Pt. 2 My Dance with Depression and What I have Learnt.

In my last post I started off a series on what I have learnt about depression from my own personal dance with the haunting figurine. So on to part two.

4. Love by listening
One of the things I most needed, and few gave, was Love.

Love that is quiet and strong.

Love that holds but doesn’t smother.

Love that shows respect but doesn’t rescue.

Love that is just being there, not with all the right answers, the technical knowledge, the problem solving, but love that just sits with you and is quiet.

Love that invites you into being held.
Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen experienced a time where he was ‘flat on the ground and in total darkness’. He had a friend that stepped into this darkness. An elderly priest he turned to. He describes the Love in this way

During the most difficult period of my life, when I experienced great anguish and despair, he was there. Many times, he pulled my head to his chest and prayed for me without words but with a Spirit – filled silence that dispelled my demons of despair and made me rise up from his embrace with new vitality.1

I wonder what the sterile Pharisee and Levite (Story of the Dehumanised Man) would have thought of this embrace on the Jericho road of life.

Few gave me this love, those that did will forever be my friends.

A leader in the field of psychotherapy, Dr. Hans Strupp, reviewed 50 years of research into the effectiveness of psychotherapy and came to the conclusion that

‘if you are anorexic or depressed or if you are experiencing difficulties with significant people in your life, chances are that you will feel better if you talk to someone you trust’2

Love will always win!

5. Too many stressor straws It’s the last straw that breaks the laden camel's back.

There is a limit to everyone's endurance. Everyone has a breaking point.

A place where the stress load carried is just too much for the fragile self. It might be the everyday conscious pressures of life. It might also be the subconscious pressures from past unresolved hurts that we all carry.

Then another stressor gets added to the burden. It could be just a little thing, but with you buckling at the knees already it is enough to send you crashing into depression.

Jesus refered to our stress load being like a yoke that we carry around our shoulders.
His yoke, his expectations, are light not heavy. Listen to his invitation.

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

Jesus doesn’t fit anything heavy or ill fitting on us.

If that’s the case, then who does? You, others, society, church …?

It’s our responsibility to identify, with him, the straws that we carry.

The solution is to do something about the stressor straws. It will be a combination of problem solving the stressors, learning some new skills, and possibly some medication.

What are we carrying? What do we need to do about it?

Do what you can, not hope to do or should do and leave the miracles up to God.

Love to hear your comments. Go on, be daring and join in the conversation by posting a comment below

Barry Pearman

Image: Free Digital Images

1. Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 114.

2.Steven Hallon, “The Efficacy and Effectiveness of Psychotherapy Relative to Medications,” American Psychologist (October 1966): 1025

Pt.1 My Dance with Depression and What I have Learnt.

A quite personal blog.

I thought I would write about my dance with depression. It all came to a bit of a head last year and I am well on the recovery road. Over the years I have talked and helped many people recover from depression. They have taught me many things and last year I trusted what I had learnt and put it into practice.

So here are my top ten learning’s. Not in any great order of importance, they are all significant and all need to be danced with.

1. The Body is Fragile.

The body you live in is fragile. It’s not perfect, it’s prone to illness and change. Ever since Eden it’s been prone to illness.

Put the brain under enough prolonged pressure and it too may well crack.

Changes in brain chemistry can lead to wackiness in your thinking processes. But there is heaps of hope.

2. The Brain is Plastic.

You thought the brain stayed the same didn’t you. I always did. I thought the brain was hardwired to think and behave in a certain way, forever. I was happy to discover I was wrong.

It’s plastic, malleable and can change, alter, and learn new ways of thinking and acting.

Check out Norman Doidge for more. Putting it simply, THE BRAIN IS INCREDBLE. You might also like to check out Learning, Ouch! and related video clip.

3. Faulty foolish thinking.

Ever since I was born, and even before whilst in the womb I have been thinking. Some would question this at times about me, but yes it’s true. I have been thinking and I have developed some thinking and acting strategies to get what I needed.

I discovered that when I cried I got fed or held. I carried this wonderful strategy, along with others, over into adult years, but discovered that it didn’t always work.

