Tag Archive - anxiety

Pressed to the Ground: A Theological Re-Frame of Depression

January 27, 2012 in Ministry-Theology, Pastoral Counseling, Therapy-Psychology with 1 Comment

In my continuation on the topic of depression, especially male depression (here and here), I wanted to share something with you by Parker Palmer. In his wonderful book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (a must read), Parker has one of the most insightful, haunting, painful, and beautiful glimpses of someone who suffers from depression that I have ever read.

Parker begins the chapter with an excerpt from a book that we all read in high school, but that perhaps we might re-read differently all these years later — The Inferno of Dante:

“Midway on our life’s journey I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard–so tangled and rough.

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring; death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

I’ll tell you what I saw…
–From The Inferno of Dante, Robert Pinsky trans.” (pp. 57)

Parker picks up after the quote with a gripping statement:

Midway in my life’s journey, ‘way closed’ again, this time with a ferocity that felt fatal: I found myself in the dark woods called clinical depression, a total eclipse of light and hope. But after I emerged from my sojourn in the dark and had given myself several years to absorb meaning, I saw how pivotal that passage had been on my pilgrimage toward selfhood and vocation. Though I recommend it to no one–and I do not need to, for it arrives unbidden is too many lives–depression compelled me to find the river of life hidden beneath the ice.” (pp. 57-58)

At some point in all of our lives we may experience some form of depression as we also find ourselves “midway in life’s journey.” But it is Parker’s account of his own depression that can help offer us a different way to look at it. In a sense, he offers us a paradoxical take on depression that sets up a paradigm through which to view depression that is so foreign to our culture. Most of us want to do anything we can to avoid the difficulty in life, while if at all possible numb out any painful experience we have with medications, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. But perhaps mental health problems like depression and anxiety are the catalyst to help us see life in a new way.

Of course, this is not a paradigm that is easily seen in the midst of the “dark night of the soul“, but I am thankful for Parker’s words as it has helped me, help clients view their own depression from a different angle.

And so as I close, here is the theological re-frame that was offered up to Parker by his therapist:

“After hours of careful listening, my therapist offered an image that helped me eventually reclaim my life. ‘You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you,’ he said. ‘Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend, pressing you down to the ground on which it is safe to stand?

Amid the assaults I was suffering, the suggestion that depression was my friend seemed impossibly romantic, even insulting. But something in me knew that down, down to the ground, was the direction of wholeness, thus allowing that image to begin its slow work of healing me.

I started to understand that I had been living an ungrounded life, living at an altitude that was inherently unsafe. The problem with living at high altitude is simple: when we slip, as we always do, we have a long, long way to fall, and the landing may well kill us. The grace of being pressed down to the ground is also simple: when we slip and fall, it is usually not fatal, and we can get back up.”

“The grace of being pressed down…..” Perhaps in our darkest nights of depression it is the hand of God that is pressing us down…an act of grace that leaves us grounded and more whole.

[Interesting aside: Parker was reticent to write about his depression until he was asked to contribute an article on the theme of the "wounded healer" in memory of his friend Henri Nouwen who had also suffered at times from depression and wrote about it in several places]

The Angry…I Mean, Depressed Male: Do You Know Him?

January 19, 2012 in Marriage-Family, Therapy-Psychology with 11 Comments

Over the last several months when I have gathered for lunch with a few of my friends, we joke about the idea of me writing a follow up book to The Anxious Christian called The Angry Christian. Don’t worry, that is not on my to do list, but our conversation hints at an issue that can be seen in our Christian culture.

If you haven’t noticed, there seems to be a lot of angry Christians out there. And more often than not, they are men.

But what I’m really wondering is if there isn’t just a bunch of depressed Christian men out there…and really,  men in general.

In the book Unmasking Male Depression, Archibald Hart lists off a few statistics (pp. 3):

  • 80 percent of all suicides in the United States are men
  • The male suicide rate at midlife is three times higher than at other times; for men over 65, it is seven times higher
  • 20 million American men will experience depression sometime in their life
  • 60-80 percent of depressed adults never get professional help, and men are at the top of the list here
  • It can take up to ten years and exposure to at least three mental health professionals to properly diagnose this disorder
  • 80-90 percent of men seeking treatment can get relief from their symptoms

This book was published in 2001, so I wonder what the statistics are today. Certainly higher I would imagine.

