Tag: Colleen Scheid

3 Tips to Avoid Distaster While Leading a Church Small Group

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 4 Comments

5th in a Series on Why to Join a Small Group

woman wearing teal dress sitting on chair talking to man
Photo by Jopwell on Pexels.com

Ok, maybe disaster is too strong a word. Call it extreme discomfort, stinging regret, and probable loss of relationship. When people seek out a church small group for growth and support, they’re acting on a need for good relationships, so it’s doubly disappointing when they join a group and get hurt.

Leaders need to take responsibilithy for setting a loving, respectful tone. More than that, groups need to come up with some ground rules that help everyone feel safe. I’m going to start by just diving into how I’ve personally messed up in my group. Call it a cautionary tale.

Disaster 1 – We Weren’t on the Same Page at All

So we had a terrific, high functioning, homogenous group when a new couple joined. Basking in our automatic harmony, we neglected to review the norms of our group with them. We covered some basics, like when we met and what we did and the need not to break confidentiality, but we’d forgotten some of the rules that had become so ingrained they were not longer spoken.

One of them – the right to ask one another hard questions to help each other be accountable and make biblical choices.

One meeting, the newest woman began to complain about a relational problem, and I asked her a very personal question about that relationship. She looked stunned.

After several long seconds, she said, “I’m gonna plead the fifth on that one.”

And I realized – we hadn’t talked to this new couple about accountability at all. My question came out of left field for her. She had never granted permission for us to ask that kind of question, and as a person who had no experience in a Christian community, it just seemed intrusive and judgy to her.

I think her trust in me took a few backward steps that day, and it would have been avoidable if we’d been more clear during the onboarding process.

Disaster 2 – We Let Couples Blindside Each Other

Couples can be tricky in group settings. Common wisdom in group dynamics is that people in the group should say what they have to say to the whole group, without breaking into factions. This keeps everyone in the loop with no one feeling excluded. Nothing destroys a group like people talking behind one another’s backs.

But couples have a prior allegience to one another that has to be considered. One fateful meeting, a wife spoke openly about an unresolved conflict with her husband that put him in an unflattering light, and everyone in the group heard her out. A few faltering comments were made offering support to both of them, but none of us really knew how to handle it.

The husband was angry and shocked that the whole group allowed this interaction. He felt threatened and walked out, and they didn’t return to the group.

As we analyzed how to keep something like that from ever happening again, we settled on the rule that no marital conflict should be brought up within the small group unless the couple has previously discussed it and agreed to seek the group’s guidance and support.

That wasn’t the first time one spouse had used the group as a place to seek help with a marital issue at the other spouse’s expense, but you can bet it was the last.

As someone with a degree in counseling, I’d had a sense all along that we were venting too much about our spouses, but I never did anything about it until we lost two people from our group.

Disaster 3 – We Let Each Other Whine Too Much

I’m the biggest whiner of all, so I’m mostly talking to myself here. I think sometimes getting empathy from my small group, and having my problems prayed for, made me slower to do things I needed to do to take better care of myself.

For instance, I’ve suffered depression my whole life, but didn’t go on an antidepressant till I was 40. Having wonderful friends who listened and cared probably kept me from suffering worse depression, but I should have tried the drug a lot sooner!

There’s a fine line between venting in a healthy, honest way, and whining too much, but we have to help each other find it. We need to get comfortable with offering patient, affirming support and respectfully encouraging action. Some groups stay stuck by supporting an unhealthy status quo (like when we complain about our churches). Some groups stay stuck by trying to fix each other all the time without truly understanding and empathizing first.

Truly loving each other will help us avoid both. Love comforts and speaks truth at the same time.

Small Groups – Incubators for Healthy Relationships

The Bible is full of guidance for how to relate to one another. Small groups are the perfect place to learn this guidance and put it into immediate practice. We work on getting it right with good hearted people who are all committed to the process and playing by the same rules. That strenthens us to go out and relate well to the rest of the world, to bring in the same peace and joy where we live and work.

Because of my small group, I can bring three insights to any situation:

  1. Expectations need to be clear at the start of any group process.
  2. Couples need to be aligned before they involve a group in a marriage issue.
  3. It’s not helpful to let people complain too much without taking positive action.

Question for Reflection:

Have you ever been in a group situation where you’ve failed to communicate clear expectations and suffered for it? How would you handle it differently now?