Often these thinking and acting strategies have been not been the way God wanted to me think or behave. But hey, I got what I needed!

Paul, in Romans 12:2 says this

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

We need to keep on reflecting with Daddy, Jesus and Spirit on the thinking and behaving strategies that we utilise. Perhaps they actually keep us in a vicious cycle of stinky thinky and bad behaviour!

That’s enough from me. The rest of my learning’s will be shared over the next few weeks.

What do you think? Don’t be a stranger, pass a comment below and join in the conversation.

Barry Pearman

Image: by  EUSKALANATO

The Poor at the Core

I watched quite a clever T.V. advertisement the other night. Take a look here.

I love the part of it where the dog on the back of the truck gets splattered with mud. The distance travelled by the dog is certainly more, and he is certainly travelling fast.

Last summer I was watching one of those ‘control by wire’ model aeroplanes. If you don’t know what I am talking about, here is a clip of one and rather a spectacular crash.

The guy in the middle controlling the plane is only rotating quite slowly while the plane on the outside just goes faster and faster. The guy in the middle is in control. He has to concentrate and not make sudden movements.

I think of this often as a metaphor for life. What is at the centre of person’s life will drive the out workings at the extremity.

One of the ways that we can discover our core values is by doing a personal mission statement. This is who I am and what I am about.

Jesus, I believe, had a personal Mission Statement.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Luke 4: 18, 19

At the core of Jesus life was a mission that focused on bringing good news to the poor.

Jesus words married up with his lifestyle. His preference of friends were those on the outside of acceptability. The lepers, adulterers, tax collectors, the rejects etc.

If we are serious about becoming like Jesus then we have to ask some tough questions about what matters most to us and the organisations we connect with.

Are the poor at the core of your life? Are you intentionally connecting with the poor in your community?

The church or faith community you are involved with. Are they intentionally focused on having the poor as the core of their mission? Does the budget reflect this? Are they enabling or disabling the poor to have a voice in decision making processes?

I think the bottom line is that people who live in poor neighbourhoods, people who live on the streets, people who have been crushed, have got to have the power to make decisions, and the power to make their own way, and to call their own shots. Ken Medema

Jesus said ‘Come follow me’ and place the poor at the core.

Barry Pearman

Jesus wasn’t PC (Perception Careful)

‘Know me before you judge me’ was a catch phrase used in a recent Mental Health Anti Stigmatisation campaign. 

It’s a great phrase as it kind of sticks in your head and challenges you to not make snap judgements.

I have seen verdicts passed on my friends as being lazy, stupid, dangerous and even naughty!

I call them friends because I have got to know them and realise that I am them.

We all do it though. We all make judgments based upon a limited knowledge of the other. We have jigsaw pieces of information that we try and panel beat into a puzzle that makes some sort of comfortable sense to us. Meanwhile the true picture remains unknown and unwelcomed.

Jesus lived a life that wasn’t focused on perception management. He didn’t stage manage his life to present a performance to win the approval of others.

‘I Am what I AM’ would have been his catch phrase as he was focused totally on the great ‘I AM’.

This Non- Conformist only once asked about others opinions.

Jesus and his disciples headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As they walked, he asked, "Who do the people say I am?" "Some say 'John the Baptizer,'" they said. "Others say 'Elijah.' Still others say 'one of the prophets.'"He then asked, "And you—what are you saying about me? Who am I?" Peter gave the answer: "You are the Christ, the Messiah." Mark 8:27 – 29

Peter, the fisherman, got it right. It must have been incredibly tough on Jesus when later Peter denied ever knowing him.

That is often the choice to be faced.

Do we follow the popular safe opinion or we do follow the radical non conformist? 

Jesus was only interested in what the Father was doing not popular opinion. So he was slandered by the religiously pure, he was shunned by the crowd and eventually deserted by most of his friends.

Still want to be like Jesus? 

It will probably ruffle some well groomed religious feathers!

Be who God wants you to be! Be the voice shouting in the wilderness!

Change won’t happen without discomfort.

The radical Non Conformist Martin Luther King Jr said this

"The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy."

People are going to judge you. They will form an opinion based on their perceptions. They will judge you without getting to know you. 

