More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 10 - March 29, 2022
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? —Psalm 42:5
“Though we may feel we are ‘like a broken vessel,’ as the Psalmist says, we must remember, that vessel is in the hands of the divine potter. Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed.”3
We must also learn to muster the same compassion, love, understanding, and help for those who suffer ailments of the mind. Charity, not judgment, is the balm we should offer.
“Hearing one another’s struggles made me feel like we were on sacred ground,” she told me.
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”
“I prayed constantly for help, for relief from the exhaustion, for just the smallest bit of energy so that I could feel like myself again. That I could feel anything, to be honest. But I just kept hitting a wall. I felt anything but normal.
when I felt certain that I had lost not just the ability to feel the Spirit but the privilege of being worthy to feel it.”
I just couldn’t feel anything.
Access to the divine feels blocked. For me, and for many of the Latter-day Saints I interviewed, the latter is the most distressing symptom of depression.
“When you are depressed, believing you have failed at something regularly referred to as ‘the plan of happiness’ can very quickly generate despair.”
“Depression,” Dr. Jorgensen says, “leads to a tripping of our circuit breakers. So the power’s still trying to get through. God does not stop talking to us, but we can’t feel it because our breakers have shut down.”
“Scientists now know that there is no difference between a perceived threat and a real threat.”
“People believe things about themselves and the world around them that may not be true,” Dr. Jorgensen says. “And when we begin to incorporate those things into our mind and into our life, the HPA Axis begins to go into overdrive. . . . If it gets stuck there long enough, it leads to depression.”6
how a depressed person can press on when the circuits in the brain are preventing the Spirit of the Lord from flowing freely.
‘Please take the time to do what you need to do. Do exactly what your doctors say, and turn everything over to your counselors.’”
‘The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound, but you can’t tell where it’s coming from or where it’s going.’ Then He says, ‘So is every one that is born of the Spirit.’ We don’t always feel the Spirit in the same way. Sometimes we feel it powerfully.
I love that! Just sharing a similar experience can help. It’s true!
It’s a lie the adversary loves and certainly hopes we will buy into: that each of us must suffer in solitude. The authentic connection you make when you share your story, and feel it resonate with another’s, shatters this lie, bringing hope, comfort, and confirmation that your suffering is real and you are not alone.
Sue shared one of the tools that works particularly well for her. “Another huge thing I need to do,” she says, “is make myself reach out to serve others. Service is actually one of the most important things I need to do.
“Service is not only a prime ingredient in the treatment of depression; it is a central part of the threads the Lord weaves into the fabric of our individual lives.
“There’s a big difference between the Spirit not being present and me not being able to feel His presence. Sometimes, we don’t distinguish that.”
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me”
Virtually every one of the men and women I interviewed for this book reported issues with stigma.
“I think we need to talk about it as ‘brain health’ instead of ‘mental health.’
What if we offered unconditional support and love to one another instead of judgment and advice to just “pray more” or simply “snap out of it”?
“You may believe I am talking only about slothfulness or Honor Code violations. Equally concerning to me is the rather common problem of perfectionism. “One area of confusion not rare among us is the notion that worthiness is synonymous with perfection. It is not! One can be fully worthy in a gospel sense and yet still be growing while dealing with personal imperfections. It might be understandable to believe . . . perfectionism is laudable. In fact it is not. It is corrosive and destructive and is the antithesis of the healthy quest for eventual perfection that the Savior prescribes.”19
I also know that as children of God we should not demean or vilify ourselves, as if beating up on ourselves is somehow going to make us the person God wants us to become. No! With a willingness to repent and a desire for increased righteousness always in our hearts, I would hope we can pursue personal improvement in a way that doesn’t include getting ulcers or anorexia, feeling depressed or demolishing self-esteem. That is not what the Lord wants.”
Not long ago, one of our children participated in an art therapy program that combined counseling with creative expression as a technique to deal with anxiety. It was, frankly, an education for me as much as it was for my child.
At the end came the lesson: the more similar the outside and inside of your box, the healthier your mental state.
Many women mentioned the appearance of their homes or their children, the way they taught lessons in church, how they looked, and what others thought of them as they shared their stories of depression with me. The desire to be “good enough” is debilitating for the depressed or anxious person.
