The Depression Men Don't Talk About
Episode #296
Greg Miller
Is this idea of what were the family messages and the cultural messages that I was given, whether it's about depression or sadness or grief or anxiety. Any of those messages that we get as children will show up later, especially when we begin recovery. You know, if I've been acting out to medicate, kind of like what you said, Medicaid and avoid these emotions, or I've been acting out in order to generate and create emotions and I stop acting out.
Greg Miller
Then I also have to have a strategy to address whatever is going on with me emotionally, because that which I've been avoiding or trying to generate is just going to start surfacing.
Randy Evert
Welcome to the Faithful and True podcast. I'm Randy Evert, your co-host, and today we're going to have a podcast that features our usual host, Greg Miller, and today's special guest, Jim Farm, the director, the clinical director here at Faithful and True, Jim and Greg will be discussing the topic of depression, and you're sure to find this very informative as well as beneficial to you.
Randy Evert
So here now is Greg Miller and Jim Farm and the Faithful and True podcast.
Greg Miller
Well, welcome to the Faithful and True podcast. Today I have Jim Farm with me, the clinical director of Faithful and True. And today what we're going to be talking about is depression. And this is one of the things that we see a lot in the men with whom we work and what we also are aware of. It can show up in a variety of different ways.
Greg Miller
So let's just start with kind of the idea of what is the the relational or social reality of depression for men and culturally, what what do we believe about depression and men in our culture? Yeah.
Jim Farm
Well, I think one of the things to kind of just recognize on the front end of it, Greg, is, you know, like when you and I probably meet a man for the first time and if we ask them, hey, you ever been depressed or even the word anxious? And the majority of them would say no, but if you go, you ever felt on edge or, you know, hopeless.
Jim Farm
And more times than not, you'll get the answer. Yes at that point. So some men don't even recognize that they're depressed and or anxious for that, that matter. You know.
Greg Miller
I know for me, depression is incredibly complicated because in my family system, my mom struggled with depression and we never talked about it. We weren't allowed to acknowledge it. I mean, if it was, it was kind of whispery. And the way I experienced my mom's depression was so difficult and painful for me as a child that if somebody asked me if I'm depressed or even suggest that I'm depressed, I see it as an insult that in some way I am failing or I'm not doing something right, versus it just being an assessment of where I am.
Greg Miller
And I think for a lot of men, that kind of the cultural message that if you are depressed or you are struggling with depression, there should be something you could do differently or you're not doing something correctly.
Jim Farm
That's right. I think it's one of the things that we often see with men in particular, and just not men, but some women as well, is that, you know, if you show sadness or you show some of these more vulnerable emotions, you're somehow weak or defective or or not enough. And that's often modeled to us, especially as guys.
Jim Farm
I think more traditionally, I think men are doing a little bit better job nowadays with it. But. Right, you know, if if our father doesn't model that vulnerability from a little boy's perspective, that means, you know, if I do that, that's weak. Not only that, but I've often thought that what it sets it up for the relationship with mom, too.
Jim Farm
Because if I risk vulnerability with mom, and dad sees that now I'm risking rejection by dad, right?
Greg Miller
Well, and there can be messages, you know, that you're not supposed to be whiny, you're not supposed to complain. And sometimes in certain family systems, just acknowledging an emotion is seen as being needy or a bother or too much. And so we do learn some messages about keeping it to ourselves, stuffing it. I also think culturally there can be this message for both men and women about we're supposed to just suck it up and make things happen.
Greg Miller
I know for a lot of women, they have so many responsibilities both in and out of the home, and those tasks can be significant in those lists can be long. And so sometimes there's just this belief that I have got to keep going. And I know for a lot of men, they experience the same thing. They look at their work responsibilities, their home obligations and responsibilities, and it just feels like they have to keep on going.
Greg Miller
And so there can be a significant denial for people around their depression, or there can be this sense of the goal is not to give into it that, yeah, maybe I'm a little depressed, but I'm not supposed to acknowledge that or give in to it. I just got to keep doing what I need to get done.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. And it's and that can be a way of just coping with it too. You know, one of the things maybe we should talk about before we get going is just how prevalent this actually is. So people actually recognize that, you know, the majority of the time, most people will experience some form of depression in their lifetime, right?
Jim Farm
You know, and so it's just a matter of, you know, do we know how to work with that when it happens? You know, currently, I think, Greg, I think the current statistics say about 18% of the US population on a yearly basis experienced depression, 18%. Right. In the sex addiction field, this is with guys. And we know guys tend to underemployment.