Be prepared for rejection, isolation, and persecution. Jesus experienced all of these things as he lived a non PC (Performance Careful) life.

Question: How much do the values of others encroach on you and conform/ mould you to something God does not want you to be?

Barry Pearman

Image: Creative Commons

Guest Blog: Passion, God and Franz Marc

I am in a season of change. Within three months I’ve resigned as a banker and resigned as a Church volunteer in Chaplaincy for Mental Health.

Wow! Big changes! I’ve also discovered a passion. I live and breathe Art.

Life is beautiful. The world is a potential canvas and I see nature in a detail never noticed before.

Van Gogh was my favourite artist until I found a new love. Franz Marc, the German Expressionist. How could I have lived till 47 without knowing Franz Marc and his Yellow Cow.

So 2011 brings big but positive changes. I have discovered I am a person of passion. I have discovered new life. I am becoming the person God wants me to be. I am alive.

Jesus came to bring new life. He tells us in Chapter 10 of John that he is the gate through which the sheep come in to rest and have life.

“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” John 10:10. (ASV)

At first I felt a little guilty about indulging a possibly selfish passion. But it’s how I am wired. Being me including this passion is spilling over into all my life. I want others to have abundant life, to be the person God wired them to be. I’m excited about this abundant life.

I want to share the good news, that God is merciful, loving and has raised us from death to life as in Ephesians 2. It’s my new informal ministry and who knows where the Spirit of God will take me?

With support and prayer from people who love me dearly, God has helped me heal from being a shut down person to a person of passion.

There is a flip side in that being alive means feeling all emotions more intensely, not just pleasure. Jesus prayed passionately in the Garden of Gethsemane for the Father to take the cup away from him. He felt the pain of the coming separation and pain and cried out passionately to the Father.

I have struggled with coming alive and leaving my shut-down comfort zone. All Moods are more intense including depression. For me depression can mean uncontrollable crying which has been a lesson in humility, especially in public.

My passion for art helps me express myself to God when words fail.

I am recovering and in a strange way through this feel closer to God and other people than before. In particular my husband and I have developed a new closeness. He has been so kind.

So I have new passion, new beginnings and Franz Marc. While there is a certain grief in the changes I am excited and curious to see what God will do next.

Janine Blackburn

Image: The Yellow Cow

Paul had a Contagious Dis - ease about him

One of the interesting features of this modern world is how communication has been sped up by the internet. The world is a much smaller place.

I can have relationships with people I have never met face to face across the whole face of the globe.

One of the activities I have involved myself in this year has been social networking via the Internet. I write a weekly blog, barrypearman.blogspot.com, which gets about 400 hits on it around every month from people from all over the world.

I Facebook, Tweet, and Google +1. I interact with a whole group of people that I would not normally connect with. Then what they do is to pass on to others what I might have written. The message spreads, it jumps from person to person, contagiously leaping around the world.

There is an internet phrase ‘viral communication’. It relates to an online video or article whose popularity spreads like a virus through links posted on websites and blogs and in forwarded e-mails.

You see it, like it, and pass it on to your friends, then they do the same, and on and on it goes.

Here is an example

This particular video has had 14 million views on the internet website Youtube, but it has also been shown on TV. I just wonder how many people have actually seen it.

For something to go Viral one commentator says three things are needed.

1. simple - It should engage people quickly

2. new - Viewers should not have seen it before.

3. good - High quality is more compelling.

In the book ’33 Million People in the Room’ Juliette Powell adds that social networking, to be contagious, needs to authentic.

4. Authentic – it must be real, not phony, fake, pretending to be something that it’s not.

You are also part of a Social Network. You might not be on the internet, but others influence you in so many different ways. You have neighbours, you have work colleagues, you have friends, you have enemies, you have people watching you and seeing how you, as a Jesus follower, respond to different situations.

Is the message you’re giving simple, new, good and authentic?

We have been looking at the book of Philippians and today we come to a section where Paul, a keen social networker, updates us with his status.

12 I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, ¹³so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; ¹⁴and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. Philippians 1:12 -14

Paul has got a viral message that is contagious. It’s simple, its new, its good and it’s authentic.

