Overcoming depression: Let Christ set you free

“I know what it’s like to deal with depression,” says Barbara at the very beginning of this lively chat, “because I’ve been there … . But I also know this can be healed, is being healed over and over through turning to God in prayer, through learning who we really are as the loved child of God, and also learning how to take control of our thinking.” This healing approach can be found in her answers to questions such as those dealing with the stigma sometimes associated with depression, how to overcome sorrow over divorce, and depression about dealing with long-term physical conditions. Other questions include what to do about anger that sometimes accompanies depression, feelings of hopelessness over conditions in a community, concerns of a wife with an alcoholic husband, the difficulty faced by someone who uses porn to alleviate depressed feelings, and the inability to pray when one is dragged into a deep depression.

The following text has been edited for clarity.

spirituality.com host: Hello everyone. Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. My name is Rosalie Dunbar and I’ll be your host for the next hour. Today’s topic is, “Overcoming depression—let Christ set you free.” Our guest is Barbara Fife, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Barbara has been a Christian Science healer for over fifteen years, and she’s been a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship since 1997. She’s participated in panel discussions and in inter-faith forums, and spoken at conferences that have to do with mental and physical health issues. Barbara, do you have some thoughts to get us started?

Barbara Fife: Yes, thanks, Rosalie. And thanks to everyone for coming on to this chat. I wanted to begin by saying that I know what it’s like to deal with depression because I’ve been there. As a teenager, I dealt with extreme sadness, bouts of crying, migraine headaches, difficulty in concentrating at work, and even scary thoughts about hurting myself. At the worst, I was burning myself with cigarettes. But I also know that this can be healed, is being healed over and over through turning to God in prayer, through learning who we really are as the loved child of God, and also then learning how to take control, you might say, of our thinking to express the dominion that Genesis 1 promises is the birthright of each one of us. I knew about the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, but I had never read it for myself. But when I started doing that years ago, things began to brighten, to get better. I felt a sense of peace I hadn’t had for two years. The scary thoughts stopped almost immediately. The migraines lessened in intensity and frequency and then disappeared altogether. And joy began to be present without my trying to conjure it up. That was so wonderful when that happened--such a departure from what I was used to. I’m so pleased to be with you today, and to share ideas that I’ve found helpful myself, and what else I’ve learned by continuing to read and study and pray with the spiritual concepts which Christian Science teaches. And these concepts are here for anyone, no matter where you are in your experience or your spiritual journey. So, Rosalie, do we have any questions?

spirituality.com host: Oh yes, we do. And it’s so great to be hearing from you all and please just keep those questions coming. This one is from Julie in Bellevue, Washington. She says: “What prayerful thought would you share with someone who is angry as a result of depression?”

Barbara: Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is that when I was dealing with this, the main idea that brought healing to me and enabled me to begin really counteracting this, was the idea that this was not my thinking. Every time I felt that this was my depression and my wrong thoughts and my unhappiness, I just struggled with it and to try and get rid of it. But when I began realizing that that wasn’t my thought, I didn’t have to accept it as my thought, then I found myself moving forward. And so I would say to this dear one that the anger isn’t any more their thinking than the depression itself. Nothing really belongs to us but what God is giving us. I began to see that I could accept as my thinking only what I knew came from God. One passage in Jeremiah which I just really found helpful was this from the New King James version. It says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (NKJV, Jer. 29:11).

spirituality.com host: That’s beautiful.

Barbara: So, to me, those thoughts of peace that God is thinking toward us is not just that he’s thinking about us, but that He is continually sending these thoughts of peace to us, over and over and over again--thoughts of health, not of instability; thoughts of peace, not turmoil; thoughts of contentment rather than anger. That those thoughts can be what we accept as our thinking and not the other. And when we begin to say, “No, this is not my thinking, I’m not accepting it”—at least for me, I found that that was really when the healing began.

spirituality.com host: So basically you’re saying to be able to divide between what are the real thoughts—meaning the ones that are coming to you from God—and then the ones like discouragement or anger or frustration or whatever along those lines, those would not be from God and to just refuse to accept those and keep your thoughts on what God is sending.

Barbara: Exactly, exactly. I remember thinking at one time if these other things that are coming—anger or sadness or whatever—if they’re not thoughts, what are they? And really they’re just, as Christian Science terms them, false beliefs. In the “Glossary” there is a definition for the word knowledge, and Mary Baker Eddy explains, in part, that the human sense of knowledge is just “beliefs and opinions; human theories, doctrines, hypotheses” (Science and Health, p. 590 ). And that’s what these things are aren’t they—they’re not really thoughts, they’re reactions or negativity or fear or misconception, but they’re not really thought. We don’t have to accept as thought anything but what comes from God, these divine ideas that come directly to human consciousness.

spirituality.com host: That’s great. Now this is from Butch in Indiana: “When I am depressed I can’t begin to pray. The two states of mind are not compatible—depression versus praying. Is calling a Christian Science practitioner right in the middle of the depression the only solution? I don’t know if I can think clearly enough to do that. How can I rise to the occasion to get help when so far down in depression?”

Barbara: Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I guess what I would urge more than anything is, that even though it seems impossible to do that, pick up your Bible or pick up Science and Health or do call a practitioner. And I think you’ll be pleased at how that does immediately begin to make a difference. Just taking that step—Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health mentions, “master[ing] fear instead of cultivating it” (p. 197 ) and I think that that applies in situations like that--that we can master this rather than going along with it. And even taking one step in the right direction can have an immediate effect. “Resist evil . . . and it will flee from you” Science and Health tells us (p. 406 ).

spirituality.com host: You know, I love the connection you just made there between mastering fear and the relation to depression, because in some ways depression really is a gigantic state of fear, so to speak. I mean not that it’s gigantic but it’s sort of an intense state of fear.

