Category Archives: stress

depression, Pastoral Office, shut-ins, stress

Making Calls

5 Comments

In my experience, one of the most difficult things for people to understand is why making calls (shut-in, prison, hospital, etc) are so difficult for someone suffering from depression and/or anxiety.

Why should it be hard? It’s one on one. They’re happy to see you (generally). It doesn’t usually take more than half an hour. For what most people see, this should be one of the things the depressed pastor should be able to handle.

Here is why it’s one of the hardest:

  • It is one on one focused conversation. This requires energy. Often they are in pain, or lonely, or depressed themselves. That makes it so that these visits are high energy right off the bat.
  • Because of this, they are profoundly draining. For myself, one shut-in call wipes me out for half a day. A visit to a prison takes about two days to recover from, and hospitals are in between. Mileage may vary on this, but that has been my consistent experience on the post-disability side of depression.
  • Pastors often serve as the sole source of information in regular calls. This isn’t part of being a pastor, but it is often the sad reality. Many shutins have very few visitors. So they want news, gossip, talk about the weather, their family, your family, everyone else’s family at church that they know. This, too, can be draining.
  • Because many people are sad, lonely or depressed, it hits the pastor where he lives. For myself, I am much more sympathetic to people’s trials and lives than I used to be. So when I hear of the sorrows of my flock, it hurts me. I’m not saying this because I don’t want to know. I do want to know. But being a pastor, caring for your sheep, is deeply personal and emotionally painful.

That’s why these calls are so hard. But there is good news. The good news is that it does slowly get better as you recover (see your doctor, take your medicine, find a good therapist, go to your confessor). The good news is that it is not about you, but about Christ and the medicine He brings. Some of the secondary things may not go as quickly as you wish. Don’t worry about it. Christ will take care of them, and He will use you as you are able, not as you want. Your suffering is for them as much as it is for you.

Also the good news is that you can ask for help. Tell your parish what is going on. Get your elders to visit. Get a tape program going so that others see them. Anything you can do to increase parish contact will make your own visits easier, because less of the burden will be on you.

Finally, you can only do what you can do. If you can’t see someone, you can’t. It’s that simple. This is good news. Don’t beat yourself up over things which you have no control over.

Anyway, pray for me as I try to make calls. You are all in my prayers along the journey as well.

-DMR

depression, Pastoral Office, shut-ins, stress

Making Calls

5 Comments

In my experience, one of the most difficult things for people to understand is why making calls (shut-in, prison, hospital, etc) are so difficult for someone suffering from depression and/or anxiety.

Why should it be hard? It’s one on one. They’re happy to see you (generally). It doesn’t usually take more than half an hour. For what most people see, this should be one of the things the depressed pastor should be able to handle.

Here is why it’s one of the hardest:

  • It is one on one focused conversation. This requires energy. Often they are in pain, or lonely, or depressed themselves. That makes it so that these visits are high energy right off the bat.
  • Because of this, they are profoundly draining. For myself, one shut-in call wipes me out for half a day. A visit to a prison takes about two days to recover from, and hospitals are in between. Mileage may vary on this, but that has been my consistent experience on the post-disability side of depression.
  • Pastors often serve as the sole source of information in regular calls. This isn’t part of being a pastor, but it is often the sad reality. Many shutins have very few visitors. So they want news, gossip, talk about the weather, their family, your family, everyone else’s family at church that they know. This, too, can be draining.
  • Because many people are sad, lonely or depressed, it hits the pastor where he lives. For myself, I am much more sympathetic to people’s trials and lives than I used to be. So when I hear of the sorrows of my flock, it hurts me. I’m not saying this because I don’t want to know. I do want to know. But being a pastor, caring for your sheep, is deeply personal and emotionally painful.

That’s why these calls are so hard. But there is good news. The good news is that it does slowly get better as you recover (see your doctor, take your medicine, find a good therapist, go to your confessor). The good news is that it is not about you, but about Christ and the medicine He brings. Some of the secondary things may not go as quickly as you wish. Don’t worry about it. Christ will take care of them, and He will use you as you are able, not as you want. Your suffering is for them as much as it is for you.

Also the good news is that you can ask for help. Tell your parish what is going on. Get your elders to visit. Get a tape program going so that others see them. Anything you can do to increase parish contact will make your own visits easier, because less of the burden will be on you.

Finally, you can only do what you can do. If you can’t see someone, you can’t. It’s that simple. This is good news. Don’t beat yourself up over things which you have no control over.

Anyway, pray for me as I try to make calls. You are all in my prayers along the journey as well.

-DMR

depression, family, Pastoral Office, stress

Do Pastors Relax?

