Self-Management of
Depression
Exogenous depression is one of those emotional experiences that lends itself well to self-management. In this chapter, I want to expand on some of the principles I have already touched on and provide a more systematic description of self-management strategies. They can be applied effectively to yourself, by parent to child, by friend to friend, or by spouse to spouse.
I must stress, however, that if your depression does not respond to a short period of self-management, you should consult a professional, especially to rule out significant biological factors or to get more-sophisticated help. Most depression sufferers, however, can help their healing by some self-management.
WHAT ARE THESE SELF-MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?
I will present the strategies in the form of seven steps. In summary they are:
1. Planning your strategy for coping
2. Catching negative thoughts
3. Answering negative thoughts
4. Targeting problems you need to change
5. Identifying and changing underlying beliefs
6. "Stepping over" your feelings
7. Learning to really relax
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ARE THESE STRATEGIES CONSISTENT WITH OUR CHRISTIAN BELIEFS?
Most definitely so. Again and again, Scripture reminds us that we're responsible for what we think and for controlling the activities of our minds. God has promised to help us to renew our minds and calls upon us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world (see Romans 12:2).
Right at the outset, therefore, make sure God is a part of your plan. Ask Him to guide you and give you the wisdom and courage to make the changes needed to bring your depression under control. Turn the exercise into a spiritual one in which your goal is not only to understand yourself better, but also to understand God better and how He works in your life.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY PLANNING YOUR STRATEGY FOR COPING?
Since the major problem with depression is that it slows you down and disturbs your normal activities, you need to plan a strategy for getting through each day and accomplishing tasks that must be fulfilled. The following steps can be helpful:
Make a list of the things you need to do today. Don't try to overplan, but focus on the essential things. You can include work tasks or, if you're a housewife, jobs that must be accomplished at home. Try to focus on three or four major tasks. List them in their order of importance. If your work is assigned by a supervisor, what you have to plan is not so much the tasks to be performed but the attitudes you need to help you complete your assignments.
Try to break each task down into clear steps. For instance, if you want to clean the windows of your home, write down the individual steps that must be taken in the order in which they must be performed. For instance, you might say:
Get bucket and fill it with water.
Add cleaner to water.
Start with kitchen windows.
Then follow with living room and bedroom windows.
Spelling out the individual steps is crucial. When you're depressed, you can't think clearly. You feel overwhelmed by global tasks but can handle "little steps" better. Alternatively, if you're a salesperson, you may want to break down the task of calling on clients into these specific steps:
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Prepare list of five clients to call or visit.
Get addresses or telephone numbers of each, etc.
Writing down the steps in this detail might seem like overkill, but be assured that when you're depressed, it's difficult to keep those simple tasks in your head. Unless you've written them out clearly ahead of time as a series of steps, you can feel immobilized. You can also get a friend or spouse to help you break down the steps.
Once you have them clearly outlined, all you have to do is to follow the steps as best you can. This will help you not to feel so overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. Concentrate on completing each step and you'll find you can get through the day more effectively.
Keep a careful record of each task you accomplish so as to reinforce your progress. When you're depressed, it's hard to get a sense of completion or to have any understanding of how much progress you're making. By keeping a careful record of each step taken and each task accomplished, you'll be able to go back, see your progress, and reinforce it in your own mind.
Try to take these tasks one day at a time. In other words, don't try to plan tomorrow's tasks until you have finished those for today. If you don't finish one day's tasks, carry them over to the next day. Set a time each evening or early the next morning to plan your work.
HOW CAN I STOP MY NEGATIVE THINKING?
One of the more debilitating consequences of depression is that it causes many negative thoughts. Those thoughts feed the depression and often perpetuate it unnecessarily. It's important that you try to catch your negative thoughts as they occur so you can challenge and reverse them. This helps to stop feeding losses into your mind.
The most effective way to do this is to prepare, either on a sheet of paper or in a notebook, a "thought register." Draw two columns, a narrow one on the left where you can record the date and time, and a wide one on the right where you can write the particular negative thought you're having.
Sometimes it's difficult to recognize when you're having a negative thought. So set a watch or an alarm to signal every half hour or hour. When you hear the alarm, stop and reflect on what you're thinking. It it's negative, capture the thought by writing it down. At other times, you may immediately become aware of a negative thought. Again, write it down. The principle here is to capture every negative, unhealthy
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thought as it occurs and write it down so you can have a record of what you're thinking.