Barbara: Yes, it really is.

spirituality.com host: That’s very helpful. Now, this is from someone who is a nurse. She says: “I work as a nurse and do all shifts—morning, afternoon, and night—at least eight hours. The challenge to my sleep pattern, and dealing with people suffering, and death, can be depressing. I drink soda with caffeine to get up for work and take melatonin, a nutritional supplement, to sleep. Is this evil? In Mrs. Eddy’s poem, ‘Satisfied,’ she mentions a ‘darkling sense.’ Will this ‘darkling sense’ be with us until we pass, or progress to a completely spiritual plane and identity?”

Barbara: Well I certainly would never tell anyone who is struggling with any suggestion of depression, or struggling to keep going, that what they’re doing is evil. But I do know that as you continue praying about this, that you will find yourself able to leave behind what you’re not feeling is helpful to you. And clearly by asking this question, you’re saying that you’d rather be free of this. I often think when people are dealing with this kind of thing, that we have those up and down times, and this idea of day and night I have found helpful--that during the day when we’re feeling stronger that’s a good time to work.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: And then when the night appears to be there, when it seems to be harder to work, we can still really work at that and keep trying, keep at it. But not to let it go during the day times, during the times when we’re up, that’s such a good time to be handling these suggestions that come, and really declaring who we are as this perfect, complete, and wholly peaceful reflection of God.

spirituality.com host: By working there, you’re talking about praying, right?

Barbara: I am talking about praying, yes. In Christian Science we use the term work for prayer, but that doesn’t mean that the prayer is onerous and hard, but it is systematic prayer, it is concentrated thought. One of the phrases I love to define prayer is “spiritual reasoning.”

spirituality.com host: Great.

Barbara: And so, if we take the ideas that the Bible gives us of God’s thoughts always coming to us, and of who we really are as God’s perfect child--which both Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy preached and talked about again and again--as we reason with those ideas, we’re really praying. And we can do that wherever we are, whenever we’re in a situation.

spirituality.com host: That’s great. Now this is from Deborah who’s in the United Kingdom. She says: “Why is it that women seem to suffer from depression more than men? With all the prayerful work and study I put in, I still can’t completely get out of a feeling of depression many times, whereas my husband, who is not a Christian Scientist, never suffers for this problem. Thanks for any helpful answers.”

Barbara: Well, Deborah, I don’t know what the statistics are on that, whether that’s an actual human truth or not, but I do know that in my experience after I went through that couple of years of depression, later I found out that it was something that the females in my family appeared to suffer from—my grandmother, and a great aunt, etc., etc. So it would like to say that it’s either something related to hormones or to the fact that we are supposed to be the daughter of Eve, or whether it’s a heredity thing. But we really can just turn on that and say, “No, I am not accepting that. I will not accept it.” You express the male and female qualities of God. You are the son and daughter of God, and you have the divine right to express that complete without any interference at any particular time or for any supposed reason. One of the passages that helped me so much is on page 90 in Science and Health where it reads: “The admission to one’s self that man [meaning all of us] is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea.” And that infinite idea of ourselves is that we are complete, that we’re not one gender or another, but are complete, and that we have the divine right to know that completeness and fullness. And when I began watching what I was accepting, what I was admitting about myself--which can seem to be that same rotation of thoughts over and over that are negative and self-condemning, etc.--when I began watching that and stopping that, and really holding to the fact that I was God’s own likeness, I found that so helpful. And I found it easier to watch, too, what was being suggested to me for my acceptance--but never my thinking.

spirituality.com host: Carol from Wisconsin—we’ve had a couple of questions on this subject, I’m taking Carol’s question as the representative question here—she says: “For decades I have been dealing with a physical problem that has not yielded to my prayers or the prayers of the practitioners whom I’ve asked for helpful support, please share with me how I can overcome the daily depression that accompanies this apparent lack of healing.”

Barbara: Yes, well, can I say again that this isn’t your thought? This idea of discouragement or depression or just feeling down, and a heaviness, is being suggested to you, and it would suggest certainly, first of all, that all of this prayer is not doing anything. One thing I find really helpful daily is to acknowledge that the truth heals. It is the law of God. It is the promise of God, through Jesus, that the truth makes free. Sometimes the very suggestion that we really need to handle is that prayer is all very well, but . . . . And the truth is that every right thought that you are holding to is helping. As we acknowledge that every right thought is a thought that comes directly from God to you, and that that thought has all of the power of God behind it, you can begin overturning this subtle suggestion that seems to be causing the depression. Mrs. Eddy defines the Christ as “the divine message from God to men.” The complete sentence is, “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (p. 332 ). And to me, that’s almost the same as Jeremiah saying, “I know the thoughts that I am thinking toward you.” So this divine message from God is coming right to your human consciousness daily. And as you put your foot down to this other suggestion, you’ll find that you begin to be just taking in these thoughts and expressing them and feeling them in your experience.

spirituality.com host: You know, there again you’ve pointed out a really important thing I think, that depressing thoughts and discouragement and so forth, sort of comes in and tries to be in the driver’s seat about our thinking. But when you said about putting your foot down, you’re really saying, No, you’re in the driver’s seat. You can control what you’re thinking and take in what God is sending. You don’t have to let this thing push you around. Isn’t that true?

Barbara: It is true. And it’s almost like the other is static that seems to hide that continual message from God to us. When we take even just that little bit of control and say “No,” we are signaling that we’re going to stop that static and we’re going to hear. Something that many people love about Mary Baker Eddy is her definition of angels: “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality” (p. 581 ). So that’s telling us right there that these thoughts that are coming from God to us, these are angel messages, and with every one of those angel messages, there is some counteracting going on, even when we feel we can’t be doing it.

spirituality.com host: Right.

Barbara: So if we can hold on, take one angel message and hold on to it, that angel message is with us and it is counteracting the misconceptions, the false concepts, the depressing thoughts, and inspire us and really control us rather than that other controlling us.

spirituality.com host: Yes. And speaking of angel messages, this is a very nice thought from Carol who is writing from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She says: “Sometimes just the writing down of all the things you are grateful for gets though the clouds, and the sun begins to shine in your thought. Just keeping one great thought you could say over and over, too, picks you up.” I think that is a really helpful concept because it gives you a little bit of armor to keep yourself feeling better and closer to God.