A Great Holiday Gift to Yourself – Join a Small Group

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

Fourth in a Series on Why to Join a Small Group

The span of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us.

One minute, we’re selflessly loading up groceries for families in need, the next – snapping at store clerks for making us wait too long in line. One minute, we’re wiping away tears at the touching message of a Christmas movie, the next – groaning at the prospect of Christmas day drama with our own families.

It’s an intense time. The hopes and fears of all the years kind of crash in on us, exaggerating joy and pain.

Small groups can help with all that. Over the years I’ve been in a Christian small group, we’ve always followed our Bible study with a time of sharing what we need prayers for.

That bimonthly discipline of meeting and praying gives everyone a chance to process how they’re feeling about approaching events. Over many Novembers and Decembers, I’ve heard a lot of statements like:

“Pray that I’ll be able to get everything done. I feel like I’m racing my advent calendar.”

“I hate shopping. We don’t have the money and I never know what to get.”

“Holiday’s aren’t the same now that Mom’s gone. Pray that we’ll figure out how to keep everyone together.”

“Pray that my _____________ doesn’t start an argument about ___________________ when we get together.”

It helps to talk about our plans and struggles with people who care, to people who want to help us keep God at the center of everything. I know that with the support and prayers of people in my small group, I’ve been able to navigate the holidays with more grace, and bring more joy to what I’m doing. I don’t think all those plays, parties, outreach events with church or family dinners would have gone so well if I hadn’t had a place to angst about them and get them prayed for!

Small groups can be especially important to people who are too far from their families to join them for holidays, or too stressed by their family dynamics to enjoy them. A low key holiday meal with a small group can be so refreshing, either as a substitute for celebrating with family, or something you do beforehand.

In our group, everyone brings one dish to the meal, we skip the presents, and we focus on the good that God has brought into our lives. Often someone will do a reading, or lead a song, and we usually throw in a game. When our kids were little, they’d often do a short Christmas play with an adult narrating. Those moments made for some fabulous memories, and some of those kids are friends for life.

We can’t choose our families; some of us have terrific families and some of us dread getting together with them. But we can all choose a small group of kind people who care for each other, and we can set up ways of relating that keep everyone safe.

A group like that keeps us centered in God’s love and gives us strength for whatever stresses the season might bring.

Ten Ways Small Groups Can Save You

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 9 Comments

Churches are always trying to get people to join groups of eight to twelve people who meet regularly.

They call them ‘small groups’ or ‘growth groups’ or ‘house groups’. One church called them ‘lambs groups’, which I get the biblical symbolism of, but I can’t imagine guys who ride motorcycles or pump iron joining a ‘lambs group’. I would steer away from that one.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Church leaders know that if people just show up to services, or even volunteer, but don’t belong to a smaller friend group, they may not stick with their faith. These groups meet a number of needs – people get to know each other and develop friendships. They learn more about the Bible. They learn how to pray for each other, then seeing the prayers get answered draws them closer to God. They live out what they believe in good, supportive company.

Anyone who really believes in Jesus is swimming upstream in American culture. That’s just how it is, especially if you’re younger. Little in mainstream mass media, art or academia supports the truth of the Christian faith. No major network or streaming platform is putting money into stories told from a Christian world view. Even saying we believe anything is absolutely true makes us suspect – puts us in company with unhinged preachers and terrorists and people who preserve tons of peaches in preparation for the apocalypse.

So, if we’re going to stick it out as followers of Christ, we need authentic community. We need to be family for each other, minus the weird dynamics. On the path where Jesus is leading us, we need fellow travelers to urge us on, tell us good stories, share their trail mix, and pull us away from cliff edges.

Even when you’ve come to a careful, studied conclusion about what you believe, it’s hard to hang onto it unless the people around you believe it too. My small group, just by gathering together in Jesus’ name, reminds me of the reality that God is really with us. We share what we’re learning, how we’re changing, how prayers are being answered, and I leave bouyant. This is not how I would feel if I stayed home and watched “Fresh Fried and Crispy”.

I’ve had the honor of being in one of these groups for 28 years. I’m writing a series of ten posts on how it’s changed the course of my life, and what we do to help one another. I’ll also talk about some of our terrible mistakes, so you can avoid those. I’m hoping something I write will urge you towards joining or starting your own. Just don’t call it a lamb’s group.

Question for the Comments: Do you meet regularly with a group of people you really trust? If not, does that seem attractive, or not so much?

