Lori Alexander, Depression, Counseling
-by Kathi
Lori Alexander recently posted a YouTube video on her channel titled, “Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself.”
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I have to ask this first: Why are people still making videos of themselves in their cars? I guess Lori was driving somewhere, had an inspirational moment about self-pity, and just had to record her thoughts right away. Does she want us to know that she actually does get out of the house?
Lori tells us that she has had years of illness, brain surgery, and problems with her neck and back, and watched those around her enjoy life. But her illnesses didn’t stop her from feeling sorry for herself. She learned from Oswald Chambers that self-pity is Satanic, therefore she wants nothing to do with self-pity.
Lori offers the following teaching for how to deal with suffering:
- Repeat: “The joy of the Lord is my strength” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
- Listen to praise songs.
- Study I Peter and Philippians over and over. Renew your mind with God’s truth.
- Understand that you cannot be thankful and grateful if you are full of self-pity.
- Kick out self-pity quickly.
Lori acknowledges that depression and self-pity may be due to a bad childhood, abuse, or “whatever.” (Seriously, “whatever?” She is so empathetic.) Here’s the thing, folks….Lori Alexander is not a trained counselor and has no business telling people how to deal with depression!
Lori’s advice is dangerous because victims of childhood trauma and adult victims of abuse don’t just “kick out self-pity quickly.” Our brain is a complex creature and no one deals with trauma the same way. Telling people to “get over it” is not helpful and is more damaging. It is spiritually abusive to tell people that if they can’t stop feeling sorry for themselves then they don’t trust in God. Don’t fall for this lie.
If you are looking for an excellent resource on how trauma affects the brain and the body, please read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. In this book he states:
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. . . . The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
Telling yourself to quickly get rid of self-pity is suppressing your thoughts and feelings. If you are experiencing depression due to abuse or past trauma, please seek professional help. If you are depressed and feeling suicidal, please seek professional help. Someone is always willing to listen to you and offer help.
I am very thankful for this community because we are willing to listen to each other and offer support. We welcome anyone who is struggling with their emotions or faith due to abuse or trauma. You will not find comments such as: “Just get over it,” or “You need to have more faith,” or “You need to trust God more.”
My advice to Lori is to stop giving advice to people on how to deal with depression. Not only are your words too simplistic for such a complex issue, but they are also shaming and not helpful. Please refer your listeners to mental health professionals when it comes to dealing with abuse, trauma, or “whatever.”
If you are need professional mental health support, the following are national hotline numbers that can connect you with resources in your area:
If you are in danger of harming yourself or someone else, please call 911.
SAMHSA Treatment Referral Helpline: 877-726-4727 (8 a.m. – 8 p.m., EST)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 (24/7 phone hotline)
Veterans Crisis Line: 800-273-8255 (Press 1; 24/7 phone hotline)
Edited to add: If you do not feel comfortable contacting a national hotline, please reach out to us through our email, SpiritualSB@gmail.com. If you need help locating resources in your area, we are here for you.
Spiritual Sounding Board 
It would be wonderful if all of our trauma could be “resolved” after listening to Lori’s 4 minutes of “encouraging” words.
I was actually encouraged to see a professional, licensed Christian counselor after sharing with a church staff member some of my life experiences. I had difficulty expressing emotions, and I couldn’t figure out why (I am very logical and analytical, but I couldn’t “logic” my way out of my feelings). So, after the condensed domestically violent/emotionally abusive/alcoholic parent childhood, raising a relative’s children due to drug issues, with a full-time “people helper” job rolled out of my mouth, this person gently steered me to someone who could help me. That was 20 years ago, and I have always been grateful. My family is still pretty messed-up, but I learned I could love them, stop rescuing them, and still live my own (now wonderful, but not perfect) life. I will always be grateful for the person who said that i needed help.
And, Lori, I knew the Bible really well. I was a “professional” Christian worker with an MA from a great Christian school. But, just reciting and applying verses doesn’t fix anyone. You need to know how and where to apply, and understand that the Savior Who suffered for us truly counted the cost. That’s why He can be our Savior, I know Him better now because I understand who I am better than I did before.
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Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. The love of self not condemned, rather, it is assumed.
Empathy is based on being able to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes, and imagining how we would feel and respond in the other person’s situation.
How can we feel compassion and empathy for others, and be thoughtful towards the needs of others, if we refuse to acknowledge our own need for compassion, empathy, love, etc.? In other words, how can show pity towards others if we do not also exercise self-pity?