Some thoughts are automatic thoughts that repeat themselves over and again like a broken record. For instance, you might be saying to yourself: I'm a failure. I haven't done anything with my life. I'm always going to be depressed. It's never going to get any better.
Each of those negative thoughts reinforces some idea of loss and helps to keep your depression alive. Whenever you feel sad or want to cry, try to capture the thought you're having at that moment, and set it down in writing. Even if the same thought recurs again and again, write it down each time. That helps to quantify your negative thoughts.
Slowly, as you do this, you will begin to notice there are certain themes that keep replaying themselves. The themes may focus on feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, or ineffectiveness. If you're depressed because you lost your job, for example, you may find your thoughts constantly going back to ideas of what you could have done differently or trying to discover why you were let go. Those are also negative thoughts. They may take the form of a question: "What did I do wrong?" "What could I have done differently?" "What can I do about it now?" Write these questions down as well, because many of them are negative.
What about your positive thoughts? If you're depressed, you're not likely to be having many of them. But if, in moments of relief, you do have some positive thoughts writing them down as well will help to reinforce them.
WHAT DO I DO AFTER I'VE CAPTURED MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS?
Immediately after you have captured a negative thought or when you have a moment to review your thought record, examine your list of negative thoughts more closely. If there's a theme, try to pull together all the thoughts on that theme. For instance, if you're thinking about how useless or worthless you are, try to pull that group together, and then ask yourself the following questions:
What is the evidence to support these thoughts?
Are they really true?
Am I taking the issue out of context?
Am I exaggerating the facts?
Am I imagining the "facts"?
Am I asking myself questions that have no answers?
What are the distortions in my thinking?
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Force yourself to examine the truthfulness of your negative statements. Some negative thoughts have a partial truth to them, but most are gross exaggerations or even distortions of the truth.
Having examined your negative thoughts in the light of these questions, try to restate the thoughts in a more positive form. In response to the thought I got fired because I'm a worthless person, you might say, "I lost my job because the economic situation is bad." Obviously, if you lost your job because you were dishonest or did not perform your tasks adequately, what you're dealing with is not a negative thought but a legitimate loss that can only be dealt with by appropriate grieving.
Having captured your negative thoughts, your next goal is to turn them around and rephrase them in a more positive light whenever you can. It's important that you remain honest, but honesty demands that you phrase a negative thought more positively if that thought is not truthful. By continuing to challenge your negative thoughts and turn them into more-positive ones, you will gradually shut off the fire fueling your depression.
Changing thought patterns is a slow process. It's like wearing away a stone by dropping water on it. But eventually, turning your negative thoughts into positive ones will begin to have an effect, so be patient in this task. It can help to talk over your negative thoughts with a spouse or close friend to test your perceptions and reformulate your thoughts.
HOW DO I TARGET PROBLEMS I NEED TO CHANGE?
I don't want to give the impression that nothing but thoughts need to be changed in a depressed person's life. It's also important to examine other problem areas needing to be changed.
Here are some key areas you may wish to review and work on:
Procrastination
Inability to enjoy pleasure
Lack of discipline
Lack of mastery of everyday affairs
Avoidance of friends
Excessive self-criticism or self-doubt
Too easily distracted, or problems with concentration
Problems with memory
Difficulty in making decisions
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Being overweight or having other physical problems
Too much anxiety and fear
Excessive anger or guilt
Loneliness due to your own social habits
To this list you may want to add several other problems as you think and pray about them. These areas can either cause your depression or be the consequence of it. Try to examine each one and see whether it's the cause or the result of your depression.
Choose one or two of these problem areas as your "target." Let's assume, for instance, that procrastination is a serious problem. You have procrastinated one too many times, and this time you got into serious trouble at work. You kept putting off a certain task that needed to be done, and as a result you were terminated. Now you're deeply depressed, and you lack the energy and drive to look for a new job. The habit of procrastination further prevents you from job hunting. And if you don't deal with this problem promptly, it will likely affect you in your next employment as well. It's a real catch 22!
Having targeted procrastination as a serious hindrance, write down three or four examples of when you procrastinated that got you into trouble. Alongside each of them, try to describe what you could have done differently.
Let's suppose you're a salesman, and you put off making important phone calls. Ask yourself, "What strategies can I devise for dealing with this?" You should start the day by making a list of those persons you need to call, then placing the calls before you move on to another task. You could ask God for help in keeping your mind focused on the task before you, since the chances are high that you procrastinate because you're easily distracted. The only way to overcome the habit is to force yourself to behave differently.
