I posted this on my Facebook Page today:
One of the cruelest things about struggling with depression is that when you are in it, you have no idea how much goodness you may be bringing to others. I was so hurt and depressed in my 20’s, working so hard to heal, to be less afraid, to trust.
The interior work was so demanding that I didn’t have the space within myself to let in appreciation and love from others. I didn’t believe it if I heard it.
I couldn’t receive it because I couldn’t trust. Pain is such a thief.
Today, all these decades later and — if not pain-free, certainly happy, fulfilled, and open — I have the space within myself to receive. I’m still awkward and clumsy about it, and I still have major trust issues (human nature being what it is, I have good reason to still have trust issues!). I have fallen into despair due to heartbreaks for than I can count, and love was not something I was ready to trust again. Closure Letter and all those hacks worked for bit. But depression struck again.
But now, having been relieved of depression and chronic anxiety for a long enough time, I see how suffering locks us into little tiny worlds in our minds. The hurt takes up so much space, we cannot see ourselves in perspective, we cannot step back or aside and understand how we fit into the larger scheme of things.
We’re like birds flying around a garage, smashing into windows and mirrors, banging against ways out that aren’t really ways out, and our own reflection. T
hank you to a FB conversation partner for prompting these reflections, for asking great questions, and for reminding me to tell you that if you’re suffering, if you’re depressed today, if you’re smashing your wings against the window, please know that my compassion is with you.
I don’t think any of those conditions are permanent. Some professionals told me that my melancholia was permanent, and they were wrong. I believe in you and your inner work. I believe in your spiritual and emotional liberation and (en)lightening of the burden that weighs you down today.
I believe that one thing you might choose to do today is settle somewhere in a safe nest and stop flapping your wings, and just listen to the voices of love and care around you. Today, maybe just rest. Part of healing and strengthening comes from resting in the nest and letting the songs of other birds cheer you. Don’t hurt your wing today, okay?
Eric S. posted this query,
PeaceBang, great post. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts about depression and ministry. So much of ministry in the modern American church seems to be about having a certain type of personality, basically a consistently hyper-positive emotional state, the gleaming, always-grinning teeth, and so forth. How have you been able to reconcile this modern American expectation about “what a minister is supposed to be like” — which, historically speaking, is quite bizarre since some of the greatest spiritual leaders in history have been melancholic — with your own tendencies toward depression? Did you find that you were only able to be accepted as a professional minister in the modern American church after your depression went away and you gained the normative personality type for this profession in the current “be happy or be a social pariah” culture, or were you able to succeed in the ministry profession while still experiencing major depression?
Great question. So important. Initially, I want to say that in the 19th century, the ideal of the mainline Protestant pastor was a meek, tender, pious character, a poetic soul, and however much a social justice firebrand, a fatherly disposition. The model of church life was entirely paternalistic, and we here in New England still maintain that pastoral archetype to this day.
Today, as Eric so rightly identifies, the pastoral ideal is energetic, inspiring, charismatic, personable, articulate, eloquent and dynamic.
Of course many quiet introverts do good and successful ministries, so the issue here isn’t really about external characteristics but internal ones. Sometimes we confuse the two. The best, and scariest, question the Ministerial Fellowship Committee asked me when I went before them for fellowship was, “You’ve been an actress all your life. How do we know you’re not just playing this as another role?”
I was so glad they voiced that concern, as it was initially my own concern for myself. Was ministry just an exotic sort of identity I was trying to assume to give public validation and professional opportunity to my spiritual intensity? I knew by that point in my life that I had not only been acting on stage since early childhood, I had been acting in my life since then. Pretending strength, performing charisma, performing excellence and seeking applause and approval to salve the lonely and frightened little person who hid inside.
I had figured out all of those issues of authenticity by then (my early 30’s), but what I hadn’t figured out was how the fairly recently liberated melancholic, depressive aspect of my personality would fit into the work of ministry. I had had lots of therapeutic help and accepted my wounded healer and all that, but I knew that the honesty of my pain and depression would be neither productive nor welcome in parish ministry. I knew I didn’t want to enter ministry as a “needy bleeder” (I think you all know the kind of pastor I’m talking about!) and I didn’t want to wind up with a drug addiction of some kind (I did wind up with a shoe addiction, and I still struggle with nurturing myself with food, but…), and I didn’t want to lie and be a smiley fake, either. I don’t remember exactly how I answered the MFC but I do remember thinking, “I see why you might be worried about this, but you’re not anywhere near as worried as I am about it!”