By “pity” I don’t mean pity in a condescending sense, but in the sense of mercy — in the sense of acknowledging the presence of suffering, and being willing to do something about that suffering. This is what the story of the Good Samaritan is all about. The Good Samaritan didn’t just tell the wounded man to suck it up, sing some praise songs, read the Bible, and snap out of it. He gave him the practical help that he really needed.
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I am glad to see you all doing a post on mental health here, and how some Christians give very hurtful or bogus advice to Christians who have mental health problems.
I just did a post on my small blog recently where I expressed a desire to see more Christian abuse or Christian recovery blogs covering mental health problems on a more regular basis.
There are a lot of Christians who have depression and anxiety (and other mental health problems), and most responses they get from most Christian lay persons or pastors, and from some nouthetic counselors, will be harmful, shaming, ineffective, or victim-blaming.
I had depression for years and years. I still deal with anxiety.
My mother also dealt with both, so she used to often buy books by Christian authors on how to fight depression, and I read many of those books growing up and in my 20s.
(All this was before the internet. The content I later found online, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, about anxiety and depression by Christians was no better, however. It was all very victim blaming and offered lame-o advice like “Just focus on Bible verses about joy and anxiety.”)
I also used to listen to sermons on Christian TV about depression and anxiety.
In all my time reading and listening to content from Christians about mental health, the vast majority of the advice was and remains unhelpful, shaming, and just does not work.
The methods – just pray more, read the Bible, attend church regularly, volunteer and charities that help the poor, blame your personal sins for your mental health issues – simple do not work, not for most people.
In all my years (I’m in my 40s now), I’ve only seen a teeny, tiny number of Christians (like a total of 3 or 4, maybe) say that memorizing and repeating Bible verses about anxiety alleviated their anxiety. For most people, that sort of “spiritual” approach simply will not work.
There are Christians out there who have been suffering from depression (or other issues) for many years (or decades) and are absolutely desperate for a healing, they’ve tried everything (including the tripe Lori A. advises), and none of it has worked.
Some mental health problems are largely biologically based and may need medication prescribed by a psychiatrist, while some issues may need a combination of medication and talk therapy.
I’d also add that many Christians are terribly ignorant about what depression is. They tend to confuse clinical depression with run of the mill “blues” or sadness that everyone feels from time to time.
Depression is NOT the same thing as “feeling sad” or ‘down’ for a few hours or for a day or two. Depression is not about being self-absorbed, or feeling sorry for one’s self, or having self-pity (neither is grieving the death of a loved one! A lot of Christians misrepresent normal grief as being “self pity”).
Depression often drags on for many years and interferes with a person’s ability to hold a job or live life.
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“She learned from Oswald Chambers that self-pity is Satanic…”
If there’s anything here to call “satanic”, it’s this type of “advice”! It’s dangerous and destructive rubbish.
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(Part 2)
As for me, I finally figured out that a large chunk of my clinical depression was caused by wrong thinking, which was promoted by my mother my whole life under gender complementarian thinking, and complementarianism (as I write on my “Miss Daisy” blog) is about the same thing as codependency.
When you’re codependent, one of the things you do is hold your feelings in. You don’t express anger.
You allow others to abuse you, use you, and take advantage of you, all because you feel that defending yourself would be selfish, un-Christian, etc. If you keep repressing all that anger and go through life allowing folks to abuse you, that anger held inwards does manifest itself as depression.
From my father, I was taught that it’s wrong, weak, selfish, or shameful, to admit to others if you are feeling weak – if you are feeling sad, lonely, what have you, you are to repress those feelings and keep them bottled up.
( I still get this from my dad, and from my big sister – even now in my 40s, both of them will get angry at me or shame me if they find out I’ve gone to someone and confided in them when I’m in a funk.)
A lot of Christians encourage this sort of thinking, that it’s selfish or shameful to go to another person when you’re hurting and admit to them that you’re hurting, and to expect to receive some empathy or words of encouragement.
Most Christians really expect you to be a tough, stoic cow-boy type of guy and get through life’s down-points all alone. Just you and God, and nobody else, no medication, no therapy, no support from friends. Anything else is considered un-spiritual, shameful, or wrong.
For me to get over most of my depression and low self-esteem – I had to read a stack of books about codependency and a lot of free, online articles by psychologists about codependency to fix my wrong thinking.
(I used to see psychiatrist and take anti-depressants, but neither one helped me personally).