Barbara: Oh, absolutely, I love the idea of keeping a gratitude list, because one of the most important things to remember is it’s not just what we’re grateful for, it’s who we’re grateful to.

spirituality.com host: Ah, good.

Barbara: Because then we begin seeing that every little bit of good in our life is because of God’s love for us. It’s evidence of God’s love for us. When we begin seeing that, it’s so much easier to see more and more. And the light does go on for sure.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: Thank you for that.

spirituality.com host: Now, this is from someone in New York City who—it’s a little bit different kind of question than we’ve had: “I get depressed very infrequently, but when I do I sometimes resort to porn as a means of coping with the depression, as a diversion to the sinking feeling I am experiencing. When I do this, the immoral behavior becomes even more depressing than the original depression. How can I overcome the tendency to sometimes resort to porn when depressed?”

Barbara: I guess my first comment would be that this is a good time to take a little bit of control, and not go there. As we said earlier, that quote about resisting evil and it will flee from you, if you put up that resistance to this, put in something else instead, a comedy or something, because the depressing thought is, yes, a hundred percent mental but it can feel, it can have, a very physical effect—sadness, and inability to concentrate, and to think rightly, and perhaps overeating or not eating—all of these things. And this is just one more of those, and yet what it is just doing is supporting the physical rather than moving thought at all. I would definitely try another movie, but also really stand up for your right to have those pure and perfect thoughts from God, those thoughts of peace, those thoughts of purity, those thoughts of control, those thoughts of completeness—not these others—because you have a right to be the man God made, and the man that can stand tall and know who he is—or she—know who this child of God is, whether male or female. And as you do that, this cycle of depression about it can be broken, and, again, more quickly than you think when we resist that and take that stand. Mrs. Eddy has a wonderful statement in a book called Pulpit and Press. It’s something to just look at daily if you have that book, or to go onto spirituality.com and find it. It says: “Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love. If you maintain this position, who or what can cause you to sin or suffer? Our surety is in our confidence that we are indeed dwellers in Truth and Love, man’s eternal mansion” (p. 3). So that sovereign power and authority to think and act rightly just as Jesus had--we don’t have this right any less than Jesus did. I remember looking up the word dominion, which Genesis 1 promises to God’s child, and it said, “supreme authority.” And when I looked up authority, one of the definitions was “the power to command thought.” Don’t you just love that?

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: Our dominion is our ability to make those choices rightly, to see that we can think and act rightly, that nothing can stop us from that.

spirituality.com host: I love the fact that you sort of tie the depression and the temptation to use porn sort of back to thinking of yourself as a material organism that needs to be kind of manipulated. In some cases, people take drugs so they are manipulated chemically or through, as in the case of watching these kinds of videos, and so forth. It just takes you back to thinking of yourself as a material organism and nothing more. Whereas in reality, as Barbara’s been saying, you’re a spiritual idea of God, and you’re pure and you’re good and strong and clear and joyful. And that’s what your natural state is.

Barbara: Yes.

spirituality.com host: And anything that builds on that, is going to help to bring you out of the depression. Quinn from Raleigh—maybe Raleigh, North Carolina—says: “How can we help our servicemen and –women better in overcoming post traumatic stress disorder? Symptoms often include depression.”

Barbara: Oh, yes. Well, one thing that comes to mind often is that this idea of depression, this concept of depression, can seem to be caused by events that have happened in our life. The world tells us that we are today all these different things that have happened to us, good and bad, over the years. It kind of reminds me of the Christmas Carol story and the chain around Marley’s ghost’s neck, forged link by link. And yet, what Christian Science teaches, and what the Bible teaches along with Science and Health, over and over and over again is that we are—right now, today—who we are because of what God is, not because of what appeared to have been going on in our experience. The Bible says in Psalms: “For with thee is the fountain of life” (36:9 ). And fountain, to me, is the source, isn’t it, that’s the determining factor. And so, whether these things appear as something from within us--maybe our own mistakes or thoughts in our head--or from without--what’s been done to us--it’s really God who determines who we are and how we are. And so we can turn away from this suggestion that these experiences can cause anything. If they don’t come from God, they don’t have a right or a power to be or cause anything. And on page 63 in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes that: “In Science man is the offspring of Spirit.” And then she goes on to say, “His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence.” So we don’t have to go through these experiences in order to learn, nor does the fact that we seem to have gone through these experiences, have a power to affect our thought or our lives. And as we refuse to give cause to what is not cause, we can stand up for these men and women—their right to serve their country in honor, and to come out stronger because of it, not weaker.

spirituality.com host: This is from Ann in Boston, and it’s a little bit off our subject but it relates to something you commented on. She’s asking: “Can you share some key ideas that helped heal you of migraines? I have several friends that have suffered from these all their lives, and have struggled with this myself.”

Barbara: Well, in honesty, I didn’t deal specifically with the migraines. It just seemed to be a part of this whole thing, and as I began reading Science and Health and seeing it as, you could say, as a mirror to find out who I really was, to see who I really was, and to see myself differently, the problems that appeared to have been causing the depression and the migraines just lessened—the sense of not having peace, and condemning myself, and all of those. When that began to be healed, the peace just meant that the migraines lessened and stopped. I have dealt with headaches since then--never migraines but just general headaches--and one of the things that I’ve really worked with was that because there’s only one Mind, that Mind doesn’t have periods where it is overtired, or stressed, or physically anything. That that Mind, being God, never aches, and my reflection of intelligence and order and harmony and control and peace—and all of these things—comes straight from God and have nothing to do with material surround or accompaniment. And so there just can’t be anything there to ache because qualities can’t ache. So that’s something I’ve worked with in the past and found helpful.

spirituality.com host: Yes, I think the more clear we are about our spiritual nature that comes to us from God and that we fully express, the less we’ll be taken in by material conditions which would argue fatigue, or stress, or anger, or whatever could be seen as leading to a headache.

