Unmasking the Silent Epidemic: Finding Peace in a Depressed World

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In July 1978, RedBook came out with a questionnaire and it asked what will make you happy. Now that's an interesting question because just in the question. It infers that things can make you happy. Now, as I looked at it, naturally, I reviewed my life because my life had been a goal to make me happy. And so, I read over some of the questions. A year later, and it took them one year to get this thing compiled. One year later, they came up with a two-part answer. Took two months to give an answer to this questionnaire. And it said that there were 52,000 women who had answered this. And it said that 58% of them said that they were depressed. Now these are people according to this survey women who were above average in intelligence, in income, in interest in life and in good fortune. And these were people who should have had everything together in life. And yet 58% of them said on paper that they were depressed, 48% said they were tired, and 58% said they were fat. Now you notice that fat and depressed is even. As they compiled these different answers and put this all together, they found out that there was only one single answer that was consistent throughout all of the age groups and economic groups in the whole thing. And that was the one thing that these women said would make them happy was inner peace. Now, this is interesting because you see this was phrased in a very materialistic way. What will make you happy? What kind of things do you want? to make you happy. And in a secular magazine, a materialistic question received an answer of spiritual need. It's amazing today how people are looking as never before for answers to their problems. Now, as you look on your outline today, you will see that it starts right off by saying, "What is depression?" According to David Brand in an article in the Wall Street Journal that was on the front page in 1972, it said, "Depression is the least understood yet most serious emotional illness of the times and all indications are that depression in the United States is on the increase. Now that was 1972 and surely it has since that time increased remarkably. The second one says by Dr. Aaron Beck who is the founder of the depression clinic at the University of Pennsylvania and therefore one of the outstanding depression experts in the country. He said some patients describe their depression as a wall between themselves and others. They lost their confidence in their ability to carry out even the simplest of tasks and so they withdraw from the world and many simply take to their beds. Depression is by far the commonest psychiatric symptoms symptom and it's found in every stage of mental illness from a temporary depression in a normal person who has suffered a great personal disappointment to the deep suicidal depression of a psychotic and that's by Dr. Quentyn Haidider who is both a Christian and a psychiat. and who has an excellent book for any of you that do any counseling entitled The Christian Handbook of Psychiatry. Depression is many different diseases all thrown together into one waste basket. That's almost as good a definition as any because when you go to the doctor about depression, they kind of throw all of your symptoms together into one waste basket and most of them aren't too sure what in the world to do with you. Many of you just say that you have a housewife syndrome and that you're bored with life. And the last one that's on there, depression is a belief in one's own help. And this was in psychology today. Yes, depression is a feeling of helplessness, of hopelessness, a feeling that I within my own strength can't make it. That's what depression is all about. Second question, how prevalent is it? Is this something we should be concerned about? 15% of all adults have symptoms. That's what the National Institute of Mental Health says. 50 million now are said to have serious depression in this country. That's the latest statistic. And that's the Commission on Mental Health says that. And then also I knew fact that has been around and has been validated of late and that is that women suffer depression two to one to men. What's the ultimate result of untreated depression? The ultimate result is obviously suicide. If a depression a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness is carried to its extreme without being helped ultimately the person decides there is nothing worth living for and takes his life. Approximately one out of 200 depressed people commit suicide. And then another new statistic, a 100,000 suicides a year in the United States right now. This is the newest one, 1983 figure. They know of a 100,000 suicides this year. And when I first wrote this outline, there was not a problem with teenage and child suicide. But recently, there have been studies on that. And Newsweek just within the last few months said that there are now known 5,000 teens a year who kill themselves and half a million teenagers a year up-to-date statistic attempt to kill themselves and somehow don't succeed. It has become and you may not understand this or realize it but it has become almost a fad among teenagers to commit suicide. It's the ultimate way of escaping what they have decided is a two-faced life by their parents of their parents pretending to be all happy and fun on the surface and being miserable at home. And they decided that's the way life is. If that's the way marriage is, if that's the way family life is, I want no part of it. And they are killing themselves in droves. It is absolutely an epidemic. And then a worse thought is that now 12,000 children attempt suicide every year. This is under the teenage. While we don't think of pre-teenagers as possible suicide victims, let me assure you, hundreds of very young children do succeed in taking their lives every year. This art article in the LA Times says depression and suicide join the list of childhood diseases. It's now listed along with measles and mumps pre-teen childhood suicide. And so as we see these various statistics and facts, we must conclude today that suicide is a real problem in the United States today and it is the ultimate result of untreated depression. Now we've seen this that this is what happens when people are totally depressed and have no hope. Now let's look Now, at some of the symptoms, because there are many of you here today that will recognize these as symptoms that you have. Some of you will recognize these as symptoms that someone in your family has, a husband, a teenager, mother, whatever it may be. And some of you will find that you've got a few of these yourself. So, let's look first at the symptoms. And I'll give them to you in groups. The first group, passivity, loss of interest, pessimism, and hopelessness. Now, this is the beginning stages of depression. When a person says, says to themselves, "I really don't want to make the effort to go. I really don't care to do it anymore. It isn't really worth my while to show up. I don't really have any interest. I don't care whether anyone goes. I just want to be left alone. There really isn't any point in going anywhere or doing anything anymore." Now, that's the feeling of pessimism, passivity leading into hopelessness. Now, these are symptoms that aren't noticed quite often in the very beginning. I have a friend who came up to me after She had heard me go over this and she said, "I thought that my husband had improved in his personality." She said, "He's been nasty and arrogant all of our married life." And she said, "He retired and suddenly he became pleasant. He sat around. He didn't give me any trouble. He didn't tell me what to do anymore. He just sat there and kept quiet." And she said, "I said to myself, isn't it wonderful that he's finally got agreeable?" But she said, "As I listen to you go over those symptoms of depression, I realize he's not being agreeable. He's extremely depressed. So, as we look at these, you may find someone in your life, you or someone else who has some of these symptoms. The second grouping, self-deprecation. There's no good in me. I don't amount to anything. Nobody cares. I might as well kill myself. Wouldn't make any difference. If I weren't here, they wouldn't even notice. And then you stay home and nobody does notice. And then you stay home again and nobody notices. And you infirm in your own mind, it's true. Nobody cares for me. Nobody likes me. They don't care if I show up. I don't need to do anything. I might as well just forget it all. Self-deprecation in me. is no good thing. And then withdrawal. First, mental withdrawal. I'm sure all of you have been in a room where you saw a person sitting there, but in spite of the fact that they were sitting there, you knew they weren't tuned in. Do you know what I mean by that? Not tuned in. Just sitting there. That's a person who's really depressed. They are beginning to withdraw. And they first withdraw mentally, then they withdraw emotionally. They have no feelings and you can put your hand on them, they don't respond. And then they withdraw physically. They don't go to the meetings. They don't leave the house after a while. They don't leave the bedroom and after a while they don't leave the bed. They withdraw from their basic society. And then a preoccupation with self. What are people thinking about me? Do they care? Are they noticing? Are they saying bad things about me? What is it that people are saying about me? A feeling that everyone is talking about you. A preoccupation with self. And then a dislike of happy people. Most of us, as we have all at some time or other been depressed, you know that if you can think back on some time when you were really unhappy, when you were really miserable, and some bright bubbly person came along and said, "Oh, just cheer up and be happy like me." Now, how does that hit you when you are really depressed? You see, that doesn't do much for you. Fred used to be very depressed. He's a melancholy temperament. He used to get depressed a lot. And I can remember one time when he was depressed, and I kept saying, "What's the matter with you, Fred?" That's a cheery way to deal with a depressed person, isn't it? What's the matter with you, Fred? He'd say, "What was the answer? say to me, "Nothing." That's what they always say, "Nothing." And then you get mad. You say, "Of course there's something wrong with you. You haven't spoken to me in days. There's something wrong with you. What's the matter with it?" So you keep pumping them. Finally, after weeks, they tell you, "It's because of this." And they tell you some dumb little thing. And you say, "That's what's the matter with you? