Share This Episode
The Masculine Journey Sam Main Logo

How Does A Christian Spot And Deal With Depression?

The Masculine Journey / Sam Main
The Truth Network Radio
October 19, 2024 12:30 pm

How Does A Christian Spot And Deal With Depression?

The Masculine Journey / Sam Main

On-Demand Podcasts NEW!

This broadcaster has 995 podcast archives available on-demand.

Broadcaster's Links

Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.


October 19, 2024 12:30 pm

Welcome fellow adventurers! This week is a best of episode of The Masculine Journey. The guys talk about depression, mental illness, and how Christians can deal with those issues. The clips are from "Dead Poets Society," "Good Will Hunting," and "When Harry Met Sally." 

Be sure to check out our other podcasts, Masculine Journey After Hours and Masculine Journey Joyride for more great content!

COVERED TOPICS / TAGS (Click to Search)
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

This is the Truth Network. The following is a best of episode of The Masculine Journey. Come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call The Masculine Journey. The Masculine Journey starts here now. Comedian, actor Robin Williams, found dead in his home at the age of 63. By all reports, he took his own life.

Later on we find out in the back story that he suffered from mental illness, many are saying depression, for many years of his life, also from alcoholism and substance abuse. So where do we go with that today on The Masculine Journey? Well, welcome in to this week's installment of The Masculine Journey radio show.

I'm Dennis Breeden. Alongside me are Sam Main. Sam, good to see you today. Well, it's good to be here. Thank you.

I appreciate it. And we have a special guest. Actually, yeah, we'll call him a special guest.

He hasn't been with us in a while. Our brother and our friend Todd Clark. It's great to have you with us this afternoon, Todd. It's great to be with you guys. Great to be with the other guys in the studio as well. It's my honor to be here.

Yeah, sitting in the booth as well are Al and Robby and Vinny. We're glad to have you here with us. So what does it look like?

What does depression look like and how do we deal with it? Why did we want to talk about Robin Williams today? We said last week that we were going to follow up on this topic and speak more to it. We're also going to address how that looks like in the Christian community. We're going to ask Todd a lot of questions this afternoon.

We want to tell folks, in case we've never said it before, that Todd is also the director of behavioral health at Novant Health, headquartered here in North Carolina. So he brings to our discussion a lot of great experience and knowledge on the topic of mental illness. Yeah, it's a topic that one out of four Americans struggle with. One out of four Americans have mental illness and one out of four Americans will attempt suicide at some point in their life.

That's the statistic. And it can be a fatal problem as the story of Robin Williams has shown us. So yeah, it's an important topic and it's something that we either struggle with or we know someone who struggles with.

So I'm glad you guys decided to talk about it. Yeah, I think it's something that gets, we talked a little bit earlier, that gets diagnosed. There's a lot of things that get lumped in with depression. If you, if you were asked, you know, what is depression?

You know, with your experience with everything you've been taught, how would you answer that that might be different than the general public? Sure. And you know, let me start by saying first, I'm not speaking on behalf of Novant Health. I'm here on my own and paid my own way and everything. So I very much love the work that I do and we see a lot of people get better. So I'm very blessed to have the position I have to create the services to help folks who are in that situation.

Yeah. The word depression is not in the scripture. You know, that is a modern term that we came up with in the scripture. You'll, you'll hear about having a broken spirit or being a groaning in my heart or being troubled or mourning or my, or accountants that has fallen or having a heavy heart.

Those are all descriptions of sadness and despair. So what is depression? You know, if the, if the scripture doesn't talk about it, then what is it? Is it just a modern invention of something or is it something that scripture really covers?

So that's a great question. And I think I have a more restrictive definition of what a clinical depression is versus everything else. And um, I could probably sum it up in a nutshell like this. A true clinical depression is a neurological meaning, a brain chemistry issue, um, despair, grieving, sadness, hopelessness. That is not clinical depression. Sometimes when someone is sad, we say, oh, that person's, that person's depressed. No, they're sad.

