not worth crying about” or whatever, you know? And it's just it's so harmful, it's not helpful to people. Just sit with them, let yourself cry. Now, you might have to excuse yourself and go into the other room, you know? It might hit you at work and you have to slip into the bathroom. Just let it happen, it actually is a healing that happens with tears. Now, I would say women are much better at this and more naturally cry than men do and-- But I found that, you know, men kind of have this natural reaction to it, they kind of slap themselves out of it. “I gotta quit this”, you know? And so, I have a-- You talked about a setting a time for grieving and I have people do this with mourning, you know?

[Brent]: I'll say and I've had guys try to do this, I said “okay, set-- I want you to set a half an hour this week, get yourself by yourself. If you're married, make sure your spouse knows what you're doing. You know, go in the other room, just get by yourself where you won't feel that embarrassment or feel like ‘I gotta quit this’ and let yourself just go there. Think what's happened, think what that hurt or betrayal felt like or what that loss, what your child's going through or what happened at work or whatever. Just let yourself feel it for 30 minutes and if tears don't come, okay, but just let yourself feel the depth of it. If tears do happen, let them happen” and there's something about-- Again, Jesus wept, you know? There's something about the healing that comes from that and so, this also helps us to know how to help others when they're in tears. Don't be so quick to get them fixed. Now, you can hand them a Kleenex, but don't say “oh, don't do that” or “stop” or whatever or “it'll be okay” or whatever, just “I'm so sorry”.

[Janis]: And sometimes you’ll feel when your own tears coming when you’re trying to help somebody. That’s okay.

[Brent]: Oh my gosh, yes.

[Janis]: That's incredibly healing for them. I remember years ago seeing a client and had been through some horrific things and she goes “and now this happened” and it came out of my mouth “oh my gosh, that's awful! I'm so sorry, that's awful that you went through this” and she said “thank you, you're the first person who has said this is a terrible thing, everybody else keeps pushing me forward, to be okay, but I needed somebody to say this is a really bad thing that I went through”.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, be present with people, let them feel it and let yourself feel it and when you cry, you don't need to apologize for it.

[Brent]: It's a normal human response to grief and loss and it is one of the pathways that we actually heal and so, get comfortable with your own tears, get comfortable with other people's tears. Learn how to sit with people. If you have a safe person, you might-- They might-- You might be with them and sharing some of your story and you might cry and they just sit with you. Learn how to be okay with that and don't apologize to them for “I'm so sorry”, you know? Just be-- I've had clients in my office, I just sit there.

[Brent]: And they cry for 10 or 15 minutes and I just sit there. They need a space where they can cry and they can mourn and there is trust that there is healing that comes in this.

[Brent]: So, we've talked about shock and denial, we've talked about anger, talked about depression, we talked about mourning. Back and forth, in and out of these. Oftentimes we'll go through. Everybody's going to experience them differently, different personalities deal different with these. Eventually we can find that place of acceptance, but realize we're talking a marathon, not a sprint in grief. Death of a loved is two to five years suggested.

[Janis]: Another study suggests seven.

[Brent]: Yeah, and forever.

[Janis]: Yes, everyone's different.

[Brent]: And for some other losses, the loss of an ideal, the loss of that dream job, divorce, all these can sometimes even be worse than the literal death of somebody. Because, I mean, if a grandparent dies, we kind of know this is part of what happens in life, you know?

[Brent]: But some of these other ones, it's an ongoing loss, you know? It's not only did I lose that dream job, but it impacted a loss of financial security, a loss because of how I feel about myself, it just multiple kinds of losses and so, there's no hierarchy here of these losses and so--

[Janis]: Right, and that's an interesting point too, because some of the things I find sometimes, is people when they're sharing their grief, other people want to share their grief and it can become almost a competition. I mean, it's like “well, at least you didn't experience this” and accepting the fact that all of us have grief in different areas and yes, there are some that are much more horrific, but all of us experience loss and when we are trying to comfort someone, generally sharing our own grief stories immediately is not helpful, because they may think that you are discounting their grief.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah. So, give yourself time to grieve, give others time to grieve and trust the power of relationship there. Those safe people in your life that-- Trust what's happening there and that these relationships and these connections move us through grief and there is a morning coming and there is an opportunity for new life and new beginnings and strength and new strength that we didn't even know we could have, that can come through these moments.

[Brent]: As we go today, I'd like to share a testimony of a precious friend of ours, who went through probably one of the most difficult losses we could experience, the loss of a child. This is not supposed to happen.

[Brent]: Our children are supposed to outlive us and this was the loss of first child, which is so incredibly difficult.