And so, Eric and others, I did not act. I served in ministry for five years while spending time and money on lots of spiritual and psychological care. I spent a lot of my summer vacation exploring the contours of my depression, learning to honor it, finding out what it meant for my life, what lessons and gifts it might have to bring. I took my hurts to appropriate places outside of the parish. I tried various anti-depressants. I went off them. I tried others. Working under very difficult professional conditions for a congregation early on, I found myself very depressed at the end of August as I contemplated another year in the same setting. I risked voicing this to my board of trustees and they were mostly quiet and respectful (even if they weren’t sure what to say, they obviously cared about me). One woman meanly said, “Maybe you don’t want to be a minister.”
She was angry. I understand. She may have been scared. I understand. But it was a clarifying moment for me, a wake-up stab in the heart. I realized that I did very much want to be a minister, but that I didn’t want to be the minister in this particular setting any more. A big, huge, enormous light bulb went off in my head, and it lit up this message: “Honey, you may have a melancholic temperament but you can find a more positive and supportive working environment than this one.”
In other words, I stopped thinking about depression as a personal problem that I had to deal with alone and started thinking about it as a sane response to a bad situation, and to see it as a very sane societal response to insane expectations we have of ourselves and others. With a LOT of help and hard work and fighting instinct and time, I was fortunate enough to leave chronic depression behind.
Some of it may honestly be age and hormones, too. I know you’re not allowed to say that but I just did. My first bout with serious, horrible depression came during college when I went on a high-estrogen birth control pill. I share this because I think ministers need to know a lot more about the mind-body-spirit connection.
Ultimately, though, I was able to get healthy and happy when I was able to do ministry in a healthy environment! DUH, right?
Ministry settings are our partners in faith formation, health, and happiness. It is not just the minister’s job to find well-being, happiness and “self-care” entirely on their own in the vain hope that they can achieve those things within toxic work environments. Not even Jesus was that much of a miracle worker.
When I was called to a congregation that offered a positive, healthy working environment, generous compensation and time off, supportive lay leadership, talented and fun staff, and the ordinary, usual, expected challenges of parish ministry, I began to achieve lasting wellness. I don’t even consider myself to be a melancholic any more. I don’t sweat my regularly scheduled summertime bout of the blues, as it comes and goes so gently nowadays that it leaves no scars. For me, dream work, silence, reading, prayer and meditation were the drugs I needed to overcome depression. Anxiety attacks stopped when I ended relationships with dishonest and abusive people. Panic attacks ceased when I learned to spend time attending to my –what to call it — psychic gifts. That sounds ridiculous, like you should start calling me Miss Cleo. Let’s call it mystical intuition? Spidey sense? Whatever you call it, when I learned to attend to and ACT ON my Spidey sense, my mental health got …healthy!
I think a lot of depressed people are mystical intuitives trying to function in a culture that doesn’t respect that modality at all. I thank God every day, throughout the day, to have a job that honors it. I am still learning what it really means and how to better respect it myself. The evangelical church calls my Spidey sense “prophecy” and sometimes I wish my own tradition had language for it. We’re think of ourselves as rationalists, so we don’t.
But most of all, my periods of depression became less and less frequent and finally went away entirely because none of my lay people ever expected me to function as a minister in working conditions they themselves would have never tolerated. This is just me. But I’m telling you that there was a long, long period of my life during which I had the label of “clinically depressed” and I no longer have any reason to identify with that label or that diagnosis. I do have to be vigilant about anxiety because I am high-strung and my fight-or-flight response is still haywire due to years of adrenalin flooding. Good old cortisol has done its damage. But I’m getting better at managing my nerves, too and I expect that to heal over time.
I do not recommend that anyone with clinical depression enter seminary. I do not encourage anyone with chronic mental health issues to subject themselves to the intensity of life as an ordained minister. I am frankly too protective of our communities of faith to do so, as this is no work for a profoundly fragile soul. This is not to stigmatize or dismiss the gifts and calling of the chronically depressed or the “mentally ill” (whatever that means, as obviously there is no clear definition of “normal,” either!). There are multiple ways to live our ministerial vocation, and parish ministry is just one.
