Depression and Racing/Palpitating Heart

Depression causes many alarming symptoms. An oversensitive nervous system, flooded with negative adrenalin, can cause missed heart beats, palpitating or racing heart, even sharp chest pains. The first time we experience one of these symptoms can be a truly terrifying experience. We may fear we are having a heart attack. The symptoms are so disturbing that we live in fear of their return, and of course, they do return, and return more frequently the more we fear them.

A ‘missed heart beat’ is alarming. It feels as though your heart stops, followed a pregnant pause, then comes a thunderous thump when the next heart beat comes. Sharp chest pains can feel like a knife in the chest. Heart palpitations such as irregular, banging or accelerated heart beats may become our daily companion, while episodes of ‘racing heart’ where the pulse suddenly accelerates beyond the norm, often accompanied by an inability to breath, are frightening as well.

Because of these symptoms, many sufferers of depression live in terror that they are going to die from a heart attack.

It is crucial if suffering from depression to see a doctor. A doctor’s medical examination will be able to ascertain if there is indeed anything wrong with our heart, or, as is normally the case for someone suffering from depression, they will confirm that these symptoms are merely the result of anxiety/depression.

However, due to our heightened state of anxiety, our fears that we will have a heart attack may not abate.

When I read “Self Help for your Nerves” by Dr Claire Weekes, I was so surprised to see all of these symptoms listed, and encouraged by her assurances that these symptoms were nothing to fear once a doctor had confirmed I was physically healthy.

I put into practise her strategy of facing the symptoms, accepting them instead of fearing or fighting them, and I learning to live with them. Amazingly, after putting these techniques into practice, over time these symptoms faded in intensity and frequency, and eventually stopped.

I recall one particular incident when I was learning to live with these symptoms. (I was still recovering from depression.) My boss had arranged for the men of our company to play a game of paintball with the staff of another company. Note that paintball is not my idea of fun - being pelted by ‘supposedly’ soft plastic balls filled with paint is extremely painful and leaves rather nasty bruises.

Nevertheless, I went to play the game and I remember doing my ‘ninja-thing’ where I infiltrated the enemy lines and used stealth to hunt down the opposing players. I was walking through a rocky area overgrown with tall grass when an episode of racing heart afflicted me. My heart rate accelerated through the roof and I found myself unable to breath. Previously, these experiences had unsettled me greatly, but now that I understood that this was just a symptom of depression that would soon pass, I knelt down and waited patiently. Within moments my heart rate returned to normal and I was able to breathe again. I stood up and went back to hunting the opposing team as though nothing had happened.

These symptoms are typical of depression, trying to trick us into believing we are on the verge of dying, when it is merely an over sensitised nervous system causing these reactions.

Let us place our complete and utter trust in God, that He is in control of our lives and that there is no need for us to fear any of depression’s symptoms.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” John 14:1 (NIV)

I would also like to announce that I have completely updated the pdf booklet of this blog’s articles, now re-organised into a more logical format. The file is about 1.1 meg in size. Permission is granted to print or photocopy this booklet for personal or non-commercial use. Feel free to give a copy to anyone who may benefit from it.

Just click here to download the pdf. Alternatively, you can also download the pdf by clicking on its image on the blog's right-hand side-bar.

The Thief comes only to Steal and Kill and Destroy

I took a day off work today so that I could take my family to Werribee open range Zoo today. My little son was especially excited to see all the animals.

For me, however, this was a trip I did not want to make. I find travelling through the city difficult at the best of times, as the city centre is a rabbit-warren like maze of freeways, tunnels and confusing off-ramps.

Yet the primary reason for my reservations for this trip was that the city is in the midst of carrying out extensive road works, and I heard a couple of months ago that they had closed the road I normally used to get through the city to reach the West Gate Bridge.

As this day approached, I found myself bombarded with fearful thoughts. Those insidious “what if” thoughts came in thick and fast. What if I couldn’t find the correct off-ramp? What if upon finding the correct off-ramp, I was in the wrong lane and couldn’t reach it in time? What if I ended up travelling down an unknown section of the freeway, not knowing how to get back to the West Gate Bridge?

So I woke this morning looking for any excuse not to go. Perhaps the threatened thunder storm was moving in? That would make the perfect excuse. But with sunshine streaming through my bedroom window, I knew that excuse would not wash.

Then I made a decision. I would face this fear. I would not let fear of what could go wrong immobilise me and ruin this family occasion.

I recalled what I had read in the Bible last night. In 1 Corinthians 15:10 Paul writes, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

So it was God’s grace working through Paul that helped him to serve God, to live the life God gave him.

So I loaded my family into the car, faced my fears, and braved the changed traffic conditions, availing myself of the power of God’s unlimited grace.