So it's not just having the blues. That's right. Or having life circumstances cause you to, to experience some sadness.

That's right. We all have emotions and we all have sadness. I mean, we would be robotic if we didn't, you know, that's normal actually to be sad over something that you've lost or some, you know, change in my life that I didn't like. Um, what a clinical depression is is it's actually a medical problem. There is a brain chemistry issue that happens and there's things that happen in the body because of that. But one of the other side effects is an extreme difficulty with sadness. You know, like for instance, we were talking before the show whenever, um, someone has a clinical depression, the actual chemical messengers in their brain that sends messages to their muscles that tell their muscles to move slows down almost completely. That's, that's what is going on neurologically. So when you have a depressed person who's in bed, they've been in bed for three days straight, they're not eating, they're not coming out, their light is off, you know, their, their shades are drawn.

It's not because they're lazy. It's because the clinical depression has flipped a switch where their body actually, the chemical messengers that tell their muscles to move cannot move. So they need medication to treat that clinical depression. There's also an emotional side effect, which is an extreme sadness. And there are all kinds of things that can trigger that.

Maybe we'll get more into that later. But you know, the, all the medication does is help to get the brain chemistry back in order so that the person can have the energy they need to go out and deal with their emotions and the stressors that are going on in their life. Would you say that it's compounded by the fact that we all get wounded along the way? And so we have these situations, everybody I've known once they get down to it has some wounds right along the way.

You don't get through life. And that causes us to react sometimes differently, you know, and it can be labeled a lot of different things. Can it, I mean, that woundedness could be the core, but it can manifest and be called something else. Right.

Yeah. That woundedness creates all kinds of emotions in us, you know, anxiety, depression, feelings of worthlessness and all of that. Whether or not it turns into a clinical depression that needs medication depends on the person's genetics.

Really. It depends on how susceptible they are to it. It's kind of like diabetes. You know, you don't decide to have diabetes.

It's determined physiologically ahead of time. So, and then you take medication to treat the diabetes. It's the same thing as a clinical depression. If it turns, you know, there are several things that can trigger a clinical depression, but what we know is the person who has it, they are more susceptible to it physiologically than others.

And so they need the medication to help them stabilize. Now getting back to the issue of wounds, Sam, well, we wanted to do a couple of Robin Williams clips today. There's so many that we could choose from so many great clips, uh, from his movies, but we have one in particular to start off with that I think addresses the issue of woundedness. It does. It's from a movie and we've used this clip in the past.

It's from Goodwill hunting. And in this movie, Robin Williams is actually playing the counselor that Matt Damon's been sent to because he is acting out out of some ends up being brokenness in his life, some woundedness. And so he's there to see him about why he's acting out the way he is.

His wasn't necessarily what you'd say, stirred stereotypical depression, but it could have been classified several different things. And just want to listen to how this plays out. What is that? This is your file.

You have to send it back to the judge for evaluation. Oh, you're not going to fail me, are you? What's it say? You want to read?

Why? Have you had any, uh, experience with that? 20 years of counseling. Yeah. I mean, have you had any experience with that? Personally. Yeah.

Yeah, I have. My father was an alcoholic. He'd come home hammered, looking to wail on somebody. So I'd provoke him so he wouldn't go after my mother and little brother.

Interesting nights for when he wore his rings. He used to just put a, uh, a wrench, a stick, and a belt on the table and just say, choose. Your foster father? Yeah. So, uh, you know, what is it, like, Will has an attachment disorder? Is it all that stuff?

Fear of abandonment? Hey, Will. I don't know a lot.

You see this? This is not your fault. Look at me, son. It's not your fault. I know. It's not your fault. I know.

