Defeat Depression—Master Your Mind

Twisted and distorted thinking is the major cause of suffering for people flattened by depression. Those who have experienced a major depressive episode feel locked onto a painfully negative mental and emotional tilt-o-whirl—a cruel carnival ride stuck on go!

Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s greatest presidents, endured a lifelong battle with the scourge called depression. He observed its effects in himself, studied it in others—and learned how to master it. He also wrote about it in order to help others conquer this powerful personal enemy.

Mr. Lincoln recognized that depression’s strong grip on a person was generated by self-destructive, negative thinking. In Lincoln’s Melancholy, Joshua Shenk tells us, “Lincoln clearly knew the peculiar thought habits that are characteristic of depression. In 1842, called upon to comfort a friend [Joshua Speed] in the midst of a severe depression, Lincoln wrote [in a personal letter] of ‘that intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death.’”

In his book Darkness Visible, Pulitzer prize-winning American author William Styron described his own bout with depression as “a veritable howling tempest in the brain.” Shenk tells us that Styron experienced that destructive mental storm “punctuated by a thunder of self-critical, fearful, despairing thoughts—one clap following another in an endless night.”

Mental health experts recognize that depression sufferers often resort to suicide “to achieve a peace of mindlessness.” Most seriously depressed people struggle to find the words to describe their mental torture. It is just as difficult for the non-depressed to relate to descriptions of it.

However, David Burns, m.d., gives a good description of the typical train of thought of a depressed patient: “[W]hen you are feeling depressed, your thoughts are dominated by a pervasive negativity. You perceive not only yourself but the entire world in dark, gloomy terms. What is even worse—you’ll come to believe things really are as bad as you imagine them to be.

“If you are substantially depressed, you will even begin to believe that things always have been and always will be negative. As you look into your past, you remember all the bad things that happened to you. As you try to imagine your future, you see only emptiness or unending problems and anguish. This bleak vision creates a sense of hopelessness. This feeling is absolutely illogical, but it seems so real that you have convinced yourself that your inadequacy will go on forever” (Feeling Good).

Solomon, the wisest man of his day, said, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). How well do you control your thinking? All human beings can become better masters of their thinking process.

In order to conquer anxiety, depression, fear and worry, you must come to know how the human brain, empowered by the human spirit, works. You must learn how to properly operate your mind. In addition, you must come to face the truth about your human nature.

Paradox in Human Thinking

You have been lied to. You have been told that you are an immortal soul and that your nature is innately good. Here is the truth: You are magnificently fashioned dust with an incredible non-physical—spiritual—component placed inside you. However, it is not an immortal soul. Your body is your soul. That soul is mortal—it is going to die.

Yet, don’t be dismayed. The fact that you can think, reason, make decisions, invent things, and create beautiful art, inspiring literature and stirring music—all products of a God-type mind—should tell you that you are different and created significantly above all other fleshly life. You have been created for a stunning purpose! Your soul, made from clay, has been created with a human spirit that gives you the power of intellect and an awesome potential not made available to the animal kingdom. In fact, your incredible human potential is far greater than the potential of angels!

Herbert W. Armstrong, the great theologian of the 20th century, understood special knowledge about the human mind. He saw an incredible paradox in human thinking. In a small but powerful booklet, What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind, he wrote: “Why cannot the greatest minds solve world problems? Scientists have said, ‘Given sufficient knowledge, and we shall solve all human problems and cure all our evils.’ However, as the world’s fund of knowledge rapidly increases, so too do humanity’s evils. Why?” You need this booklet—not just to read, but to study and apply diligently. We will send you a free copy upon request.

Are you able to see this paradox about the human mind? Think about what gifted human minds have invented technologically in the last decade: cell phones with mini-computers inside them; power-packed, micro-thin laptop computers; and scads of other work-saving gadgets for the home and office. We even have cars that park themselves! Yet at the same time, our world is drowning in depression and other tragic human problems like child abuse, divorce and family breakdown, genocide, life-snuffing epidemic illnesses, murder and suicide, theft, racial hatred, terrorism—and war.

“Is something wrong with the human mind? Is something missing?” Herbert Armstrong asked. These are vital questions that must be answered for all humanity—especially for the depressed and downtrodden.

“There most certainly is a missing dimension in human knowledge. … The most perfect mechanism ever designed and made is the marvelous mind and body that is man. And it is only natural that our Maker sent along His instruction manual—revealing for our good what we are, why we are, where we are going, and what is the way.” That instruction book is the Holy Bible. This book, maligned by scholars and the intellectual elite, reveals man’s incredible human potential and “how to operate this human mechanism of mind and body to live happily in peace and to achieve that awesome potential.”