And after all those fearful thoughts, after all those “what ifs” - do you know what went wrong? Absolutely nothing – I followed all the road signs and found the route to the bridge, and all the way to the zoo. (And if something had gone wrong, we would have found our way back to the correct route eventually.)

And we had a wonderful time. We watched an irresistibly cute family of meerkats frolicking in their habitat, we learned that zebras roll in rhino poo to smell like rhinos, so that the short sighted rhinos think the zebras are rhinos and leave them alone (ewww), we saw giraffes, hippos, even camels. And my kids had a ball, racing around the walkways and giggling their heads off.

On the way back from the zoo, I reflected on how Satan wants to rob us of the fullness of life that Jesus has given us. Satan will never hesitate to throw fears at us in an attempt to scare us into immobility, to stop us stepping forth in faith to receive the blessings that God is reaching out to give us.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Satan wants to rob us of God’s blessings to make our hearts sick, but by trusting in God and stepping forward in faith, by availing ourselves of His grace, we stand ready to receive fulfilled heart’s desires, and life.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12.

Who Am I?

Depression tends to leave a trail of destruction in its wake. One of its victims is a positive self-concept - our sense of significance and self-worth. We look at sorry state of our lives, and compare ourselves to what we used to be like and what we want to be like, and often feel worthless.

Part of the process of recovering from depression is rediscovering our worth and learning to have a positive self-concept again.

I remember going through this process back in 1992. The worst phase of depression was behind me, and I was living close to a normal life, although still afflicted by strong fatigue and panic attacks. When I examine my diary entries from 1992, I can see that Jesus was teaching me once again how much I meant to Him, that I was His treasure, His beloved. Only when we understand our significance to God, and how He views us, can we really understand our true worth.

This is something I wrote in my diary after I had gone on a prayer walk one night on 7th August 1992.

Who Am I?
I love to walk alone at night,
And gaze up at all the heavens,
Bright stars twinkling in the night sky,
While a gentle, cold breeze refreshes my soul.
And while I look up at the great expanse above me,
I wonder, "Who am I, Lord, that You care for me?"
I am so tiny, so little, such a tiny part of Your creation,
I am dwarfed to insignificance compared to the heavens.
Yet You care for me. You tell me that You treasure me.
You hold me in Your hands and delight in me - even tiny little me.
I am precious to You, the Great God who created all.
You who fills this wondrous night sky,
Have fixed Your attention on me.
And You love me so much
That You died for me.
Jesus, I love You.

We see King David, who shared his experiences with depression in the Psalms, reflecting on the very same topic – his value in God’s sight.

Psalm 8
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

If recovering from depression, let us sit at Jesus’ feet and wait upon Him, and reflect and meditate upon the amazing way in which our loving God thinks of us. Although we appear to be insignificant when compared to the grandeur of God's creation, let us join with David in rejoicing that God has crowned us with glory and honor - He created us in His image. Moreover, when we placed our faith in Christ, He clothed us with Christ's robes of righteousness and gave us the right to become children of God. We are special, we are significant, we have value.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1:12-13

All verses from the NIV.

Depression and Self-harm

Some depression sufferers resort to what is known as ‘self-harm.’ This may involve the person hitting or otherwise deliberately injuring themselves. While suffering from depression back in 1990, I too struggled with this issue.

The purpose of this post is to encourage anyone struggling with this issue that they can be set free from it, as I was.

‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.’ Galatians 5:1

Why do some people suffering from depression resort to hurting themselves? My diary entries from 1990 reveal some of the common reasons, which can be summarised as follows:

Reasons for Self-harm:

Stemming from despair, hopeless and unbearable frustration:
1. Self-harm can be an attempt to fight depression’s symptoms and make them go away.
2. Self-harm may be an attempt to punish our body & mind for seemingly ruining our lives and refusing to recover.
3. Self-harm can be a cry for help.
4. Self-harm can be an attempt to use the physical pain to distract us from unbearable inner pain.

Self-harm is typically accompanied with crushing waves of guilt and sorrow, in the aftermath of seeing the injuries we may have inflicted upon ourselves.


Changing our Attitude Towards Self-harm:

In order to break the habit of harming ourselves, we need to change our attitude towards it.

1. Self-harm may feel like a relevant outlet for our rage and anger – a way to fight depression’s symptoms in an attempt to make them go away. Self-harm may seem to give us some form of temporary relief, however, we must remind ourselves that this is a lie, another of Satan’s deceptions. The fact is that if we self-harm, the anger, injuries, pain and guilt make the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle worse by causing more fear-related adrenalin to flow. This makes depression’s symptoms worse.