For me, reading these books was what freed me. Once I read these books and articles and learned things like that my feelings are just as important as anyone else’s, that I don’t have to be a doormat, that it’s okay for me to be assertive and tell someone off if they’re being mean to me – most of my depression has lifted.
I had to learn things from these books that my parents should have teached me when I was a kid, teen and young adult but they did not – my parents actually taught me the opposite!
So, it took reading books by psychologists for me to be ‘healed’ of some of my issues.
All the years of praying and Bible reading and all the other spiritual mumbo-jumbo most Christians (such as Lori A.) pressure you into pursuing did not work for me, and those “solutions” don’t work for 99% of Christians.
I write all that to say, if you’re a Christian reading this, and you’d had depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or some other problem for years and years, there is hope. If you’re tried prayer, Bible reading, going to church, and so on, and none of that stuff has alleviated your problem, the fault is not with you. You are not unspiritual.
You might want to try medication, talk therapy, group therapy, or a combination of all those things. I could not afford to see a therapist or psychologist, so I had to go online and research what was wrong with me (which led me to the books about codependency), so maybe that approach could help you.
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I wanted to clarify a couple of things from my last post or two.
In my family, it is true that for the most part, I was shamed and discouraged from talking about my feelings, going to people if I was in need of emotional support.
However, the one exception was my mother. My mother was fine with me going to her and confiding in her if I was feeling sad, depressed, anxious or lonely.
My mother never once shamed me, criticized me, or victim-blamed me any time I came to her crying or upset. She was empathetic and warm.
The only emotion my mother discouraged me from showing in public (and to a degree in private) was anger. She didn’t think it was feminine or Christian for a girl or woman to show anger.
As for my dad and sister, they don’t like me showing ANY emotion or admitting to any weakness, not anger, sadness, feeling anxious, etc. (They think it’s shameful, so they think I should act like a robot. I’m supposed to go through life acting as though nothing bothers me, I’m a tough guy.)
Another point to clarify:
It is true that I could no longer afford medication or therapy – not in the last several years. Up to my early 30s, I was able to pay for psychiatrist visits and for medications.
But in the last several years, I have not had the funds to pay for mental health stuff, not for pills or doctor visits. Previously I could afford it, but not now.
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Sadness is Sadness.
Self Pity is Self Pity.
Depression is something else.
I couldn’t make it past that.
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Why not the psalms? Too much sadness?
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i.e. More Righteous Commandments (TM) from Serena Joy to all the Handmaids?
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This kind of advice is based on fear. Self pity is satanic!?? Wow, that would scare any “good Christian” to avoid it at all costs… and feel scared and guilty and work all the harder to memorize verses and sweep such feelings under the rug. Good grief. This is the kind of approach that tells depressed Christians they are sinning and should repent and “snap out of it” etc., etc., by simply reading scripture. Bad advice!
I found no solution for my depression years ago from this type of “Christian” advice. What is needed is therapy with empathy, compassion, and practical tools to help people train their brains to recognize negative, illogical thoughts and combat them with specific positive facts. This “secular” book on cognitive therapy helped me more than any “Christian” advice I got. Highly recommend it. And it actually fits more reasoned Christian teaching > https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy-ebook/dp/B009UW5X4C/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1496166745&sr=8-1
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Let’s not forget, Jesus Himself sought the company of his closest friends during His most difficult time. Would He have talked to them about His feelings and fears if they had been able to stay awake? We’ll never know… but based on the available information, at the very least, He didn’t want to go it alone. So why should we?
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I was ashamed and felt guilty for YEARS when I was in the IFB church over my anxiety and depression. I was told from the pulpit that “worry is a mild form of atheism ” and that depression is selfish. I was even told by one looney pants that the reason why I have migraines is because I’m living in the flesh. Gee there’s some encouragement for you!! The church I go to now is the total opposite. The pastor gave a message last summer about mental illness and what scripture says. He encourages people to seek help for their issues. He also said that we don’t hesitate to talk about and seek help for our physical problems, why should our mental illness be any different? That was the final push I needed to get counseling. I have made so much progress. How many people are living in misery or even gave up the fight and committed suicide because of “advice ” like that?
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Oh, boy. (Sigh.)
Yes, as Christians we should try to cultivate a sense of thankfulness for the love and gifts we have from our heavenly Father. Certainly. And sometimes we do throw ourselves “pity parties” for selfish reasons, just because of not having cultivated that attitude. And every so often we need to be slapped back to reality when we start down that path (think along the lines of, “My neighbor gets over 500 channels and all I can get are these lousy 300 channels! Life’s not fair!”).