[Brent]: But she just recently wrote an article about her experience over the last several years and I just thought it would be really important and leave you with an understanding of what grief can look like in our life, what community can offer and the potential for life going forward and so, this is our special friend Bonnie.

[Brent]: It says “my relationship with Jesus was intimate and strong for about 19 years, until my son Oliver passed away in my arms. Ollie was my firstborn and he died when he was only 20 days old. I felt like a tornado had come through and destroyed everything I thought I knew about God, prayer, life and faith. My heart felt like piles of debris and ashes, scattered for miles with nothing standing or salvageable. How could God let this happen? How was I supposed to move on from this? Would I ever be okay again? How could I believe God loves and cares for me, if he didn't save my son's life when we had prayed so hard? How would I ever experience Joy or peace again if I had to live the rest of my life without my son? I was in such a deep pit I could not get myself out. Like Psalm 49:7 and The Message Bible says ‘really, there's no such thing as self-rescue pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The cost of rescue is beyond our means’. When we come face to face with our own brokenness, we have a choice to lean in towards community or to lean away. I chose to lean in. I attended church every week not knowing if I even believed in God. I went to counseling. I questioned everything. I didn't sing the songs. I couldn't force myself to believe the scriptures. I didn't know how to pray anymore. I didn't even stand up when everyone else did. I mostly sat and cried and cursed under my breath week after week, month after month and even years longer than culture tells us is acceptable. But these people still accepted me, they told me to grieve as long as it would take and said there was no time limit for it to be done or finished or healed. The faith of others truly carried me for a long time. When I couldn't pray, they lifted me up. When I couldn't hope, they hoped on my behalf. They cried with me, they fed me, they held me. They asked about my son, they listened to me vent over and over again, because I was completely distraught and full of anger. They didn't shame me and neither did God. As I unleashed my darkest emotions on God, I was surprised to find that he was not offended by me, but instead he was full of compassion. As I lashed out with angry accusations, he met with me with tenderness and mercy. He understood my feelings about losing my son and he was not mad with me. I was starting to see God again through his people”.

[Brent]: “Christianity is a communal faith. It was never meant to be privatized; we cannot thrive in isolation. Sometimes we are the strong ones and sometimes it's our turn to be weak and let others show us again what God is like. There's no shame in being fully honest. Our feelings and emotions won't go away on their own, if we stuff them, they are still there and will end up affecting us. We must find ways to release our emotions before God in order to find both the emotional and spiritual healing and renewal. So, what can we do when we find ourselves crushed by the weight of grief? Just show up. Show up in tears, you don't have to smile, be honest with God about your deepest and darkest emotions. Share the messy, angry and untamed bits of yourself with others. Keep venting to safe people, keep coming even if you can't find anything positive to say, keep showing up even when you feel like God isn't meeting you or healing you or speaking to you. A few years from now, you might look back like me and say ‘God was with me after all. God does care, he still loves me. God was working in me and bringing healing slowly in the dark when I was unaware’. It's been seven and a half years since we said goodbye to Oliver; my family and I continue to grieve not getting to watch him grow up. The loss of a child is a wound that will never fully heal on this side of eternity. Isaiah tells us that Jesus himself was known as a man of sorrows, deeply acquainted with grief. Jesus took time to weep, he felt abandoned by God on the cross. Wherever you are, whatever your experience with grief, Jesus is with you. I pray as you give yourself permission to be fully honest with God and others, that you will experience little bits of healing here and now”.

[Brent]: What a great testimony and the challenge with loving deeply, is that we're going to hurt deeply. We can't experience the deep things of life, people, relationships, without the risk of hurting deeply. But this is how life works and there's always a way through.

[Janis]: One of the things I loved about what she shared was, you know, sometimes it's our turn to be weak and sometimes it's our turn to be strong and oftentimes, so many of us feel like we always have to be strong. But acknowledging the fact that in this world we will have trouble and there will be time that we will be in pain and we need other people around us, who can walk us through to healing.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah. I'm so proud of Bonnie's community, that she could speak about her church and people around her this way, that they were patient with her and that they were with her and that there was no timetable for this.

[Brent]: Oh, if our communities could be this way, that we could allow people to be where they're at and yet, we be present with them and our presence with them reminds them that God's presence is with them. So, whatever you're experiencing, again, we all are grieving something all the time and just know that there is a way through and that there is an understanding that this is a process, but that you're not alone and--

[Janis]: And that God is present.

[Janis]: Whether you feel him or not, God is present.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah, he'll never leave you or forsake you. So, today, go in peace. Blessings as you go.