Barbara: And I think, also, just following what you’ve been saying, Rosalie, is this idea that we can stop looking for cause, we can stop giving cause to these things, and as we do that, we really pull the rug out from under it, like depriving fire of oxygen. Because when we give it a cause, we’re giving it a reason to be.

spirituality.com host: Right.

Barbara: And it has no reason to be because of our spiritual connection—continual connection to God. I like to think often of the Christ-message. It’s the divine Presence identifying us correctly. It’s God’s divine message of love to us about who we really are. And as we begin to think more clearly along those lines, and hold to these ideas, even if our sense of mind doesn’t seem to be believing it at the moment, but still stay with it and declare it, because we don’t empower Truth by holding on to it, it empowers us.

spirituality.com host: Yes, nevertheless, whatever you may be saying to me, this is what is true.

Barbara: Yes.

spirituality.com host: Keith from the United Kingdom says: “It seems that depression is often triggered by a specific circumstance—a bereavement, divorce, or illness. Yet God, infinite Spirit, is a constant and enduring source of genuine joy. In your practice of Christian Science, how do you maintain a constant awareness of God’s presence and power to counteract the aggressive claims of material existence?”

Barbara: Well, the how-to is--can I say?—is Christian Science. It is reading the Bible and Science and Health daily. As a practitioner, of course, that’s my main stay, so I am working all the time with these ideas. And when something seems to be trying to pull me down or away from that Truth, that’s the very time to go back and get clearer, first of all, about who God is. When Mary Baker Eddy defines God over and over and over again, Jesus told us who God was and what He was, and as we work with the ideas that the Bible and Science and Health give us and strengthen our stand about who God is--Mary Baker Eddy defines God with seven synonyms: Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love--and as we become, through study, more familiar with what those terms mean, that just gets us closer to God. And then we begin to realize that as the image and likeness of God we, and everyone else, is the reflection and the expression of those names for God. And so as we just keep working, we get stronger and stronger, because any suggestion that would try and pull us down is really a suggestion that God isn’t present or isn’t all-powerful. So the answer is always going to be to go back to getting clearer, because as we’re clearer about who God is and what God is and that He is ever-present and all-powerful right here, right where we seem to be in our human experience, then we’re less impressed with what this human experience is trying to pawn off on us.

spirituality.com host: Yes. Now this is from a spirituality.com site visitor who writes: “After being raised in, and being a student of Christian Science for many decades, when depression hits and I turn to the books—meaning the Bible and any of Mrs. Eddy’s writings—they always seem to present just words. The words are so familiar but just the words doesn’t help. My spiritual sense is so dull when depressed that nothing sinks in. Any thoughts on how to help me open my thought so the words sink in and lift me out of my depression?”

Barbara: That’s something that I think most people could identify with who have dealt with this. Perhaps I could share something. It is very interesting that when this talk went up on spirituality.com I began to get a lot of e-mails and phone calls from people who were dealing with depression or who have had experiences and healing. One was a friend of mine, and I knew about this experience but had kind of forgotten about it. So we talked and this friend had for years suffered from great sadness and grief. She put on a happy face as she went about her day, but some days were so bad that she couldn’t get out of bed or off the sofa and couldn’t read the Bible or pray. But she knew that the one thing she could always do was love God. And love for God, she said, was her anchor and her rock. She knew that that’s who she really was, so even in that blackness, that sense of being able to love God and that that was natural to her never left. And loving others from that standpoint was also easy. She said one day as she was praying, she had a key insight. She realized that her prayers had been to remove the depression. She’d seen it as something that was there that needed to be removed. And depression is actually, she thought, the absence of joy. It was saying that she’d lost her joy somewhere on the road of life.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: When she saw that, it changed her whole concept on how to deal with this challenge. Jesus said, “. . . your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22 ). And she also spoke about Paul’s list of the nine fruits of the Spirit and that number two is joy—love joy, peace, patience [longsuffering], gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (see Gal. 5:22 ). And so she said it really interested her that Paul had listed joy right next to love. And because she knew that her love for God and man was intact, she also knew that the spiritual quality of joy must still be there also. And that her job was to cultivate that, and not just putting on a happy face—she’d been doing that and it hadn’t helped really. But it meant cultivating and cherishing even the tiniest bit of evidence of the presence of joy in her life. So she began giving her attention to that every single day, and even in the blackest days she could look for those little moments of joy—a child laughing, or puppies playing, and recognizing even joy in another meant that she could claim it too, because if she could see it in someone else, it meant that she had it too.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: And as she continued to make this a daily exercise to cultivate joy, the moments of joy in her life were increasing and the moments of darkness there were lessening. Then one day she made a comment to a friend at lunch that she was feeling very chirpy, and this friend looked at her just in surprise and said, “When aren’t you chirpy?” And she thought about it later on, and she realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt that deep sadness and grief, that it must have been at least a year since it had left her so completely that she’d actually forgotten about it.

spirituality.com host: All right, that’s excellent! Barbara: So this shows that we need to take an active stand, to begin doing something. I know that just that desire, as Mrs. Eddy says, is prayer (see Science and Health, p. 1 ). So that desire to move forward, God will give us what we need to move forward. He is not telling us: “Here’s your answer, but you’re not going to be able to do it right now. You’ll have to wait.” That answer is there for us moment by moment, and we can put down this continual suggestion that this is a time when we can’t, because that’s just as much a false suggestion as the depression, and we don’t have to accept that. spirituality.com host: Now we have a comment from Andrea who’s in Seattle. She says: “I’ve noticed in some people that a seeming addiction to porn arises from depression or anger about the blandness of one’s culture. As living beings we long for and are drawn to vitality, unfoldment, freshness. If one’s culture feels stifling, anger can seem to draw one toward crude, raw images for some sense of so-called aliveness. I feel that divine Spirit, Life, heals any sense of entrapment in a bland culture by unfolding real freshness and aliveness. Hope this helps that person who e-mailed in earlier.”

Barbara: Oh yes, thank you for that.

spirituality.com host: So that was nice.