The Darkness of Depression Will Lift – Promise

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 5 Comments

What I find most heartbreaking about the high rate of suicide among young people, is that I know, if they could have waited, they would have come through the dark time and been glad to be alive.

The first time depression hits, and it gets hold to the point where life isn’t worth living, you think the rest of your life will feel like that. But you swing out. Most of us don’t just suddenly wake up feeling awesome – it’s a slower swing, but soon you look back, and think, “Wow. I was in a really bad place. Glad that’s over.”

So if you’re in the middle of it, please hang on! Even without doing any of what my previous posts suggest, we were made to move on from sorrow and failure and heartbreak and despair, to adapt and grow and thrive. You will too.

The Tools You Need to Fight Depression

Taking care of ourselves chases depression away, just like it does for other illnesses. When we get to a more solid place, that’s when we need to make the self-care stuff habitual. There are things we can make part of our lives that will keep us out of the deep hole of depression. Here’s my top ten, linked to the posts that explore the topics:

  1. Say kind things to yourself: If you catch yourself thinking self-critical thoughts, change them to positive ones and say them out loud.
  2. Bring your thoughts back to the present moment when you realize they’ve gone to weird or yucky places. Remind yourself that you only have to do one thing at a time and you don’t need to worry about what’s next.
  3. Don’t isolate. Make people part of your life even when it’s hard and get help when you need it.
  4. Deal with past trauma; not just big stuff, but little things that you don’t want to remember. Once you process it with another person, it loses its power to haunt you.
  5. Beware of avoiding things that make you anxious. Avoiding stuff that should be faced makes you more depressed.
  6. Eat food that helps your body function and drink eight glasses of water each day.
  7. Live in tune with the rhythms of the natural world, pausing to rest between segments of the day.
  8. Make your living spaces functional and beautiful, into places you want to live and work.
  9. Examine your world view. Ask yourself if it is consistent with reality and helps you to live through and beyond depression. If you don’t already, consider following Jesus Christ.
  10. Examine where your time on screens is going, and whether it’s helping or hurting you.

Depression isn’t something we have to put up with. There are so many steps we can take that will lead us out to a better place.

Homework: Journal what choices you’re making that help you feel good, and which ones lead to you feeling bad. Analyze one of the bad choices, and note what kind of help you need to change it. Then go get that help.

Anything helpful to add? Click on the top title, then comment below.

Is Your Time on TV and Social Media Depressing You?

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

Tenth in a Series on Fighting Depression

(Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com)

You can’t leave the digital realm out of any mental health conversation, depression included.

There are a few reasons for this. For one, levels of higher social media exposure correlate with highter levels of depression. So do higher levels computer use and TV watching in general. Higher screen times indicate moderate to severe depression, especially when people view over six hours a day.

It’s hard for most of us to believe that what we watch and listen to will strongly influence our moods and actions. I want to think I’m more objective than all that. Guess not. I guess if we were that objective, there would be no fashion industry – in fact, no trend-based industry at all. There would be more Republicans in the cities and Democrats in rural towns. There would never have been 17 million people pouring freezing water over their heads in an ice bucket challenge.

Given the hard cold reality of how socially influenced we are, whether it’s by real people or digital ones, how depressed we are has everything to do with what we’re watching and listening to. So, in this area as in all others, we need to know ourselves to fight depression. What kind of content inspires and energizes us? What brings us down? What makes us feel good for a while, but leaves us feeling worse when it’s over?

If following a bunch of gorgeous people who spend gobs of time and money on physical perfection makes you feel inadequate when you look in the mirror – you could stop following them.

If watching porn leaves you more lonely, maybe its not as harmless as we want to tell ourselves.

If obsessing over your ex’s facebook documentation of all the best moments in their new relationship is driving you to despair – you get the message.

Staring at me from a bookshelf as I write are three wooden monkeys carved in Africa – each with a hand over eyes, ears, or mouth. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. When fighting a low mood, it only makes sense to see no depressing, hear no depressing, speak no depressing. (Unless the speaking is to someone truly compassionate and helpful.)

Even if I’m watching good, fun, inspiring stuff, too much screen time will keep me from doing the other nine things that help me fight depression, which we’ve covered in this series. It can also lead to later bedtimes and pooorer quality of sleep. I ended up deciding to keep the recreational screentime for the last hour or two of the day, and stop it in time to read something before I go to sleep. That feels about right for me.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wonder what real happiness I missed while I was watching everyone else’s virtual drama.