2. As self-harm stems from bewilderment, despair, hopeless and unbearable frustration, it is imperative that we understand what depression is and how the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle works. Please read this post to understand that cycle, and let knowledge replace the confusion. Once we learn the technique on how to break that cycle, hope replaces hopelessness and the frustration fades away.

3. We need to teach ourselves to hesitate if about to self-harm. If we raise our hand or reach for something with which to harm ourselves, we need to pause and remind ourselves that this will make depression worse by causing more negative adrenalin to flow. Ask Jesus for the strength to resist the urge and then let time pass - the urge will lose its urgency and fade away.

4. As a Christian, we need to remind ourselves that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit – God lives in us. We need to be responsible and look after and respect God’s temple, rather than harming it. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

5. One thing that helps people to stop hurting themselves is to reflect upon the effect such behaviour has on their family and friends. Caring family members and friends grieve if they see us hurting ourselves. We need to change our focus from ourselves and focus on our desire to stop hurting them through our actions.

6. One thing that helped me immensely was this: if I felt tempted to hurt myself, I would picture Jesus standing before me, telling me that He accepted and loved me, that He wanted to take me into His arms and comfort me (He understood what I was going through), and that I did not need to react in such a manner. (This is what He showed me during a counselling session.)


If We Fail:

Keeping the above things in mind can help us break the self-harm habit, but we may still fail on the odd occasion. If we do, we must not let guilt have its way with us. Go to God, confess the sin, thank Him for His forgiveness and ask Him to help us resist the urge to self-harm next time, and then put the lapse behind us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:9

However, if we find that the issue is not improving or getting worse, please see a doctor and/or a Christian therapist or counsellor, and get professional help. Do not struggle alone.


Other Things that may help:

Other things that may help us overcome a self-harm habit include keeping ourselves occupied with constructive activities, regular exercise, and spending as much time as possible with others who care for us, especially family or close friends.

We must not listen to the negative thoughts and voices (and memories of others) telling us that we are pathetic, useless and worthless. We must not hate our body for ‘putting us through this,’ as our body is not responsible, but the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle. We must ignore any feelings of self-hatred and loathing.

Instead, we need to fix our eyes upon Jesus, and upon the love that He has for us.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19.

Regardless of how we may view ourselves, Jesus does not reject us or despise us - He loves us so much that while we were still sinners He died for us so we can be restored to fellowship with God. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." John 6:37-40

Jesus treasures each of us so dearly that He wants us to share our lives with Him for all eternity. He died for us so that, whether we are awake (on earth) or asleep (in heaven), we may live together with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:10

Only by focusing upon God’s Word will we see our true worth - we are precious in His sight!

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

All verses from the NIV.

A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break

While suffering from depression back in the 1990s I was painfully aware that I had become a broken, shattered person, a shadow of who I had been.

From my diary, 10th April 1990:
I once saw a spider that only had four legs,
The poor thing had lost the others somehow.
Yet the spider, a creature of instinct, did not even know,
It just kept struggling, vaguely aware something was wrong,
But not knowing what it was exactly.
That’s how I feel.

And 15th May 1990:
Self-hate keeps descending upon me like a swarm of angry hornets.
I look at myself and find nothing but contempt for this pathetic person I have become.
But I know this is wrong,
If I examine myself through the eyes of Jesus, I see someone special,
I see how much He loves me and cares for me,
How much I mean to Him.
And that He understands.
But knowing these things does not take away these feelings,
Feelings of self-hate, feelings of depression, of despair, and doubts.

And 18th May 1990:
I wish You were here on Earth, Lord, so I could go to You.
I would ask You to take compassion on me,
And heal my wounded spirit.

The fact was that Jesus was with me, holding my hand and comforting me. And one of the greatest sources of comfort was His word. In this post I would like to share a particular passage of scripture that brought me great comfort, a prophecy from Isaiah about Jesus. (God the Father is speaking.)

"Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope." Matthew 12:18-21

The latter part of this passage spoke volumes to me. I could think of no better description of someone suffering from depression than to portray them as a bruised reed or smoldering wick. That was exactly how I felt - bruised and battered, with my passion and zeal for life virtually extinguished, leaving nothing behind but a smoldering ember.

It reassured me greatly to know that Jesus held me gently in His hands, a bruised reed He would not break but restore to wholeness. How wonderful that although there was nothing left of me but a smoldering wick, He would take the time to gently fan that flame back into life. And that is exactly what He did. Jesus healed my bruises and rekindled my life flame, making me whole once again.

Jesus knows how frail we are.

As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:13-14

Yet even so, He treasures us so much that He gave His own life for us.

The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

How comforting to know that those who follow Him are held safely within His hands, even in the midst of life’s trials and storms.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:27-28

I would also like to share one my favourite worship songs, a song which has also brought me great encouragement.



All verses from the NIV.