At the beginning of each day, therefore, write down the tasks that need to be done before anything else. Before you move on to some other activity, make sure you have completed those tasks.
It's also possible that the activity you procrastinate on is an unpleasant task for you. We seldom defer pleasurable tasks. A helpful principle is to always precede a pleasant task with an unpleasant one. In other words, first do something you don't enjoy, then follow with something you do enjoy. You earn the right to do something pleasurable by first doing something unpleasant.
I call this my "grandmother's rule." My grandmother always said to me, "Do the unpleasant thing first, and then you get to do the pleasant thing." Unfortunately, she also applied this rule to food. "First eat your cabbage, and then you get to eat your ice cream."
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As an adult, I have found this helpful in overcoming my own procrastination. "First make the unpleasant phone call before you make the pleasurable call," I often tell myself. If I make the enjoyable calls first, I find I am out of time before I can make the unpleasant ones.
I've tried to illustrate here how you can deal with procrastination. The same strategy can be applied to the other problem areas you have listed. The strategy is simple:
1. Write down the problem area.
2. Alongside, describe the behaviors that need to be done to reverse the problem.
3. Follow through by giving a high priority to performing those healthier behaviors.
One last thought here: a lack of adequate discipline can be a serious cause of depression in many people. Unfortunately, there is no instant cure for lack of discipline. You need to see it as much as a spiritual problem as it is a psychological one and to ask for spiritual help in dealing with it. In the final analysis, you just have to take control of yourself and do what needs to be done despite your feelings.
HOW DO I IDENTIFY AND CHANGE UNDERLYING BELIEFS?
We are all controlled by our beliefs. One of the main features that distinguishes the human mind from that of other life forms is its ability to develop and hold to certain beliefs. This capacity makes it possible for us to have faith and to believe in a God.
But the same system is capable of developing many other beliefs that are not necessarily true and are often "irrational." By irrational, I simply mean the beliefs have no basis in reality. They're driven more by emotion than by fact. They are gross distortions of the truth. The human mind has a great affinity for such beliefs, and they're often the cause of unnecessary emotional pain.
For instance, it's irrational to believe that I am a useless person because every individual I have ever encountered does not value me. It's an exaggeration to say the least. There is no reason to expect every individual you ever meet to be totally enamored of you. Similarly, it's irrational to believe you should never make a mistake. Making mistakes is inevitable. Of course, it matters whether you're making mistakes 90 percent of the time or only 10 percent of the time, but to be totally free of mistakes is not possible, and to expect it is irrational.
Many unsound beliefs bat around in the heads of otherwise intelligent people. They have a way of eluding recognition simply because they're never challenged. Unfortunately, they also have the ability to cause depression. If, for example, you really
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believe you should never make a mistake, you'll feel a significant loss when you do make one. A series of several mistakes could easily provoke a fairly serious depression.
People who have strong perfectionist tendencies are subject, therefore, to many depressions brought on by the irrational belief that they should be perfect. Since they can't be perfect, they're often confronted by failure.
We all need to survey our beliefs periodically. Make a list of those that seem to be causing you problems now. You may find that some of the thoughts you captured in step two are variations of some irrational belief. For example, a negative thought that says I will never be normal again because of depression is clearly based on an irrational conviction. Depressions do not last forever. Even the most severe ones I have worked with ultimately do lift. Only in rare cases does depression continue for a long time.
Write down a negative thought that's bothering you, and then next to it put the irrational belief it's based upon. For example, if you wrote down, "Once you are depressed you can never become undepressed," try to capture the underlying belief. In this case, it might be that "Depression is an incurable disease." Obviously that's not true, so write down a more truthful belief like this: "Sometimes depression is hard to cure, but sooner or later most depressions get better."
You can invariably assume that a negative belief is irrational and should be replaced by a positive one. The belief that "because I have failed on this occasion, I am a total failure" has to be replaced by a more truthful statement: "Just because I failed this time does not mean I'm a total failure."
It can be helpful, even for normal and nondepressed people, to examine their irrational beliefs and counter them with more-positive and rational beliefs. If you're severely depressed, you may have great difficulty doing this exercise by yourself, so try to get a friend or spouse to help. Changing your beliefs from irrational to rational may be an extremely slow process, but in due course you will begin to see the benefits.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO "STEP OVER MY FEELINGS"?