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." And what happens to the poor little person who's trying to crawl crawl out of the pit of depression when you say that? Where do they go? Right back down in it again. You see, most of us don't know how to handle depressed people. Most of us don't know what to do with them or what to say with them. And Many of them, you see, cannot stand the thought that someone else is jolly and happy. One lady told me, she said, "When I was deeply depressed, if I heard someone laugh, it hurt my ears." You see, sometimes we begin to get physical symptoms of mental problems. The next set, change of personality and habits. Many times we begin to recognize depression at this point. Someone who has always been neat and clean gets sloppy. Someone who looked good looks terrible. Someone who used to have her hair done every week doesn't bother with it at all. Someone who used to always to show up at all the meetings doesn't come anymore. People that begin to change their habits, their personalities. And as you see this, you begin to recognize there's something wrong with her. Fatigue. This is one of the most obvious symptoms of depression is fatigue. In fact, most depressed people are very tired because working at depression as hard as we do makes us very tired. We can't quite get moving in the morning. Now, this fatigue can take either one of two avenues. One, a person who is tired all of the time and they wake up in the morning, open their eyes and say, "Oh my goodness, another terrible day like yesterday." Shut their eyes, pull the blanket up, and stay in bed if they possibly can. Many times, women who are depressed sleep as much as they possibly can because sleep blotss out the problems that they've got. Now, some people at that same stage of depression never sleep at all. I had a girl who lived with me for about seven years. She was a chronic depressant and she never slept. She was the type that never slept at all. In the night you would hear her pacing the floor and she would pace near enough my bedroom so that I could hear her and therefore I would know how depressed she was. The next thing is on eating now on overeating or undereating the same problem. The tendency for most women who are depressed is to eat. That's a tendency. Now this doesn't mean everyone does some undereat but the tendency is to overeat. Now why is it that we tend to overeat. As I thought about this, only in the last year did a new thought come to me. I began to realize that the reason that we overeat when we're depressed is because of the fact that eating has become a reward in life. Most of us as little children were told that if we ate our dinner well, we could have dessert or if we did this well, we could have candy or if we behaved nicely for a whole week, we could go out for ice cream. And throughout our childhood, we were given rewards of some kind of food. So that if I did well, I got food. So when I'm depressed as an adult and I feel that I haven't got anything going for me and I'm unhappy and I want to treat myself and make myself feel better, what do I do? I give myself some food. I had one lady tell me she ate an entire chocolate cake. She ate the whole cake. Now they'd had it for dinner that night and three pieces had gone out of it and she ate the entire rest of the cake. Now many times depressants at this point become almost food the hollix. And the next day she realized that her husband was going to know that she had eaten that whole cake when he came home. So, you know what she did? She made another one and ate the three pieces out of it and had it ready. Now, you see, other people's depressions are funny. What other people do is funny. But you see here, this lady got fatter and fatter. Now, as you notice that statistic I gave you, as those ladies wrote in, 58% of these women were depressed and 58% were overweight. And so I know that many of us tend to overeat when things aren't going our way. When we're not happy, we reward ourselves. So many of us eat ourselves into what we think will be happiness. Now, after we eat ourselves into happiness and we have now enjoyed the entire chocolate cake and waffles with extra syrup and extra butter and all the other things that you like. After we've done that, then we go and we get undressed one night and happen just by just a happen. to catch a view of ourselves with no clothes in a mirror. Now, for those of you that have overeaten and have had that terrible reaction, what happens when you see that? What does that do to your spirit? Oh, do you get depressed? And when you get that depressed, what do you rush to do right off to cheer yourself up? Go and eat something quickly to make yourself cheer up for the fact of how you really look. And you see, then you eat some more. And where does that go? On you again. And then you look again and you See, it's a real bad cycle that depressed women get into. We eat to cheer ourselves up. We gain weight. We look at ourselves that makes us depressed. So, we eat to cheer ourselves up. And you see, if you can think about that today, that maybe you, some of you may be going through a cycle like that right now where depression calls for food. Food puts on weight, weight causes depression, and we go on and on like that. So, many of us are overeing in our time of depression. Some of us are undereating. There are some of us today In fact, we have a new problem in life today. You know what that is? What it's called? Anorexia. Now, you see, anorexia is when we decide that to cheer ourselves up, what we've got to do is not eat, but to starve. Because if we're slim, people will love us. Because, isn't that what we see in all the magazines? All the happy people standing around having drinks at parties are all slim. They don't show any ordinary ladies like you and me. They don't show any ladies who are a little too thick around the middle or who've got bulges on their thighs. They don't put any of those. those happy pictures, the people in the happy pictures are slim, almost emaciated, and they're standing there, not even they don't even have bones, those people. They're just just slim like like just a little rod. And here they're standing around looking happy. And so a lot of depressed teenagers particularly decide that I could be happy if only I were slim. And then they starve themselves to death. Bulimia is another one where they eat a lot and then cause themselves to vomit and so that they don't therefore put on the weight. Either one of these is a real serious illness. And it is an illness of our times. We never heard about it five years ago, but it is now it has been made popular by Pat Boon's daughter who brought it to the forefront. And now many people have come out of the closet as victims, as they stated, of anorexia. It's one of the symptoms of the area of depression, increase in drinking or drugs. Now, most of us here would say today, well, we're fine Christian ladies. Certainly in this room today, we have no problem with drugs. Now, you may not. You may have a child who does or a husband who does or a neighbor who does. You may have someone else who does. And yet, I want you to ask yourself this morning, how many of you take some kind of a drug to help you out under certain moments of stress. The statistics show that over 50% of the drugs sold in the pharmacies today are what are called mood elevating drugs. They aren't drugs to take care of diseases. They're drugs to make us happy. Over 50% of the drugs sold are drugs to make us happy. Mood elevating drugs. They may be just on the line averages. Some of you here today that every day may take something to pep you up. Maybe later on you take something to calm you down. Maybe before you go to bed you take a few sleeping pills. You see when we do these things it becomes a habit and we become drug oriented even though we as good Christian women would never say that we are on drugs. But many of us are taking things to make us cheer up. Now if you just every day are taking a few of whatever after a while you see none of those things do you much good. And then when you have a problem, you have to take more and then you have to take more again and then more and as you get depressed and need more help, you tend to take more and more and after a while there's an increase in drinking or drugs. If any of you find yourself in any kind of a spiraling effect of taking something to make you happy, think about it. This is a real sign of depression, an increase in either drinking or drugs. Then poor concentration. It's obvious that when you've gone through all these symptoms that you can't concentrate, your mind is a little fuzzy. You become a hypochondric. You run around trying to find different doctors who are going to help you and in this pursuit many times become more and more depressed because what happens most often when a woman goes into a doctor and says I am depressed nothing seems worthwhile what does the doctor usually say to her it's all in your head now she already was afraid it was all in her head and she's come hoping you can give her a shot some miracle pill it'll cheer her up and you tell her it's really all in your head now what does that do to a person who's already depressed it gives them that kiss of death that hope lessness. If that's what he feels, then there's no hope for me. Now, as we go down this suicidal tendencies come around, people begin to talk about committing suicide. When I was a child, I can remember my mother telling me that as long as people talked about committing suicide, they never would do it. And I found out statistically that that's not true. That when people are talking about committing suicide, they usually are planning to do it. And why are they talking about it? Why do they talk to you about it? What is it? It's a bid for attention. They're saying, "This is my last chance. I'm letting you know how I feel. Please help me." It's as if they're drowning and they're asking you to reach out a hand and to pull them in. You see, when they talk about it, they are thinking about it. Suicidal tendencies. My son came home one day when he was a senior in high school. My son is a melancholy child, very deep, not a lot of lightness in life in him. And he came home one day from school and he said to me, "Mother, we sat around at lunch today talking about committing suicide. Now I being a volatile type of personality in years past my reaction to that kind of a statement would have been if I hadn't studied this and known better my reaction would have been what yours might have been. What do you mean you talking about suicide? What right have you got to think about that? Don't you realize you have that room of your own that's even got a door that comes in from the outside. You've got your own bathroom. You got me from a mother from a mother. How could you possibly in any way think you're going to kill yourself? Now see that's the way most mothers react to a teenager who says, "I think I'm going to kill myself or I was talking about it." Now, gratefully throughout my study of this and my dealing with children, my three teenagers that I've had, I have learned not to overreact, and most mothers do overreact. And I used to do that. So, now I have learned to bite my tongue, swallow a couple times, get my wit about me, and then nicely and calmly say, "Why were you talking about that, Fred?" And he said, "Well," he said, "we've all been realizing that there's going to be war. We're now all 18 and we're going to be drafted. They're going to send us somewhere. We're all going to get killed. And we talked about it, decided, why don't we just end it all now instead of waiting for that to happen? Now, you might say, "Isn't that ridiculous? She must have a peculiar son." That's not ridiculous, not peculiar. This is what teenagers are talking about today. They don't see any hope. They don't see anywhere to go. Have you see the difference from those of us that are my age or anywhere in my age category? Because as we grew up, we had no money. We were in the depression. And that was a time of hopelessness. moneywise. But you see, most of us can weather the money problem. What's the problem? It's when our spirit's depressed. That's when we want to take our lives. As long as we don't have money, and that's our worst problem. There's always hope that we can get it. Somehow we're going to make it. And I knew as I set my goals as a child that somehow someway I was going to make it. But you see, today they've made it. They've already got the money. My son's sitting in a beautiful house with his own bathroom, with a 20 by 20 bedroom with with his own door to come in. He's got everything he wants. How can my son talk about killing himself when I lived in three rooms behind a store and had nothing and I managed to get through. All right. You see, that's what goes through our mind. How can