Homework: Pause after each show or social media session to notice your internal state. What are you thinking and how are you feeling? Is it positive, neutral or negative? Do you need to make any changes? How much screen time is enough for you? How much is too much?

Anything helpful to add? Click on the title, then scroll to comment after the article. For the first post in this series, click here.

Ugly is Depressing – the Importance of Bringing Beauty into Your Living Space

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments
“The way my place looks doesn’t have any effect on me. I don’t care; it’s just where I crash.”

I’ve heard quite a few people say things like that. I don’t believe them.

You can’t sever sensing from feeling. Everything we see, touch, smell, hear and taste affects our emotions. When I see a picture of a puppy playing, I feel happier than when I see a picture of an animal being hurt. When I smell lavendar, I enjoy that a lot more than smelling garbage. So it goes. Surroundings matter to humans.

Ask Yourself Some Emotion Questions

Go into the room where you sleep and look around. Do you like the look of the walls? Do the sheets smell clean? Are there any annoying sounds? Rate the room on a scale of 1 (ugly and uncomfortable) to 10 (beautiful and comfy). Do that for all the rooms you live in.

If your numbers are low, you can do some things to feel better in your space.

I know, there’s that pesky issue of money for most of us, but cleaning is cheap, and so are some of the other changes that will boost your mood.

My sister runs an interior design business, Rusty Fig Redesign, and she specializes in repurposing, rearranging and reorganizing the stuff people already have to make it a more beautiful, more functional space. When people come back to their homes at the end of the day for the ‘big reveal’ -to see their redesigned spaces, they are always delighted. Some of them even cry with joy. They often say things like, “I can’t believe I get to live here.”

Ask Yourself Some Sensory Questions

Granted, my sister is especially gifted at this, but anyone can do something to improve their space. Any small improvement gives you an emotional lift. So try asking yourself some questions:

  • Start with one room. Think about all the uses for that room. If it’s a bedroom, you may list sleeping, resting, reading and dressing. Ask yourself, “Do I have what I need to be comfortable while I do all these things? You might need a new mattress, or a big pillow to lean against when you read in bed. You might need a standing lamp next to your closet so you can see to get dressed in the morning. If you can’t buy new stuff, be sure you’re making the best use of what you have.
  • Is there enough light in the room overall, or too much? You might need room-darkening curtains to sleep better, new lighting to see clearly, or to move things you’ve put in front of windows so you have a better view.
  • Look at the colors of walls, floors and objects. Do they look good next to each other or are their some clashes you don’t like? Would you like the room better if you painted it a different color? If you’re starting a room from scratch, try picking three to five colors that really look good together, and stick to them when you shop.
  • Are there any plants in the room? Plants bring life into a room (as long as you water them!) and they improve the air quality.
  • Are there any pieces of furniture or objects that give you a bad vibe? Seriously, sometimes we keep things because we inherited them or they’re a gift, or we spent a lot on them, and to be honest, we just don’t like them. Do you think of your mean great aunt every time you look at that vase? Lose the vase. Did you buy a modern side table that looked great in the store but just doesn’t look right with your other furniture? Maybe it needs moving to another room, or another home altogether?
  • How much stuff is in the room? If there’s a lot, do you like all of it, or would you enjoy more openspace? Edit out things you don’t use or like. Some people are most comfortable with a lot of stuff out on surfaces. That’s fine, but if you feel better with clear surfaces, its time to make some piles – Keep, Sell, Give Away and Throw Away.

Are there some things in the room that you enjoy? Maybe a scented candle, a framed certificate of an achievement you’re proud of, a soft throw blanket that makes TV viewing super-comfy? Comfort and beauty are different for everyone; my husband thinks his racing bike looks great in the dining room!

One More Way to Fight Depression

Obviously, great design isn’t the cure for depression. Lots of miserable people live in gorgeous mansions.

However, life is just more pleasant when you walk in to a room you’ve fixed up. It also gives you a little more energy and confidence to make other changes to improve your life. So, paying attention to the surroundings where you spend a lot of your time is one great way to fight depression.

Peace and Joy for the Long Haul – a Gentler Daily Rhythm

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments

(Seventh in a series on fighting depression. Click here for the first post.)

There’s no quick fix for depression.

Which isn’t to say we’re helpless to do anything about it. It’s something we have to fight. We come at it from many angles, pruning away at it, putting up boudaries so it can’t take over. Think of it as a vine that creeps over everything if it’s not dealt with.