4 Comments


Do pastors relax? There is a grand question. Many pastors work 80+ hours a week, even down to cutting the grass for the church, janitorial services, and a host of non-pastoral or quasi-pastoral tasks. Why do we do this to ourselves? Family has little room in such a life. Friends exist only on the internet. Time for personal recharging and reflection will certainly be at the bottom of the heap. We can easily look at life as one long series of obligations (and failures), and that all we do is try to keep our heads above water. I once had a pastor tell me that we (meaning pastors) measure our day not by the mistakes we make, but by the number of things we didn’t get done.

I certainly have lived that life, and continue to struggle with it every day. Guilt is a powerful thing, and none of us will ever fulfill our vocations completely (see the Ten Commandments).

All of this brings me back to my original question: Do pastors relax? And if they do, how?

One thing that really is critical for pastors and relaxation (and this may sound a little silly) is that often it has to be scheduled. I live by my calendar. If it isn’t on the calendar, or on the “task list,” it simply isn’t going to happen. If I do this, it is much more likely that I will take the time to sit back and relax. Golf. Tennis. Cards. Brewing Beer. Drinking tea by the lake. Whatever it is.

Of course, the danger with scheduling relaxation is making it become another obligation, something you MUST do can become a chore in no time. It’s a delicate balance.

Is it worth it? YES!

Is it a hard habit to form. YES!

Can you do it? YES!

Talk with your spouse about it if you’re married. It will help across the board in dealing with people, church, home, and the like.

So how do you relax?

-DMR

depression, family, shut-ins, stimulation, stress

Reentry Blues

2 Comments


Sorry about that two month hiatus there. If it is any consolation, in the words of Larry Nelson, “You’ve always been on my mind.”

I’m now several months into “reentry” and things are mostly good, but with definite bumps along the way. One plus for you longer time readers is that I have a draft of the book done. We’ll see where it goes from here. But that consumed a lot of my time this spring. Now I just have to get it to make sense…

For the most part reentry has gone well. We’ve done a couple vacations. I’m trying to get back into the swing of pastoral life juggled with family life. It’s okay. Here are a few observations that do come to my mind:

  • The things that bothered me on disability still bother me, e.g. overstimulus, stress, time with too many people, and so forth. That has not gone away. I’m learning how to manage it better, but it is still a long road.
  • Family time really has to be deliberate and planned. If it isn’t, I’m much more likely to simply bail out.
  • “A man has to know his limitations,” in the words of Clint Eastwood. I am very tempted to take on new and more projects, and to get right back to where I started. It’s my nature to be the superpastor, and while I’m working on that, it is very hard for me.
  • Time in the Scriptures and in prayer is easier now, but still not an unconscious habit of my daily life. Maybe its energy. Maybe there are still spiritual matters that have yet to be resolved. I’m not sure. But this is an ongoing challenge for me, as it is for most pastors.

So there you have it. I hope to be back to posting more regularly now. If you have any topics you would like to see covered, let me know and I’ll take a stab at it.

-DMR

depression, stimulation, stress

Globalizing

6 Comments


I am having a bad week. Not a “I’m gonna die so just shoot me now” bad week. Just a bad week. Some things have happened that I don’t like, and while at one level I’ve “handled” them pretty well, made good decisions involving my own health, etc., it has not changed the fact that the fog has rolled in much more than I would like. I feel like I’m in slow moving quicksand, and I’m afraid of a relapse. I don’t want to go back to where I was even a month ago. I want to move forward, but I’m afraid.

This is what we might call Globalizing: taking an isolated event or time period, and extrapolating a whole series of future events that all work off the worst possible construction theory. Now everyone is susceptible to this. Everyone has their moments of despair and when you can’t see the future.

For one suffering from depression, globalizing is, well, more like solarsystemizing.

Instead of thinking of the stead progress that (by God’s grace) I have made over the last six months, I simply catapult back to the worst, the foggiest moments of my illness. It’s absurd. It goes against all of God’s promises for health and healing. It discounts medication, therapy, a supportive family, supportive pastor, and everything else good that has happened to me in the last year.

Yet it is how I feel. It is what I dread. My mind and body tell me that I am going to fall all the way back a year or more.

Is it true?

NO. It’s not true. I’m having some bad days. That’s all it is.

So what do you do when you’re slumping? You do what you know has helped you in the past. Here are a few of mine, but I’m sure you have your own list.

  • Get outside.
  • Golf
  • Work in the shop
  • Play chess or some other game (cards) that engages your brain elsewhere.
  • Spend quality time with your spouse.
  • Have some quiet, but don’t isolate yourself.
  • Pray

Those are a few. God’s peace be with you.

-DMR

psychology, stress, therapy

Going bananas over cognitive reframing

1 Comment

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. -Proverbs 23:7


cognitive therapy
n.

A form of psychotherapy using imagery, self-instruction, and related techniques to alter distorted attitudes and perceptions.

Cognitive reframing is a type of cognitive therapy where the basic premise is this: as you think about yourself, so you are. So the question basically is this: can you rethink how you view your world, and particularly the stressors or other events in your life so that you can handle them?

