My Turn
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Centerpiece
by Harvey Yoder
I remember as a child going on a mountain hike one hot summer day with some of my older siblings and their friends. It didn't take long for me to get so tired I began to lag behind the rest. And the further behind I got, the more exhausted and terrible I felt, yet I didn’t want to admit I needed help.
Finally, someone noticed and suggested the group pause to let me catch up. Then that kind person took my hand and walked with me for the rest of the climb. I can’t even remember who it was, but I’ll never forget how much better it made me feel. Even though we continued to move at a good pace, I actually experienced a new physical as well as emotional energy to reach the top with the rest. A little help and a little hope go a long way.
I sometimes ask my clients to rate their emotional state on a scale of 0-10, a ten meaning they feel euphoric or ecstatic (something we rarely experience), zero meaning they are suicidally depressed (which most of us, thankfully, also rarely experience), and five feeling just average or so-so, neither really bad nor especially good. Distressed clients often report a mood range of about 2-4, as compared to a wished for 6-8.
A key factor, I believe, in maintaining positive emotional energy is to restore a greater sense of hope. No matter how bad things are in the present, or have been in the past, if we can borrow—from the good Bank of Hope—some evidence-based belief that things will get better, then we will be able, with God’s help and the help of other good people, to feel and to function better, and to keep up the fight. The Bible actually defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not (yet) seen.”
It is this kernel of faith, even if it’s only the size of a grain of mustard seed, that I want to help clients build on to better deal with the mountains of distress they face, and to either to have those mountains removed, or to be able to find a way around or over them.
In drug trials that are done for testing the effects of antidepressants, there is always a control group that is given a placebo, a so called sugar pill. Amazingly, that group often experiences nearly as much relief from depression as do the ones actually taking the drug. This isn’t just because they trick themselves into believing they are less depressed, but because the very hope of getting better releases good endorphins in their brains, a natural drug, if you please, that makes a real difference in their well-being.
A helpful web site I discovered recently for individuals dealing with mental illness is called, appropriately, “mental hope.” ( http://mentalhope.wordpress.com/ ) You can also find the link on the Shaping Families website.
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