I don't know why, but it's common for people to believe that because we feel a certain feeling, we must be controlled by it. It's as if some deterministic mechanism has kicked in to control us. Take anxiety, for example. Most people believe that because you feel anxious, you must keep worrying.
This simply isn't true. You don't have to dwell on such feelings, nor do you need to give them any credibility. When you are depressed, your feelings are the result of the depressive process inside you. If you can just understand that these negative feelings have no basis in reality but are symptoms of your depression, you can force yourself to
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set them aside.
Take guilt, for example. I have a strong tendency to feel guilty even though I've done nothing bad. It goes back to my childhood, when I so often felt responsible for fixing something that had gone wrong in my family.
Now as an adult, I often feel the same. If one of my daughters asks me to get something for her the next time I'm in town but it would really be inconvenient for me to do it, I might well say no to her request. She accepts my no and understands why I can't do what she wants, yet as I walk away, I begin to feel intensely guilty.
That's called neurotic guilt. It's the guilt we feel when there really is no reason for it. By saying no to my daughter, I have not violated any of God's laws. I'm entitled to say no. I am only violating my own arbitrary internal standards of right and wrong. But I still feel guilty.
What do I do with this false guilt feeling? Do I let it control me? Do I allow it to bother me, destroy my peace, or make me depressed? If I don't challenge the feeling, it might well do all of this to me.
Can I remove the feeling? Not always! Even if I challenge my underlying irrational belief, it may still be there. And even when I understand what's causing my neurotic guilt — that it's the consequence of a strict upbringing that made me feel guilty about everything — my feelings remain. So all that's left is for me to ignore the feeling. It's false, and the best I can do is to "step over" it and get on with my life. "Stepping over" is simply my way of saying "disregard the feeling." Do what you believe is the right thing to do, and overlook your emotion.
The "stepping over" image is very useful. We do it in the physical world, and there's no reason we shouldn't also do it emotionally. When we walk along a mountain trail and come across a tree that has fallen in our way, we don't stop and say to ourselves, There's no way we can go any farther. This tree is blocking us, so we should turn around and go back. No, we don't accept that from physical obstacles. We climb over the tree trunk and continue our journey on the other side. Many feelings have to be dealt with in exactly the same way.
Let me give another example. When I'm grieving some significant loss in my life, I don't have to allow the sadness to prevent me from moving forward. While I encourage the process of grieving, I might well "step over" the depression, realizing I don't have to be controlled by the feeling. I can say to myself, I know my sad feeling is part of my depression. I don't have to let that feeling determine what I do. I know what I must do, and I will go and do it.
Another application is in the realm of anger. Someone my unintentionally do or
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say something that makes me angry. I realize immediately that the person didn't intend to hurt me, but I feel angry anyway. What am I to do with this feeling? I certainly shouldn't act on it. It would be totally unfair to take my anger out on the person. All that's left for me to do, therefore, is to "step over" my feeling of anger. I can't wait for it to go away. I must disregard it. It's a smoke alarm that goes off without reason. I acknowledge I've heard it, and then I ignore it and get on with the business at hand.
Realizing you don't have to be controlled by your feelings can be very liberating. "Stepping over" can, therefore, be a useful way of dealing with many false and even some real feelings.
HOW CAN I LEARN TO REALLY RELAX?
In my discussion of premenstrual tension (see chapter 3), I outlined a strategy for relaxation. It's possible that if you're a male you didn't read that section. Since my comments here build on the technique I describe there, you may want to review it.
Effective relaxation is an important strategy for dealing with many disorders. Stress symptoms, for example, are greatly reduced when one regularly relaxes. Certain depressions, especially those that are stress related, respond dramatically to regular relaxation exercises. And since depression is itself a stressor that can produce secondary stress symptoms, practicing relaxation when you're depressed can help to relieve your stress symptoms.
The relaxation technique I described in chapter 3 was essentially a form of muscle relaxation. By relaxing all your muscles and remaining immobile, you can produce a fairly profound state of deep relaxation. This is known as the "relaxation response" and is the exact opposite of the "stress response" in which we're mobilized for "fight or flight." When we're deeply relaxed, we can't be under stress. The two responses are totally incompatible. Relaxation displaces stress.
Since the essential mechanism of stress arousal is an increased flow of adrenaline, other techniques can supplement muscle relaxation to produce a more profound state of relaxation.
