DEALING WITH DEPRESSION AND LONELINESS

A primary symptom of depression is sadness. Freud, a sadly depressed man all through his life, admitted, “we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.” Our aging population now reaps the consequences of our seniors having few insights to cope with increasing bouts of sadness, depression and a sense of worthlessness. Perhaps our view of Christianity has been so strongly activist that when one can do very little, one’s citadel of faith also begins to dissolve. How different it is for those who do not put hope in their own stoicism or faith in their ability to increase their happiness, but who embrace a prayerful way of living, biblical meditation and Christian fellowship which leads to the emotions of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal.5:22-23). These are the gifts of God to us not self-achievement.

Depression can range from the universal feelings of sadness, to feelings of low mood, despondence, self-criticism, low-esteem, self-hate and anger. The Christian psychologist, Armand Nicholi, who taught at Harvard and I was privileged to meet, compared two great voices of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, notes that in their youth both were depressed. Lewis finally reconciled suffering with faith, but Freud never could do so. Lewis, after he came to Christian faith in his adult years, joy became a new reality and he eventually died serenely. Freud was in his seventies, faithless and melancholic all his life, when he welcomed death as a deliverer from a life full of miseries. He died by euthanasia administered by his doctor, having dreaded death all his life. Lewis found his identity not in himself but “in Christ”; he turned outward instead of inward. This changed his attitude to others, seeing them as destined to an eternal destiny, not just limited by their mortality to die.

To deal with depression we must take our personal emotions seriously. Many of us grew up in a culture that ignored or repressed our feelings. The depression of aging souls may be the long undisclosed burden of sins that were never confessed and never forgiven. Angry people are often those who have never had their stories heard in empathy. Need we be surprised then that an aging population will express more and more anger when sentiments and feelings were never allowed to be discussed, never exposed, never heard? The emotions of seniors should never remain bottled up, allowing them only to die in further bitterness. We need to reflect and live out from our inner lives how Christ has entered in to deliver us from shame, guilt and resentment.

If many seniors suffer depression because their own emotions are stifled for multiple reasons, then many others are sadly depressed because they feel so lonely. Lonely people find themselves incapable of establishing deep and lasting relationships. We have innumerable causes for feeling lonely, being misunderstood, falsely judged, envied, depressed, that are common to all of us. For some, being lonely is akin to helplessness for we fear being unloved and rejected by those we would welcome developing a friendship. Dejected and brooding, some lonely people mourn over a defeated self and we become paralyzed to reach out to others. Boredom spreads its anonymity and we no longer have any enthusiasm to take risks in social engagement. Yet loneliness can be a force for good. It can be reinterpreted as solitude where we can create an inner space for God, for the cultivation of a contemplative life. We realize that the real Christian is never alone for God is with us in Christ. We also belong to the family of God and we can meet one another in the community of faith. We also have an eternal destiny with the communion of saints in glory. Death is not the end of our story. It is this profound sense of belonging to God that makes all the difference in how we go on living. We see our life as given by God, not just a human series of achievements and failures. It has meaning beyond our decaying body of eternal value. We pray and contemplate more. We become more attached, not less, to loved ones and friends. We become more involved in the inner lives of others, to encourage, nurture and love them, taking more of an interest in them than in ourselves. We live more for the present day, with fewer fears about the future.

(This is a summary from A VISION FOR THE AGING CHURCH, by James Houston and Michael Parker.)