Barbara: Yes, and I can identify with that, because I think in years after my experience as a teenager I wondered why was I burning myself with cigarettes? And I think part of it was feeling that mental pain and sort of wanting it to be physical instead, but also just sort of wanting to feel something other than the despair, and so I can completely understand that. And, again, as this contributor said, we don’t have to accept that as being the answer, that we can begin praying for that sense of Life which is good.

spirituality.com host: Now it’s interesting about your comment about feeling because we have a question from Tom in New York who says: “I don’t feel anything, no emotion, so where are my thoughts? Am I so depressed that I can’t even hear God?”

Barbara: You can never not hear God. One thing that I like is the idea that God makes Himself heard. We don’t have to feel that it’s our responsibility, because God is continually speaking to us and is making Himself heard. A parent who wants a child to hear him, will make sure that he’s heard. So we can give over this sense of it’s our responsibility and it’s just one more struggle, it’s one more thing we feel we have to do, and let go of that sense of responsibility for all of this, and just respond to God’s ability to comfort us and to make Himself heard and felt. Just to go back to that idea of angels, there’s a wonderful statement about angels in Mrs. Eddy’s writings where she speaks of angels and she says, “Oh, may you feel this touch,--it is not the clasping of hands, nor a loved person present; it is more than this: it is a spiritual idea that lights your path!” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 306 ). I was so drawn one day to that idea that these angel messages are more, they’re more palpable to us than a loved person present, that, as I said, God can make Himself felt--”Oh, may you feel this touch” and so God is able to make us feel that, and we can just open our thought to that. The idea that we feel nothing, you know feeling is not just a physical thing or a mental thing. Or actually it isn’t either. It is a spiritual thing. That touch—we might say, “Oh, I was so touched by his story or by his courage,” and this is a spiritual quality that each of us has. So we can ask ourselves, “What is God today sending me to feel and to be aware of?” and refuse to see it as just a physical thing that is dependent on where our thought appears to be today.

spirituality.com host: Now this is from Church members who are writing from Klamath Falls, Oregon. They say that the community has been dealing with teenagers who seem to be somewhat out of control. “Efforts to reach out to law enforcement and the schools for help have had limited success. A sense of hopelessness is a very common reaction and at times it is very depressing to see private property damaged and no one held responsible.” And although they haven’t put down a question they clearly are trying to get a handle on how to address this concern, and also to get past the feeling of depression and powerlessness.

Barbara: I would like to say something that I think is so important—we’ve been alluding to it—and that is those synonyms for God, two particularly, are ones we need to be so clear about and keep really close in thought. One is Love and the other is Mind--this very strong, clear basis in Christian Science that there is only one Mind. Mrs. Eddy makes two statements which, again, are so strong. She says: “The basis of all health, sinlessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely believed, but it must be understood” (p. 339 ). And the other statement is: “Mind is God. The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind,” (p. 469 ) and then it carries on. So, clearly, that has to be the basis of our work. And if we are accepting that someone else—or ourselves—has a mind apart from God, a mind that can be acting out and destroying—that teenage thought, whether it’s a lark or anger or drug-induced, or whatever, that thought that anyone can have a mind apart from God to do anything apart from the reflection of the divine goodness, is something that we can handle. The thought that we ourselves can be depressed by something like this, by accepting it first as real, because as long as we’re seeing that this is a false picture, a misconception of God’s perfect reality, we’re not going to be impressed or depressed by it. So, as Church members, as Christian Scientists, as students of Christian Science, we have what we need to see through this mirage that appears so real, that seems to be person, place, and thing, and really take our stand for the fact that there is no mind apart from God. And we cannot conceive, believe, or receive a false concept. The other one is Love—our love for God and Her love for each one of Her children. We can just wrap everybody up in that Love, and continue loving and specifically loving, not matter what seems to be going on, because we know that Love is the ultimate healer, don’t we?

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: And anyone who is acting up, or depressed, or dealing with a physical problem that doesn’t seem to be yielding, or whatever it is, everyone needs to be loved. And we can do so much by just turning from this picture of a person apart from God, an identity apart from God, and just really be loving, getting clearer about who God’s child really is, and loving that. That’s our job, really. When we have these wonderful ideas from God and these ideas, or divine concepts, come to our human consciousness and they become our thinking, our thought. But these other beliefs—reactions, fears, opinions, whatever--that seem to come from what the Bible calls “the carnal mind” are never really thought, and will only be accepted as our thinking if we decide to let it be. So we can just stand firm that this is not our thinking—this is not your thinking.

spirituality.com host: This is from Sue in Florida. She says: “Can you please expand on the idea of not being the daughter of Eve? I feel that way after decades in a mentally abusive marriage. How do I deal strongly with the aggressive mental suggestion that my depression is still driven by that, even though my husband passed away twenty years ago?”

Barbara: If you have a Science and Health, I would suggest you make a study of everything Mrs. Eddy says about women, about female, feminine, and become really familiar with those passages. There are a lot—and motherhood, as well, because that’s all part of this idea, in both Science and Health and her other writings. And also read the Gospels, and see how many times it was women Jesus was healing, over and over again. From a young girl who needed help, right through to an older woman who was so bowed she couldn’t stand up right, to a widow who had lost her only son and means of support. And it was so clear that Jesus in every one of those instances was overturning this sense that women deserve to suffer. This whole idea that because there is this allegory of Adam and Eve—there never was an Eve—so the whole idea that this could determine our life is, can I say, bogus. We just do not have to accept that. So that would be something that I would suggest, because you are not the daughter of Eve you are the daughter of God. Psalms 45 says, “The king’s daughter is all glorious within” (verse 13 ). And that’s the truth about you. That daughterhood also includes, I think I said this earlier, it also includes those masculine qualities of strength and support and principle. As you begin to realize that all of those qualities make up the compound idea of who you are, and so you are always being strengthened within you. That strength is within you, and it is strengthening your female qualities, you might say, that they’re not weak, they’re strong. So you can see that every feminine quality you express is strong, and every masculine quality you express is nurturing you, as well as everyone else you are expressing it to. You don’t have to accept for a moment that you are weak in any way for any reason. And you know that was the one thought I think that made the Church in Mrs. Eddy’s day so against what she was writing, was this whole idea of overturning this concept of Eve. Because if we can keep women to blame for the state that manhood appears to be in, then we can let ourselves off the hook. So she knew what she was setting out there, and that this whole idea of salvation for mankind needed to come through recognizing the importance of overturning that false sense of Eve. And if man is the son and daughter of the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God, then no one is an Eve. I hope that helps.