Jim Farm
So the research currently shows that 40% of men who struggle with sex addiction also have depression. Yeah. And that's that's more likely underreported.
Greg Miller
Absolutely. Well, because for a lot of men, they may identify that they're depressed, but they don't want to name it. But for other men, they may actually be depressed or struggling with depression, but because of what they believe about it, they're not willing to acknowledge it or know that it's existed. You know, for some men, depression shows up as fatigue.
Greg Miller
They're lethargic, they don't have energy. And I talked to a lot of men that have, like the Sunday night malaise or the Sunday night melancholy or the Sunday night dread as they think about having to engage the next week. And that may be that fatigue, that melancholy, that may be a form of depression. Another way the depression can show up is just apathy.
Greg Miller
Things that you used to care about, you no longer care about, or maybe you don't care about as much. Or maybe there were certain things that you were investing a lot of energy in. They were very important to you. Maybe it was a hobby that really, at one point brought you a lot of enjoyment, and now you don't care about it so much.
Greg Miller
So apathy can be another way that I think depression shows up. And then I think another way is just the sadness and grief. And that typically is what we associate with depression. And we just feel sad about things. We we don't feel happy, we don't have access to our joy. And so that could be another way that a man is experiencing it.
Greg Miller
But if he's not given permission to acknowledge it, both in his relationships or in his culture, it makes perfect sense. He's not looking for these things.
Jim Farm
That's right, that's right. I think, you know, one of the ways of I often looked at this sometimes is I always kind of described, do I have the Elijah depression, you know, from the Book of Kings where, you know, Elijah's, you know, said to be in the fetal position, not wanting to get up, not wanting to eat, not wanting to drink, no motivation, no energy.
Jim Farm
All those typical signs that you would see, you know, think of a depressed person. And, you know, I just kind of went through the DSM five symptoms for a little bit. But I've also said, you know, specifically a lot of times for men, you have kind of that Paul depression, you know, we go to First Corinthians where it says, you know, Paul says I was despaired even to life, which kind of gave me the start.
Jim Farm
I mean, it's Paul had suicidal thoughts, right? You know what I mean? And we never think of Paul's depressed because he's so active. He's always doing it seems like he's always doing something well.
Greg Miller
And he's also talking about no matter what's coming his way, that there is hope in that, that it doesn't matter if he's experienced prison or injury or rejection, you know, that he can overcome that. And I think language like that can many times hide this depression that you're talking about, where there is this resilience in us sometimes, but it actually hides the deeper thing that is going on where we are feeling apathetic or we are feeling degree for sadness, or we are feeling the fatigue, but we just push through it.
Jim Farm
That's right. And I think one of those other signs that often hide the depression is this anger, irritability. You know, we see a lot of men that are angry men, you know, and when you really get underneath it, that anger is really a shield for a lot of sadness. And.
Greg Miller
Right. Well, you know, what's interesting is one of the stages of grief. And I've never really liked that because stages make it sound like it's an order. But one of the aspects of grief is the anger stage or the anger aspect. And there probably are a lot of men that get into this place of grief and sadness and that feels too passive.
Greg Miller
They don't like this idea that their energy is being drained, and so they turn it into anger, which gives them more energy. You know, one of the things I talk about at the workshop is I think there's two kinds of emotions. There are those emotions that drain us of energy, and then there are those emotions that give us energy.
Greg Miller
And the ones that give us energy typically activate adrenaline. So excitement, eager eagerness, anger, even anxiety those things generate energy. But the reality is, if I don't like that part of me that feels fatigue, that drains the energy, then I'm going to switch it to something else. And I think you're right. For a lot of men, you know, ultimately what they're dealing with is depression.
Greg Miller
But how it shows up is in anger.
Jim Farm
That's right, that's right. And I think, you know, one of the other things to think about too is, you know, sometimes this we've kind of wonder, well, you know, is the depression leading to the addiction or is the addiction leading to the depression. And I would suggest it's probably both.
Greg Miller
Absolutely.
Jim Farm
That, you know, maybe the depression was their first. And I learned to cope with the addiction, which just reinforced the depression. Right. But one of the things we run into is you're aware of is sometimes, you know, if clients have gone to a therapist and they try to deal with the depression before the addiction, you see what ends up happening is that guy can become very hopeless pretty quickly because you're not dealing with the medication.