First the theological question. How does this jive with a biblical view of original sin? The problem with most psychological theories is that they begin with the false premise that man is either inherently good or morally neutral. This is why psychotherapy methods based on the works of Jung or Freud are inherently suspiscious, if not flawed from the start. Neither of these jive with a biblical view of human nature.

Cognitive reframing, however, works not with underlying questions or good and evil, but with the question of behavior. When certain events occur in your life, it has a physiological and psychological effect upon you. The high from a great run. The low from getting fired. A family meal. A friend or family member dying, or even simply moving away. Sex. All of these and more clearly have both mental and physical aspects to them.

That really is at the foundation of understanding many aspects of depression. Depression is a mental illness that has physical manifestations. Furthermore, one suffering from depression can have “trigger” events that will send them into a mental and physical tailspin. Stress. Family. Work. A combination. Particular parts of work or family life. You get the idea.

The premise behind cognitive reframing is how we view these events mentally will shape our mental outlook as well as our physical outlook to things. No, this is not some Zig Zigler type motivational nonsense (you may see Little Miss Sunshine for a great parody on that). What cognitive reframing teaches us is that we can change our mental outlook on things, just as a good counselor or psychologist can.

My counselor tells me that they could raise my body temperature by several degrees just by talking to me about heat in great detail. If this is true, is it so hard to believe that we can reframe how we look at things?

For me, we’re talking about stress. Stress triggers a mental and physical overload, so that I cannot function. I may know at some level that I’ll be fine, I’ll handle it, and that there is a future. But my mind and my body is telling me otherwise. My brain gets foggy. I can’t think. I can hardly move or listen. In really bad cases, it probably isn’t safe for me to drive.

But what if I can think of these trigger events differently? What if instead of looking at them as “stressful” I look at them as “pickles” or “opportunities” or “bananas”? Crazy? Maybe. But try it. Consistenly try it. It works.

Think through the events that drag you down, that make you crazy, that turn you into that zomebie or down that deep, dark hole. Come up with a word for those events that are absurd. Take the fear out of them, and with it, you will find that over time, events that terrified you or filled you with dread will come back to the realm of normalcy, or at least a whole lot closer.

Here is one link to cognitive reframing I found interesting. There are others I’m sure.

-DMR

psychology, stress, therapy

Going bananas over cognitive reframing

1 Comment

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. -Proverbs 23:7


cognitive therapy
n.

A form of psychotherapy using imagery, self-instruction, and related techniques to alter distorted attitudes and perceptions.

Cognitive reframing is a type of cognitive therapy where the basic premise is this: as you think about yourself, so you are. So the question basically is this: can you rethink how you view your world, and particularly the stressors or other events in your life so that you can handle them?

First the theological question. How does this jive with a biblical view of original sin? The problem with most psychological theories is that they begin with the false premise that man is either inherently good or morally neutral. This is why psychotherapy methods based on the works of Jung or Freud are inherently suspiscious, if not flawed from the start. Neither of these jive with a biblical view of human nature.

Cognitive reframing, however, works not with underlying questions or good and evil, but with the question of behavior. When certain events occur in your life, it has a physiological and psychological effect upon you. The high from a great run. The low from getting fired. A family meal. A friend or family member dying, or even simply moving away. Sex. All of these and more clearly have both mental and physical aspects to them.

That really is at the foundation of understanding many aspects of depression. Depression is a mental illness that has physical manifestations. Furthermore, one suffering from depression can have “trigger” events that will send them into a mental and physical tailspin. Stress. Family. Work. A combination. Particular parts of work or family life. You get the idea.

The premise behind cognitive reframing is how we view these events mentally will shape our mental outlook as well as our physical outlook to things. No, this is not some Zig Zigler type motivational nonsense (you may see Little Miss Sunshine for a great parody on that). What cognitive reframing teaches us is that we can change our mental outlook on things, just as a good counselor or psychologist can.

My counselor tells me that they could raise my body temperature by several degrees just by talking to me about heat in great detail. If this is true, is it so hard to believe that we can reframe how we look at things?

For me, we’re talking about stress. Stress triggers a mental and physical overload, so that I cannot function. I may know at some level that I’ll be fine, I’ll handle it, and that there is a future. But my mind and my body is telling me otherwise. My brain gets foggy. I can’t think. I can hardly move or listen. In really bad cases, it probably isn’t safe for me to drive.

But what if I can think of these trigger events differently? What if instead of looking at them as “stressful” I look at them as “pickles” or “opportunities” or “bananas”? Crazy? Maybe. But try it. Consistenly try it. It works.

Think through the events that drag you down, that make you crazy, that turn you into that zomebie or down that deep, dark hole. Come up with a word for those events that are absurd. Take the fear out of them, and with it, you will find that over time, events that terrified you or filled you with dread will come back to the realm of normalcy, or at least a whole lot closer.

Here is one link to cognitive reframing I found interesting. There are others I’m sure.

-DMR