More and more men are coming into my office these days because they complain that they just don’t seem to know what is wrong with them. But when a man finds himself in my office I want to communicate to them that it is a huge step of courage on their part. Many men do not reach out for help, so if they take the step to call and actually come in, then I know something is seriously wrong. Hart writes (pp. 8):

“Being a man can be hazardous to your health, especially when you have to maintain your masculine identity at all costs. Generally, men are less willing to admit to depression because they believe, irrationally, that being depressed is a sign of weakness. They are also less likely to want to discuss the topic, for fear, I suppose, that they may discover something about themselves that they don’t like–that they are less manly than they think they are. Depression, the subliminal male self-believes, is a ‘feminine’ problem, so therefore, I cannot be depressed. It’s only logical, so don’t even suggest the idea.”

So maybe underneath all that anger is a man who really needs some help. Maybe you are that man. If you are, then one of the biggest acts of courage that you can do is to reach out for help. You are not alone.

And if you know a male who is struggling with depression, maybe there are some ways that you can come alongside of him and encourage him get the help he needs.

So what are some signs of male depression, since it so often looks different than female depression. Again, I turn to Archibald Hart for some good insight (pp. 29):

  • Blames others for his depression
  • Acts on his inner turmoil
  • Needs to maintain control at all costs
  • Overly hostile, irritable
  • Attacks when hurt
  • Tries to fix the depression by problem solving
  • Turns to sports, TV, sex, alcohol
  • Feels ashamed by depression
  • Becomes compulsive, time keeper
  • Terrified to confront weakness
  • Tries to maintain strong male image
  • Tries to act away his depression
  • Turns to alcoholism and other addictions

This last summer my father and step-mom spent a month on a small lake in Minnesota. When my dad returned home he commented on how each day he could sit outside and hear all around the lake conversations of men who were sitting in their fishing boats all day fishing. My dad wondered if that type of male bonding wasn’t a form of therapy for them. Whether it was fishing, hunting, or playing sports together, maybe that is a way and a place for men to emotionally connect and process that anger, anxiety, depression and other emotions they were experiencing.

But we are living in a society that has become increasingly fractured and fast paced and men might be losing the ability to connect. And technology that men so often love may actually create a disconnection and with that disconnection comes a sense of loneliness that can foster depression.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this. For every angry man I come across in life, I now ask myself, “Is he depressed?”

The Anxious Christian is Coming Soon….Sneak Peek

December 21, 2011 in Writing with 1 Comment

This has been an exciting month for me as I have been wrapping up some details on the soon to be publication of The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?.

The book will be released by Moody Publishers on March 1.

I’m very thankful for the amazing group of people who have endorsed the book, and a special thanks to the New York Times best selling author of Quitter, Jon Acuff for writing the foreword to the book.

If you are someone who has wrestled with anxiety, then I believe this book is for you.

Here is a sneak peek:

Anxious Christian from ETS Productions on Vimeo.

Can You Tolerate Your Own Anxiety Long Enough to Grow?

December 1, 2011 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 1 Comment


[image by Phil Schatz]

The ability to live in the question long enough for genius to emerge is a touchstone of creative success. In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Creative Behavior revealed tolerance for ambiguity to be “significantly and positively related” to creativity.

Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Alchemy of Fear

These words from author Jonathan Fields (Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance) reminded me a bit of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s words in his work, Letters to a Young Poet:

…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

When we can tolerate, or sit in our own anxiety…it is then, and only then when we are close enough to being in the place to truly discover, grow and be transformed in the process.

But sadly…most of us aren’t able to tolerate our own anxiety long enough to push through our own fears and doubts.

Anxiety is Good…

November 29, 2011 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology, Writing with 1 Comment

Philosophers and Poets, from their perch on the cutting edge of reason, have always seen the advantage of anxiety. It is the “dizziness of reason,” argued Soren Kierkegaard; “the handmaiden of creativity,” said T.S. Eliot; “the beginning of conscience,” observed novelist Angela Carter. So have actors backstage, summoning eternal energies and edges for the roles they play, and sprinters on the block, finding hormonal springs in the fear of failure that allow them to achieve race times they never managed in practice.

So begins the opening paragraph of TIME Magazine’s December cover story, The Two Faces of Anxiety.

This is a timely topic as the release of my book The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good? is being published by Moody Publishers on March 1, 2012. When I was in the book proposal writing/submission phase in the late Fall of 2010, anxiety was the topic that my acquisition’s editor Randall Payleitner seemed to be really focused on. You see, in all my anxiety of trying to submit the right proposal I had submitted a large, sprawling dissertation that lacked any real focus or clarity, but Randall seemed most excited about a chapter I had submitted on anxiety. So eventually, one chapter idea became the whole theme of my new book.