Jim Farm
So in the long run, it's not going to get much better for him. Absolutely. Because he's not actually dealing with the pain that led to the depression. First.
Greg Miller
You know, one of the things that we talk about at the workshop is this idea that for a lot of men, I believe they're acting out is their depression medication, because one of the neurochemicals of sexuality is adrenaline. So if I am feeling fatigue, if I am feeling apathetic, if there aren't things that energize me and bring me life, then it's very easy for me then to use the energy and the adrenaline of sexuality to bring me out of that depressed place.
Greg Miller
You know, I want to go back to what you were talking about with Elijah and Paul. You know, what's true is many times we only see something when it's in the extreme. And so if someone literally is having difficulty getting off the floor or if somebody is in some way despairing to the point of wanting to end their life, then maybe they can see it more easily.
Greg Miller
But the reality is, and those who have been to the workshop know this about me. I love a continuum, and I think most truth can be found on a continuum, so you don't have to be on a scale of 1 to 10. If ten is, I can't get off the floor like Eliza. I don't have to be at a tend to be depressed.
Greg Miller
I may be at a solid five. That's right. And the way it shows up is apathy. It may be having difficulty getting out of bed. One of the ways that many times our depression shows up is a fatigue where we want to sleep, where, you know, we we struggle when that alarm goes off. And it has to do with not being able to engage our lives and in fact, our lives feel overwhelming.
Greg Miller
And so therefore we want to retreat either in sleep or in some other form.
Jim Farm
Yeah, well, I'm glad that you said that because, you know, if you go back to this diagnostic statistical manual that we use to diagnose people which were not really fond of, we understand the basis behind it. But, you know, if you look at depression, you have major depressive disorder, you know, the old diagnosis of dysthymia, that's one or the other.
Jim Farm
And so I really like what you just said. I think it's much more helpful to kind of say, where are you on the continuum rather than you have this diagnosis or you have that diagnosis?
Greg Miller
Well, and I don't know if this is accurate. And my belief and even my experience is I wonder if depression isn't one emotion, but depression is kind of a puree of a variety of different emotions that I really haven't processed individually. So they just become like this sludge that sits in my soul and so it can show up as apathy.
Greg Miller
But maybe it's unprocessed grief, maybe it's unprocessed anger, maybe it's unprocessed hurt or anxiety or fear. And because I've not been engaging those when I'm experiencing them, I've just been stuffing them. Eventually it just becomes this puree of unprocessed emotions that really keep me from moving forward. And I do think that there are a variety of different ways to address it.
Greg Miller
And one of them can be to really look at what is this about for me, if there's hurt, what is the hurt about? If there's anger, what is the anger about? And getting some community or a therapist that can help you process that I think can be really helpful. I also want to just acknowledge that there are times when medications are a part of the solution.
Greg Miller
You know, one of the things I believe about medication is if kind of I'm under water emotionally, whether it's my anxiety, my ADHD, my fear, my depression, sometimes I need the support of medication to help create enough balance so that I could begin to deal with whatever it is that maybe originating or formulating the depression I'm experiencing.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah, that's right. I know that's a controversial thing for a lot of folks. But you know, we know it's helpful for sure. And I think the one thing that you kind of mentioned is, you know, all these different support things for depression. And I think it is important that we talk about that, because sometimes what'll happen is we take the, you know, a guy gets sober, you know, we take away his busyness, all of the distractions.
Jim Farm
But if he doesn't have any resources now, he's going to fulfill the full extent of his pain, which can be actually pretty scary at times. And we do know, you know, that men tend to commit suicide at about four times the rate, you know, right, as as women do. And so it can be one of those things we want to make sure that, you know, people have resources before, you know, not necessarily given anybody an excuse for an addiction or anything like that, but as a provider or even as a family member, recognizing that if we're going to, you know, work with someone through recovery, do they have their resources available to, to be able
Jim Farm
to deal with what's left over?
Greg Miller
Right. Yeah. What surfaces you know, the way I talk about despair. Despair isn't when things are bad. It's when things are bad and we can't imagine them ever getting better. And I had a seminary professor that talked about hopelessness isn't the absence of hope. It's when you can't remember what hope is. And so that's one of the ways that depression shows up.
Greg Miller
Is it tips over into that despair or hopelessness place. And that really is something really significant to pay attention to, both within ourselves and maybe other men that are in our community. You know, sometimes we may be in relationship with someone who is in that place of hopelessness and despair, and yet they are so good at hiding it.