True, when we’re in the trap of major depression, we may be helpless for a while. But as we start to climb out, with therapy or rest or antidepressants or all of the above, it’s time to start caring for ourselves in ways that will keep it from creeping back.

Because of the reality that most of us need to work, and all of us are less depressed when we accomplish something, this self-care needs to take turns with working.

The previous posts have covered six ways to do this. In this post I share another way I cut back depression – by paying attention to nature’s rhythms and getting my schedule in sync with them.

Some of us push ourselves too hard and crash after the burn. Some of us have trouble being motivated even to get out of bed. Both extremes can be softened by pacing ourselves in harmony with the natural world, pausing regularly to rest and recharge.

Monks are ninjas at this lifestyle. People who live communally in monestaries have honed the art of moving peacefully through the day as a way to stay near to God and honor God with their work. They even have vocabulary for it – they call it the Liturgy of the Hours.

It invites us into a lifestyle where we become aware that there’s a lot more to it than getting stuff done, a way of being that faces the reality that life waxes and wanes (like the moon, right?) It involves breaking the day into segments, and pausing between them to catch our breath and reflect.

Without going into lots of ancient monastic detail, I’ll take you through a sample of how you can put this into practice:

  1. The day begins with early morning when the demands of work and people haven’t kicked in. This is a good time to breathe in the quiet, to imagine all the day’s possibilities before you lock yourself into a schedule. Remind yourself that with each new day, you can start again and do things differently if you want. Out of this sense of possibility, you plan your day and get going.

2. Pause mid-morning when you’ve done a few hours of work. Remind yourself that the best work is done when you’re not in a hurry. Consider how your work can be a gift to other people. Drink some water. Take a few deep breaths before you get back to it.

3. Midday – This is noon for monks, who’ve been up since before dawn. Getting up before dawn is depressing in itself to me, so I skip it, and do a midday pause anywhere between noon and 2 pm, when I’m hungry and want a break. A this high point in the day when the sun is at its brightest, pat yourself on the back for what you’ve already done, and consider what you’ll do in the afternoon to build on it. If morning didn’t go so well, put it behind you, eat good food and start again. Try to look at something beautiful – the sky if nothing else. Think about how vast the world is so you don’t get swallowed up by the day’s troubles.

4. Mid to Late Afternoon – a few hours later, pause again. This is when we face our mortality. We may be losing steam, focus and interest. We may realize we’re not going to get as much done as we’d hoped. Here’s where I’m tempted to give up and take a nap, or eat a large bowl of M&Ms. But another choice is to pause, feel the weariness, stretch or take a walk, and think about what can be done in the time left.

5. As evening falls, put things away and tell yourself it’s time to stop working. You are worth a great deal more than what you get done, and it’s time to unwind. Evening is a great time to shift from doing to being. For some, this seems out of reach. Many people have to work two jobs or have toddlers to get to bed, or have chores to do after work. But as muich as possible, slow your pace and take care of yourself.

Let go of the day’s frustrations, switching to something else, like eating a good dinner, talking to a friend, doing a hobby you enjoy, or watching a show that lifts your spirits.

6. Bed Time – Pause at your ideal bedtime – even if you are in the middle of a game of Fortnight. Feel your tiredness. Look outside into the dark. Remind yourslef it’s time to shut down. Let yourself settle into the darkness and quiet of night. If your thoughts start to spin, tell yourself, “Night is for sleeping.” No problem-solving, no replays. You may need a habit to calm you in this pause – journaling what you’re graterful for, playing a meditation app, praying surrender of everything on your mind to God. Night is for sleeping. This is when your body heals, when your mind processes its hidden issues, when you sink into that wonderful oblivion that gets you ready for the new day.

So, what does this Liturgy of the Hours have to do with depression? Everything. As we take life in managable segments, grounding ourselves between tasks, we enjoy ourselves more and feel less overwhelmed. We are more interested in the world and other people, realizing it all doesn’t revolve around us. We feel more grateful and less burnt-out.

As we look over the other topics we’ve covered on fighting depression – affirming ourselves, staying in the moment, processing our emotions, seeking connection, caring for our bodies – we can see that all of them are made easier by living in tune with the rhythms of nature.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below, after you click on the title.

Happiness Needs to be Fed and Watered

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

(Sixth in a series on fighting depression. Click here for the first post.)