I think anxiety is an important topic because everyone at some point in their life struggles with it, and many struggle with it on an ongoing basis.

But is all anxiety necessarily bad?

I don’t believe so….in fact, anxiety can actually be good for us as I see it as a catalyst to help us grow as people. There are only a couple of options when you begin to feel anxiety.

  1. Pretend it doesn’t exist and push it below the surface.
  2. Acknowledge that the anxiety is there and use it as an opportunity to move you forward/to grow in life.

You choose.

Do Churches Try and Protect Their Congregants from Anxiety?

July 12, 2011 in Ministry-Theology, Pastoral Counseling, Pastoral Leadership, Therapy-Psychology with 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine shared an article with me on my Facebook profile called, How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.

It is a fascinating read for sure, and well worth your time.

But I was especially taken by this passage:

Paul Bohn, a psychiatrist at UCLA who came to speak at my clinic, says the answer may be yes. Based on what he sees in his practice, Bohn believes many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment—“anything less than pleasant,” as he puts it—with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.

Consider a toddler who’s running in the park and trips on a rock, Bohn says. Some parents swoop in immediately, pick up the toddler, and comfort her in that moment of shock, before she even starts crying. But, Bohn explains, this actually prevents her from feeling secure—not just on the playground, but in life. If you don’t let her experience that momentary confusion, give her the space to figure out what just happened (Oh, I tripped), and then briefly let her grapple with the frustration of having fallen and perhaps even try to pick herself up, she has no idea what discomfort feels like, and will have no framework for how to recover when she feels discomfort later in life. These toddlers become the college kids who text their parents with an SOS if the slightest thing goes wrong, instead of attempting to figure out how to deal with it themselves. If, on the other hand, the child trips on the rock, and the parents let her try to reorient for a second before going over to comfort her, the child learns: That was scary for a second, but I’m okay now. If something unpleasant happens, I can get through it. In many cases, Bohn says, the child recovers fine on her own—but parents never learn this, because they’re too busy protecting their kid when she doesn’t need protection.

I think that we often do the same thing in the church as well.

Take this quote:

“parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment—“anything less than pleasant,” as he puts it—with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.”

And re-write it like this:

“churches will do anything to avoid having their congregants experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment-’anything less than pleasant.’”

I just see too often instances where pastors will swoop in and try and rescue a congregant from having anxiety as they wrestle with scripture or with God. They somehow believe that any anxiety is wrong and the person should have a solid certainty about God’s truth. So much for the dark night of the soul.

Or a youth pastor tries to keep a youth kid from asking too many tough questions that promote some anxiety in the group, and uncomfort with the youth pastor themself.

Or a worship planning meeting will spend endless hours managing every detail of a service so that nothing unplanned happens, or no mistakes are made. Sometimes I wonder if they are just trying to stave off any anxiety that may arise during the service in congregants or themselves if something were to not go off as perfect.

Much of church life is geared around trying to protect people from the frustrations of life and from experiencing any discomfort during church or their spiritual lives.

I say this from experience in my own work as a pastor for many years, and from what is conveyed to me by clients who come in for counseling.

But if anxiety is unpermitted in the church pew, then where else can they go to freely express it than the counseling office?

Managing Anxiety in the Family System: How Couples Can Do a Better Job of Owning Their Own Anxiety

June 7, 2011 in Marriage-Family with 2 Comments

I would estimate that in about 70%-80% of the situations in which kids are brought into my office for counseling, the presenting problems have less to do with the individual child, and more to do with what is happening in the larger family system, and more particularly in the couple’s marriage (or former marriage). The children have often become the scapegoats or the symptom-bearers for the marital problems.

One of the newer relationships that I have become engaged in is a relationship with the Fuller Youth Institute. I love the work that they do in providing training, research and resources for youth workers, youth and families. In June I wrote an article for their E-Journal called Managing Anxiety in the Family: Strategies for Changing Our Relationship Dance.

Anxiety is a huge issue in the lives of many people, and it is often manifested in the lives of the youth I work with. In this article I wanted to help families understand how anxiety works within the family system, and how when couples avoid relational conflict they often end up placing their anxiety onto the lives of their kids. I hope that you will find some of my recommended strategies helpful, and that you become not only more aware of this issue, but that it will also help you avoid casting your anxiety onto others in the process.