Greg Miller
We may not be aware of it. You know, one of the things that is true is sometimes the things that are going on in me leak out. And so if somebody is paying attention, maybe they can sense that, maybe they can become aware of it. What's also true is especially for those of us, those of us who grew up hiding, we are really good at hiding.
Greg Miller
And we know of situations where you know someone who is a good friend may commit suicide, or someone was in my community and people are surprised by that. And one of the things that we can easily go into is some guilt or shame of, how did I miss this? How did I not know this was going on? But what's also true is people can be really good at hiding those things.
Greg Miller
And so maybe part of the way that we can engage people in our lives when we are concerned is to move beyond just how are you feeling the kind of asking questions about how are you living, you know, do you have difficulty getting out of bed in the morning? Do you have do you struggle getting excited about things, ask questions about their hobbies, ask questions about their community because there can be other factors that we can maybe attune to that will give us some insight into maybe what's going on.
Greg Miller
And I would say that the way that it works, I think in many cases is if I'm depressed, I isolate, and if I isolate, that enhances my depression. And so if we're aware of people who are kind of removing themselves from their community, their relationships, that's something for us to be aware of and pay attention to.
Jim Farm
Yeah, I think that's one of the bigger factors is, you know, having to go through something difficult and, you know, with the depression, it just amplifies the isolation and shame because you don't have some of that energy and then you isolate and just more feelings of loneliness. I don't have friends, things like that, that just kind of gets reinforced, you know.
Jim Farm
But I think it, you know, we've talked about this before, you know, and I've heard you said this at the workshop, you know, in order to really start to move through the depression is I have to feel it in order to heal it, you know.
Greg Miller
Right. And even, you know, we're using a label depression. What can be true is I don't have to identify it to begin to experience it. And so even if a man is out there and you know, he wouldn't necessarily say that he is depressed, what I always encourage men to do is to move towards whatever it is that they are avoiding.
Greg Miller
And so maybe you would call it apathy. Maybe you would call it grief, maybe you would call it sadness. But to be able to say, okay, instead of just accommodating this or this or trying to bypass this kind of the image we talk about is I move towards, I move through, I move beyond. And one of the best ways to do that is when I I'm in community and others can go with me on that journey.
Greg Miller
And we kind of began this conversation with this, but I want to go back to it because I think it's is this idea of what were the family messages and the cultural messages that I was given, whether it's about depression or sadness or grief or anxiety, any of those messages that we get as children will show up later, especially when we begin recovery.
Greg Miller
You know, if I've been acting out to medicate, kind of like what you said, Medicaid and avoid these emotions, or I've been acting out in order to generate and create emotions and I stop acting out. Then I also have to have a strategy to address whatever is going on with me emotionally, because that which I've been avoiding or trying to generate is just going to start surfacing.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things that, you know, we, we I think when we think about difficult emotions or painful emotions, our natural instinct is to avoid it. Just like if it was something that was physically painful, we wouldn't want to deal with it, right? But, you know, it's one of those things we talk about as well is there's there's this pain of healing versus the pain of the injury.
Jim Farm
Right?
Greg Miller
Yeah. The idea is we move towards the pain for the purpose of healing, and we acknowledge the pain. And again, we are safest when we are doing that with a professional. We are doing that in community. If we are in a place with our family where it's safe and we can have those conversations, we can do that with our family.
Greg Miller
And one of the images I think is so helpful is that others cannot rescue us from this. You know, we would love to be able to do that for the people that we love. We would love to be able to rescue them from their depression, their grief, their sadness, their anger, their hurt. And we can't. So sometimes people will say, well, why should I tell anybody?
Greg Miller
What difference will it make? Well, the difference that it makes is you don't have to be alone with it. You know, when Jesus shows up at the tomb when Lazarus has died. The idea is that Jesus showed up and that he chose to be with the people in their grief. We've talked about this before, and we are the embodiment of Jesus.
Greg Miller
And so when we hear about a friend, a family member, someone in one of our groups who is struggling, what we are seeking to do is to be with them in their struggle to just, you know, be with them in their hurt, whatever it is that is going on. And everything in us typically does not want to talk about it.
Greg Miller
And yet the way forward is by talking about it.
Jim Farm
Yeah. Well, I've often said it's not so much the pain of whatever happened to you, but it's the pain of having to go through it alone. Right. And when we retell the story we're not having to go through it alone this time.