spirituality.com host: I think it does. Now this is from Matt in England, and we have quite a few questions. I just wanted to announce to our listeners we have lots and lots of questions and we won’t be able to get to them all, but we are going to run about fifteen or twenty minutes over our regular time to try to get in as many as we can. But let’s get back to Matt in England who says: “What about climate? I think I’m right in saying that often the countries that have the highest depression rates have less daylight hours and are less sunny. These places often also have higher alcohol consumption. I live in England where it rains a lot. Sometimes I feel I would be happier if I lived in a sunny place, like Spain. Would I be happier?”

Barbara: Yes, well, I live in Vancouver . . .

spirituality.com host: Which is rainy!

Barbara: That’s just a part of the belief about this. Mrs. Eddy certainly addresses this idea of climate, whether it’s for physical or mental health. We don’t have to accept that. Certainly, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus used that analogy for light by talking about being the light of the world. “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5 ), and so as we entertain these Christly concepts in thought, as we let God’s thoughts of peace which were clearly communicated to and through Jesus, as we let them be ours, as we let the mind that was in Christ be our mind, we are right one with the light, and how could we be feeling that we are in darkness or there aren’t enough hours of light? There is no end to the light. There is no night in this kingdom of heaven where you and I live and move and have our being. And that that Christ-light is always with us. I love that this talk was titled “Overcoming depression—let Christ set you free.” I love the fact that that idea of the Christ was brought in there because, that is the light, and the promise that that light makes free. So just that sense of light and day and Christ, it is ever present, ever present with us. We can pray at night when the sun has gone down and have just as much inspiration as during the day. So I would just not accept that at all.

spirituality.com host: OK. Now let’s go on to Elaine from San Diego. “About seven years ago I took medication and was being treated for depression. When I started to work with a practitioner the depression was healed. Since that time many challenges have come and gone but at this point depression seems to have returned, maybe as a reaction to a challenge that seems to grow worse and worse. I find myself feeling so far from God and even unwilling to study. Studying consistently has always been a challenge and sometimes seems pointless. [And by study here, of course she’s talking about studying Christian Science and the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings.] What can you suggest?”

Barbara: It’s clear that a lot of people feel this way when they’re dealing with depression, that it’s just hard to work. One idea that we can do, even if we feel we can’t work, is we can take one thought, just one thought, and hold to it, repeat it, stay with it. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, “Hold these points strongly in view.” To “Keep in mind the verity of being,--that man is the image and likeness of God, in whom all being is painless and permanent.” And “Remember that man’s perfection is real and unimpeachable, whereas imperfection is blameworthy, unreal, and is not brought about by divine Love” (p. 414 ). Well, the reason I mention that is because unimpeachable means unquestionable. And this sense of depression would always have us questioning our soundness, questioning our joy or our peace of mind, questioning our ability to pray, our ability to think and act rightly. The more we hold strongly that this is not who you are, is not who anyone is, and that you don’t have to accept that you can’t work, and then just start by working a little bit, and keep going back to it. If you can only do a few minutes at a time, just do that and take one thought. And also, get out for a walk, go and do something. The suggestion often is just to sit and not move and to put on the TV or whatever. Do something physical. Get out and get going because we don’t have to just stand still and accept this.

spirituality.com host: Yeah. Anthony from Europe has a comment. He says: “I would like to comment that having suffered depression for many, many years, I found that the root problem was an issue of self-pity. It may be humanly true that things appear bleak, but I realized it was not spiritually true. Consequently, I should not be persuaded to stay in a box which I had unwittingly constructed for myself. This spiritual approach healed me, and many of those who I’ve talked with who have this same issue.” So that’s a nice concept.

Barbara: Very, very good. That goes right along--doesn’t it?--with this sense of identifying ourselves as mortal and having a mind that is susceptible of depression. And we become very used to this persona, and have really accepted it as who we are, and sometimes it takes humility to be willing to let that go, and take that stand for admitting that we’re God’s own likeness.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: And being able to be aware that it is a cycle of self-pity, yes, you bet.

spirituality.com host: Now this is from Jay in California who says: “Thanks for being here. My husband is an alcoholic and drinks heavily almost every day. It’s gotten to the point where I have a hard time seeing him as God’s child, and spend a good part of many days trying to get over being depressed and feeling like I’m not doing much good. Any ideas?”

Barbara: The very fact that you care and are wanting to continue seeing him correctly, that’s just wonderful. Know that God is right there with you in this, and is keeping you up, keeping you strong, keeping you focused, and that you can do it. Sometimes when I have a hard time seeing a particular person correctly, I will just go to seeing the man God made, getting clear about who man is—the generic sense of man that Mrs. Eddy speaks of as perfect and whole and complete and “the compound idea of God, including all right ideas” (p. 475 ), and therefore not including “a single element of error” (see p. 463 ), not including any wrong concept of themselves. And so there can’t be any unyielding belief in that consciousness of God that is the truth about man. I find that that can help me kind of get away from the personal picture, and just get clear about man. And then you can be knowing and praying that your husband is that man. That’s who he is. The definition of man in Science and Health is not just out there and applies generally, it is specifically about your husband, and about anyone that we are praying for. And we can see it as the truth about them, and make it specific—just as we can do that with the passages in the Bible and Science and Health for ourselves, too. Make it personal. Once we’re clear about what is it that God has created?—this perfect, intact creation which is continually maintained by Him/Her.

spirituality.com host: Now this is from Joan who’s in Vancouver. She says: “Do you think forgiveness can help with depression if there might be a connection with having been unjustly treated?”