Don’t Place Your Anxiety on Your Kids

April 19, 2011 in Marriage-Family, Therapy-Psychology with 5 Comments

A few weeks ago I taught a parenting class at Highland Park Presbyterian Church where I made the claim that many of the anxieties that children experience are due to issues within the family and marital unit at large, rather than just in the individual kid.

This isn’t just my own belief, but something I learned in graduate school as I studied Murray Bowen and his ideas around the Nuclear Family Emotional System. In the Nuclear Family Emotional System one of the relationship patterns are “impairment of one or more children.” When this pattern is in work it looks something like this:

The spouses focus their anxieties on one or more of their children. They worry excessively and usually have an idealized or negative view of the child. The more the parents focus on the child the more the child focuses on them. He is more reactive than his siblings to the attitudes, needs, and expectations of the parents. The process undercuts the child’s differentiation from the family and makes him vulnerable to act out or internalize family tensions. The child’s anxiety can impair his school performance, social relationships, and even his health.

This is not just a graduate school theory with no application in the “real world”, but is something I see everyday in my work with families and in my teaching. I would say that probably 8 out of 10 adolescents who are brought in to see me by a parent to “fix” or help them “work through their issues” are usually just the symptom bearers of the anxiety that is present in the marital unit or in the larger family system. It just so happens that one way a couple deals with their own anxieties is to place it upon a child (most of the time unconsciously) within the family by focusing all their attention on that child and the various things they are dealing with. Focusing on children is one way that couples in an unhappy marriage manage the anxiety that exists between them.

Here is a good example of a case study taken from Michael White and David Epston’s book, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends.

“John and Wendy made an appointment with the intention of addressing concerns that they had about their son’s ‘irresponsibility.’ Joe, 16 years of age, had, somewhat reluctantly, conformed to their wishes for him to accompany them. However, he did not agree that his parents had good reason to be concerned about him. In fact, Wendy and John’s decision to make the appointment had confirmed for him what he believed to be the problem all along — his parents’ excessive ‘nagging’ and ‘hassling’ of him.

Attempting to sidestep this unproductive dispute over how the problem was to be defined, I asked John and Wendy what they thought might happen if things did not change. In response, they talked at some length about how anxious they felt about the likely quality of Joe’s future. I then asked how this anxiety was organizing them around Joe’s life. It was encouraging them to watch over him more closely and, in various other ways, had them centering their lives around Joe’s. ‘What effect was this anxiety having on Joe’s life?”
Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends by Michael White and David Epston.



When parents begin to take responsibility for their own anxieties, it is amazing to see how the anxiety that is often manifested in a child soon begins to disappear.

Theological Anxiety: Underneath All the Theological Debating

March 30, 2011 in Ministry-Theology with 2 Comments

I believe that underneath all of the current theological debate is a theological anxiety that is intolerable to many people. The need for certainty in everything is a way to assuage one’s anxiety…an anxiety that is normal as we wrestle with the things of God.

We must be able to live with a certain amount of anxiety…it is a part of faith.

“A partisan of the most rigid orthodoxy may be demoniacal. He knows it all, he bows before the holy, truth is for him an ensemble of ceremonies, he talks about presenting himself before the throne of God, of how many times one must bow, he knows everything the same way as does the pupil who is able to demonstrate a mathematical proposition with the letters ABC, but not when they are changed to DEF. He is therefore in anxiety whenever he hears something not arranged in the same order. And yet how closely he resembles a modern speculative philosopher who found a new proof for the immortality of the soul, then came into mortal danger and could not produce his proof because he had not his notebooks with him.”
Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread (Anxiety)

Ministry Leadership: Being ‘Authentic’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Bleeding All Over the Congregation’

February 22, 2011 in Ministry-Theology, Pastoral Leadership, Therapy-Psychology with 30 Comments

It seems that everyone is searching for ‘authenticity’ in their leaders. At least a younger generation of people are wanting this ‘authenticity’. In fact, Thomas Rainer who co-authored The Millennials: Connecting to America’s Largest Generation with his son Jess Rainer, recently wrote this in the article 4 Things Millennials Want in Their Leaders:

3. Transparency and authenticity. I wish Jess and I had counted the number of times that Millennials used the word “real” to describe leaders they want to follow. As one Millennial told us, her generation “can smell phony and pretentiousness a mile away.” They don’t want phony; they want authentic. They don’t want pretentious; they want transparent.