Greg Miller
Right. Absolutely. Part of the power of the experience work that many people have and many therapists do, is the whole idea is to move through it again with the resources that you didn't have the first time. That allows there to be healing the second time. And, you know, there are those that would say, well, why would I want to go through it again?
Greg Miller
It was horrible the first time, but the idea is if I don't acknowledge it, it continues to follow me. So the best strategy, I think, is to move through it again, but just do it differently with new resources, with support, and to do it in community or with the presence of a professional. But that is some of the things that can bring healing to those old wounds that we continue to move forward.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. I think the other thing to think about, you know, why do we have to go through this again is our experiences. Oftentimes if you don't resolve and work through that pain, you end up projecting it out towards others, right? You know, and the pain just gets bigger then.
Greg Miller
Yeah, the pain that is not healed will then be expressed towards others. You know, it probably would be helpful to maybe make a distinction between the idea of being depressed and having depression. And for me, being depressed is about a response to maybe a circumstance. You know, I lost my job, or my wife and I are in a difficult place, or my best friend moved away.
Greg Miller
That can be a situation where I feel depressed, you know, and depressed can be the same thing. Depressed can show up as apathy or it can show up as grief, sadness, anger. The difference with depression is it moves from being circumstantial to almost being comprehensive. It becomes the environment that I'm actually living in, and that's what causes it to be so challenging to navigate.
Greg Miller
If I can attach what I'm feeling to a circumstance, then understanding that circumstance and recognizing that I won't always be in this circumstance helps me to begin to change that. But if my environment the the place I am in my my state of being is more of that depression that can feel pretty hopeless. It's like being in a fog and not knowing when the fog will lift, or when you will get to the edge of the fog itself.
Jim Farm
And I think that's the oftentimes the difficulty that sometimes as children or adolescents, when you're in an environment that is depression inducing and you can't leave, right, you know, is that's where the issues kind of arise, the medications or the internalization of your emotional experience. Right.
Greg Miller
And I think that's a great point, is that whatever environment we were in as a child, whether we saw it as positive or hurtful or a combination of both, the thing to understand is, as a child, we were powerless over being able to escape that. So whatever the environment was, that was our life. And it becomes important as adults to recognize, although I did not have agency in power as a child, to exit my circumstances when I was growing up, I do, as an adult have the opportunity to exit them now.
Greg Miller
And there is something about the irony of depression is it robs us of our agency, and part of the way forward is to reclaim whatever agency we can. And I just want to take a pause here, because I also want to validate this is incredibly complex. You know, as we talk about it, we may come across as it being very simplistic or, you know, kind of an easy step by step process to come out of it.
Greg Miller
But I also want to validate for those people who are struggling with depression, and this has been a part of their life, it does become incredibly difficult. It is consuming, it is overwhelming. And I would never want someone to feel shame about depression. Like somehow they're failing or they're bad. My encouragement is get curious about it. You know, what I often talk about is shame is based upon lies, and so it holds us hostage.
Greg Miller
But if I get curious about something, I can begin to explore it. And maybe that understanding can lead to some of the the freedom that I'm wanting in a particular situation.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you said that because it is very complex. And sometimes if it's not, you know, getting better or just the mere fact that I'm having it to have to own, that is almost just reinforcing the depression. I'm not enough. It's reinforcing the shame statements.
Greg Miller
Yeah. And I would say nobody that I know ever chooses depression. And so if I didn't choose it, it's not as if I can choose to come out of it. You know, sometimes family members can get frustrated and kind of can't. You just choose to be happy? You know, can't you just choose not to think about these things or, you know, can't you just decide?
Greg Miller
And I think it's important to recognize no, you know, if I didn't choose the depression, the way forward is not going to be about choosing not to be depressed. Now, what can also be true is the choosing can be to be curious. The choosing can be to find resources. The choosing can be to share it and not be alone with it.
Greg Miller
And the choosing can be to be in community instead of isolation. So there is choosing in it. It's just not choosing not to be depressed.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. Well, I you know, I think one of the things that we can talk further about is how do we enter into that pain. What are some ways that we can do that rather than getting, you know, paralyzed in it oftentimes, which is kind of the tendency it's overwhelming. You know, I've heard people who are depressed, it's like this big black fog and I can't get out from underneath it.
Jim Farm
You know.
Greg Miller
When one of the things I would say is talk about what you know, you know, somebody may ask the question, well, what's going on for you? You know, why? Why do you think you're depressed? And you may have no idea, but you can talk about what you know what maybe what you know is I do have difficulty getting out of bed.