But when we are dragged down by depression, or consumed and burdened by the pain from hurts and abuse, being exhorted to “stop feeling sorry for yourself” is about as helpful as the person in James who responds to one without clothes and food by saying, “go in peace, be warmed and be filled” without providing clothes and food. In fact, in some ways it’s worse because it implies that your struggles are not real, they don’t have a legitimate basis, they are just in your mind, and it’s only your own unwillingness or stubbornness that is preventing you from just “snapping out of it.”
Having struggled at times with depression and having had several periods where I was being crushed under its weight, I can say that “stop feeling sorry for yourself” is just about the most un-helpful, un-productive thing one can hear. At that point, what one needs is support, sympathetic acknowledgement of the problem by others, friendships, encouragement to seek out help, and the guidance and counseling of someone (or someones) properly trained to address such issues from the various medical/psychological/emotional standpoints. And, the grace of God.
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Sunshine, evidently Pastor Rick Warren also said that worry is a mild form of atheism. I was really surprised to hear this because he and his wife promote suicide awareness and getting mental health care (after their son tragically committed suicide).
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Ah, the mental health prosperity gospel again. Claims such as this merely lead me to believe that the person making the claim has only the most superficial understanding of the Bible. It contains many stark passages on mental suffering, both about people who suffered prolonged mental pain, such as Jeremiah, and how such suffering feels. Some of the Psalms are cries of agony, such as Psalm 88 by Heman the Ezrahite, which ends in unalleviated darkness:
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What Lori Alexander is also overlooking is the fact that much (perhaps most) depression and anxiety have an underlying physiological cause. Vitamin D deficiency. Thyroid disease, which is both underdiagnosed and undertreated in the US. Sleep apnea and sleep disorders. (4 out of 5 sleep apnea sufferers are undiagnosed. One study evaluated newly diagnosed sleep apnea patients and 80% of them suffered from depression and/or anxiety. CPAP therapy cured the depression/anxiety in 80% of them.) Poor diet: the standard American diet in the US, filled with processed foods, not enough fiber, not enough whole foods, too many additives, too much sugar – is associated with anxiety and depression. The majority of brain neurotransmitters, which govern mood, are actually made in the gut, and with poor diet, you have poor gut health and thus poor neurotransmitter synthesis. Change the diet, and moods improve dramatically. B12, magnesium, and zinc deficiencies – also associated with anxiety and depression. So praying and meditating is not going to magically correct all these underlying physiological causes. The cause must be addressed with lifestyle and dietary changes and sometimes medical interventions. When your B12 levels are so low you can barely get out of bed, or when you stop breathing over 30 times per hour all night every night, no matter how much “joy of the Lord” you have, you aren’t going to have strength, not mental, not physical, and not emotional. It’s not physiologically possible.
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Julie Anne said,
I’ve heard this sort of thing a lot for the last three decades.
There are a lot of Christians who will tell you that having anxiety (fear) is “sin.”
This is one area Christians can’t agree on, though. One moment on one Christian show, I’ll see a pastor saying having fear is “sin” while on another show another Christian will say no, it’s not.
It just seems rather counter-productive to tell someone their anxiety is sin. I’m not sure if the Bible presents fear as always being sin in each and every case.
Even it if is, I don’t think shaming or scolding people for having it is helpful. I’ve had anxiety my whole life, and it only would make me feel ten times worse when I would read or hear Christians categorize my anxiety as being sin.
I think it’s the same thing with categorizing fear / worry / anxiety as being a “mild form of atheism” It sure doesn’t do anything to help the person who is suffering from a lot of worry / anxiety.
And yes, you’d think Rick Warren (whose son died from suicide) would be a heck of a lot more sensitive towards this sort of thing.
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Leila said,
There are biblical persons, such as some of the prophets in the Old Testament, who apparently had depression.
There was one OT prophet who collapsed under a tree, and he didn’t want to go on.
God sent him an angel, who brought him food and told him to drink water, I think, and told him to take a nap after eating.
I also once saw a person on TV (can’t recall if it was a man or a woman, though I thin it was a woman) say she was planning her own suicide by carbon monoxide.
She was heading out to the garage to start her car up to end her life, when an inner voice told her to stop, go back inside, and drink a glass of water. After she drank the water, she lost a desire to kill herself. She was dehydrated.
One point of all this is that if someone is not getting enough rest or food, that can contribute to depression.