Barbara: Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely. When you think that depression is the sense of just letting these depressing, angry, frightened, or reactive, or whatever, thoughts going round and round and round. It may feel physically like a heaviness, but when we’re paying attention we realize it’s just this root of thought that wants to go over and over and over again. So, yes definitely. If we know that this stems from feeling wrongly treated, then forgiveness is such a help. It lightens the load considerably and often can heal the whole thing.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: And, of course, forgiveness is really first and foremost, just seeing what is really true about both the person—the individual who’s dealing with this—and anyone else that they are thinking about.

spirituality.com host: Sally from North Dakota says: “I overcame serious depression through affirmations. It’s true it’s hard to read, but I’d sit by a lake and affirm: Truth, Life, and Love [and those are words for God] is all present and all power. Ephesians talks about the holy Spirit pleading on our behalf with God. We’re deeply ‘rooted and grounded in love’“ (see Eph. 3:17 ). So that’s Sally’s thought to share and we’re glad you sent it, Sally.

Barbara: Yes, I love that, and that’s what I meant, really, by taking one thought and holding to it. One thought that I love is where the Bible says that “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14 ). I think it’s so good to remember that every truth we hold to is powerful.

spirituality.com host: Yes.

Barbara: So when we think that “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28) in God, in Spirit, as Paul said, we can know that it’s in the power of the Spirit that we live, and move, and have our being. And that every truth we’re holding onto has all the power of God behind it. And, of course, it is moving us forward, opening our thought, and healing.

spirituality.com host: Now this is a spirituality.com site visitor who says: “How can I overcome having to think of one particular individual many times a day, even many times per hour, in a compulsive, needless, unproductive way? You have already answered this by our right to resist unproductive thoughts and to think and act rightly. Could you please add something specific to this type of distracting thought?”

Barbara: Interesting. I’m not a hundred percent sure what you mean by that, but it reminds me of an experience I had when I was a young mother and there was the wife of a couple that we were friends with who was a very dominant personality, and she had an opinion about absolutely everything. I was very fond of her because she had taught me a great deal about parenting and grocery buying and the whole thing, so I had a lot to be grateful for. But over a period of time I began to feel that she just overshadowed my every thought and she was constantly on my mind--would she like this or would she approve of that? And I began to realize how important it was that I be an independent thinker. So I began working on that, that idea that my thought came straight from God. It didn’t come through someone else. I didn’t have to feel that she was the source of my intelligence or direction or guidance. But I also didn’t have to feel that I could be overpowered by that. So I really began claiming my independence, my right—as this questioner said—to think and act rightly. I found myself realizing that this, in a way, was a suggestion to in fact, stop me from doing my own thinking. So, as I began to recognize that, and sort of took it out of person, the whole thing just turned around so quickly. So I’m not sure just exactly what you meant, and whether that’s helpful or not, but on one added note, the more we watch our thinking--Jesus said, “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:37 ), and he had to have meant our thinking. He couldn’t have meant the weather or what our neighbor was doing. So we can’t take control of our thinking, we can’t change our thinking, if we’re not watching. Give yourself that assignment: to pay more attention. And when you find yourself doing that, just recognize it, and say, “No, no, I will not go down this path. God is giving me thoughts of”—whatever it is that you need, thoughts of peace, thoughts of strength, thoughts of courage, thoughts of good that come straight to you from God. You know, everything comes straight to us from God, and a lot of times this whole business of depression has to do with heredity. When we can see that like spokes of a wheel, everything is connected to the center, and goes straight to the center--that everything we need comes straight from God.

spirituality.com host: No heredity can get in there to mess it up.

Barbara: Yes, it’s a suggestion and just one more theory, isn’t it? Something that I have really worked a lot with is a passage in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy shares that, “Throughout the infinite cycles of eternal existence, Spirit and matter neither concur in man nor in the universe” (p. 319 ). To me, that means that throughout the infinite cycles of eternity there’s never been a single case of depression to be passed down. There has never been--just as there’s never been an Eve to pass down that curse--there has never been a single instance of depression or any other disease.

spirituality.com host: One thing that I’ve found helpful—we sort of have to hurry a little bit—one thing I’ve found helpful is Mary Baker Eddy wrote a poem called, “Bless Christmas Morn” which is also a hymn, and there’s a great deal of interesting—her concepts that help deal with heredity, one of which is, “Thou gentle beam of living Love /And deathless Life! / Truth infinite,--so far above / All mortal strife” (Hymn No. 23 ), and I like to think of “all mortal strife” as any negative thing that would cause strife, whether it’s disease or depression or sickness or anything like that. That sometimes is helpful. But let’s move on to Ann from Chicago. We have only time for just a few more questions and we need to try to keep clipping here.

Barbara: OK.

spirituality.com host: “My good friend has a college-age daughter living at home. My friend is distraught because her daughter’s depressed, has dropped out of college, just sleeps all day, has no desire to interact with friends. Can you give me some thoughts that I could share with my friend?”

Barbara: Yes. I think the most important thing would be for her not to label this and focus on this as her daughter, to separate this from her, to see that this is a lie about her, about her thought processes, about her ability to live and move and have her right and normal being in God, and in school or wherever else she needs to be. I think sometimes we can sort of attach this to someone, and want them to just sort of stop. And yet, what we really need to see is that this is trying to handle her, this is not something she’s choosing. To know that God is right there, right there, every moment, giving her good thoughts. When Jesus was about to go through the trial and the crucifixion and Peter had cut off the ear of one of the soldiers who came to get him, and Jesus said that if he needed it, God could give him “twelve legions of angels” (see Matt. 26:53 ). A legion is—it was a term for a Roman section of an army, and it meant 4,500 men, or up to 6,000 men. So that means Jesus was talking about 54,000 to 72,000 angels. That’s got to be greater and stronger than anything that’s being suggested to anyone who’s going through this--that those legions of angels are right there. Perhaps give her a passage from the Bible or Science and Health about woman. Perhaps that passage in Psalms 45, “the king’s daughter is all glorious within” (verse 13 ). Perhaps something about the child of God, the perfect child of God, and give that to her. And also, I would love to suggest the twenty-third psalm, that is such a wonderful help. And in Science and Health on page 578 Mrs. Eddy puts in the word Love all the way through that psalm, so that’s a wonderful thing she could take over there and share with her. For those of you who have the Journal, the new February Journal—you can get them in the Christian Science Reading Room—there’s a wonderful poem called “The Shepherd’s Song” which is the twenty-third psalm sort of reworded, which is so comforting and beautiful for anyone who needs something like that.

spirituality.com host: The Christian Science Journal, we probably don’t have the poem on the Website, but you can check out The Christian Science Journal on our Website to just get an idea what it is, and just want to mention that both Science and Health and the Bible are on the Website so you can search for those items that Barbara just mentioned right here on the Website. We just have a few more minutes, so please stay with the chat until we’re done here.