they be like this when I've given them everything? Now, see, the reason that they're thinking like this is they've got everything. They've got nowhere to go. They have no goals they have to set. They've achieved just about everything already. And we've handed them whatever it was that they needed. And they've gotten to a point where suddenly they see, I've got everything, and what's it worth? And then they begin to look around and they see there's nothing much in the world for me. Where am I going to go? I haven't amounted to anything. I haven't made it in life. You see, they come to that point where there are suicidal tendencies because they don't see any way out. I was able to share with my son and say, "Fred, how many of the young boys were talking about this?" And he told me about the group and I said, "Fred, it is true. If you're dealing strictly with the world, it's true. There's not a lot of hope for you. But you could share with those boys because you know what it is to be a believing Christian. And you know that that even if there are difficult times on earth, you know that there is an ultimate hope. That Jesus Christ is our ultimate hope. That he promises us eternal life. That he's going to give us a better life than we've got here. He promises this. And Fred, you can give hope to those other boys. And so we were able to have a spiritual discussion over the fact that many of his friends were talking about suicide. Do you know that in that year, his senior year in high school, and we live in a beautiful suburb and a lovely area, and that in that year, three of his friends did commit suicide in that one year. One took an overdose of drugs and two shot themselves. You see, three of his friends in our nice neighborhood committed suicide. You see, this is something we have to talk about and we have to face. Suicidal tendencies, sudden improvement. Now, this is a step which when I first did this, I didn't understand and didn't even have in here. But as I've counseledled and dealt with hundreds and hundreds of depressed women, as I've done this, I found out that many times before the end, there is a period of sudden improvement. A time when that person who has been depressed for quite a while suddenly seems to be over it. They seem to be better. They smile again. They go back to their normal behavior pattern and their own personalities. And you see that there is an improvement. And many of us, if we don't know any better, think that that means that they're all better. I can remember my friend Mary, she had been the college beauty queen. Her husband had been the football captain. They had been the beautiful people, everything wonderful, romance, the greatest things in life. look forward to. But they got married and Mary had five children. She didn't want one. She ended up with five of them. Her husband, who only wanted to play football, had to go to work and he didn't like work and she didn't like babies. And after a while, they were both depressed. And Mary, every time I would go over there, the children would be tearing around the house, ripping things up, causing all kinds of turmoil. And Mary would be tearing her hair out. One day I went over there, Mary was calm. Children were the same, but Mary was calm. She smiled. She had somewhat the radiance about her that she'd had when I first knew her. And I looked at her and I thought, "Mary's better." I went home and told my husband, I said, "Mary's better. She's just gotten out of this whole depression." The next day, Mary went to the doctor's office. It was in his home. She went into his kitchen, took a big butcher knife out, went back into the waiting room, and stabbed herself in the heart in front of all the patients. They took Mary off to the mental hospital. She didn't kill herself. They put her back together. And later, as I talked to Mary about it, as she had somewhat recovered, she said the doctors told her that when she got that sudden improvement, that when she looked as if it was all together. That was when she had decided to kill herself. You see, sometimes towards the end, they'll decide how to get rid of this hopeless feeling, how to kill themselves. And as they decide that, they have a ray of hope. Because you see, now things are not hopeless any longer. There is a way out. And then they hear a call to death. And Mary told me that she heard voices telling her to come to a better place. And I've talked to many people who have tried to commit suicide. I spoke at the national suiciders anonymous convention. Every single person sitting out there in the audience was someone who to even be in that room had to have attempted suicide and failed to do it. Now you see it's depressing to face a room full of people who have tried to kill themselves. I've talked to so many of them and most of them had this time of sudden improvement. One lady told me that her mother had been very depressed since the father had died. And one night she invited the whole family over for dinner and they came to dinner and the mother was dressed in a gown. She had the table set beautifully. candles and flowers. And as they walked out that night, all of the family said to themselves, "Mothers finally got a hold of it. She's gotten over the depression." The next morning, she was dead. She had staged her own farewell party. You see, people who commit suicide don't do it on impulse. They've thought about it for a long time. And they are giving you the opportunity of saving them because they have decided, "This is it. I'm going to end it all." And there is that time of sudden improvement where there's a peace comes over them that they know that the end is near. So don't be fooled by this time of sudden improvement. And then comes that call to death where they hear from somewhere beyond. And so many have told me voices. Some have heard trumpets. Some have heard a little whisper. Many of them have told me the different kind of calls they've heard that have said come to a better place. You see those are the symptoms of people who are depressed. All right. Now what kind of people get depressed? Let's ask ourselves that question next. Who gets depressed? Number one, born losers. Who's a born loser? What's a born loser mean? What is one? A born loser is someone who from the time he was very young learned from his parents and other people that he didn't amount to anything. Someone who could see right from the beginning that he wasn't going to make it. Someone whose parents said something like, "Why are you so clumsy? Why aren't you bright like your sister? Why aren't you athletic like your father? Why aren't you this? What's the matter with you?" And how many of you can remember somebody saying something like that? to you because those of you who do remember usually this damages your self-image. I was in one lady's house one night. She introduced me to her children. She said, "This is little Susie. She Susie is so adorable." And Susie smiled appropriately so. And little Susie is about eight years old. Little Susie takes ballet lessons. Oh, she is so cute. You can't believe what she does in her toes. I mean, just pirouetses. Just wonderful little Susie. And then she tells me about her dancing recital and the little tutu that she wore and the little sequins that were on it and how adorable is little Susie. So little Susie just all beaming. She's just all happy. Here's little Susie. She dances. And then next right here, this is Joey. Oh, I tell you, such an athlete is Joey. This lady's telling me about it. She wins awards and everything he tries. I mean, there isn't anything Joey can't do. Whatever he goes, she's maybe he'd like to go into Joey's room afterwards and look at his his big cabinet on the wall full of all these little statues. Joey only 14 years old and a prize in every single thing that he enters. And then she says, "And this is John." And that was it. This is John. Now, see, She didn't say anything terrible about John. But if you were John, what do you know by now? You know that Susie piouetses and you know that Joey wins awards and you know that you're just John. Not too bad, but surely not much to be said about you. I have learned as I have worked over this section, I found out that there are so many women in life who are teaching their children to be born losers, who are telling them something wrong with them every day of their lives. Why can't you do this? What's the matter with that? Watch out. Here he comes. He's going to trip. You can tell. And he comes in and he trips. And you you just program the child to become a born loser. And when you do that, you will have on your hands as a teenager a depressed child. Now, my son Fred has got a lot of strikes against him. And it's unfortunate because I have two natural daughters who are superhumans. I mean, they are ones the the ones that do everything. I mean, they've always had lots of goals. They've always achieved. And when I've said move to those girls, what What have they done? They've moved. They've done what I said to do. When I've given them goals and set it for them, they've gone with me. And the three of us have just joged through life all happy and full of gold. Then I have Freddy. Freddy's adopted. That's a problem right there because he knows he isn't one of us. Not only is he adopted, he's the end of the line. He's behind two aggressive, accomplished sisters. And he's also very melancholy and introverted in analyzing himself all the time. You see, Freddy just in those three things is programmed for depression. And I used to help him be programmed for depression because I would say why don't you move like your sisters? Why don't you get good marks like your sisters? I used to say things like that to him before I realized this particular step that a born loser is one who becomes a depressed teenager. And I began to realize this and I had to shift my emphasis and I had to start finding things about Fred that were positive. When Marita went away to college, I can remember Fred saying to me, he said, "You're going to be really lonesome now, aren't you? father. And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, the one that gives you all your laughs has left." Now, I realized, you see, I'd never told Freddy that he wasn't funny. I'd never told him he didn't have a sense of humor. But what had Freddy learned on his own without my ever verbalizing that? He learned what? He wasn't funny. He'd learned that I got the laughs out of Marita and that he wasn't very funny. Now, see, I'm glad he said that to me because that made me realize that I had never told him it was he was funny. And I had always told Marita that she was so amusing and isn't she funny? And I would point out to other people, Marita's so funny. And I'd repeat all of her stories and everybody loved Marita's stories. Freddy didn't have any stories. So when he told me that and she was going away to college, I began a new program with Freddy. I didn't come right out with it blatantly so he'd notice it. But every time Freddy said something that was even remotely amusing, I would say, "Fred, you are really developing a sense of humor that was really funny. And I began to lift him up in that way. One day when he was about 17 years old, he sat down one evening with Fred and me in the bedroom. And he said, "I've got something I want to tell you." I was grateful he felt he could tell us. He said, "I want to remind both of you that I'm adopted, that I'm not like you, and that I'm never going to be what you want me to be." He says, "I don't have the stuff in me to be what you want. But he said, "I'd like to just ask you to like me the way I am." And see, I can hardly say that without crying myself because I realized that here was a boy who had to point it out to me because I wasn't smart enough to be dealing with him