I admire that trait A LOT as well in leaders. And I tried to be that type of authentic leader when I was working as a college pastor. And I try to be that as a therapist with my clients.

But when we say that we want our leaders to be ‘authentic’, what are we really wanting of them, and asking from them?

I really, really wonder….so last week I posted this tweet:

I think there is a big difference between “authenticity” and “bleeding” all over the congregation. #self-differentation #fb

It was in response to a really great blog post by Rachel Evans, “Dear Pastors – Tell Us the Truth. This is a really great topic to be talking about, and you can read the comment I left at Rachel’s blog here. I originally saw her post linked at Adam McHugh’s blog where he responds to her analysis with his own, Pastors and Honesty.

My Concerns About What Is Often Passed Off As ‘Authenticity’
Something that I have been taught as a therapist, but never in my work as a pastor was this. When I share something personal with a client (when I’m wanting to be ‘authentic’), does my disclosure have more to do with me or the client? Often, when we share, we share because it fills more of a need in us, than the person we are trying to be ‘authentic’ with.  Therefore, it ends up being more self-serving, which is not what leadership is about.  So I wonder how many ministry leaders in search of being ‘authentic’ with those they lead are really trying to fill an emotional need in themselves?

I think authenticity is a great quality to have in leadership. But I think we have mistaken ‘authenticity’ as something that we can just acquire and put on ourselves, like some sort of skill or technique, rather than really letting it emanate from within. I agree with the research findings of Edwin Freidman in that leadership is an emotional process, and not a cognitive process. It has less to do with our training and skills, and more to do with our ability to honestly do the hard work of looking at ourselves.

One’s ability to be authentic is correlated to the degree at which a leader has done the hard work of REALLY, REALLY looking at themselves. Being ‘authentic’ has everything to do with the leader’s ability to be self differentiated (a term coined by family therapy pioneer Murray Bowen). When a leader lacks the ability to self-differentiate they are more and more dependent upon others for approval, acceptance, and affirmation. There is a strong desire to be liked.  They don’t know where they begin and end. And I would venture to say that there are few professions where more people are leading who have a need to be liked and affirmed than those in ministry positions. Remember, I was, and am a pastor. I pastored in Los Angeles to college students, the epicenter of wanting to be ‘authentic.’  And so I’m speaking from experience.  I really, really wanted/want to be liked.

It is only when leaders can stand before others, not needing their affirmation, acceptance, and approval, that they are then truly free to be ‘authentic’. When ‘authenticity’ is attempted out of one’s need for approval, then leaders end up violating healthy interpersonal boundaries and “bleed all over the congregation.”

Here are three ways that I think leaders ‘bleed all over the congregation’:

  1. When they lack the ability to “self-soothe” and manage their own anxiety, so sharing/oversharing (which passes a lot in our culture as ‘authenticity’) in an attempt to be ‘authentic’, is really emotional dumping on the congregation.  It can be a subtle and even unconscious way of passing off their anxiety onto members of the congregation.  When we don’t manage our own anxiety we skirt our responsibility as leaders.
  2. Leaders often come across as ‘authentic’ when in reality they may be lacking interpersonal and emotional boundaries.  I see this a lot when a pastor often shares intimate details of his married life (how often he and his wife are having sex).  When a pastor doesn’t model healthy interpersonal boundaries, they set a bad example of what ‘authenticity’ should look like in a community.
  3. Being ‘authentic’ can sometimes be an attempt by leaders to deflect truly looking at themselves, and so there is often a psuedo-’authenticity’ that is being practiced.  It’s a way to avoid responsibility.  I can’t tell you the amazing number of times where a leader confesses something publicly, therefore then putting the responsibility on the congregation for the outcome, rather than taking responsibility of their actions for themselves.

These are just three ways that come to mind today as I’m writing, so I’m hoping to pick up more on this conversation in future ongoing blog entries.

‘Authenticity’ in leadership is a super important topic, and I’m glad Rachel Evans and many others are bringing it up.  It’s something that I think I carried the banner for for many years.  And I will continue to strive for ‘authenticity’ in my leadership, but not at the cost of  not taking responsibility for myself and passing off my anxiety and other emotional issues onto those that I lead.

And by the way, leadership, and leading well is a journey and process that we are all on.  And so learning to be truly ‘authentic’ is part of that journey too.
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