Episode 97: A Look at Depression and Anxiety Through the Lens of the Gospel

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Before I begin I want you to be aware that as we dive into specific diagnosis and talking about them, this is not considered therapy and is just informational. If you feel like you need help and support with anything I talk about today please reach out and get that support. 

In my therapy practice and in my coaching business, I use a modality called Mind Body Bridging. One of the things I love about teaching the skills from this modality is how seamlessly it translates into gospel terms. Today I want to show you how I use the terms in this modality to explain symptoms of depression and anxiety.

One of the main factors that sets this modality apart from others that are used in mental health is that the reason we all experience internal turmoil is because there is a system inside of you that causes it to occur. When this system is turned on, it can cause havoc physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally and socially. When it’s active inside of you it can cause you to feel physical tension in your body, feelings of shame and guilt, distant from God, affect your brain from functioning optimally and keep from from communicating well with others or even wanting to communicate at all. 

Spiritually speaking, this system inside you is called the natural man. We all have a natural man inside us. No one is exempt from this phenomenon and there isn’t anything actually wrong with you because you experience this system. If I had to write a job description for the natural man it would sound like this:

• Advocates for practices opposing God
• Works to convince you that you’re broken
• Approaches situations with perfect ideal requirements
• Collaborates with Satan on everything
• Plays a key part in creating agency in everyone
• Fosters a place for internal chaos to occur
• Reviews failures and shortcomings frequently
• Discovers insurmountable ways to fix your life
• Maintains regular spinning cluttered thoughts and body tension

What do you think? Does that sound like a system you want to be operating inside of you very frequently or for very long? I bet not! One thing to remember is that you can’t change the natural man’s job description. You can’t change how it operates. Trying to do that will cause even more turmoil in your life because you are opposing a natural phenomenon. What you want to focus on learning to do is putting it to sleep when it wakes up and understanding what wakes it up in the first place. That’s what I focus on when I teach Mind Body Bridging skills

Let’s dive a little further into how the natural man relates to depression and anxiety. Depression and Anxiety can also occur outside of the natural man and aren't necessarily always caused by the natural man. These diagnosis can occur genetically or because of experiences out of our control. The natural man will cause even more turmoil if it is activated AND you have these diagnosis. Other times the natural man wakes up and you can experience some of the same symptoms of depression and anxiety. Let me show you how this happens.

DEPRESSION

Remember one of the descriptions of the natural man's job description is to work to convince you that you are broken? This means that anytime the natural man is awake you will be experiencing one of the types of thoughts known in Mind Body Bridging as, depressor thoughts. These thoughts are just how they sound, depressing. They are not just negative thoughts though. They are thoughts that create a flood gate of other negative thoughts to be released and eventually convince you that there is something seriously broken about you. 

You are not broken simply because the natural man tells you that you are.

You, of course, are not perfect. You do have room for growth and have weaknesses that need worked on, but that does NOT mean you are broken. I like to use the following analogy of a garden to illustrate this. 

If you plant a seed in a garden and it doesn’t immediately produce a ripe juicy tomato would you say the garden is broken and you need to fix it? No. You would say the seed needs more time, nurturing, and looking out for potential things that can get in the way of its growth. You would even give the seed what it needed to grow and begin to produce fruit. But you would never blame the garden or say that the garden itself, it broken. You too have many seeds that are continually being planted inside of you that need time and nurturing to grow, but you are not broken. You need to give yourself what you need to in order to grow and become what Heavenly Father created you to be.

This is where the depressor thoughts come in to play. Depressor thoughts such as, you are a failure, you are a bad mom, or you are a lost cause. When the natural man spits out these depressor thoughts you can start to feel symptoms of depression like sadness, irritability, loss of energy, loss of desire, loss of hope, feelings of worthlessness, wanting to isolate. 

These are results of that system running a certain story in your mind and create an effect inside of you. They are thoughts that begin to affect you physically and emotionally as well. Hence the reason we call this Mind Body Bridging. The natural man affects your mind and your body and essentially your spirit as well. This is also where depression symptoms can be manifest or a depression diagnosis can be made worse and symptoms enhanced.

Anxiety

The second type of thought that the natural man creates is what Mind Body Bridging calls a fixer thought. If the natural man is sticking to its job description and you are listening and believing the thoughts it’s pumping out then you are going to feel like you are actually broken. When something is broken, what do you want to do? Fix it!  Then the natural man starts to do tell you all the actions you need to take in order to fix how broken you are. 

The problem with this logic is you are taking action on something that isn’t true in the first place. You aren’t broken! You will then spend a lot of time taking action on things that never actually fix something because nothing was ever broken in the first place. This can create feelings of overwhelm, stress, feeling restless, wound-up or on edge, a difficulty concentrating, trouble sleeping, nervousness, sweating, nausea and muscle tension.

The confusing part about fixer thoughts is they are sometimes good actions to take. The problem is you are taking the actions for the wrong reasons and you will never feel satisfied with those actions. Then the cycle begins and you experience another depressor thought. Which will bring up another fixer thought. We call this the depressor fixer cycle that fuels the identity system into staying awake.

You can imagine if you are in your natural man state and you get thrown back and forth between these two types of thoughts that would be very exhausted. This is not a place you want to stay for very long or too often. This is why I am so passionate about teaching these Mind Body Bridging skills to help you exit this cycle and return to your true divine self. When you do return to that state you are connected to God and can receive what He wants you to receive. Mind Body Bridging is the time and nurturing that you need to grow the seeds of confidence, faith, endurance, joy, and peace that God has planted inside of you.

My self-paced video course called the Connection Course actually walks you through the four mental health skills of mind body bridging in spiritual language. I called it the Connection Course because the natural man is what disconnects you from your true divine self, others and especially God. The tools you learn in the course show you how to reconnect to your true divine self, God’s power, and other people. This connection will help you lesson the symptoms of depression and anxiety regardless of their root cause. Click on the image below for more information and get started today on your journey to more peace of mind, confidence in who you really are and a connection to the enabling power of Christ.