Greg Miller
What I do know is Sunday nights are incredibly difficult. What I do know is things I used to care about, I don't care about anymore. Okay, that can be a beginning place. So instead of focusing on what you don't know, just try to find safe people in your life that you can communicate what you do know. And then for the people who are hearing that have the capacity just to be with them in that space, not to try to rescue them, not to try to move them out of that place, but to simply acknowledge, wow, that that must be difficult to no longer care about things you used to care about.
Greg Miller
Yeah. If you're talking about being depressed and there are memories or experiences that come to mind, my encouragement is you share those to the best of your ability and instead of again having shame for what you can't do, really engage and celebrate whatever it is that you can do or talk about in order to include other people.
Jim Farm
Yeah, I love the you know, that curiosity piece. I had a client a ways back. He had come in and, you know, in recovery doing fairly well. And he was just I just don't understand my my wife expressed sadness and I got extremely angry with her and I have no idea why. And I said, well, what's your feelings about sadness?
Jim Farm
And he was like, I don't know. Yeah, well, you do know you don't like it. That's all. You got angry with her? I bet you felt pretty helpless and knowing how to deal with her sadness, because you don't know how to deal with your own sadness.
Greg Miller
And you know, I am not an expert in neurochemistry. I, I I'm not, so that's just true. What's also true is we do see that there is maybe a hereditary nature of depression. What I also believe is part of that may be not just, you know, brain chemistry and genetics and biology. Some of that may be because that was what was modeled for us.
Greg Miller
You know, what was modeled for me was my mom spending a lot of time in bed. And what was modeled for me was my mom not being available at times because of the depression. And what was also modeled for me is we don't talk about it. You know, I didn't have language to even describe what it was that my mom was experiencing, and I certainly didn't have the word depression.
Greg Miller
And so sometimes how we're showing up now, a lot of times was based upon what was modeled for us as children. And if it's not been working in the past, more than likely it's not going to work in the present. And that's why we seek to do something different. So if you grow up in a home where people didn't talk about sadness or acknowledge sadness, or they didn't talk about their apathy, you just experienced it, then probably a good thing to do is start talking about that.
Greg Miller
And, you know, one of the principles is nobody is failing. If somebody is depressed, the family is not failing. The person who's struggling with depression is not failing. So nobody's failing. And again, if we can be curious about how do we support this person, how do we encourage this person and what are they able to receive? A lot of times we want to give a lot more than somebody is able to receive, and in the long run, that's not going to be helpful.
Jim Farm
No, I think it's our natural instinct is when we see somebody hurting and in pain, we want to fix it, we want to make it go away. And sometimes maybe it's not so much because we're in touch with them. It's we're uncomfortable with it.
Greg Miller
Right. Exactly.
Jim Farm
You know, so I think that's part of the journey. You know, it's one of can I understand why I'm not comfortable with this?
Greg Miller
I think one of the best gifts we can give our children is identifying and naming where we are, and then clearly communicating that they are not responsible for making it better. You know, I often think if my mom had just said I'm depressed or I struggle with depression and it's not your job to make me happy, that would have been such a gift.
Greg Miller
But for a variety of different reasons, we weren't able to have that conversation. And so for parents out there, maybe it is circumstantial, maybe because of the pain of the betrayal, maybe because of the acknowledgment of past woundedness. You are showing up in your family system now with depression or being depressed. One of the best gifts you can give the family system is naming it for what it is and even being clearer.
Greg Miller
You know, maybe you have experienced me as being more apathetic, or maybe you have experienced me as being less motivated. Or maybe you've experienced me as not being as invested in things like I used to be, validating that that may may be their experience, and then to also free them up, to not be responsible, to try to make it better.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. I think the important thing too, is just to recognize that not dealing with it's really not an option oftentimes because it only gets worse.
Greg Miller
Absolutely.
Jim Farm
And so recognizing the important thing is recognizing these things we talked about in terms of, you know, what we thought some symptoms might be might not necessarily be. You know, we've often heard, you know, people who have committed suicide. I didn't even see it coming. Right? I didn't know it was coming. You know, sometimes they didn't even know it was coming because they didn't recognize the symptoms that they were having were depression symptoms because they didn't seem like the normal depression symptoms.
Jim Farm
But it is important that we do deal with these things that are kind of gripping us. Yeah. You know.
Greg Miller
And again, that's the the value of talking about it. If I'm, if I'm actively sharing where I am, then others can see something in me that maybe I cannot see in myself. And what's also true is, you know, if this has been a normal part of my life and over time it has slowly gotten more intense, I may not even realize that it's getting more intense.