in that way. He had to let me know that he wasn't going to be what I wanted him to be. But couldn't I love him anyway? Now, I have worked to show that boy since that time that I love him anyway. And do you know that he and I, Lest you say, "Well, maybe it was easy for you, I want to let you know it was not easy for me to learn to get along with Freddy. He and I are temperament wise miles apart. We've never agreed on anything. We don't see the same way about anything in life. And I could just say he and I don't get along and just kind of throw it away. That's the easy thing to do. But what have I had to do? I've had to learn to love Freddy. I loved him in a certain way, but I was always loving him conditionally. I had let him know that I'd love him a lot better if he moved faster. That I'd love him a lot better if he did things the way I wanted it done. And yet I have worked prayerfully and humanly in the last five years to show that boy that I love him just the way he is. Recently when he came in and I was at home, I had done his laundry and I was out in the garage and here was all his laundry hanging up there and I'm not home much and I don't do a lot of laundry and he does the laundry at home when I'm away. But I was there so I'd done his laundry and he drove into the garage and there he was right beside me in the car and as he got out of the car I said to him a simple statement that any mother would have made. I said, "Freddy, I did all your laundry." Now, we want credit, don't we? I mean, we've done a noble deed here. Said, "All right, Fred. I have done all your laundry. Here it is." And then I added what any one of you would have added. I said, "Take it all to your room." Now, that's what I said. Now, that's a simple statement. There's nothing wrong about that, is there, mothers? You've done the work. The least that child can do is carry it to his room. So, I said to him, "Freddy, carry it to your room now. now. And do you know what Fred said? You mothers will rise off the chair. He said to me, "I don't have it in my mind to take that in at the moment. I'll do it later." Now, doesn't that just raise you right up inside? You want to scream at that. And the old me would have said, "I didn't ask you when you wanted to take that. I told you to take it now." That's See, that's what the old me would have said, which would have communicated to him what he already knew is that he's got to do it my way and that I look at him as just something to move in my direction. But instead, and I'm just sharing this with you, not that I'm noble, but that this has taken years of self-disipline in my life to get to the point where I was able to look at him and say, "That's fine, Fred. Whenever you want to do it now, What has that done? The fact that I've been able to take that attitude. Fred was able to go in. He did not take the shirts. He went into his room. And as I stood there alone in the garage looking at the noble deed I'd done, I said to myself, Lawrence, does it really make any difference when he takes those shirts in? I mean, does it really does it make any difference whether those shirts go into his closet now or an hour from now? Does it even make any difference if Fred wants to live in the garage with his shirt You see, it doesn't really matter. And I've had to learn this myself. I've had to say, "Florence, it isn't that important that you get your way. What's important is that you show this child that you love him unconditionally." I got a phone call Sunday night from my son away at college and I said, "Fred, I can't believe you're calling me." He said, "Well, I called daddy. I was talking to him at home. And he said, "I just missed you." And he said, "I want to call you and tell you that I love you." I tell you ladies, that touches me because you see, here's a boy that I couldn't get along with. Here's a boy that wasn't like me. Here's a boy that isn't my flesh and blood. Here's a boy who didn't move when I told him to move. Here's a boy that I had programmed to be a born loser. I'd let him know he hadn't made it. He wasn't the same as the rest. And you may say, "What a terrible woman I am." But I want I want you to share that when you think about it, there may be one of your children that you don't just seem to hit it off right with. There may be one of them that you say a few negatives to now and then. And all I want to do by showing you my example and being vulnerable myself and letting you know how poorly I've handled this situation in the past that you might go home and examine your mind and see, are you raising a born loser? Because if you are, you can turn it around because I've turned it around prayerfully and humanly because I want that boy to know that he amounts to something with me. And as he shared with me on the phone the other night and called me up. He told me what he's doing at school and he said, "Mother, I guess I'll last the rest of the year, but he said, "I just miss being at home." Now, see, he wants to come back and he wants to be with us. Now, I am so grateful for the changes in this boy's life. Not just because it happened, but because he pointed out to me, and how great I appreciate that, he pointed out to me that I really was loving him conditionally. And some of you may be doing the same thing. So, think about that because those who get depressed, who are they? Number one, those who are born losers. Secondly, those who are successful people. Now that sounds like a contradiction, but there are many people like me, goal oriented people, caloric temperament people who set goals and achieve them. And what happens when a person like that retires, has some physical impairment where they can't go and climb these big mountains anymore? What happens to a successful person who can no longer find a new goal? What happens? He becomes depressed. How about those who can't communicate? You say, "Well, everybody can talk." They can talk, but that's a different thing from communicating. I found so many young people who have come into my house that can't complete a sentence, that mumble all the time, that don't talk clearly at all, that you can't even understand, and who don't know what's going on in the world at all. Young people who can't communicate. Now, when I was growing up, we didn't have television. And so, we sat around in the store and we communicated with everybody. My father led us in communication. We didn't realize what we were doing at that time. I didn't realize what a blessing it was that I had a father, a British father who loved words, who taught me vocabulary as a game. So, I never realized I was being instructed. A father who spent time with each one of us encouraging us to be creative. So, that all three of us turned out to be speakers. I have one brother who's been a chaplain in the Air Force and who is now a pastor in a church in Ohio. And I have one brother, some of you may know, Ron Chapman on the radio in Dallas. My father made learning fun. He made us communicate. around the table and every time one of us told a story, the other one would add to it and my father would encourage us. I've tried to do that with my children. I've tried to have a sit around the table and communicate. I've tried to share every morning what's the news today. I listen quickly in the morning to what's going on. And as my children were in school, I would fill them in each morning on some fact out of the newspaper or on the morning news. And I'd say, "When this comes up in school today, you can say this." And I'd say, "Try to work it into your conversation today." And at dinner that night, we'd have a contest to see who had done the best with this fact of information working it into their school somehow that day. Now you see that challenged my children to think. They've all become thinkers. And even Freddy, who does not have the same kind of a mind as the rest of us have, he is now a more creative thinker. And as he's told me on the phone several times since he's been away at school, he said, "Mother, I'm the only one who knows this. Nobody else seems to know what's going on." You see, most parents today don't bother to teach their children to communicate. They just hope that somehow they'll grow up and in some way they'll be ble to say a few sentences how important it is that we teach our children to be able to communicate. Marita had a boyfriend that came over one time and he said to her, "It makes me nervous to eat dinner with your family." She said, "Why?" He said, "Because they all talk." She said, "What do they do at your house?" He said, "I don't know, but I know we don't talk." She went over to his house. She found out why they didn't talk. The whole living room was arranged like an amphitheater headed towards the television set. And they ate every night on TV trays in front of the television. Do you know this is a wonder? way to teach your children to never be able to learn to communicate. Keep their eyes glued to the television all the time because that way they hear things but they have no idea how to answer them because TV does not demand a response and so they can sit and listen and never have to give. And that's why so many children today can't communicate can't give a complete sentence. No one has ever demanded it of them and they have never done it. Those who can't compete, so many of us raise our children protected so that they never have to compete in anything. I brought Marita up that way. Lauren was the first one and she and I were like the mothers together. Lauren and I suffered through these babies together. We went through these problems together. Lauren and I were both adults. But Marita was a baby and she was my little treasure because I lost my boys and I put all my attention on little Marita. She was adorable. She was my baby. I babyed her long beyond what I should have done. I made everything easy for Marita because you see, I didn't want to have anything happen to that child. I wanted to make life easy for her. I'd had to work a lot myself and I wanted to make sure that Marita Peter didn't have any troubles in life. Some of you may have had that thought on some of your children. Spoiled them, made everything easy for them, and taught them that there was no competition in life. Mother would fend it off for you. Mother would part the red seas for you, and you only have to walk through in the path that mother makes for you. That's what I did with Marita when she was graduating from her little nursery school. And she announced to me the week of graduation, I am not going to nursery school graduation. Now, in those days, that was my social era and that was the time And I wanted to always be at the right place at the right time. And I had bought twin matching dresses for Marita and me, yellow orundandy fluffies with a big bow in the back and little flowers up top. And I had the two of us. We were going to go to nursery school graduation. And we were going to show and people were going to look and say, "Don't they look great?" So I had already bought these outfits and Marita announces to me, "I am not going to nursery school graduation." Well, that's impossible. I said, "Of course you are going. I bought you the dress." You see how I was so geared into how we looked? from the outside that I was trying to make Marita's reason for going to this graduation the fact that I had already spent money on a dress. And so I said, "You are going." She said, "No, I'm not. I am not going to nursery school graduation." And so she fussed all week. She was not going to go. She was a very belligerent, strong little child. And so towards the end of the week, finally I got it out of her. Why do you not want to go to nursery school graduation? She said, "It's because they're going to have a potato race. And every time I go in that potato race, my