So far in this series on fighting depression, we’ve covered:

  • The need to affirm yourself, to speak kindly to yourself.
  • The habit of staying in the moment, using your senses to focus on now.
  • The need to process and heal past trauma.
  • Choosing connection instead of isolation.
  • Addressing anxiety by working against avoidance, since that feeds depression.

Foods that Help Depression

While we’re on the topic of what feeds depression, let’s talk about actual food. This is my least favorite of these posts, since I’m super fond of desserts, breads, sweets and chocolate in any form. I don’t want to face that what I put in my mouth can bring down my mood, but it does.

Ironically, when we’re down, that’s when we have least energy to prepare good food. We tend to grab what’s easy and gives us a little comfort.So here’s the dare: journal what you eat and drink for three days. Face up to it (no avoiding, right?) Note what you eat, and also write how you feel in the hours after until you eat again.

Nutrition blogs abound, so I won’t go over how to eat, but here are some tips I’ve made into habits that help give my body and brain what it needs to function and have a fighting chance at happiness:

Food Habits that Fight and Heal Depression

  1. Don’t skip breakfast. Include something with protein like eggs, meats, nuts or seeds, so your energy doesn’t dip mid-morning. That helps focus and get me into the day’s work. (And we generally feel better after we’ve gotten some work done.)
  2. Don’t pig out on lunch, or skip it. Both options are bound to lead to a long afternoon nap, at least for me. Work some fruit or vegetables into your meal. If you can’t do without the fries that go with a burger, add a small salad and eat it first. Put some lettuce and a tomato slice on a ham or turkey sandwich. Finish with a few strawberrries. You get the idea.
  3. Make yourself a decent dinner. Frozen meals heated in a microwave every day are a sure recipe for depression in my book. If you’re a meat eater, focus on fish and chicken instead of beef and pork. Fill half your plate with veggies.
  4. Buy stuff that’s easy to prep, especially snacks. If I have a choice between a salad with five ingeredients that all need preparing, and a nice little peel-top container of pudding, guess what I’ll go with! It helps me to buy individual yogurts, protein bars with natural ingredients, and nuts that go in little bags or an easy cannister. Baby carrots and celery sticks can be pre-washed and stored in jars, and most fruits can be washed and ready to eat.

Dehydration is Such a Downer

I think the single biggest difference I can make to my mood and energy levels is to drink enough water. Buy yourself a boujee water bottle, and make it your best friend. (Wash it well every night, you don’t want a stomach ache from bacteria in your water on top of depression!)

Changing how you eat and drink can’t all happen at once. If you don’t get close to eight glasses of water a day, start with that. Get used to one extra before you add a second, and so on. And remember the first post, speak kindly to yourself. “I’ll feel better if I go drink some water now,” is much more effective, and feels a lot better, than, “I’m such a moron. I can’t even remember to drink water.”

Homework

Pick one food or water habit to start working on. If you don’t get close to eight cups of water a day, start with that. Start small and add a cup every day or two. If you get down or stressed and forget all about it, start again.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below, after you click on the title.

The Seesaw of Depression and Anxiety

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments

(Fifth in a series on taking steps away from depression.)

I used to think of depression and anxiety as two unrelated problems.

But I realized, at some point, that depression often followed a time of anxiety. Then I made the connection that anxiety often set in as I was emerging from a time of depression.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out whether they just take turns, depending on what’s going on in your life, or if they actually trigger one another.

There is a Connection

I’m convinced, at least in my own case, that anxiety wears me down to depression. When many tasks of life are seen as a big hurdle, triggering shortness of breath, a sense of dread, a feeling of incompetence, a fear of rejection, trouble focusing – that drains me to a point where I feel so down I want to quit stuff.

One study described in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders states that anxiety and depression are often highly correlated with each other, and that depression can follow anxiety years later. People with lifetime anxiety had lifetime depression 73 per cent of the time, and people with both had worse illness and functioning than those with only one.

This article also pointed out that past depression predicts future avoidance, and avoidance predicts anxiety. A huge study of over 6000 adolescents over 14 years demonstrated that avoidance behaviors occurred in between times of anxiety and depression a significant percentage of the time.

Avoiding Makes it Worse

We kind of know that intuitively, don’t we? If my 13-year-old self chickened out and skipped a party because of social anxiety, I had to deal with a residue of shame, a sense of failure, loneliness and hopelessness that soon added up to depression.