I also note that when the OT prophets became depressed, God did not lecture or shame them, and tell them to just “pray more” or “focus on Scriptures.” God empathized with them, told them to get some sleep, and eat something.
But God did not shame them or lecture them for being worried or having depression or even for being suicidal. I wonder why more Christians today aren’t following God’s example there??
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Thank-you Leila for your wise counsel. You are absolutely correct concerning proper dietary patterns and appropriate rest for the body. Spot on!
Daisy; Great story about the dehydrated individual! Thanks for sharing. You brought up another valuable point concerning the human body not getting enough water, which can cause our minds to blur. I see a chiropractor who does not crack the bones, but massages the muscles in a way that builds up the muscles around the spinal cord from the lower back on up. Recently, he shared that I need to drink more water for cell health as he could feel the lack of hydration during my therapy session. I was stunned for a moment because he never asked me if I drink plenty of water throughout the day!
Also, I do believe that having one or two very, very good friends in this life who are there for you when the manure gets so deep, can be such a great blessing to the soul. These are individuals who will not use Scriptures against you as a “sign and wonder” of their own great spirituality, these are ones who will listen and not judge or fix you, and these are individuals who will love you with compassion and empathy for they themselves have been down that rocky road of hardship.
In watching this video, I cried for Lori, for it seems as though she has lost her own soul/personality to someone else. I pray someone will love on her for who she is; not for what she is.
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Indeed. I have read so many stories this last year where people turned to someone they thought was a friend and got the brush off, or judgement, or spiritualeeze or what have you instead of a genuine love and compassion. Instead of simply listening. I wish better for them.
[Me, I judge myself far more harshly than anyone else. Which maybe is an anxiety thing. I read one of those little pinterest meme things the other day that said anxiety is not being able to sleep because you said the wrong thing one time two years ago. ]
But yes, Lori’s answers are not helpful in this. I truly think all those bible verses about overcoming fear and sadness and so on are meant to be comforting to people precisely because we ARE going to fear. We are human. It is so sad to see them used to hurt rather than help.
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Leila, amen. When my OCD was at its worst, I went to see a Christian counselor (licensed, professional, non-nouthetic). He was great, but I made only the teeniest incremental progress. Finally he said it was time for me to go see a shrink and get meds. Those meds made all the difference — like night and day. That’s because OCD is neuro-physiological in origin. It’s caused by a serotonin imbalance. Today I am on generic Luvox — very inexpensive and a total lifesaver. I cannot imagine life without it.
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A verse I’ve been pondering for a long time is “I desire compassion and not sacrifice”. I think this speaks to the heart of the issue with Lori. Life for the Evangelicals seems to revolve around self-denial and self-sacrifice. So, for someone suffering depression, Lori’s answer is not compassion – pushing the person to find support and help – but sacrifice – calling the depression sin and shoving it in a box.
While there are a few pictures in the Bible of people who had to trust God with emptiness to be filled, the much more common picture in scripture are those whose lives become a conduit of God’s grace. We abide in the vine and the sap flows through us to create fruit. Our cup runs over. The oil drips off our beards.
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I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments yet, and someone else may have touched on this point already… but isn’t the Bible full of believers who have suffered with various kinds of depression at some point in their lives?
Off the top of my head I think of Job, Hannah, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, etc. There are no pat answers in the Bible regarding the despondency of these people, who are all historical giants of faith. Why are we modern-day Christians not allowed to feel sad or forlorn when life is harsh and bitter?
Would Lori Alexander have the temerity to scold these people, some of the greatest folk in the scriptures? Oh wait… that’s been done already. Job’s friends. The ones who took pleasure in scolding Job about his hidden “sins” that caused his tragedies and depression. Snap out of it Job! You’re sinning and your faith is weak if you’re depressed. Lori is taking a page from their playbook.
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Lori did this blog post after she made the video:
https://thetransformedwife.com/make-sure-your-heart-is-happy-in-god/
This is a gem statement: “You watch an individual Christian who’s sad: She’s necessarily self-centered. As long as she’s sad she makes a poor marriage partner.”
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I think the advice Lori gives encourages phoniness and false piety. Because as long as depression is labeled as ‘sin’ & something that must be pushed aside by quoting Bible verses – Christians with this mindset will not be honest with each other about their struggles. When asked how they are doing, they will parrot the acceptable religious response, I’m trusting Jesus or I’m pursuing joy in the Lord or any number of similar responses. Anything but how they are actually feeling. Hence, those with serious clinical depression don’t get the help they need and suffer in silence and loneliness.