For example, there's an excellent method of raising the temperature of your hands. No doubt you've noticed that when you're under a lot of stress, your hands get cold. If you've ever had to give a public lecture or preach a sermon, you probably noticed this phenomenon. We all suffer from it, but some of us experience it to a greater extent than others. Some may only cool their hands one or two degrees, whereas others will cool them by as much as ten or 15 degrees. Obviously, you can't cool your hands below the temperature of your environment, but you can come close to it.
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What's happening here? During the stress response, your body puts out more adrenaline as its way of mobilizing your system to cope. Your blood pressure goes up, your heart rate increases, and your muscles become more tense. This is the body's way of preparing itself for threat or emergency, and it's why we call it the "fight or flight" response.
To prepare your body for this response, blood has to be redirected to those parts of the body that need it the most. For instance, your heart and brain need more blood for controlling the body, and the stomach and digestive organs need more blood to speed up digestion. That helps the body to perform its tasks more efficiently during the supposed emergency.
This is all good during times of genuine emergency. However, for many of us, stress is often not related to a genuine emergency. It may be caused by something internal or imagined. But the body doesn't know the difference between threats that come from within and those that come from without.
When extra blood is shunted to the heart, brain, muscles, and stomach, it has to come from somewhere — the hands and feet. They don't need much blood to perform their functions during an emergency, so they get colder as they're deprived of blood.
You can test for this cooling effect by putting your hands on your face. If they're colder than your face, you are having a stress response. Your adrenaline is pumping strongly and preparing you for an emergency reaction. If this reaction is prolonged, you'll begin to experience stress symptoms like headaches, ulcers, stomach disturbances, and muscle aches — all related to too much adrenaline.
How can you relax so as to reduce these symptoms? Since the lowering of your hand temperature is one of the effects of adrenaline arousal, in addition to the muscle relaxation technique described in chapter 3, you need to learn how to warm your hands. There are two ways to do that. The first is to relax your thinking in such a way that it stops maintaining the state of emergency. The second is to consciously raise the temperature of your hands. Together with muscle relaxation, you can then produce a profound state of relaxation.
HOW CAN I RELAX MY MIND?
Relaxing your thinking involves filtering your thoughts and mental activities so as to stop maintaining the state of arousal. You can accomplish this by doing the exercises I have already described. Negative thoughts produce a state of arousal and stress. Positive thoughts do the opposite. By following those exercises, you will "filter" your thoughts and only allow healthy ones to remain, thus producing a lowered state of arousal.
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The technique for raising your hand temperature is more physical than mental. Begin by doing the muscle relaxation exercise described in chapter 3. When you feel you're in a fairly deep state of relaxation, turn your concentration to the temperature of your hands. Are they warm or cold? Imagine that you're lying on the beach with the warm sun beating on your arms and hands. Then imagine that the blood vessels in your hands are getting larger and that the body is sending more blood to them. Every now and again, raise your hand and put it against your face to see whether the hand is getting warmer. This is a form of feedback that will help you to know if you're doing the right thing.
Continue this for a while. At first your hands may get colder. This is due to some anxiety over whether you're doing the exercise correctly. Before too long, this will go away. In my book Adrenalin and Stress,1 I describe how you can use temperature dots to help you tell how warm your hands are. These dots can also be used as a form of feedback to confirm whether you're relaxing effectively.
By focusing on hand warming and coupling it with deep muscle relaxation, you can produce a profound state of relaxation. When practiced for as little as 20 or 30 minutes a day, it can help to reduce stress symptoms and speed the healing process even in biologically based depressions. If you have difficulty learning how to relax by yourself, seek help from a psychologist or counselor.
One further word of comment, however. It's common for Christians to think that relaxing their minds and silencing their thoughts gives Satan an opportunity to take control of their minds. I can't think of any idea that is further from the truth. If we're steeped in God and desire His presence above everything else, a state of relaxation such as I have just described can be the perfect opportunity for you to spend time with Him and to allow Him to meet with you in a profound way.
Sadly, many of us are too hurried and busy to ever touch God profoundly. Deep relaxation can provide the ideal opportunity for such a meeting. God can touch us with His healing in new and meaningful ways if we just slow down and spend some quiet and restful time with Him. Be assured that when you empty your mind of the stress and hurriedness that pursues you every day, God will be there to meet with you.