potato falls off the spoon. Now you say, "Well, that's trivia." And it was trivia. So, of course, what did I do as a normal mother? I called up the teacher. I paid a fortune for this child to go to this very expensive nursery school. I called her up and I said, "Marita does not wish to be in the nursery school potato race, and I want you to remove her from it." Now, the lady had no option but to remove her. So, as soon as I told Marita, you don't have to be in the potato race, she went happily off to the nursery school graduation, and we arrived in our little fluffy yellow dresses. You see, we went because I had removed the obstacles. I had shown Marita that she didn't have to compete in life. And what happened after that? It's not as unusual story in itself. But what did I begin to see? I began to see that everything that Marita didn't want to do in life became a potato race. Pretty soon she found out mother will make the way smooth for you. You don't have to do a thing about it. See, I was teaching her she didn't have to compete in life. And children who are taught not to compete in life, as they grow up, they become depressed. Florence continues her discussion of who gets depressed on side two. She illustrates further the link between depression in children and the competitive spirit. I had one lady come up to me one day as I was speaking on depression and she said to me, she said, "I think my depressed son is really a bum." I said to her, "Tell me about him." She told me, she said, 'Well, he's 25 years old and he hasn't worked yet.' I said, 'Th that sounds like a bum'. I said, "What? What does he do?" She said, "He goes surfing every day." I said, "He goes surfing every day." I said, "How does he get to the surfing?" "He goes in his Mercedes." I said, "Where'd he get the Mercedes?" She said, "Well, a boy had to drive something." I said, "Where does he live?" He lives at home. "Does he pay any rent?" She looked at me like I was an idiot. She says, "How could he pay rent when he doesn't work?" "All right, he doesn't pay rent. So, how's he get the gas?" I gave him a credit card. On and on with all these various things, telling me these things. And after a while, I looked at her and I said, "You know, you're right. You are raising a bum. Not only are you raising a bum, but you're raising a very smart bum. He's a lot smarter than you are cuz he's figured out how he doesn't have to work in life. He doesn't have to compete. And then I asked her, I said, "Would you mind adopting me?" Sounded like a good life to me. Now, you see, here was a boy who was depressed and yet he had everything he could possibly have in life. Why was he depressed? Because he hadn't learned how to compete in life. He hadn't learned how to go out there into the mainstream and find out what life was all about. Those with too much to do, all of you know what that means. Those of you with nothing to do, probably doesn't fit anyone here, but it does fit a lot of people. Those in drastic circumstances, those with real problems, things that have happened to them that have really devastated them at the moment. Those with a low image of self, people who don't think they're worth anything, those with too high standards, they're trying to do everything perfectly. And people who want everything perfect and who cannot compromise on any of their standards are obviously easily depressed. And those who feel guilty, who feel that it's their fault that certain things have happened and how many of us in the Christian community dump guilt upon other people. Now, what we've looked at here, we've looked at what is depression. We have looked at how many people are depressed. We've looked at what are the ultimate results of depression. We've looked at the symptoms of depression. And we've looked at what kind of people get depressed. And as we look at the area for overcoming depression, We can ask ourselves one more question. What are some of the step steps of self-help? What can I do for me? The steps for curing any kind of a problem in life, whether it's depression, a marriage problem, a personal relationship problem, a problem on the job, wherever it may be, the first step in overcoming any kind of a problem is to recognize that there is a problem. That there is something wrong with me. Every one of the anonymous groups, whether it's the suiciders anonymous that I mentioned or whether It is overeaters anonymous, alcoholics anonymous. Each one of them has one first step and that first step is that the person with the problem has to admit it. Has to admit, yes, I have a problem. For those of you who read about Betty Ford when she went in for her alcoholics and drug rehabilitation that she wrote in her book, one of the hardest things for me that I ever had to do in my whole life was to stand up in front of those strangers and say, "I am Betty Ford. I am an alcoholic." Now, see, that's very difficult for us to state sometimes as I'm counseling women with problems and they will tell me how nasty they are to their husbands and I had one woman in throughout her conversation with me mentioned the word that she was nasty once she mentioned that she was arrogant but this was somewhat in conversation and so I said to her now that you've told me all this why don't you say it back to me in one sentence I am an and I am a nasty and arrogant wife now she looked at me she said well I'm not really that bad And I said, 'Well, you did really tell me that throughout the conversation. She, well, I mean, I just kind of put that in there with other things. And I said, 'I know, but let's let's say it back to me. I want to hear you say, 'I am a nasty and arrogant wife. Well, it's very difficult for us to say this, you see, because what do we innately within ourselves do when we're facing a problem where there's something wrong with me? You see, we rationalize that maybe a little of it's my problem, but most of it is somebody else. It's my circumstances. It's someone else's problem. And it's very difficult for us to stay and just say, "I have a problem." And yet, as all of these anonymous groups have found out, that until you're able to say clearly, at least to yourself and preferably in front of someone else, I have a problem, you don't get over it. So, you see, whatever it is that we're dealing with in our own human nature, we will never get over the problem until we can first place recognize that we have one and know that we must do something about it. So, that's the first step. So, as you're sitting here today, think about whatever problem you've got today. It may be depression. It may be a marriage problem. It may be a mother child problem. Whatever your problem may be today, think about it and say to yourself right now, "Yes, I have a problem." You see, that's the first step in overcoming it. And if you don't get to that step, you'll probably never overcome whatever your problem is. So, first place, recognize the problem. Secondly, decide that you do need to do something about it, that you need some kind of help, that you must do something about it. Whether it's making amends with another person, whether it's uh uh stopping eating what it is you're eating, stopping going where it is you're going, stopping associating with the people that you're with, whatever it takes to help you in this area, decide that you want to do something about it. Now, those two steps are imperative or we don't make any progress at all. Next, think about examining how did you get in this situation in the first place. Now, sometimes if you were to go to a psychiatrist who puts you into therapy, they will go way back into your childhood and figure out how it is that you came out with the problems you've got today. Now, much of of that can be done by ourselves. We can sit down and think about it. How did I get myself into this mess? Why do I feel this way? What has caused this? Where did it start? And think it over. I once heard Dr. Schuler at Crystal Cathedral give a sermon uh one Sunday morning on depression and he called it his three-point outline was face it, trace it, and erase it. Now, I love that. I wish I could take credit for that because I think it's so clever. But unfortunately I didn't say it. He did and I have used it since then but always in quoting him that he said that if we want to get over our depression or whatever problem that you're facing today number one is we've got to face it. We've got to say yes I have a problem. Whether or not at the moment you think it's your fault. Yes, I have a problem. And then I'm going to trace it. I'm going to think back about it. How did I get myself into this mess? Why do I perpetually get into the same problem? You many of us get into the same problems over and over and over again. So examine the cause. How did I get here? What made me choose this kind of a way of life? The next is to look at the alternatives. Now, in counseling someone else, let's say that some of you here have are Bible study teachers, Sunday school teachers, or somehow women seem to come to you with their problems. What do you do in counseling with them in the area of depression? Well, start with what we've got here. Help them to recognize they've got a problem. Thank them that they're so intelligent that they came to you and asked you for help because they have therefore already decided that they need some kind of help. And then ask them how they think they got into this position. What is it in your past, your background, what what got you here? And then next is to look at the various alternatives that they have to choose from at this point. Now, I have found that in counseling women that this has been one of the most helpful things I've been able to do is say, "What are your alternatives? What can you do about this situation today? What can you do?" Now, uh quite often I'll have a woman say, "Well, I could kill myself. So, I don't scream or rant at that. I say, "That's true. You could do that. Let's write that down as one of your alternatives." Now, very few people really want to write that down. I said, "But that is an alternative." And so, why don't you just write it down? If they don't feel like going to write, I write it down for them. I said, "All right, let's list your alternatives." Number one, kill yourself. Wonderful. That certainly is an alternative. What's number two? Number two, run away. Good. Number two, run away. All right, you can run away. What's Another thing you could do, Another thing I could do is I could kill him. Oh, very good. Kill him. All right, that's wonderful. All right, we're coming up with some good alternatives here. Now, this is you. You're beginning to think about this. This is fine. What's another thing you could do? Well, ultimately somewhere along the line, they'll come up with well, and I could change. Now, you have to help them a little with that one because they don't like that one. And so, you have to kind of pull that out of them. And that's down there somewhere. Say, all right, now we have listed the alternatives. You've listed the various things that you can do. Now, the next thing to do is to look at the probable outcome of taking that particular alternative and choice. All right. Now, what's going to happen? The first one you have down here is kill yourself. Now, that certainly is an option. You can do that. Now, what's the outcome if you do that? Well, uh it's all over and I'm happy. Are you sure you're going to be happy? I mean, do you know where you're going? That's a good point to ask that. And and so, uh it's over with me. Well, maybe it is over with you. So, if I know they've got children, I usually will say to them, "Now, this would be a nice way out for you. You be gone. Now, uh, what person are you planning to have raise your children? Well, they haven't thought about that. And