No, no, you don't. It's not your fault. I know. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

I'm so sorry. So how do we classify that? He obviously had some wounds going back to his childhood that had led up to some of the issues he was having in his life and just broke down in the psychiatrist's office, the character that Robin Williams was playing. Yeah. You know, the challenge for a psychiatrist is, you know, the mind and the body are connected. So the psychiatrist and the licensed counselor is trying to figure out, is this a neurologically generated issue or is this just a normal emotional state that is pervasive and has been for a while?

This person needs some better coping skills to manage. That's what they're trying to figure out. And with Matt Damon, he gave I think there's a great example there of how men deal with depression or what do they do when they're depressed? You know, it can come out in a lot of different ways. The one universal trait with men is that we try to hide it. Women don't try to hide it as much. They're better about communicating about it. We try to hide it through withdrawing. We try to hide it through anger. A lot of times when men are angry, sometimes they're depressed about something.

Why'd you look at me? Yeah, good. Good example. Or we get very active thinking I'll just push through it. So I start getting busier. But you know, sometimes the the core issue there is depression, even though we we mask it with other things. I was listening to that clip.

And obviously, we've all heard it many, many, many times just how many times he had to tell him it wasn't his fault. Yeah. Right. And so that woundedness, right? And there is a spiritual element to all that.

But that's not that's not the same as clinical depression. That's right. A lot of times Christians, good Christians, bad Christians, I don't know what you're saying. I mean, because we're all on both sides of that, right? Right. But they well meaning Christians is really what I'm trying to say will classify everything as a spiritual issue.

Right. And everything's not is it? It's not I think of the parable when Jesus walked by the man who was paralyzed, and his disciples came to him and said, he's paralyzed. So who sinned him or his mom, because obviously, this is generational sin, and it's manifesting and paralyzation.

And what Jesus say, neither one. It's just a physiological issue. And it's the same thing with a clinical depression. Doesn't mean they've done anything wrong. Doesn't mean they're being spiritually punished. It just means that that part of their body is not functioning properly, and they need to get it corrected with medicine so that then they can go out and manage the stressors, the emotions, the spiritual life that they need to manage.

Yeah. And I think that one of the things we want to investigate and talk a little bit about when we come back probably will be how it's diagnosed, and whether or not it gets over diagnosed sometimes by medical professionals. You're listening to the Masculine Journey radio show. We invite you to our dove camp, which is coming up in just two weeks, Friday through Sunday, the fourth through sixth of September. You can log on to our website, masculinejourneyradio.org, and see all the information on that. Also, you can listen to our past shows via podcast. Check us out. Check out our blogs and check us out on Twitter as well.

We'll be right back. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there. I want to read the dictionary meaning of vulnerability. It's the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed either physically or emotionally. I always had a negative aspect of vulnerability, but at boot camp, it's really different because we come and there's seven or eight guys here that speak and they all get vulnerable with the rest of us. And what comes from that is encouragement, just building up and knowing that, hey, I'm not by myself in this battle and warfare and growing up stuff.

You guys have all had similar experiences and it's great to know that. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Sure you've had enough of this life. Hang on. Don't let yourself go.

Cause everybody hurts sometimes. Welcome back to the Masculine Journey radio show. We're glad you've joined us this Saturday afternoon. Great song by the group REM from 1992, their album Automatic for the People. Sam picked out the song. It's actually one of my favorite groups and a song that has some special meaning to me because at a time when I was going through some really rough times, it spoke to me. The guitarist, Peter Buck, actually said at one time when I asked about it, they had initially written it for teenagers. But he said, when you're consciously directing it to someone who hasn't been to college or is younger, hasn't had that much schooling, that you tend to be more direct about what you're saying. And he said, in that regard, the words of this song has carried over and worked for a lot of different age groups. And you hear the message in that, which I think is very, very true.

So I think if you would ask somebody, though, if you listen to that song and say, OK, if you just had one word, you could say what it's about. They might say depression. Yeah. Right.

And you know, not to give into it. But as we were talking in the last segment, that's not clinical depression that he's talking about there. Correct. And he's talking about grieving, sadness, loss. Yeah.