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And let’s not forget Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law. She was so convinced that “the hand of the Lord had gone out against her”, she changed her own name from “Naomi” to “Mara”. If that’s not a sign of depression, I don’t know what is.
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@Kathi:
Again, Serena Joy righteously scolding the Handmaids with wagging finger.
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I came across this video, and it reminded me of Lori’s mental health advice. To be fair, she isn’t the only one with this attitude. It’s so prevalent in some enclaves. The founding elder of my former cult said there is no such thing as depression, only sin.
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Lori’s at it again: Because SHE didn’t have depression means that NO ONE should take care of themselves because you really ARE NOT depressed. If you are “depressed” you should solely follow her advice of changing your attitude.
“Everyone talks about hormones being a cause of depression. I had almost NO hormones for many months before hormone replacement and yes, I could tell my body was not thriving and something was terribly wrong with me, but I had NO depression. Even through my many years of illness and pain, whenever I began to feel like I was getting depressed, I would immediately take my thoughts captive and remind myself that I can indeed do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me and that the joy of the LORD is my strength. (I do know there are some mind-altering drugs with the side effects of depression and suicide. Stay away from those, if at all possible.)”
https://thetransformedwife.com/depression-and-suicide-is-skyrocketing-among-women/
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Lori HAS NO MEDICAL TRAINING! UGh.
I can’t deal with this. You can see the difference between depressed and not depressed patients on brain scans. Hormones are not the only thing. Has she ever heard of Serotonin??? (the “S” in SSRI)
I can’t handle her on this topic. She knows not a d*** thing.
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She has done a few on this topic of late and all seem to blame women for being depressed. She even appears to link the lack of smiling to depression. Basically it is our fault if one becomes depressed. One person made the comment about about post-natal depression and her reply is “I believe the main cause of postpartum depression is not getting enough sleep and this is why we trained our children to sleep through the night quickly.” Its all to do with lack of sleep – have enough sleep and all will be well.
The one on suicide was enough for me – it really made me angry. so angry.
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Surprise, surprise, John Piper actually has some good advise for a young woman who asks if she is depressed. He addresses sleep patterns and eating and exercise habits. Then he tells her she should see a doctor. He tells her that this may feel like a spiritual issue, but there are “physical roots as well.” Personally, I think he could have stopped here and not gone into his seven points. I give him credit for addressing physical issues and advising to seek medical attention.
http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/god-s-work-in-your-depression
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She even appears to link the lack of smiling to depression. Basically it is our fault if one becomes depressed…
Sounds like Bill Gothard….as long as the “countenance” was smiling and sparkly, you could never harbor sadness or a host of other “negative” emotions. Then, you read the stories about Bill, and you realize how negative and angry most people felt.
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@Kathi
My guess would be that Piper, or rather his attorneys, would rather not face a lawsuit for his advice going sideways. Not a bad thing to be cautious about. I agree with you that it was good he advised medical attention.
I checked out Lori’s June 1st post, and there is no disclaimer about her not being a doctor nor licensed to give medical advice. She is playing with fire, imo. That’s all well and good that SHE can defecate rainbows, but others may not be as fortunate.
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This is exactly what happened to me at a church…I was seeking counsel from about past abuse. Read and memorize these scriptures…keep happy thoughts, don’t be full of self pity, and just move on….I tried that method for years….and it backfired…I ended up in major depression for years, and now don’t want anything to do with church…. Their one script fits all and every situation…is crap!
I believe God heals….but he also uses therapist and others who are trained to help you….there are many things that are needed to help people …like nutrition,exercise, time, different types of therapy…sometimes medication.
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Lea made an excellent point that I have also seen pictures of: the brain scans of people with depression and other mental health problems versus normal brains.
There really is a difference in the functioning of the brain.
Lori is uneducated and giving dangerous advice. It’s too bad she doesn’t have the good sense and humility to admit that she’s in over her head.
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MRI pictures showing the differences between peoples’ brains who are having mental health problems versus peoples’ brains without mental health problems.
https://thetab.com/uk/2016/09/02/images-show-damage-mental-illness-17542
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More information on brain research of depressed people:
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True. If you have milder depression, things like excercise have some evidence base in helping.
Talk therapy plus medication is general best, results wise I believe, for more serious forms.
And do not take this for any kind of endorsement of Lori because it is absolutely not, but singing is good for your emotional health. Choirs in particular, although this music doesn’t have to be religious at all. Sing Aretha! It’s good for you 🙂
http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/16/singing-changes-your-brain/
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