Posted by Helen on: 04.08.2008 /
In this video and audio, Pastor Tom Nelson, Senior Pastor of Denton Bible Church in Texas, talks about his experience with clinical depression.
He shares how he started having physical problems the doctors couldn’t find a cause for. Those were followed by him falling into the ‘black hole’ of clinical depression.
His wife told him to see a psychiatrist and counselor. Eventually he agreed.
He found out what happened to him often happens to people who push themselves to the limit for years. Eventually their body and mind can’t take it anymore and they have a breakdown like this. [This is not the only reason people become clinically depressed; clinical depression has a variety of causes]
Tom was prescribed Lexapro for a period of months and Ativan as needed. He also met with a counselor who had experienced clinical depression. When he was well enough to return to work, he cut back his schedule to prevent it happening again.
After he went through clinical depression he found out two of his elders, four staff members and his secretary had also been through it. He said, no-one talks about it [in the church]. It’s like being gay.
Tom said, be careful about telling evangelicals you have clinical depression. Their reaction may well make you even more depressed. ‘Pagans’ often respond more compassionately than evangelicals, who tend to immediately moralize and have knee-jerk reactions.
He said before he went through clinical depression he probably would have told someone who came to him with it to read the Bible, pray and quit doing anything that caused problems. He would have had no idea how to deal with it. When he was depressed he couldn’t even read the Bible - he couldn’t read anything because he couldn’t even process nouns and verbs.
I liked listening to this talk because Tom is an excellent speaker and he told his story in a very straightforward way without Christianese. Then he shared some lessons he learned and some advice based on his first-hand experience, also in a straightforward way without Christianese. He didn’t even have a Bible with him because it wasn’t that sort of talk.
The only part I disagreed with was when he said it’s important to have a counselor who’s been through the same experience you’re going through. I do think it’s important to have a good counselor but it’s sufficient if they understand your experience. They don’t actually have to have gone through it in order to help you navigate it.
(h/t Ray Pritchard)
Comment by: pamhogeweide
1 04/8/08 9:54 AM | Comment Link |glad to hear that a leader is openly talking about an area of weakness in his life. Too often spiritual leaders hide their weaknesses which leads to a public persona of Super Person. Deborah Loyd, the pastor of The Bridge where my family calls our spiritual home, says that she and the other co-pastors from The Bridge aspire to lead from a place of weakness. Within our community this means that because our leaders are open about their sh*t, we can be, too.
At my women’s group from The Bridge I have felt tremendous freedom to talk about how depression began to cripple my life after all the tragedy of last summer. I blogged about this, how Zoloft has become my new best friend.
In my former evangelical days I judged people who leaned on meds for emotional stability. How humbled I am now! Not that many years ago I would have counseled someone like me to
1. Draw near to God
2. Stay in the word
3. Worship God
4. Stay close in fellowship
5. Fast
6. Get deliverance
Yep. What a sensitive soul I was!
Anyhow, I bet his congregation will go to a new level of honesty since he is leading this way. Good for him!
(Deborah and I once had a conversation about how seminaries teach future pastors about how to create “pastoral distance” with the congregation. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?)
Comment by: Helen
2 04/8/08 10:14 AM | Comment Link |Thanks Pam - it’s a lot easier to judge before going through something than afterwards, isn’t it?
I should have mentioned that Tom gave this talk to students at Dallas Theological Seminary. It wasn’t at his own church. He told his own church about it when he returned to work and he said everyone wanted to hear that tape.
Anyway, so I was encouraged that seminary students would be hearing this from someone they respected (I assume) at the outset of their careers.
Comment by: Jason Horton
3 04/8/08 3:33 PM | Comment Link |I enjoyed the talk. I think it makes him appear more human. The label of Pastor (or Priest, or Manager, or Leader) does imply a certain je ne sais quoi. As Pam says there is a distance created in the position, whether intentional or not.
Comment by: Helen
4 04/8/08 4:21 PM | Comment Link |Jason I’m glad you enjoyed it too. I also thought he came across as very human in it.
Comment by: benjdm
5 04/8/08 8:53 PM | Comment Link |I would bet that they don’t hide it because they are hiding weaknesses. They hide it because they deny that human thinking IS biological and causal. In their worldview, they should be able to overcome depression through free will.
Comment by: Helen
6 04/9/08 4:23 AM | Comment Link |benjdm, yes, in the talk the pastor says at first he thought he should be able to overcome this himself. (Or with God’s help - but without professional treatment, anyway)
His wife told him to go get professional help and he was resistant, but eventually he agreed. Now his advice to anyone else going through clinical depression is ‘get treatment for this’. He’s open to pastors doing the counseling if they’ve been through it themselves (personally I think professional counselors are best - I think he overrates pastoral counseling although a pastor who’s been depressed hopefully at least will be sensitive and understanding) - but says the depressed person does need to see a psychiatrist and get on medication.