Want to read more ...? click here

Barry Pearman

Image: Free Digital Images

4. Release what is good! *

I love good conversations. The ones where we speak words of life into each other. That energizes the tired battered soul. That stir’s up the flickering embers of life. For most conversations however they are a mix of ‘try harder’, ‘fix what is wrong’ and ‘get more’. All requiring me to do or be something which is impossible in my own strength.

‘Encouragement is oxygen to the soul’ (George M. Adams). Like a whisper of oxygen on a dying flame come our words and deeds of love.

When we ask Jesus into our lives he actually does come in. He doesn’t just come and go, waiting for more effort on our behalf, to get things right, to desire him more. He is living within us. We are a new creation, we have Spirit living within us. We have a new heart.

Because of Christ and his unfathomable love for us we now have a New Purity, New Identity, New Power and a New Disposition. I will cover these more in later blogs.

To nourish and cause this new life in me to grow and mature I need others around me to speak encouragement in my soul. This is true connecting. Conversations where I can look bad in the face of love. Where I am welcomed, warts and all. Where there is no pressure to change, but there is an invite to journey with a few safe others.

I have a friend who has been dubbed ‘The Computer Whisperer’. He seems to have this incredible ability to bring dead and dying computers back to life. He listens to them, whispers some deep wisdom into their hard drives, and brings them back to life.

Spiritual Transformation is not that hard. It requires a few close safe friends, where you can be honest, vulnerable, authentic and held. They pour life into you and then you pour life into them. They tap into the ‘good’ that Jesus has placed in you and draw it out like the Living Water Jesus promised to give us. They bring it to the surface and enjoy. Then you do the same for them.

Spirit dances a jig. Jesus, in his divine humanness, is worshipped, Daddy throws a party. All are welcome to dance!

Barry Pearman

*In this 4 part series I will be looking at Four approaches to Spiritual Transformation from Connecting by Dr. Larry Crabb and Revolution Within by Dwight Edwards.

Image: Free Digital Images

Guest Blog: A Psalm for Living

21 years ago, I crashed and burned, severely depressed, even suicidal, burnt out – ending up with what is called Bipolar Disorder. God is in the business of ‘restoring souls’ – our innermost being/who we are. The apologist Ravi Zacharias puts it this way, ‘We ARE a soul; we HAVE a body.’

Psalm 23 is so often read at funerals for comfort, it’s actually a Psalm for living. It starts, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul.” Psalm 23:1-3

God/Jesus is MY shepherd. It’s personal. He looks after me. It’s a relationship. I’ve learned that when I let Him lead, life is a whole heap better, and what I’m doing is in His will – His best for me.

He made me “lie down” and rest “in green pastures”; “sitting beside the quiet stream” as one translation puts it. It’s amazing how therapeutic being beside a waterfall, river, or at a beach is.

Verse 4 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me”. The “valley” is where the grass is the greenest. It’s not death, but “the shadow of death”.

Last year, a phrase in a song played on Radio Rhema meant a lot to me, ‘The shadow proves the sunshine’. In Jesus’ case, it meant to me that He was with me – ‘The shadow proves the SONshine’.

I learnt the hard way, that Bible verses can’t be used as a chant or mantra, which is what I did on the way to work each morning with Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”

That was contrary to what Jesus said in John 15:5, “...apart from Me you can do nothing.” I came to understand that it really meant ‘I CANNOT do anything – unless He GIVES me the strength.’

I had to learn again to look after myself – eat properly, get proper sleep, take proper breaks, have a holiday, have fun times/laughter, not to be a people-pleaser (that it’s OK to say ‘No’), have time with people, time alone, do things for others (getting paid for it sure helped my self-esteem/self- worth) – so becoming again a fully-functional member of society.

Isaiah 45:3 meant a lot, “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.”

I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but there are a lot of things I have learned that I probably not have learned by any other way. The Bible, God’s Word, has really come alive. I couldn’t go through that time of “darkness” quickly, as there were things that I had to learn in the “secret places”, and gain “the treasures” there.

Malcolm Dixon

Image: Naked Pastor