Sarah from Rhode Island has sent in a comment. She says: “Regarding the dear one who turns to porn for comfort, I’ve observed that those who are attracted to that are looking for love to lift them out of depression, and of course they don’t find it there. [I think by love, she means a material sense of love.] So sometimes a good anecdote might be to do something loving for another person or to get really busy being useful and productive, even if that means just chopping wood or washing the car or whatever. Believe it or not, that can help break the mesmerism of depression at times. Instead of depression, try expression.” And that’s a nice little thought there.

Barbara: Oh, that’s wonderful. I just am so grateful for everybody who is sharing their insights. It’s just such a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to do that.

spirituality.com host: Now we’re going to do two more questions, and these kind of get at the root about some key beliefs about depression, but we may have to do them a little briefly. This one—these are both from spirituality.com site visitors. “How can I deal with what seems to be a stigma regarding someone who has dealt with and maybe overcome depression? The fear and hurt from the stigma is as hard as the depression itself.”

Barbara: Can you read the first part of that question again? How do you help someone else who is dealing with the stigma?

spirituality.com host: Let me read it again. “How can one deal with what seems to be a stigma regarding someone who has dealt with and maybe overcome depression?” So that maybe it was somebody who was depressed and they kind of have a stigma attached to them.

Barbara: I think to realize that overcoming that was proof that this person is seeing who they really are as God’s child, free and unencumbered by anything like that. So that is still the answer here, that this has never been who this dear one is or was, that there’s nothing to hang on, because it never was a part of who they were. So the clearer we are about who we are, the less we’re bothered by what someone else might be thinking. To really be grateful for that healing, and realize that it’s really what God knows about you that’s important. You just can take comfort in that and just continue being who you really are.

spirituality.com host: We’re actually going to do two more. I just got a second one that seemed important. OK, the next one is: “So when I feel depressed, is it my fault? Does animal magnetism, something outside of who I am, have anything to do with this?” And we should probably define animal magnetism.

Barbara: In Christian Science animal magnetism is the specific term for evil or error, what might be the opposite of God, and claims to be a power in human experience. Absolutely not your fault, absolutely. These things are suggested to us, and never our thought and never our fault. The only thought that has power is a right thought. I think that any sense in the world that our thinking makes a difference in our experience seems to come with that added burden that then what goes on in my life that’s not good must be my fault. But the truth is that only what is good in our thinking, in our experience, has power. Our thought is so directly linked to God—in fact, God’s thought is our thought, we have the mind of Christ now, and have never had any other. As we see that, we can completely just say no to that.

spirituality.com host: All right. Now this is the last one, absolutely, sorry, but I hope that the questions we have answered will be helpful to those of you who have not had your questions answered. We’ve had just lots and lots of questions and we’re so grateful for them and I wish we could have done them all. This is the last one. It’s from Scott in California. He says: “My wife recently served me with divorce papers. I don’t know how to even begin to describe how I feel, so much sadness, grief, hopelessness. I study and pray and find moments of some relief, but all the darkness seems to cascade back in within moments. I so wanted to work this out, to redeem all the hurts and mistakes and sadness. I can’t seem to reconcile that I won’t have this opportunity. I know that I need to see God as the source of my fulfillment and happiness, but I so miss my dear wife.”

Barbara: Well, my heart goes out to you. My husband died unexpectedly, years ago, but I know exactly what you’re saying, and that sense of just where do we go from here and how do I put one foot in front of the other? I’ll tell you two things that really helped me. One was--and it’s been mentioned here already--keeping a gratitude list. Just as my friend talked about cultivating joy, that was when I started keeping a list every single day of every little thing that I could list. But I also would keep lists of where my thought was going, and the unhappiness, and then I would challenge it with a truth from the Bible or from Science and Health, and just really systemically handle these thoughts. And part of it was self-pity, and part of it was just sadness, and fear of the future, and all of those different things. So know that you will get through this, and God is with you every moment, and that you can take just one thought at a time, one step at a time, and keep looking for the good, and insisting that it’s there, that God has not stopped showering you. On page 5 in Science and Health it says, “. . . God pours the riches of His love into the understanding and affections, giving us strength according to our day.” So whatever strength you need today, God is pouring out to you. And you’ll get there, you’ll get through this.

spirituality.com host: Well, thank you all for being with us. You have just been fabulous to put these great questions out here for us. I’m just getting my sheet of paper here to get ready to give you the announcement for the next chat, but before I do that I’d just like to ask you Barbara if you have any final comments?

Barbara: Well, it’s been such a pleasure to be here and thinking about this with all of us, and to know that everything we’ve talked about this morning and this afternoon are healing this for everyone, moving thought forward and counteracting the lies of this. And that God never leaves us alone--never. We are never separate from Him and always one with the divine Mind, and loved unconditionally no matter what by divine Love and embraced in that Love. So just wrap everyone up in that Love and know that they feel it and will continue feeling it. spirituality.com host: Thank you so much, Barbara, you just have been great. In case you weren’t quite sure, today’s guest was Barbara Fife, who is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science in Vancouver, British Columbia. Our next chat will be on Tuesday, February 16, at 2 p.m. when Keith Wommack, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science from Corpus Christi, Texas, will respond to your questions on the subject, “Infidelity in marriage? Finding healing answers.” Thanks so much for being with us today.