“Now I’m going to start crying. . . . No, I know there have been times when I know that He loves me. But no, I don’t feel like I’m as good as what He expects me to
“they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:69; emphasis added).
am afflicted in a manner, and He can heal me.’ That was the first time I felt hope.”
It is, after all, that very grace that will perfect us in the end. Notes
These practices—called “self-mortification”—have no official place in our Church, but missionaries can be susceptible to that kind of thinking. On a mission, desires that were once normal for teenagers—to want to sleep late, watch movies, hang out with friends, date, or wear jeans and other casual clothes—are suddenly inappropriate and can feel unrighteous. In this environment of self-denial, young missionaries can wrongly believe that the Lord will not love them unless they are suffering.
Too much perfectionism and self-judgment can lead to the same mistaken conclusion—that the Lord doesn’t want us to be happy or to have things that we enjoy. In the hell of depression, thoughts of that kind can lead to self-harm and even suicide.
Dr. Feinauer told her, “Well then, you’re going to do an experiment, and you’re only going to do this because I’m asking. You’re going to break the rule that you have in your head and you’re going to go down to the river. You can talk to everybody on the way, but you’re going to walk down to the river and back.”
“We talked later about that desire she had had to go down and walk by that wonderful river,” Dr. Feinauer concluded. “That was the Spirit. She was having a hard time hearing it because it was also a desire she had. She thought the Spirit would only make her do hard things that she didn’t want to do. She thought that God only pushes us to do things that we don’t want to do that are righteous, and that He would never tell us to do something that we enjoyed.”
As she and her companion returned to the river again and again to teach their new friend, she increasingly felt God’s love and sensed that He was a kind, sensitive parent. She saw that her desire for beauty was good and righteous and that the Lord could use that desire for His work. This is how grace happens—miraculously and unexpectedly.
“The missionaries felt needed, they could see that their service was extremely meaningful, and it was very fulfilling to them. They couldn’t wait to get back the next day. They recognized that these people were their fellow men who were hurting, and that they had an opportunity to go in and to help them. During that four-month period, where we were working almost every day in the homes and basements of the people whose homes were flooded, our mental-health issues were few to none.
The counseling went down because missionaries were focused on other people, not worried about themselves, and they were feeling very fulfilled in their service. They could see that it was worthwhile and meaningful, and so the combination of that fulfillment helped them emotionally, and then specifically, they were out doing rigorous work. It just declined dramatically during that four-month period.”
“It was a big part of it. They were getting up, they were tired, they were working . . . carrying couches, and furnaces, and tables, and belongings, and boxes. They were working very hard. At the end of the day, they were covered in mud from head to toe, just exhausted. Therefore, they got a good night’s sleep. I’ll tell you, sleep is a wonderful thing for all of it, homesickness or an illness. So, the hard labor, good sleep, as well as the focus outside of themselves . . . it really helped the emotional and physical state of the missionaries.”
She found that only 11 percent of the survey sample came home early because they’d broken a rule or committed some serious indiscretion. Thirty-four percent of them had a physical illness or injury, while 36 percent had mental-health concerns.
You do not need to follow that up with, ‘But it was only four months.’ Just forget that part and say yes, you served a mission and be proud of the time that you spent.”41
found that 73 percent of the participants in her survey suffered from feelings of failure and that two-thirds felt discomfort in social settings due to their early releases. Fewer than half (46 percent) felt confident stating “I’m a returned missionary,” and 44 percent felt uncomfortable answering questions about their missions. Forty percent felt pressured to go back out, 37 percent reported adverse effects on their dating lives, and only 37 percent said they felt connected to those who completed their missions successfully. Dr. Doty-Yells’s study is filled with accounts of shaming—by
...more
I told my dad and he tells me that he has failed me as a father. I won’t be able to come home. There won’t be a bed for me there.”44
As people who are under covenant to share the burdens of others, it seems unconscionable that we would instead, in any way, add to those burdens through stigmatization and uncharitable judgments. All of us have the opportunity to either help or hamper early-returned missionaries in resuming their lives while simultaneously trying to leap a mental-health hurdle or any other challenge.
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Romans 14:11–13).
An ecclesiastical leader who is educated and empathetic about depression is always a boon to one who suffers from it, but mission presidents can’t go it alone.
more women will develop postpartum mood disorders each year than are diagnosed with strokes (300,000 in the U.S.) or breast cancer (250,000).