then I usually suggest, how about your mother-in-law? Oh, I've had women rise right off the chair at the thought of it. Oh, no, no, not my mother-in-law. I'm not going to let her lose with those kids. Then I say, well, do you have any other option? Is there anyone else that's looking for them? Well, no, there isn't. Then I think maybe we better cross out kill yourself. So then I run a big mark through that one. I think I'm going to cross that one out. All right, run away. Wonderful idea. If you run away, where are you going to go? Well, I hadn't thought about that yet. Well, let's think about it. Where are you going to run to? Well, I'm just going to go. Well, you just going to take off in the road with the children? You going to take the children? Well, of course, I'm not going to leave them there. So, you're going to take these children? Who do you know in the world that wants you and the children to arrive on the doorstep to move in? See, nobody wants any of that. So, we go over that for a while. How you going to live at truck stops? I mean, that's a Wonderful place. You meet a lot of nice men at truck stops. And is that where you plan to go? Well, no. Have you got any real plans for running away? I don't even know where to let's cross out runaway. All right. Well, see, then you work right down these alternatives with them. Pretty soon, they begin to see how foolish most of these things are. And finally, ultimately, you lead them into the area where it is that I've got to do something about myself. I've got to change my habits, my pattern of behavior. I have to do something with me. And that's what you want to lead them into. to. But you don't ever start right out lecturing the poor little damaged soul who's all upset. You don't say, "Well, if you'd only shape up and amount to something, you'd be all right." That's not what you start with. You say, "What are your alternatives? What are the possibilities? What could you do about your life?" And then you go down through these alternatives. So, when you're counseling someone else, lead them through these choices, but you don't make the choice for them. You show them these choices, and then you lead them into making the right choice. And I always make sure when I'm counseling someone that I say to them, "Now, this is is your choice. It's so important that those of us lay people who are counseling our Bible study people or whatever others come to us that we aren't sitting there as God and putting the finger on them and telling them what to do but that we show them their alternatives lead them to cross off all the wrong ones and to get to the right alternative and then say to them now you have made this choice. You see it's important that that choice does not rest on the person who is doing the counseling. Then the next thing is to check the person's health. I find out so frequently in depression that there are health problems. I had a sugar imbalance at one time and it took me years to find the answer to that problem. And I finally after going through several different sets of physical things came up with a right answer. Didn't happen the first time around. I talked to many women who have a hormone imbalance, who have a sugar imbalance, who have a thyroid problem, who have different kinds of things. And because of these problems that are physical, they end up depressed themselves. So as I talk with women with problems with depression problems or any kind of problems. I ask them things like, "What did you eat today before you came to see me?" Just ask them conversationally. They'll usually say, "I didn't eat anything. You didn't have anything at all to eat today?" "Well, I didn't really eat anything." "Well, what was not really eating anything?" I mean, what does that mean? Well, I only had a chocolate donut and and a Coke. Oh, that's not really anything at all, is it? But, however, what is a chocolate donut and a Coke going to do to you? See, this gets you either geared up And then usually you drop right afterwards because it raises your sugar sugar level and then when you drop you become depressed. So as I talk with people I try to check over any possible health problems they might have and then suggest that they find some kind of help. And again realizing that not necessarily will the first doctor you go to know or find the cause of your problem but check over your health. Do you eat correctly? Do you sleep correctly? Do you exercise correctly? These are things that when we don't do them that we find out that as we get a little older, these are things that tend to depress us. Analyze your self-pity. How many of you can sit around and find 10 friends that have got more than you've got and they don't deserve it. Now, you've worked hard and you've only gotten this far and they've been lazy and they've gotten this far and you have all good reason to hate them, to dislike them, and to never want to see them again. And you can sit around and think about how poor little me has never made it and those people who don't deserve it have. You see, it's very easy for us and I don't think there's a woman in this room that has not at some time or another sat around with a feeling of self-pity. Poor little me. I'm the one who deserves it and look who got it. Now, you want to ask yourself that question. Do you sit around and think that you are the only poor thing that did not get the breaks in life? Everybody's against me. Nobody loves me. Look at poor little me. How terrible that I don't have what I deserve. So ask yourself about the area of self-pity. Now another one I don't have on your list but is important and that is to avoid trouble. How do you avoid trouble? You avoid trouble by staying away from people that are miserable and depressed and mournful. You don't sit home every day watching the soap operas. Now I find many depressed people watch the soap operas. This seems to be a real thing for depressed people. And then they watch somebody who's worse off than they are and it it ladens them down so much that they can hardly get up off the couch and then they have to lie there and eat a few more chocolates and watch another soap opera. Now you see this this perpetuates your feeling of depression and misery and self-pity because you watch all these other people and most of these people live in lovely homes. They all live in mansions. I mean they all are married to doctors and they all have have got tremendous social status and they're always standing around drinking every afternoon at 4 and they never get drunk. They're all just makes them happy and pleasant and lovable. And they're all standing around doing these various things. And you watch them and if you're already depressed, it makes you worse. Now, of course, not only do they look happy and great, but they already have got a load of problems. And if you watch in an afternoon and I saw a little magazine thing, it's called Soap Opera Digest. Now, if you ever want to get depressed, you could read that. And it tells you right down here the history of every soap opera that has happened this week. And I mean, you go from rape to incest to all kinds of of murder plots and everything you can possibly imagine. It's all there before you. Now, you see, if you're already depressed and you get into this kind of a pattern, this makes you more depressed. Depressed people also tend to hang out with other depressed people and then they each tell each other how miserable they are and then by the time they leave, they are each double miserable for themselves and for the other person. So, I have found that one of the suggestions I make is avoid people who are miserable. Avoid watching miserable things. Avoid reading things that are going to depress you. Stay away from trouble because that's a sure way to keep it moving. Take some kind of action. All right. What can you do? What are some kind of the things that you can do if you're depressed? As I began to study this and think about it and how we get over these things, I realized that one of the biggest problems for a depressed person is that they feel they can't do anything anymore. They can't complete anything. They're no good. They have already convinced themselves that they don't amount to anything. And one of the first things that therapists do with people that are acutely depressed is to have them do some simple task that they can accomplish and say, "Here it is. I've done it." Sometimes as I'm talking with a depressed woman, I will say to her something about her housework. I'll just say it conversationally. One lady I said, and she's typical of many, I said, "Uh, do you know how to clean your house? I mean, are you physically able to clean a house? Can you stand up and move a vacuum? I mean, she looked hail and hearty as far as her physical condition. She said, 'Well, yes, I I guess I could do that. And I said, "How long since you've done it?" "Well, a long time. My husband did it because he could see I wasn't doing it anymore." And so I asked, "Well, do you think that you could go home and clean your house?" "Oh, no. No, I couldn't do that." "Could you clean a room?" "No, I don't think I could do that." "Do you think you could do a drawer?" Now, I see you can kind of laugh, but as you're counseling a depressed person, you got to get down to what they think they can accomplish. Maybe it's only a little wallet. Maybe it's a pair of earrings. What is it that they can do? So, I've sat in my office and I've counseledled women, told them they should go home and clean a drawer. One lady said, "How do you clean a drawer?" Now, this is an intelligent woman. I'm not wear I'm not working with little dummies. I mean, and I said, "You want to know how to clean a drawer?" She Yes. So, I quickly developed a policy of how to clean a drawer. Hadn't really thought about this before because I don't like to clean drawers, but I figured uh I'll do something. So, I told this lady how to clean a drawer. She's not the first one or the last one that I've taught that to. She went home. She called me up an hour later. Now, here was a lady who was very depressed. She called me up an hour later. She said, "I've cleaned three drawers and I feel better." Now, see, I've learned from my experience, simple-minded though this may sound that if you can get that depressed person, whether it's you or someone else, to achieve some simple task that they can handle and get to a conclusion of that this alone, the achievement of some task will elevate their feelings. And so, this is one of the steps. Get organized, do some kind of action, get going, accomplish something because most of us when we aren't accomplishing anything are depressed. Get your priorities in order. Find out what it is that you're doing that's out of line. And you see, as I thought about this, I realized I have not been one who's done a lot of getting my priorities in order in the past. And I realized that what depresses many of us is that we never get done what we're supposed to do. And we have this cloud hanging over us all times. We have not achieved what we know we needed to do. And half the time it's because we did not have our priorities in order. We did the fun things first and left the things that were essential to the and and never quite got them done. Now, you see, think about it. What is it that holds you down? This is a lot of different suggestions to work on improving yourself. I have many women that are depressed and they should be depressed. They look terrible. Some women are still wearing the the makeup that was dated when they were in high school and you can tell they're still doing the same thing they used to do. And maybe when they used to do it, it looked good, but doesn't look very good anymore. So, some of us need to update what it is that we're doing with ourselves and