On the other hand, if I went to the party, chances are I would have some positive experiences there in addition to all the awkwardness, and I would feel prouder of myself afterwards.

I would probably also learn a few things, whether or not I was aware of it, that would make me a little more hip to how I should behave at a party, which would make the next experience less scary.

Conquer a Little at a Time

So it goes. If we can gradually expose ourselves to what makes us anxious, our window of fear gets smaller.

I used to be terrified of getting onstage and saying or doing any little thing. Now I’m only scared if I’m performing at a big convention with video screens. The setting is usually a lot smaller than that, so having succeeded at the convention, I no longer dread a crowd of 200.

That’s how we anxious types need to march through life. The worse thing that happens is that we aim too high and we fail at something. So we learn, and we take our challenges in smaller chunks.

And when depression starts to take us down, we don’t avoid that reality either. We take care of ourselves and get as much help as we need, so the downward spiral changes direction.

It seems that often our greatest anxieties are attached to our giftedness. It’s so frustrating to see a marvellous athlete quit just because she failed in one competition. Or a wonderful musician stop playing because his performance anxiety wore him down to exhaustion.

Don’t Give Up!

Please don’t give up on yourself. Don’t let yourself get too busy, or make yourself a slave to others’ expectations, but don’t quit either.

Then you can get off the anxiety/depression seesaw and just focus on one thing at a time.

It’s so rewarding to get to a place where you can function in your strengths, and even get a handle on a few weaknesses, only to discover that they no longer stress you out.

For the previous post, press here.

You Can’t Let Go of What You Don’t Remember

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 8 Comments

(Fourth in a Series on Overcoming Depression. For the third post, press here.)

When I read or hear instructions to ‘let go of the past’, I get irritated. As if the past is like some heavy bag of groceries that you can just set on the table. Like you’re making some sort of conscious choice to carry it around to make yourself miserable.

This post is fourth in a series on depression, and gives some suggestions for how to deal with the past in healthy ways.

There’s a whole lot to unpack in that phrase, ‘Let go of the past.” There are some reasons why we don’t want to be in too much hurry to dismiss the past as irrelevant to now.

The Problem with Memory Gaps

Here’s the thing – our brains are wired for meaning and for wholeness. When bad things happen to us, we might forget them as a way to cope, but part of us will keep looking for the missing piece till we find it. Our mind needs to discover what happened in any memory gaps, to make sense of our own story. In that sense, we can’t let go of our pasts till we’ve got a finished picture.

A good current example of this takes place in the Neflix limited series, Maid.All through earlier episodes, we see the lead character, Alex, having a cold and fearful reaction to one of the other characters, who seems to be a fairly nice person. Not until a cleaning job in a creepy house triggers a very early suppressed memory do we find out what happened to plant that fear in Alex’s mind. Once she remembers, she has energy for a confrontation that brings her more peace. She’s released from having the emotions of a terrified victim without knowing why.

Getting to the Truth

Another reason we need to take a second look at our pasts through adult eyes is because bad experiences can warp our thinking. There’s no way out of that but coming to understand how we’ve been damaged, what lies we believe from those experiences, and what truth we want to replace the lies with. (See what I wrote in the first post about how we talk to ourselves.)

For instance, when a parent leaves a child, the child tends to blame himself for that. A child might think, “Dad left because I wasn’t nice enough.” He makes a vow to become the nicest person in the world. He may not even be conscious of the vow, but it becomes like a vice, holding him to niceness even when it keeps him from defending himself.

That’s a hard way to live. Not until the adult realizes how his compulsive niceness was shaped will he see that it’s been a trap based on a lie. At that point, he’s free to change his belief to something true, like, “I’m nice, but I can also be tough when I need to be.”

Making Choices That Heal

Another other benefit of looking back at the past and reprocessing it is that you can choose some new experiences for yourself that will help you heal and grow stronger. Take the super nice person above – maybe he’ll decide to enroll in a martial arts class to rewire his brain to be able to fight when he needs to.

Maybe he’ll decide that he’s got a friend who’s taking advantage of his kindness, and he’ll work with his therapist to set some new boundaries. Maybe he’ll start praying for wisdom to know when his compulsive niceness is serving him more than anyone else. Once we’re clear on what the problem is, we can address it.

It’s not self indulgent to take some time to look back and see how we may still be reacting to past trauma that we’re not fully aware of. It’s only after we’ve done that that we’re truly free to let go of our pasts and be ready for what’s next.