Greg Miller
And so that's where I think our community and our support is so helpful and beneficial because they can see things, but they can only see the things that we are willing to reveal.
Jim Farm
I think I think one of the we'll have to deal with one of the core beliefs that maybe a lot of us got is, you know, is that it's not okay to cry. It's not okay to be sad. It's not okay to be vulnerable. Right. You know your country music guy.
Greg Miller
Not really.
Jim Farm
You country music guy. No, I know you're neither. So there's a song out there. I ran across it recently and I was blown away by the lyrics of it was Cowboys Cry two. You heard the song.
Greg Miller
No I haven't.
Jim Farm
You'll have to listen.
Greg Miller
You'll have to sing.
Jim Farm
It for you. Might be a no, no, no we don't. We don't got Randy here. Cowboys cry two you should listen to it really talks about this. You know there some cuss words in there by the way. Stuff way I yeah.
Greg Miller
And they're usually is in recovery.
Jim Farm
So exactly. But I love how this gal she sings that you know, it's okay to even be a cowboy in which I would say that's true for a cowgirl. Yeah.
Greg Miller
What's interesting is we often talk about the fact that wise men named their limits. I'm wise. Men live in their truth. I'm wise men are clearly defined. They know who they are. And so, as a wise man, if I am struggling with depression or I am depressed, or there is apathy or there is fatigue, then I ask for what I need.
Greg Miller
And so maybe I'm a part of a community, and what I need is to ask for people to check on me. Maybe what I need is for someone to specifically ask these questions to me. Maybe what I need is for if I'm in an in-person group, I need somebody to drive by my house and pick me up because I don't, in this moment, have the energy or the agency to drive myself there.
Greg Miller
But if someone's willing to come by and pick me up, I do have the agency to get in somebody else's car. What what can happen is if depression is slowly building, just the normal parts of life begin to become more challenging. And, you know, whether it's getting exercise or being active, whether it's, you know, preparing meals or feeding ourselves and it it can show up in ways it's unexpected.
Greg Miller
But again, if I'm being more open and honest about what's going on, somebody else might be able to see it.
Jim Farm
Yeah, yeah. I like to go back to the story of Elijah. You know, we probably recognize God didn't say, go up and start your work. Yeah. Get going on your mission. Right. He just simply said, just get up and eat something. And that was just enough. Yeah. You know.
Greg Miller
Well, and what we talk about the next right step, it doesn't have to be this big grandiose act. It can be the simple thing of feed yourself or go for a walk or communicate this to somebody. Some, you know, take care of yourself. But those types of messages can begin to change the momentum. You know what I said earlier, that I believe that despair isn't when things are bad.
Greg Miller
It's when things are bad and we can't imagine them ever getting better. And in that case, maybe the only thing I can do is acknowledge that things are bad. And maybe what I want to say is, and I don't believe they're going to get better. And yet, if I add the phrase and maybe they will, that opens the door to hope.
Greg Miller
You know, I talked about hopelessness as not being without hope. It's when I can't remember what hope is. So maybe if I'm experiencing hopelessness, I encourage myself to try to remember a moment where I did have hope. Because if I had hope once, even if it was way in the past, if I had hope once, then that certainly provides the opportunity that I could have hope again.
Greg Miller
And so allowing yourself to recognize that because this is a complex issue, because there are a lot of factors that can be contributing to this. They can be circumstantial, they can be historic, they can be neurochemical, they can be biological, they can be genetic. It probably will take a complex response. That's right. Then even with the complex response, there's still hope and ways to move forward.
Jim Farm
Yeah. One of the other things I wanted to kind of just talk about is I want to kind of see, there's a there's a healthy component of depression that I would say is, you know, like when we have a physical injury, one of the things that happens to us is that causes so much pain that slows us down, right?
Jim Farm
It makes us stop. Like you and I, we run, we have an injury. It's going to slows down. It's going to be stop running. Right.
Greg Miller
And I say it this way, the wise person is going.
Jim Farm
To go through the pain because we might.
Greg Miller
Modify, you know, the run. Yeah. It's it's the foolish person who continues to run with injury because running with injury just creates more injury. That's right. So I love what you're saying, that depression is maybe a message from my soul that I need to slow down, or that I have needs that I'm I'm not attuned to.