improve ourselves. Help someone else. This is one of the greatest ways that we can overcome our own depression is to help someone else with a problem. And so ask yourself, is there someone that I could help that I could uplift? And many times when we ask ourselves that, we'll see some way that we can help someone else. And review your finances. This is another one to add because I find in these days where some of us have had to take a cut in our incomes, where some of our husbands are not doing as well as they used to do, many of us it depresses us to go down a step in our social or financial ladder. And now my husband have had and I have had many ups and many downs. And at one point when we lived in a very large house when my husband's business at that time fell apart that we had to face the fact that it was going to take every nickel we had to stay in that house. Now that house was very important to me and we were able to seat 90 people in the family room for Bible studies and we had an archway where we stood and spoke from and we had lighting that was correct in that and we had designed this house so that it was right for Bible study. Now, you see, I kept saying to myself, well, the Lord wanted us to be in this house. He gave us the ability to have this. But you see, there came a time when I had to just sit down and face the facts that if we were going to stay in that big house with six bedrooms, that if we were going to stay there, it was going to take every nickel that both of us could possibly earn just to keep the mortgage payments going. And so, what did I have to realize in my life? Much as I hated to face that fact, that when I reviewed our fin cial position and Fred and I sat down and went over it. We decided that the only intelligent thing to do and it was not our emotional feeling but the only intelligent thing to do was to sell that house. And so I prayed and I asked the Lord I said if it's right to sell this house then have the first person that come in buy it and I thought I'll give the Lord an impossible chance and have the first person or among the first people to come in buy this house so that and this was July so that I can be out of this and wherever it is I've got to go by the time the children go back to school. In September, we put it on the market. The first day it was on the market, the first lady that walked through the house, who did not even open a cabinet door, who didn't ask one single question, bought the house. Now, what did I have to realize? Much as I didn't like it, what did I have to realize? That was what the Lord was answering me. Get out of that house. And as I at that particular time, the verse in Hebrews 12 where it says to lay aside all the weights and all the things that encumber you so that you can run run the race and not be encumbered and weighted down and held down by other things. And I found that verse in Hebrews 12 and I realized that that was for me. That that house was encumbering me that I had so much house and so much money invested and so much time spent on keeping this setting around me so that I would look good and could be the hostess on the hill and have everybody look up to me. And I had to review my financial situation and realize that that was not for me at that time. And we moved from this huge home to a 1300 ft² condominium, five adults of us, and we moved into this very tiny place. And it was when I got into that tiny place, it was like living in a motel. And it was when I was living in that motel that I wrote my first book. You see, I'd never had time to write before. I'd always said, "Someday, I'm going to write a book." But it was not until I got unencumbered by that house and got into a small situation that I was able to do it. You see, many times we keep ourselves strapped down by too many things and encumbered by pressures of life and we have to review our financial position and maybe make a change. Humbling experience at the time, but if it's in the Lord's will, he'll give you the joy and the ability to do it. And we became happy in the condominium. And after a couple years there, the Lord increased the business enough that we could move into a bigger house, which is where we are today. Kind of a middle of the road average house, and that's where we are. And since my husband's home alone in it most of the time, it is already really more than we need. So, you see, sometimes because of our image and our feeling, we keep ourselves surrounded by things that are far too expensive for us and then we wonder why we're depressed when we don't have enough money to make the payments. So sometimes we need to review our finances and make some changes. Now those are some physical things that you can do. You can recognize your problem, decide you need help, examine the causes, look at your alternatives, check your health, analyze self-pity, avoid trouble, take some kind of action, get yourself organized in life, get your priorities in order, improve yourself, help someone else, and review your finances. Those are some things you can personally do. Now, what if you if you're really so depressed that doing any of these things doesn't seem to be helpful to you? You feel that you're beyond any of these being a help. What can you do? Secondly, what kind of help is available outside of yourself. Now, there are many areas that can be helpful to you. Most of you go to your pastor first, and that's usually a logical thing to do. And we assume that most of your pastors in whatever churches you attend that they would know enough if they couldn't handle it to sell send you to somebody who could. So, go to your pastor first. Maybe go to your doctor, have him check your health, tell him how you're feeling. The doctor many times can spot some of your depression problems. Many times you can go to a therapist. And it's always best, of course, not to get yourself involved with a worldly person who's going to make suggestions to you. As I have had women tell me that their psychiatrist has suggested that the problem you don't get along with your husband and the reason that have no romance in your life is because you've only had him and it's time you go out and live it up with somebody else. And once you get loosened up with him, you'll be able to come back and be much better for your husband. Now, I've had people tell me that that's what they were told by therapists. So, we have to be very careful that we don't go off. And if you are at a therapist and he starts telling you to do strange sexy things that you know better than, then you better get out of that therapist and go somewhere else where you're going to get some sound advice. Because so much today, there are things said that are totally anti-biblical and what you know perfect in your own heart is totally wrong. So you can seek some kind of therapy. There are drugs that are ones that will lift your moods. Now I don't ever suggest this myself as a first step but I do want you to at least be aware of the fact that there are many new drugs that basically are set to help you in an area of depression. Psychotherapy is when a therapist hopefully one who is also a Christian can lead you through some of the tracing of what's happened to you in the past. Group therapy where you sit around and share some of your problems. Now, for some people, and again, I've talked to women who've done all these things. For some people, group therapy is a help because they find out there are some other people have similar problems. Makes them feel less bad about themselves. But I've also talked to women who when they found out how depressed everybody else was, they got worse. So, I can't tell you that that's an answer, but it is an available possible option. The shock treatment, the ECT it's sometimes referred to, Again, I don't recommend this. I've known people for whom it worked. I've also known people that were really their whole minds were blown by this kind of therapy. So, that is something that's available and possible, but certainly should be done only in the very last stages. Stress analysis. There are many tests now where you can check off different things that have happened to you and add up some points and you can tell whether or not you are under an additional amount of stress. Now, I think most of us intelligent women can tell that without taking a test. I think most of us know whether or not we have stress in our lives. The problem is that most of us don't do anything about it when we find out we do have too much stress. And that's one of the things that we must do to keep us from being depressed. BOF feedback is a new thing that they're doing with depression. And this trains you how to get yourself out of bad humor when you find yourself getting into it. Now, I'm just mentioning these because these are things that are available. Although I don't ever personally suggest them. I just let people know that there is such a thing. The National Institute of Mental Health. They will send you information on the latest drugs, the latest treatments on the area of depression if you write for it. So they will give you all of the updates so that you will know what is in right now, what is being successful. So should that be a problem and you have not been able to solve it and you feel you need some kind of help along this line, that is the way that you can turn. Now what is the possibility for spiritual health in my particular area where having lost my two sons and being very depressed as I committed my life to the Lord. I began to develop some steps of how to get out of my depression in a spiritual way. Now, I did not know at the time what I was doing. I didn't know that anyone ever cared because I had been so firmly brought up that you kept all of your problems to yourself and you didn't ever let anyone else know you had any. So, consequently, I never talked about them to people and I never thought I'd be sharing them with you. But these are the things that help me. And let me go over these with you. I want you to realize number one that before you can have any kind of spiritual help, you have to be a believer. You have to believe that the Bible means something. And in 1 Corinthians 2:14, it tells you in there that the Bible is foolishness to those who don't believe. And that's true. So, I could give you wonderful spiritual answers and I could give you wonderful verses, but if you don't believe in God, if you don't believe in the Lord Jesus, if you do not believe there is a power in the Holy Spirit, if you don't believe any of those things, And naturally, verses aren't going to help you at all any more than memorizing Shakespeare. If we don't believe that God loves us, that he sent his son to die for us, and that there is power in the spirit. If we don't believe any of those things, then chances are we're not going to get much spiritual help. But assuming you do, then I will give you some other verses that help me. In John 1:12, it says, "But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the children of God. When we believe in him, he adopts us into his family. family and he makes us his own. That's a first step in any kind of spiritual healing whether it's marriage problems which you can apply on these steps or whether it's a depression problem whatever it may be first thing is do you believe in the Bible in God the father God the son and God the holy spirit now if you believe there then you can go on the second step is that when you believe you are able to then give yourself away Romans 12:1 and2 that what we are to do when we accept that there is a God is to present our bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto him which is our reasonable service and be not conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your depressed mind in order that you may ultimately know what is that good acceptable and perfect will of God for you now as we go through these steps picture these in your mind picture number one that you're going to reaffirm in your heart right now that you do believe And as you reaffirm that, secondly, say, "All right, Lord, I am now going to give myself away to you. Here I am. I'm presenting myself to you today." Thirdly, realize that you are not alone. