Jollyblogger is so timely with things I’m thinking about and so prolific in his dissemination of them, he never gives me enough time to just come up with a post on my own. I’m always having to respond to something he says. Right now, it’s late, I’m done blogging, but I just can’t resist weighing in on his latest series, On Christian Counselling II, Can Depression Every Be A Good Thing. This is a subject which is very dear to my heart, since I am a “melancholy” and have struggled with the competing notions of melancholy vs. depression for much of my life up until I was about 30. Then, it just all seemed to make sense to me. For a brief history of how I came to this conclusion, read here.

Nevertheless, some time ago I had made a comment on Adrian Warnock’s blog that a man named Phil read just a couple of weeks ago and took the time to ask me about. He asked me what difference did I see between melancholy and depression. Here is the text of our conversation:

[Phil:] May i ask about your…distinction of disposition from depression found on Adrian Warnock’s evangelical blog’s comment page? What follows from this, do you think, in terms of understanding and treating the suffering produced by either? And why do you say evangelicals get it wrong?

[My response (with some recent clarifications):] Well, let me start by saying I’m not qualified to give psychological advice. I have some opinions about the subject, borne out of my own experiences, but that’s as far as it goes. Having said this,

My own experience as a ‚Äúmelancholy‚Äù made me see that my disposition isn‚Äôt really going to change. I just see the world from a dark point of view. I‚Äôm not an optimist. But, that doesn‚Äôt mean I‚Äôm always depressed. For me, I‚Äôve found that while melancholy is a way of looking at the world, depression is an emotional response to my expectations of the circumstances of life. Meaning, I expect things to go my way, but when they don‚Äôt, my response is to get depressed. It is a function of my human inability to fulfill my will, and while it’s is a perfectly natural response to my relative powerlessness, it is one based upon a faulty view of the world. What I realized is that my expecations were what was the problem, not my depression. Once I started to change my expectation level (primarily by realizing that I am not owed anything in this life), then depression stopped happening. In fact, I don‚Äôt really get depressed much anymore, and when I do, my first instinct is to check what were my expectations. Almost always I find that therein lies my answer. Once I correct my expecation level, my depression goes away.

That doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time, though. I still remain a melancholy, depressed or not depressed. This might seem paradoxical, but it isn‚Äôt, since as I said in my comment on Dr. Warnock‚Äôs blog, depression is an emotion, but melancholy is a disposition. Some people are optimistic, some people aren‚Äôt. Some people don‚Äôt think either way about a thing. Those are dispositions, whereas emotions are mental responses to circumstances that are laid on top of that dispositional foundation. So, when things go bad for an optimist, depending upon how they have trained themselves to respond to emotional disturbances, they may respond by working harder, and trying to be optimistic, or they may fall terribly hard (worse than I would, lets say) because they have no mindset to see the world from a darker point of view.

I think evangelicals miss the mark on this issue because they give emotions more prominence than they deserve, I think, and I don’t. I see emotions a products of a wide variety of variables – some chemical, some circumstantial. And since as Christians, we are to be governed by our minds, not our emotions, I view emotions as transiences and ephemerals, and thus I consider them less important that what I think in my mind. Because of this belief, I have made an aphorism for myself: “Emotions are the sky above my head, not the earth beneath my feet.”

What I know about God is what is supposed to govern my response to either chemical or circumstantial variables. But, it takes training to detach oneself enough to view one‚Äôs emotional state objectively. Lots of it. It’s something you have to work at. But, I‚Äôm convinced that a person can be successful at it. All that to say, since many evangelicals believe that emotions are not ephemerals, but rather foundational states of the mind, they often think that it is godliness to be happy, and sin to be depressed. When, in my opinion, neither is true. Emotions are just what they are. As C.S.Lewis said : ‚ÄúFeelings come and go, and when they come a good use can be made of them: they cannot be our regular spiritual diet.” That’s what I think evangelicals are missing about emotions. They make them their regular spiritual diet, not a side dish. Some side dishes we like, others we don’t, but I am actually convinced that all emotional side dishes are good for us. Depression can be very productive, and happiness is like dessert. But a person cannot live on dessert.

Now, in the many times I’ve had this conversation with people, they always bring up that a person’s mental chemistry can be extremely difficult to overcome. That is true. And I think sometimes, we may need medication to help us get a leg up, so to speak, because those chemical imbalances can sometimes be just too powerful. I also think that the less mental discipline we have in the first place, the more power those chemical imbalances will exert on our will.

But, I also believe that we blame chemical imbalances much more than they deserve credit for. Everyone is taking Prozac and Zoloft for what would have historically been considered mudane circumstances in life. But, I believe that our luxurious societies have made us soft to the harshness of the world, i.e., our expectations are high, our tolerances for disappointment low. So, while I believe there is a place for medications for people who are imbalanced (and there are those people), I think the rest of us have taken the easy road with anti-depressants, instead of modifying our expectation level to match the reality of the world. If John Nash of A Beautiful Mind can exercise enough mental discipline to discern whether or not the person he is seeing in front of him is a real person, or the figment of his schizophrenia, then you and I can exercise some measure of control over our depression. I think the answer is fairly simple: modify your expectations.

So, that’s my initial response to the Jollyblogger. Maybe next time I’ll get a chance to post something original first, although I doubt it.