Jim Farm
That's right. Or in the, you know, light of some of the, you know, women that come to our center that have been betrayed, it slows them down to recognize the pain they just went through.
Greg Miller
Right.
Jim Farm
You know, so there's a there's a positive aspect of that that we don't necessarily see as a positive, that it is slowing us down to actually attend to the pain that it just got inflicted.
Greg Miller
Yeah. You know, and again, we're back to the beauty of community. It's when we are in community and others can see us and we allow others to see us. It can normalize what it is that we are experiencing. And so for me to be in a community talking about my apathy or my fatigue or my malaise or my melancholy, whatever language is appropriate for me to have other men go, oh yeah, I'm familiar with that too, or I'm struggling with that now.
Greg Miller
Or there was a whole season, you know, it just validates and normalizes something that maybe I've had a lot of shame about and also felt very unique in. But anytime community is able to gather around us and help us to understand that we're not alone again, they cannot rescue us, but they can be with us in it. That is a place of hope.
Jim Farm
I know when we have the men's workshop, we kind of talk about sharing the 100%, and we often talk about like these behaviors that we have so much shame about. But I think that's, you know, you and I lead groups throughout the week, and I know one of the things that I'll do with guys is have you shared the 100% of the painful things?
Jim Farm
Maybe they weren't sexual in nature, but the things that were painful that you've really not talked about?
Greg Miller
Yeah. Well, and I would say that the last 10% can be that I'm struggling with depression, or the last 10% can be how intense my anxiety has been. That's right. And that invitation, one of the things that I think is helpful in community is if a guy does have the courage that he mentions depression, that we follow up with that, you know, we don't always assume that he's going to have the courage to bring it up.
Greg Miller
And so if somebody mentions depression, we the next time we see them, we say, hey, how is that depression going? And we follow up, because my experience is most people want to be honest if they're just asked the right question. Most people want to be vulnerable if they're given that permission. And one of the ways that we can invite people to vulnerability and give them permission is to acknowledge that we heard them previously, and we engage that particular conversation.
Jim Farm
Yeah, like we said, that's that. Seven desire of needing to be heard and understood, you know, just not listened to but heard and understood.
Greg Miller
Absolutely. Well, this is probably the beginning of a conversation. As we've already acknowledged, depression is incredibly complex. And for those of you that would say that you are depressed or that you have had depression, or maybe it's not something you've labeled as depression, but it showed up as apathy or fatigue or isolation and disengagement to really in and be invited to consider what might be your next right step.
Greg Miller
Reminding yourself that I don't have to be alone. And for those of you that maybe do struggle with suicide ideation, that that is a part of your your process and what you struggle with during the day, that you find the courage to talk about that with someone that can be with you in that and that you you move from the isolation that intensifies the suicide ideation or the depression and bring community and positive resources into that so that you can find your way forward.
Jim Farm
Yeah, I, I love the the passage where Jesus talks about carrying each other's burdens, burdens, meaning it's heavier than we can carry ourselves.
Greg Miller
Absolutely. Yeah, I one final thing is that image where the friends bring their friend to Jesus on the mat and the crowds are there. They can't get to Jesus. So they go up on the roof, they dig a hole, and they lower their friend to the feet of Jesus. And I love the effort that it took to do that.
Greg Miller
I love the commitment, and I love the fact that these four friends, they each had a corner and they were carrying the mat, and then they did what they needed to do to get the guy to Jesus. And I think that's a beautiful image of community that we take turns being on the mat. We take turns carrying the corners.
Greg Miller
We take turns digging a hole in a roof so that we can get people to the resources in the hope and the healing that they need. So, Jim, thanks for being with us. It's always good to have that conversation. And so for those of you that are familiar with Faithful and True, I hope that you will continue to reach out and use us as a resource.
Greg Miller
And for those of you that are new, I encourage you to consider the possibility of checking this out at Faithful and True. And thanks for being with us today.
Randy Evert
Thank you for joining us today on the Faithful and True podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed this conversation between Greg Miller and Jim Farm and their discussion about depression. Hopefully that will be a very supportive and informative for you as well. If you have the opportunity, we invite you to visit our website, Faithful and True, where you'll find lots of helpful information as well as online information and registration for our three day intensive workshops.
Randy Evert
We hold the Men's Journey Workshop every month here at Faithful and True. And we're we're here to help you. We have men come to us from all over the country, and we hope that you will find our resources to be very supportive of you in your healing journey. So until we meet again, we hope this coming week for you will be a week that's filled with many blessings and with great vision.