That said, know thyself. After all, I am a person who entered the ministry while battling the angel of depression. I did not see it as an angel back then, but as a cold, clinical reality. I struggled with it until it took the shape of an angel and then I wrestled a blessing out of the damned thing. The blessing was the one we are sharing right now: that I can talk about it, understand it, relate to it, write about it, and lift it up for our shared consideration in this public forum.
Now, your turn.
PeaceBang,
I am in my 20’s, coming to grips with my own tendency toward depression and anxiety, and “working so hard to heal, to be less afraid, to trust,” as you put it.
You’ve put forward a thoughtful, careful, articulate, and I believe productive addition to the conversation on depression in this post. And of all the things you’ve said here, the words I heard the clearest were these:
“I believe in you and your inner work.”
Thank you.
I will continue to think on some of the other points you bring up, but I wanted to stop and tell you how important it was for me to hear that encouragement, especially from one who has been there.
– Suzanne
Thank you Peacebang for your courageous and very personal blog. I hope that those souls who are depressed can read this and feel hope at a time when all seems hopeless. I, too have battled depression and very bad genes but I no longer feel hopeless or helpless. You speak so articulately of the inner work necessary to move from that black place back into the light.
Thank you for this piece. It has given me much food for thought, both as a pastor who has experienced depression & anxiety herself (yes to the hormone bit – I completely agree!) as well the mom of a son who has experienced the same (panic attacks included, for him). I am holding my own, and my son (16) is soaring in the “right setting” for him.
Thanks for this dose of hope.
I was following along with you, ready to forward this along to some of my colleagues as well as our Dean of Students, when I hit your statements, “I do not recommend that anyone with clinical depression enter seminary. I do not encourage anyone with chronic mental health issues to subject themselves to the intensity of life as an ordained minister.”
I take great issue with these statements. I am not defined by bipolar disorder, instead I am informed by it as a different lens with which to view the world. Have I had to adapt? Of course! So does the student or minister who is blind, uses a wheelchair, or has any of a number of other different ways of interacting with the world.
Depression, or any other mental illness, does not indicate a fragile soul. In fact, someone who lives daily with a different view of the world than what is considered “normal” most likely has an incredibly strong soul to withstand the pressure of normalization. It is one thing to engage in therapy and take medication in order to maintain a healthy mental state, but quite another to say that how one views the world and self is abnormal.
Your wide-sweeping blanket statement regarding mental illness, does attach stigma (the statement to the contrary does nothing to negate this) and encourages discrimination. In denying access to seminary education and ordained ministry with the conciliatory attitude that there are other ways to fulfill one’s vocational call, you affirm the pre-Civil Rights Movement attitude of separate but (semi-)equal.
Of course our communities of faith need to be protected from harmful people, and this is why responsible ordaining bodies require psychological evaluation, recommendations, interviews, papers, councils, ministerial formation, and more. This is a process of discernment, vastly different from your simple bar to admission. A process evaluates individuals, where a bar omits any who cannot reach it. Do we truly want only ministers who view the world from the height of the same bar?
I would encourage you to check out the UCC Disabilities Ministries (http://www.uccdm.org/) and Widening the Welcome Conference (https://www.facebook.com/wideningthewelcome) to meet people who are thriving in ordained parish ministry while diagnosed with mental illness.
[Christina, I write from personal opinion and experience. You respond with political categories. I never said that the perspective of anyone with mental illness is abnormal. Those are your words; your defensiveness. I simply said that I personally do not recommend seminary for people whose struggles with depression or mental illness have caused them to feel extremely fragile. Your blanket assumption that depression and mental illness do NOT lead to fragility of the soul is just as mistaken as anything you accuse me of. Someone asked me for my opinion and I gave it. I am not writing for the official stamp of approval from any program of the UCC or any other denomination. I am writing as one pastor, one who was at one time diagnosed with clinical depression, and who has served alongside many other fine ministers who have also been. I have also seen mental illness ravage individual ministers and their congregations. You presume I haven’t seen the disabilities materials. I have. I’m sorry that I’m not persuaded by your anger, your defensiveness and your assumption that I need to be schooled by you in these issues. – PB]
I’ve been diagnosed with chronic depression since my middle teen years. I’ve had periods of time when I’m functioning very well, and then I begin the slippery slope of “not so well”. I’d been in my current parish (which is also my first) about a year when I began to realised that I was not well, emotionally or psychologically. I struggled a great deal with who to tell, how to tell.