And we were we were saying before we went to break that we were going to pursue this aspect of it a little bit further. How do you diagnose depression? How's that diagnosed today? And is it over diagnosed? And in the case of Robin Williams, was it correct that he was actually struggling with depression?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, there is no lab test yet to see or a genetic imprint to see whether or not you have depression. You know, you can't it has to be a conversation with a professional because we don't understand everything about it yet. But what we do know is that there are certain signs and symptoms of where it's probable that it is a neurological issue rather than just a situational or emotional issue. So it takes sitting down with a professional, either a psychiatrist or a licensed counselor to say, here's what's going on with me.

Here's how long it's been going on. And they'll ask a lot of questions and they'll say, you know what, with this with these types of symptoms, which is usually complete lack of energy, lack of appetite, not able to get up and do interferes with most everything else in your life. Folks with clinical depression are not holding down jobs and doing lots of stuff. Is it possible to have Monday morning depression? Only after the cults have lost? Yeah, Sunday. Okay, we'll talk later.

It's a cults oriented. Yeah. Well, I guess one of the questions then, you know, why are doctors, you know, pretty quick to prescribe?

Yeah, I'm saying, you know, I mean, you go in and they ask you a few handful of questions and, you know, I've been in some situations in life and the doctor said, well, you need to be on this for a while. Right. Right. And so why would they do that? Yeah, I think they're, you know, our physicians have a tough spot to be in because if they don't treat it, if they don't treat anything aggressively and something bad happens to their patient, whether it's a medical or psychiatric issue, then they're going to be held liable. So they're going to go with kind of, you know, even though they really should be going with the least restrictive treatment first, they're going to go with what they think might help most of what's going on, even if it's even if it's not what the person needs fully.

And I shouldn't speak for all psychiatrists, but it's kind of like, well, I don't know if it's neurological or not, but I'm going to give this antidepressant temporarily to see if it makes a difference. And then we'll back it off and see if that makes a difference. Yeah, you know, so and as you said, that gives them time to talk and get to know them and find out more of the story and then make determination maybe differently later.

That's right. Yeah. Now, we talked earlier that if we wanted to deal with personal experience at all, that we might get into that a little bit. As you were, as you were talking about that, I have some personal experience with that. Going to doctors, being diagnosed with depression, taking medication, and men, I'm going to speak to you directly for a minute, choosing not to take medication because I thought I could get over it myself. It's a tough process to go through.

It's a process and Todd and I talked about this before that it's that we have to be patient about. One of the things I want to ask about, though, is most of the men I assume they're listening to us today are Christians. And as Christian men, I think we sometimes have a particular challenge with acceptance of this could be just a real illness for me rather than why I'm just, I'm not close enough to God. I'm having to fall away from God and that's why I'm not feeling well in these circumstances. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. And I see this in the office a lot where men and women, but especially men, tend to think, I'm going to pray my way out of this. You know, me and God can handle it. And certainly, you know, when I'm asked the question as a behavioral health professional, should I pray about my depression? Is that what I should do?

I always respond this way. Well, let me ask, let me ask you this. Should you pray about an abscessed tooth? Well, of course you should, because we're supposed to pray about everything, but you should say the prayer on the way to the dentist office. God gave us the dentist, the science of dentistry, psychology and medicine to help us. And so there, you know, we don't understand everything about all of those fields, but what we do know about depression is that it can be neurologically based. And just like an abscessed tooth, I mean, you know, can God come down and perform a miracle and clear that all up and have it tied up in a bow? Yeah, he could.

I don't, I've never seen that with an abscessed tooth. I'm not saying he can't, but it's the same way with a clinical depression. If it's neurologically based and there's medication, and by the way, whether that medication is a traditional medicine or an alternative medicine, I'm not just pushing pharmaceuticals here. You know, whatever is needed to help the brain chemistry get back in order is what we need to be open to doing.