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, it says, "There's no temptation or problem or depression or discouragement, whatever it may be that's happened to you, but what what's the rest of that say? But that which is common to men." Whatever your problem is today, but the marriage problem, child problem, relationship problem, depression problem, whatever that is, there is no problem that's taken you today, but that which is common to man. Somebody had it yesterday, someone else has it today, and surely a few more people are going to have it tomorrow. You are not alone. Now, there are sometimes when I talk to chronic depressants who get depressed over that verse because they really wanted to be the only one. They wanted a unique depression. They want to be the only one that's got this. There's a certain pride in being depressed and being the only one that's got this problem. And yet, the Bible tells us we're not the only only one. And it says, "But God is faithful, not you and me, but God is faithful, and he won't tempt us beyond that what we're able. And he will with the problem give us the ability to rise above it." It says escape, but that means rise above it. A great verse that's helped me so much. Then desire a change. And this desire is the same thing we looked at in the beginning to recognize we've got a problem and want to do something about it. So many times I have people come to me with marriage problems and they tell me how gotten their husband is and they don't want to be one bit better. They love being depressed and they are going to stay in that depression the rest of their lives. It's a great attention getter. Everybody waits on them. People are constantly say, "How are you today? Oh, miserable. Worse than yesterday." And it goes on this way. There are certain people who never want to get one ounce bitter. So think about that yourself. Do you really want to do what's right in your marriage? Do you want to do what's right? Do you want to do what the Lord wants you to do? And if you don't, then claim that verse for Philippians 2:13 that God is always, not once in a while, but always at work in you, not me, but you, to make you willing and able to obey his good purpose. And God does not want mixed up marriages in the Christian church. He does not want depressed people going around joyless. And so, it's his will that you be joyful and that you have a good marriage and a positive relationship with everyone. So, desire a change. Next step is to deal with your guilt. To decide whether your guilt is a necessary guilt, a justified guilt where you haven't done what you should have done or whether it's a guilt that someone else has heaped upon you. Think that one over. Confess your depression. It isn't that all depression is caused because we've had some terrible sinful act that we've done in our lives. But many times the fact that we don't desire to be joyful is a sin in our life. And I realized that I'd been depressed too long. And as I began to think about it, I can remember saying to the Lord, "All right, I know that for me to be joyless and miserable when I'm naturally a bubbly person that I know this is not what you have in mind for me. And I began to confess that and I had as a new Christian learned the verse 1 John 1:9 that said if we confess our sins, our problems, our depressions, our negatives, if we confess all these things, it says, "Then he is faithful and just to forgive us all these sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And so I claimed that and I boiled that down to four little words which have helped me a great deal. If we Then he what is it God wants? He wants me to take the first step. And he says that if we will confess our sins, then he is faithful and just. He's always there. We're the ones that vary. That if we confess our sins, then he is faithful and he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We have to be willing to confess and say, "Lord, this part of it is my problem." Forget the past. There are so many of us that are still hanging on to the past. I talked to so many women. One woman came into me and she shared with me about the problem. she had with her husband before they even got married. She was mad at him. He was supposed to get the car for the wedding. And he wrote and told her she should get the car. And she said, "It's your job to get the car." He wrote back and said, "If you want to marry me, get the car." So, she got a car. And she said, "But I didn't think it was my job." And she said, "That night, I let him know. And when we left the church, I let him have it." I thought, "What a wonderful honeymoon this man must have had. Here he's got this woman, and she is letting him know how angry she is as they drive from the church." And As I'm thinking about this, she said to me, in case you don't believe me, I've got the letter right here. She pulled this tattered letter out of her handbag and she showed it to me. She said, "I keep this letter that he wrote me telling me I had to get the car. I keep that in my handbag 10 years down the road." She says, "I keep this in my handbag so that if I should ever begin to forget it, it's right there to remind me." Now, you see, oh, I can tell you think, "What a terrible lady. Nobody like that in this room. Nobody that holds a record of wrongs in this room. Just that lady. But you know, as I've counseledled women who are depressed, I find that many of them are hanging on to the past. That many of them have got those tattered envelopes in their heads that they've got this list, this record of wrongs up there. And I had one against Fred. And I realized that I had kept a record in my mind of everything Fred had done wrong. And every time that I had any problem with him, I would let him have it. I'd say, "Fred, do you remember when you did this and you did this and you did this and you did this?" And I used to review it every night. And I got so that I could say that list very fast. And then I would add on the new things he did today. And I'd put them all together and package them up and throw them at him. And you see, this is our ammunition. Most of us don't want to get rid of that because what would we use to fight with if we didn't have our record of wrongs? And so, I used to work on this. And one day, I read in the Bible 1 Corinthians 13:5 where it says, "Love does not keep a record of wrong." I realized I had a record and I didn't love Fred. And those were two real terrible truths that fell upon me at that time. And I can remember getting down on my knees and saying, "Lord, take away the record of wrong and cause me to fall in love with Fred. And you see that's in God's will when I pray like that. And what does he promise me? That if I pray in his will, what he will answer. He took away the record of wrong. And after a while, I was able to do dishes without reviewing what was wrong with Fred. And after a while, I found that I really fell in love with Fred. And that's a miracle in itself. You see, God will answer that which he promises when we are praying in his will. Uh ask that you have joy. Ask for silver lining in Now, John 16:24 is a verse that I love. It says, "Hi, the two of you ask nothing in my name. Ask that you may receive." And it ends up by saying that what? That your joy may be full. See, God does not want us depressed. He wants us to be joyful. And that verse right there says it. You haven't even asked this before. And many of you who are depressed maybe never asked this. Here the two of you ask nothing in my name. Ask that you may receive that your joy may be full. I started working off that verse. Ask asking the Lord to give me joy. Study God's word. Oh, what a wonderful suggestion that we study God's word because so many of us in life are depressed and we don't do anything about it. And yet David was very depressed. And you read the Psalms and you'll find out in every one of those Psalms where he was depressed, he starts out by saying how miserable he is. But at the end of each one of the Psalms, he says, "My hope is in God." And he praises God at the end for what God's going to do in his life. And we can study God's word, study the Psalms, find out what it is God wants for you. The joy that he wants in your heart, find out how somebody deeply depressed like David was able to sing to the Lord and pour out his heart and then say, "But no matter how I feel, I'm going to praise you." And in Jeremiah 15:16, it says, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they were the joy and rejoicing of my heart." And then write down your feelings. David wrote down his feelings when he was upset. And I have found what a help this is to people to sit down and write down their feelings. Record your feelings. Write them down and see what happens. And ultimately realize that the only hope we have in life is in God. Hope thou in God. And in Isaiah 26:3 is a verse which has helped me, which I use as a goal for myself in my areas anytime I'm depressed or discouraged. It tells me there, "Thou will keep him in perfect peace." What's the rest of it? Whose mind is stayed where? On thee. Where's the depressed person's mind? On self. 100% on self. Looking at every other thing around them as how does it affect me? The depressed person's mind is on himself. And that verse says, "Thou will keep him in perfect peace." Which is what we all want. What that article that I read for you right in the beginning said, "What is it we all want? We want inner peace." And where does that peace come from? It doesn't come from large houses. It doesn't come from decorations or Lincoln Continentals. It does not come from fur coats. None of these things come from the externals in life. This elusive peace that we're all looking for, the Bible tells us, comes only from God. Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. Now, as we've shared these things today, I've tried to point out to you and let you see the areas of depression that we have. What depression is, what the symptoms are, what kind of people get depressed, and what are we going to do about it? What am I going to do physically as a human being to go home and move on this. What am I going to do if I need outside help? And what can I do for spiritual help? And as I confessed these things to the Lord and as I realized that he did not want a depressed mother for my children, that he did not want me spending the rest of my life belaboring the fact that I had lost two sons. And when I looked at my alternatives, I could cry over the fact that my sons were gone. I could cry to you today about it. Any one of us can cry over the problems that we've had. And I could go my whole life crying over these circumstances. Or I could accept them as a reality in life and say, "Lord, I know for me it's wrong for me to be a depressed person. I know that's not what you want out of my life. Lord, I confess this to you. I realize that if I confess to you, you're going to cleanse me of this problem. And I know that ultimately when I'm able to look at you, that I will find that I can have inner peace when I'm looking at you and not at myself." So say it with me. Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Thank you.

1 Corinthians 2:14 John 1:12 Romans 12:1 1 Corinthians 10:13 Philippians 2:13 1 John 1:9 1 Corinthians 13:5 John 16:24 Jeremiah 15:16 Isaiah 26:3

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