I have shared my diagnosis of depression and mental illness with the congregation. It illuminated a darkened corner where many of our personal demons live. It opened conversation in the community where I live and by naming it, the elephant in the room lost it’s power. [ AMEN. Courageous of you, and a gift to them. – PB]
I have stood publically at Clergy Conference and named it. And now I have the unofficial title as the “Poster Child of the Mentally Ill”, which really bugs me, but has also illuminated an issue that is rampant in my denomination. I don’t let my illness define me. I am working hard at being self-aware.
I’m taking a course in September on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy which I suspect will be life-changing. [I look forward to hearing how this goes! – PB]
You and I have talked before at the importance of being an authentic presence. Right now the struggles loom large and I am in desperate need of time off, which will come in a few weeks. [Praying for you to get there in one piece, sister! – PB]
Thank you for giving us a forum to share together, to join together, and to be safe together.
Congratulations on your own journey. Thank you for sharing your success and thank you for being brave enough to share your challenges.
In short, I thank God for you being you.
Please give Max a cuddle for me.
Christina,
As a minster with mental illness, I thank you for your comments. I love the UCC program. There is a Unitarian Universalist mental health curriculum as well called Caring Congregations. It is great work and will go a long way to helping end the stigma.
I too read that statement in the post as a sweeping generalization as well. Sorry if that was misread, PB.
PB, would you tell yourself to go into ministry if you were to go back in time and visit with your seminary self? [What a great question. I honestly felt I had no choice. Everything else I tried to do turned to dust in my hands. Like, literally fell apart. When I entered seminary, everything started flying. I could therefore never question the rightness of it. – PB]
I kind of feel like we all deserve that healing you speak of PB. Healing through doing the work we are called to do. It would be hard to do that for someone with chronic mental illness if it is suggested to us that we should not go into ministry or any other job we are called to for that matter.
I have seen ministers with mental illness and without destroy congregations, so I think it is a matter of the individual, not the illness. [OF course. – PB]
This post I wrote a few years ago may better explain my position on this issue: http://www.movinginwithdementia.com/2011/06/see-my-humanity-not-just-my-illness.html
PB,
Actually I think Christina has a point, and I do not see any “political categories” in her comment; she too is speaking from personal experience. Your response to her strikes me as defensive, demeaning, and wholly unpastoral.
Perhaps you do not care to follow along ecumenical thought and progressive movements when it comes to the church and issues of mental health. But there is a growing convention in this area that is too much for any ecumenically minded person to ignore. [Your reading comprehension is a problem for me, here, and again later. I didn’t say I don’t follow along. I said I didn’t need to be schooled by Christina. Because I DO follow along! – PB]
Aside from the civil right issues in terms of admitting all people to theological study (people with mental health issues can not be barred from theological study when otherwise qualified according to the spirit of the ADA ), I am deeply concerned that you write of your own experience with mental health during seminary and then you say people with mental health should not be allowed to enter seminary. [Where did I saw ALLOWED? I said I don’t recommend it. Not the same at all. You can see where I get defensive. Because there’s a lot of anger being directed at me that presumes what I am not saying. Reading comprehension problem again- PB] Is that not like slamming the door shut behind you? what about social justice? Sorry PB–I have been following you blog for years and this is the first time you have come across as a hypocrite, but there it is. [Kelli, my “hypocrisy” is more an issue of your poor reading comprehension. Sorry, but there it is. – PB]
While I don’t write from the perspective of clergy with mental health issues, I do write from the perspective of clergy with physical disabilities who had to fight tooth and nail to get through seminary because theological schools claim exemption from ADA requirements, why would anyone suggest that it is ok for theological schools to exclude anyone qualified for study on the grounds of disability (mental health issues are a disability, as mental health issues have physical componets)?
