This week I felt the need to share with you the words of a well known and well respected man who recently shared with the world about his depression.  His talents at writing and expressing his experience truly touched me and I think express for many people the difficulty when our minds have thoughts that can’t be trusted.  Most all of us have experienced at some point in our lives depression or anxiety at such a level that we are, as he says, “not in our right mind.” With the help of other’s love and guidance, we need to fight through and challenge these thoughts, clinging to the reality of our self worth and true value.  

Michael Gerson is a political columnist for the Washington Post, a former Presidential speech writer, and a regular contributor to many national news shows.  He was invited to give a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral in which he decided to help reduce the stigma surrounding depression and talk openly about it. He introduces the topic:  “Like nearly one in ten Americans – and like many of you – I live with this insidious, chronic disease. Depression is a malfunction in the instrument we use to determine reality. The brain experiences a chemical imbalance and wraps a narrative around it. So the lack of serotonin, in the mind’s alchemy, becomes something like, “Everybody hates me.” Over time, despair can grow inside you like a tumor.”

In my own experience and with many of the people I work with, the identification of depression as altering one’s view of reality is so important.  When we are gripped by depression and anxiety, our mind’s take over with a dark cloud or fear that colors the world we see. It is like a lens through which we interpret the world is placed before our eyes.  The problem is, we do not know what to trust. Our very own minds try to convince us that we need to act on our thoughts or fears. Studies show that these distortions in thinking are caused by biological changes as well as defense mechanisms meant to help us control or protect ourselves.  By seeing fear or rejection that is not there, we are driven to withdraw or work harder in ways that serve as desperate attempts at lessening some threat.

Michael Gerson shares some of his journal entries at the times he was most depressed.  Despite being a successful man, one of a few with a column in a National paper, he truly feels like a failure and a dissapointment.  When reading them in his right mind, he can see that they are “just lies,” but at the time he writes them he believes they are true. He reflects:   And it seems, particularly when you’re isolated, it can be very dangerous, because all you have then is this — these thoughts in your own head, these ruminations in your own head. And it really takes other people to try to break into that and say, this is wrong. This is not true. What you’re thinking is not correct.

So please, if you are gripped by thoughts of failure or worthlessness, don’t believe it.  I know this is easy to say, and not to do, but stay open to the notion that you are not in your right mind. Take a moment before you discount the opinions of others who love you and respect you.  Entertain the idea that they, perhaps better than you, are a good judge of your character. Not being able to trust your own perceptions is truly an uncomfortable and vulnerable way of being. Yet, as Michael Gerson explains it, you need to listen to someone who has the courage to say to you:  “You’re, in fact, much too hard on yourself. You’re living in a kind of small little world of your own creation. And you need to come out of it.”