Understanding Depression to Cast off the Confusion

One of the worst aspects of depression is the mind numbing confusion and bewilderment that accompanies it. Many, not aware that they suffer from clinical depression, have no idea what is causing the huge list of troubling physical, mental, emotional and spiritual symptoms. I have pages and pages of diary entries where I tried to work out what was causing these symptoms.

2nd Jan ’90 – I often wished Jesus had given me a book, a manual, all on me. It’s so hard - we go through these things that we’ve never gone through before, and we don’t know what’s happening and don’t know what to do.

28th Feb ’90 –
Every day is a nightmare…I just want to hide.
It relents for a day, then its back in full force.
Feeling disturbed, pain, anger, distress and grief soon follow.
It feels like there are little knives inside my chest and jaw, and they cut, cut, cut…
I can’t believe this is happening to me.
I wake disturbed, I go to work disturbed, all day, everyday, disturbed.
What’s happened to me? Where has it come from?

Even when we are diagnosed with depression, the sad fact is that it is often not explained to us in sufficient detail. Even though I was told, “You’re depressed,” I was given so little information about depression that when I examined my life and all that was wrong with me, I concluded that I was an aberration - a freak - and I despised myself.

12th April ’90 (after being diagnosed with depression) –
What is this storm that rages within me?
Why won’t it abate, why won’t it subside?
It comes in like a storm, and devours me.
And it won’t go away. It’s nearly four months now.
Four months of doing nothing, just hiding and hiding and waiting


Understanding Depression Brings Relief

Knowledge and understanding on its own has the power to end this hideous phase of bewilderment and confusion. ‘Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.’ Psalm 119:34

We can understand depression when we learn:
a) What symptoms depression can cause, and
b) How depression causes those symptoms.

When someone who is suffering from depression realizes that their symptoms are a normal and common reaction to a malfunctioning nervous system, they feel a great sense of relief. Understanding how their malfunctioning nervous system causes those symptoms brings further relief. Suddenly, we no longer view ourselves as a freak. Doctor Claire Weekes writes in ‘Self Help for Your Nerves’, ‘These symptoms are not peculiar to you, but are well known to many like you.’ (1)

Learning this is one of the first steps towards recovery. (In the next article, I will discuss some simple steps that can help to end those symptoms.)


Symptoms Depression Can Cause

This is a list of some of depression’s symptoms. I suffered from most of these while depressed.

Physical
Aching jaw
Aching shoulders
Difficulty in breathing
Dizziness
Fatigue
Headaches
Heart-burn
Insomnia
Loss of appetite
Missed heart beats
Nausea
Palpitating heart
Prickling sensation in the limbs (feels like something crawling or biting beneath the skin)
Racing heart
Self-harm
Sharp chest pains
Stomach tension

Mental
Fearful thoughts
Mental churning
Obsessive fearful thoughts
Sluggish thinking

Emotional
Anger
Bewilderment
Crying fits
Fear of the symptoms outstrips the fear of depression’s original cause
Feel depressed
Feeling alone
Irritability
Loss of interest in life
Low self esteem
Panic attacks
Self-hatred
Suicidal Thoughts
Transitory elation
Withdrawal from relationships

Spiritual
Anger towards God
Anger towards Satan
Compulsive repentance
Feeling abandoned by God
Guilt
Unable to feel God’s presence

The first time I saw a comprehensive list of depression’s symptoms like the above was in late July 1990, when I started reading ‘Self Help for Your Nerves.’ You can hear the relief shining through every word that I wrote in my diary, as below:

28th July 1990 -
This book, ‘Self Help for Your Nerves,’ goes on to…describe EVERY single thing I have been suffering from for the past eight months, and even back for the five or so months prior to that. I had no idea all of the strange things in my mind, body, and emotions, were ALL interlinked and caused by the same thing! And it even says how I've been sitting and wondering what happened to me, and wondering if I’ll ever be the same again? The book explains every thing, right down to obsessive thoughts, and that people who've developed this thing have probably been stuck with it for weeks, months, and one guy even had it for ten years.


How Depression Causes those Symptoms

If we are suffering from depression, our nervous system malfunctions and becomes over sensitised. A fearful thought that a healthy mind would have dismissed out of hand, can become a ‘sticky’ thought - one that becomes obsessive. It is common to be convinced that our fears will come to pass. In my case, I could not differentiate between fear and reality. Dr Weekes wrote, ‘A sudden or prolonged state of stress may sensitise adrenalin-releasing nerves to produce the symptoms of stress in an exaggerated, alarming way.’ (2)

As the first of the symptoms I listed above start plaguing us, we unwittingly become our own worst enemy by reacting in one of the following ways. After an attack or a symptom fades away, we are so afraid that it will return that a minor trigger in the future is all that is necessary to bring it back. Another reaction is flight - we try to flee the symptom. However, the harder we run from it, the more we fear it, and the more powerful it becomes. The third reaction is to fight the symptom. Although this reaction feels more positive that fear or flight, it also makes the symptoms worse.

Why does fear, fleeing, or fighting the symptoms make them worse?

Doctor Weekes calls it a ‘fear-adrenalin-fear cycle.’ Quite simply, all three reactions cause more negative adrenalin to flow, and it is the adrenalin that causes the symptoms. The cycle is vicious. The more we fear, flee or fight, the worse we become, as the additional adrenalin produced prolongs symptoms and produces new, even more alarming ones. Soon we become terrified, thinking, “What else is going to happen to me?”

The good news is that the cycle can be stopped.

The first step in stopping the cycle is to recognise that the disturbing physical, mental, emotional and spiritual sensations we are experienced are caused by the cycle. Just knowing the truth of what is wrong with us brings such a sense of relief, a significant step in the journey of recovering from depression. Understanding this brings huge relief, as you can see from my diary below:

28th July 1990 -
...for the last 8 months, as always, I've reacted to what was wrong with me in the same way. I have been scared of it, and feared all the many side effects and things that were going wrong with my mind, body, and emotions. And my other reaction has been to fight it. (I've even literally said that I wished this "thing" had a physical body, so I could beat the daylights out of it.) And now I learn from this book that these two reactions are the wrong reactions, because they both only make it worse. Basically, my nerves have fallen apart, and have been manufacturing too much adrenalin. When the symptoms come, I have feared and fought, and these have produced more adrenalin, which made me fear or fight more, and it just got worse and worse and worse. Its a Catch-22 situation, a merry go round…Thank you Jesus, Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, for being faithful, for hearing and answering my prayers, and for showing me what's wrong with me.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32

In my next article, I will discuss in detail simple to follow steps that show us how to be free of the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle.

(1) ‘Self Help for Your Nerves,’ Doctor Claire Weekes, Angus & Robertston Publishers, 1989, p18.
(2) ‘Self Help for Your Nerves,’ Doctor Claire Weekes, Angus & Robertston Publishers, 1989, p6.

All verses from NIV.