Your personal story is yours, but it is not for the 1 in 4 who liv with a diagnosable mental illness. To judge someone with clinical depression or MI as unfit for seminary or ministry is ludicrous to me, as well as contrary to NAMI, etc. It enhances the stigma of mental illness. Much is to be said for the chemical imbalance that causes clinical depression and other MI , which can be helped with medications.
That being said, know yourself, realize your own boundaries, and seek counsel. I(by that I mean, spiritual director, mentor, etc.) Mental Illness is not an excuse, it is an illness
If I might add to Christina: I would say that someone with *untreated* depression, just like someone with an *active* drug addiction, should not be in seminary or the ministry. I treasure the ministries of some absolutely marvelous pastors who are alcoholics in recovery, and those who have coped successfully with their depression, bipolar disorder or other mental illnesses, whether in the ways PB has or through the right medication or some other means, also bring spiritual gifts to our congregations.
I’m 100% with you. As someone with depression, seminary is extra tough. I, too, have found some freedom in honoring the intuitive nature that has been screaming to be recognized. The labels I’ve tried was Religious and Spiritual, or New Age Christian. I have found that Christian Mystic is acceptable in my tradition. However, this is not acceptable at seminary. Perhaps if this was explored more in seminaries instead of shunned, seminary could be a place for all. [I have not heard of this modality being understood or nurtured very well in our seminaries. I think we all suffer from living in diagnostic times, where we attempt to understand all the complexities of the human soul in clinical terms. This can cause more spiritual suffering. I would like to see pastors hold up some of the older concepts of human nature, just offering them as a creative balance to all the pathology models. – PB]
PB, I agree with your assertion that pastoral ministry and leadership is hard, demanding, intense work and it isn’t for everyone. Why are those who make this assertion attacked as non-pastoral or discriminating? There is a tension between supporting seminary students and holding them accountable–a necessary tension, I think. Congregations deserve (need!) mature and capable leaders. And to be thrown into ministry unprepared (or not capable) can be a debilitating experience for a potential leader and his or her family. Thank you for naming that. [You are welcome. Thank you for appreciating it. – PB]
You are really on to something with this.
“I think a lot of depressed people are mystical intuitives trying to function in a culture that doesn’t respect that modality at all.”
This describes people I know very well. I’d love to see more on that topic. [I’d like to work a lot more on this topic! I think a retreat plan is taking shape… – PB]
Add me to the chorus of voices for whom this resonates so very deeply.
Dear PB,
I think it is rather rude to change (write within) someone’s comment without contacting them about it, but since you have done so, and in the process challenged my reading abilities (really mature during a dialogue about disabilities, btw), I have to respond. [Kelli, it is not at all rude to comment within a comment. To comment parenthetically is not in any way altering the content of what you’ve written. I’ve been doing it for ten years and you’re the first to see it as a form of persecution. I think you’re just itching for a fight. I’m going to let you go ahead and have it, but without me.- PB]
You bring up a very very slippery slope. It is a very short jump from saying you “don’t recommend” something for a group of people to saying it should be prevented or prohibited–present me with a historical situation where it was “recommended” that a class of persons not do something and that “recommendation” did not become the social/political/legal convention of society.
Do you really think it is civil discourse to resort to accusing someone of intellectual deficit because they too have a perspective on thoughts you release into the public square for debate? Does it not occur to you that doing so could be grounds for liable, when you have no evidence to back that up? If you had any notions about my reading comprehension scores you would not assert what you did–but you may wonder about the communication skills of the author if what they meant to covey clearly was not effectively conveyed. Great Leadership! Thanks!
Hi PB and all,
I am currently in seminary (finishing m.div in December!!!!). I came in not knowing that I was having the black dog (Winston Churchills description of deepresion), get closer and closer. It was building and I was working as a student chaplain a at a state psych hospital. then my aunt got very ill and tried to kill herself. She has lived with me for most of my life, this was devastating to me. A few months later my boss said therapy or fired(she is a college from my churches area). I went and then the suisidal feelings emerged and my mind created a plan.
I am thankfull that I had Freinds who sat with me in the ER, and that I learned I had the courage to ask for help. It was rough and to finish out the semester was super hard. But in that darkness I learned a lot about ministry, sadly more about what not to do. But I was able to find my true call and God the trickster that she is keeps reminding a out it.