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CAN YOU GIVE SOME KEYS TO MINIMIZING DEPRESSION IN THE FUTURE?
Every depression ought to teach us important lessons about how to minimize the effects in the future. Here are four ways to lessen future depressions:
1. Learn to monitor your thoughts in such a way as to produce a healthier and more positive way of thinking. Besides helping you in your present depression, the exercises I've described, if also carried out during times when you're not depressed, can prevent the onset of your next depression.
2. Learn to recognize the connection between your negative thinking and feelings of depression, and cut off those thoughts earlier. We can't ignore our thinking habits. Many depressed individuals have practiced negative thinking for years. It has become a life-style for them. They have a lot of unlearning to do before they can avoid or minimize future depressions.
3. Think more realistically and honestly, and be more reality based. Fantasy and imagination can feed expectations and lower our tolerance for loss. Ultimately, we all need to realize life is full of losses. The only abiding hope is that which God gives us in Christ. He is our reality.
4. Prevent or minimize future depressions by developing healthier life scripts, or "schemes." A schema is a framework of beliefs. The idea "I am a failure" is a schema, because it writes a script for your life. If you believe it, you'll probably behave like a failure. If you hold to such global beliefs, your whole life will be determined by them. Every Christian needs to rewrite his or her life scripts and make sure God is a part of them. We believe God is in control and that Christ is our Savior. This should create a more hopeful outlook so that we can say with Paul, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation" (Philippians 4:11).
HOW CAN THE CHURCH HELP?
There are many ways the church can help those who are depressed beyond providing pastoral or other counseling. This is not to minimize the value of pastoral counseling or even the guidance provided by lay counselors. Those who are depressed need all the help and companionship they can get, but the help the church can give goes way beyond this.
First, I would stress the importance of creating the right attitude in the minds of church members toward those who are depressed. As I've said before, too often, especially in evangelical and more conservative circles, depressed people are shunned, even ostracized, because depression is seen as some form of moral or spiritual failure.
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I repeatedly encounter literature from Christian organizations, usually television-based programs, that encourages those in emotional turmoil to call their telephone counseling service. The literature they receive invariably condemns them for being depressed and suggests that God has abandoned them and their depression is due to some moral or spiritual problem. That only makes the depression more painful to bear. The one who is depressed knows well how difficult it is to be spiritually alive, so when he or she feels condemned by other believers, the depression is only intensified.
How can members of a church be sensitized? Clearly, there needs to be some instruction. This can take the form of special Bible studies or special events to which professional persons are invited to teach members how to view and respond to depression. I have conducted many such seminars to great effect.
A sensitive pastor can also educate a congregation through preaching. The Bible has many examples of depressed saints of God, and by building on their experiences, one can teach people how to understand and deal with depression.
Coping with depression should be a fundamental mental health skill we teach to all our church members, who in turn can teach it to their children.
Second, churches can provide healing resources of many sorts. In addition to whatever counseling facility is available through the church, support groups can be set up to help those who are deeply depressed to take care of themselves. Depression distorts spiritual perceptions. It isn't always easy to pray for yourself and to turn toward God in your pain. The help of other believers in Bible study, prayer, and other support activities can go a long way toward sustaining one's faith. Just hearing from others who have also been depressed can greatly facilitate your own recovery.
Third, churches can provide financial support for those among their numbers who are poor and need professional treatment, especially antidepressant medication. If a church is to be Christ's body and a witness to the gospel, it has to take care of emotional needs just as readily as it responds to physical needs. We would certainly rush in to feed a starving member of a congregation, but we often stand by helplessly and watch someone who is impoverished suffer a depression that could easily be relieved with appropriate treatment.
A special fund could be set up to help people in your neighborhood with emotional needs. It could be a fantastic outreach from a church to a community that could produce a rich harvest of souls. After all, when you're hurting, you're a lot more open to spiritual issues than when you're healthy.
Last, and above all, a church needs to be in much prayer for members' emotional
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struggles. Times of trouble ought to be times that unite a church, not split it apart. We can't fix everything, nor can we be everywhere at the same time. But prayer is a powerful resource for us. A church that is in much prayer for the emotional needs of its members is a church ready to fulfill Christ's calling to be the bearers of each other's burdens.
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1. Archibald D. Hart, Adrenalin and Stress (Dallas: Word, 1986, 1988, 1991); 1986, 1988, pp. 121-26; 1991, pp. 101-5.