And then after that happens, then you and God walk down the path to find out what are the stressors in my life and the emotional unmanageability that my faith can help me through. Yeah. Now, in there a lot of times, though, the symptoms can look the same, to some degree. Yeah.

I mean, if you're going, I know for me, and I can only speak personally, if I'm living in a situation where I don't feel like I'm aligning with my values, right, then I'm going to behave in a different way. That may be depression, it may be anger, maybe lots of things. And but for that, that's not clinical depression that's going in dealing with that as a separate issue. But doesn't that kind of cloud the waters a little bit when there's all these things can kind of look the same?

It does. But you know, when it's not a clinical depression, it's usually more temporary. A clinical depression is underlying and pervasive.

You know, it usually lasts a lot longer than the the temporary nature of emotions, if that makes sense. Okay, well, we have a another clip from Robin Robin Williams movie that we want to get into before we wrap up the show today. Sam, will you set us up for that? Yeah, it's it's from the movie Dead Poets Society. And in this Robin Williams plays a teacher. And he's talking to his students who are there to get an education and are in this class that they think there's no real value. It's poetry. He's really talking to him about life. And I want you to listen to what he says here. And and just really soak up the words. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

I see that look at Mr. Pitt's eye, like 19th century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right? Maybe a little secret for you. Huddle up.

Huddle up! We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.

And medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love. These are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, oh me, oh life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, oh me, oh life? Answer, that you are here.

That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? What will your verse be, Sam? That's a good question.

I don't know yet. One of the things is, as both these clips played out, you know, for me it spoke a little bit to, there's lots of things that you need to go look at to find the life that your heart really wants, right? And some of those we know, people deny their wounds and all that, but once they move past that and they let God work on them.

And then the second one speaks to passions, right? And so finding your God-given passions, but doing all those things, if you're clinically depressed, it's not going to fix it, is it? No, it's not because it wouldn't fix it any more than it would fix diabetes. You know, it's still a medical issue that needs to be addressed medically. And I know we've come back to that a couple of times, but I really want people to hear that. No, that's great. And so when guys turn to other things, work, false comforters, can you speak to that for a second?

Why they would do that? Yeah. In other words, you know, I may be feeling something that I'm not used to feeling and it could be an underlying clinical depression. So if I'm turning to other false comforters that I'm used to going to, it can be habit structures of behaving, it can be whatever it is that I find comfort in.

That's only going to be a temporary thing. I have to ask myself, am I really being honest about what's going on? And that's where I think we turn to someone in our life that we trust to say, hey, this is going on with me. It's been going on for a while and I need your feedback on this.

Yeah. And that's where you need friends to step up that see that in someone else and say, hey, you may want to go get this checked out. Yeah, there's actually, um, we're trying to, the, the, the mental health field is creating what we're now calling mental health first aid, where we're trying to teach folks out in the community to do that first initial response to help folks who look like they may be having emotional disturbance. Like for instance, you know, before CPR came on board and the general public knew about it, you had to send everybody to the hospital to get there, you know, to, to start breathing.

No one knew what to do. Well, we're trying to do, so that's kind of how we can see ourselves as mental health first aid helpers who love Christ, who love people and want to direct them to the right, you know, to the right resource. Yeah. Great strides are being made.

It sounds like tied. Well guys, I feel like we've only scratched the surface here. We could, we could really talk about this, uh, a lot more, but, uh, bottom line is this is real. These are real illnesses we're talking about.

So, uh, if you're a Christian out there, get yourself checked out. If you feel like that may be the case, uh, we were glad you've listened to the masculine journey radio show today. We invite you to go online and listen to our podcast as well. Our resident dove cat expert, Robby Dilmore informed me that I had the wrong dates. It is September 5th through the seventh. Our dove camp go online to the masculine journey, radio.org and check us out there. We have all the information on the dove camp until next week. May God be with you. This is the truth network.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-10-19 14:25:05 / 2024-10-19 14:35:51 / 11

Get The Truth Mobile App and Listen to your Favorite Station Anytime