So your statement of a person with behavioral health issues should not enter in to seminary, cuts to my soul. If we a created in the in the image of The Devine maybe God has some mental health challenges as well. Behavioral Health is an organic biologically based issue, granted certain life experiences can add to this. Understanding myself in the context of a person with mental ilness has helped me to grow deeper with God and to see the world in terms of resilance, challenge, and growing.
<3Betty
I found this article fairly informative. You do a good job of sharing the insight from your own depression and mental illness/brain disorder in a religious/spiritual way. As Christians and ministers it is so important for us to name and claim mental illness in a way that reduces stigma and allows others to do the same. I will be ordained in 11 days. My journey through seminary has been longer and more difficult than planned, because I have anxiety, OCD, some depression, and a learning disorder. Like you, I could not do anything else. Sure, perhaps it would have been easier to quit and do something else, but I could not imagine doing anything else. Mental illness ministry has become part of my ministry. It is difficult for me to understand why you would discourage others facing mental illness from entering seminary. It’s true that seminary and ministry are not for the faint of heart, but I have found that people who have struggled and properly treat their mental illness are often strong people partially because of their struggles towards wellness and wholeness. I recognize your concern about people with mental illness in ministry must come from your own experience with depression and/or others you have seen go through it. I would challenge you to come to a Widening the welcome conference and try to get to know other ministers with mental illness, in the hopes that meeting others would open you to how much of an asset ministers who just so happen to have struggled with mental illness can have in the Church. [Thank you for the invitation and for a beautiful letter that speaks wisdom. – PB]
My guess is that most of us who serve as clergy and have depression were nodding with you right up until the last few paragraphs.
I think the difficulty many of the posters are having ((or at least I can say surely the reason why I am having) difficulty with your comment about “I do not recommend that anyone with clinical depression enter seminary. I do not encourage anyone with chronic mental health issues to subject themselves to the intensity of life as an ordained minister. I am frankly too protective of our communities of faith to do so, as this is no work for a profoundly fragile soul.”
is that it sounds too much like what I’ve heard throughout my life whenever I’ve let people know i deal with depression. “OH! ” and then I’m treated by people walking on eggshells, or if I’m upset, saying “it must be your depression” (no, the reality is that in what you are doing is unacceptable, and I’ve drawn a line). Or they start treating me as if I can not behave like a rational adult or make reasoned decisions- all which they thought I could do before I said the word “depression.” So I no longer tell anyone, including the church pastoral relations committee, that I have depression. My Judicatory knows, but not the individual congregations.
What I hear when you say that is you are afraid I will somehow damage the congregations I serve in ways that those who do not have deppression would or maybe even could not. That this would happen based merely on the fact that my brain chemistry works in a different way than another’s is stigmatizing and hurts. It would be the same as saying “I do not recommend that anyone with arthritis to subject themselves to the intensity of life as an ordained minister…as this is no work for the fragile body.” While the last statement may be true (fragile bodies, minds and/or souls should seriously consider if this is the field for them) , to classify all of us with depression as fragile is as stereotyping as saying all people with arthritis are fragile physically, and should not do ministry because the schedule taxes one in a physical manner. As with all things, each is is a case by case determination. There are many strong souls who have depression, and many fragile ones who do not. You know this being one of the strong souls; therefore when you infer/imply that your sisters and brothers in the faith who also have depression most likely are not, I hear it as even more degrading than if another said it, as if you are trying to hold yourself out at the exception. [I read a tremendous amount of projection in this letter — a lot of assumptions, a lot of conclusions that I did not make. Otherwise, thank you for many good reflections. – PB]
Perhaps the key here to everyone’s concerns, first of all, is that we acknowledge how stressful ministry can be as well as life-giving for those who are called to it. Then we who are in the ministry need to work on self-awareness and self-care, being ready to seek and accept the help we need during times of fragility. Similarly, those who see their pastors going through such times need to encourage or even insist on those pastors taking care of themselves for the sake of all, to be supportive rather than dismissive or critical, and to take responsibility as a church member to create and sustain a life-giving community for all. Ministers who have experience of depression can sometimes be more compassionate and understanding with those in similar situations; they also need to be extra careful in maintaining a disciplined spiritual practice, leaving room for prayer and creativity, quiet and exercise, time along and time with friends, time outdoors, and the like, for the good of all.