Being there for your kids - Tools for Beating Depression

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

When depression is organic or genetic, treatment may require medication. When depression is situational or reactive, you can beat it with these two simple tools.

This is Teachable Moments. I'm Dr. John Robinson. Has anyone ever asked you whether you're depressed and your response, depressed? Nah, it's all in my head. The Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote long ago that nothing was so but that we think it's so. For reactive or situational depression, that fits. If there is a generational component and your symptoms have been since childhood to varying degrees, then it's an organic depression and medication will be part of the healing. If the symptoms are mostly a result of ongoing events or life circumstances, then it's reactive and the healing is on you. Through God's grace and your hard work, you can beat this depression. Two tools for beating reactive depression. First, use the as-if principle. When you are depressed, you don't feel like

doing anything. Here comes moping, eating, laying around. Depression robs us of the activation process. If you don't feel like doing something, but in your heart, what you're thinking of doing is good to do, then act as if you feel like doing it and get busy. Second, activity is the antidote for reactive depression. When your heart gets above 120 beats per minute, your brain releases endorphins, nature's Prozac. Why buy this stuff when getting active releases the equivalent in your brain? It's hard to be active and depressed at the same time.

Activity beats depression both because of the endorphins and also because the activity distracts you from the depression. Epictetus was right. Depression? Nah, it's all in your head. I'm Dr. John Robinson, licensed clinical psychologist, and Christian parenting author, and this has been Teachable Moments. Teachable Moments, building blocks of Christian parenting, is available online at AmazonBooks.com and in local and national bookstores. More on Dr. Robinson at TMC-P-I-N-C.com.