How often does your alarm go off in the morning? You wake up and all you want to do is hit the snooze button. The 5 minutes suddenly turns into 30 minutes... but really deep down, you don’t want to get up. You feel there is no reason to get up – you pull the covers over your head and you lie there wrestling with your feelings – feelings of sadness, or anger, or guilt. You find yourself crying. When you start thinking about it all, you find yourself feeling little interest in anything that you do. Whatever you do leaves you with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. 

At the core, you are fed up with life. You have tried praying but you feel like you have hit a brick wall with God. You know in your head the truth that God is with you but you cannot feel God’s closeness like you used to. You wonder if perhaps God doesn’t care about you, or that maybe your life is too messed up for God to intervene. Perhaps you have also become increasingly irritated by people around you. You wonder why you struggle to make those seemingly simple daily decisions, so you withdraw. Just to keep yourself to yourself. You think to yourself: “What is the point anyway?” Somewhere at the back of your mind, you begin to wonder if harming yourself or ending your life may not just resolve everything.....
 

What I have described above are classic indications that you may be suffering from a form of depression. Depression affects approximately two in three adults at some stage in their life. While some people are more susceptible to depression than others, it can affect anyone, even at a time when that person may feel that everything is going well in their life. This sometimes makes it even more difficult to make sense of your feelings.

Talking through your thoughts and feelings with a psychotherapist offers the first step to help you to make sense of what is happening in your life.  Your therapist can work together with you to help you to understand the triggers behind your depression. In a professional and confidential setting, you will be offered the space to explore those difficult and perhaps painful thoughts that you couldn’t possibly share with anyone, whether family or friends. In this sense, your therapist becomes for you the ears and heart of Christ at a time when the darkness of depression threatens to overwhelm  you.

A therapist who is a Christian will also have the added advantage of being able to understand in greater depth your spiritual walk with Christ and help you to manage what seems to be unmanageable feelings about yourself, others and God. Where appropriate, your therapist may even gently challenge you, so that together, you can make sense of your feelings and thoughts. In this way, you will be able to work towards recovery from depression, and fulfil the full life that Christ wants you to live.
 
Thomas Yap