Think about it. The human brain has been dissected, studied and theorized about, yet not one educator, minister, philosopher, scholar or scientist can even begin to explain why man’s brain output is so vastly different from that of animal brain, which for all practical purposes is of the same quality as a man’s. What educator, minister or scientist has ever explained why humans have the mental ability to send men into outer space and return them back to Earth, yet have little capacity to solve our impossibly difficult human problems? There is only one: Herbert W. Armstrong.

Here is great news. The paradox of the human mind has been solved! There is a right way to think—the means to provide for human material needs and to solve our human problems.

Not an Emotional Disorder

Because so many depressed patients complain about their dark and negative feelings, most psychiatrists have worked to alleviate those feelings. The trend to get in touch with your feelings comes from that kind of psychiatric reasoning. This approach has also given rise to the feel-good and anti-depressant drug industry. Sophisticated advertising specialists have helped make anti-depressant drugs big business.

Yet a different school of psychiatrists, known as cognitive therapists, do not believe depression is caused by mood. They believe the cause of depression is thinking disorder.

“Depression is not an emotional disorder at all!” David Burns states. “Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking. Illogical, pessimistic attitudes play the central role in the development and continuation of all your symptoms” (op. cit.). To recover from depression, people must learn that every depressed feeling has its corresponding distorted or illogical thought. That negative thought came before and created the depressed feeling. If you are depressed, you must isolate, examine and replace all your illogical thinking with thought that is based on true facts.

Yes, it requires hard work. Yet, unless a depressed person changes the way he thinks, his suffering will continue and may lead to suicide. Even those psychiatrists who advocate the use of antidepressant drugs know that drugs work only for a short time; a change in thinking is required to sustain lasting relief.

Abraham Lincoln fought depression by getting control of his emotions. How? He mastered his thinking. Those close to Mr. Lincoln spoke and wrote about his “blue spells”—times when he would sit alone in a private place appearing to be in a trance. Discussing those down times, Shenk suggests that “while in one sense an indication of melancholy, [they] may also have represented a response to it. Paradoxically, such obvious suffering may actually have been the visible side of Lincoln’s effort to contain his dark feelings and thoughts—to wrestle privately with his moods until they passed or lightened.”

Shenk tells us that “Lincoln also worked assiduously to develop his mind, carrying with him around the circuit, in the early 1850s, the first six books of Euclid’s Elements, which move from definitions to postulates to axioms to proofs. In Lincoln’s time, this text represented the apex of logical rigor.” Lincoln studied the logic of geometry to know how to restructure his own illogical thinking. He was a man ahead of his time!

David Burns’s book Feeling Good is a self-help manual teaching people how to restructure their disastrous negative thinking. This book has successfully helped many people. However, Dr. Burns does not reveal the vital mystery of how the human mind was created to work at its peak potential.

The human mind is a powerful tool. Its power can be harnessed to do incredible good, yet it is also capable of creating appalling evil.

On a purely physical level, you can learn to govern your thinking. However, there is even more amazing knowledge to be gained about the human mind that can bring you lasting freedom from negative thinking.

Human Mind—Not All There

The Bible reveals that man is wholly physical. This sacred book states clearly—with authority—that God made man out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). When a man dies, his flesh—all that he was—decays back into dust. At the time God sentenced Adam and Eve for their sin of disobedience, God said, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19, English Standard Version). It was Satan the devil who told Eve she was an immortal soul (verse 4). Satan has used men to promote this lie, and many have believed it since our very beginning.

Yet, man is not an animal! God created within man a spiritual component that gives men, women and children the power of intellect—a mind that can think, reason and make decisions; a mind that can create, design and invent things using materials taken out of the earth.

“So let us understand! Man is flesh and blood—composed wholly of matter—and that living matter is a living soul,” Mr. Armstrong wrote (op. cit.). We are made of physical matter like animals. Yet, we are amazingly different from animals. Science keeps looking for the missing link between man and apes. Do you realize that they are looking in the wrong direction? Instead of looking down to a lower form of life, science should be looking up. To put it very simply, man was made after the God kind—the highest form of life!

“I have explained that human brain is almost identical to animal brain. But man was made in the form and shape of God [Genesis 1:26-27], to have a special relationship with God—to have the potential of being born into the Family of God. And God is spirit (John 4:24). To make it possible to bridge the gap—or to make the transition of mankind, composed wholly of matter, into spirit beings in God’s Kingdom, then to be composed wholly of spirit, and at the same time to give man a mind like God’s—God put a spirit in each human” (ibid).

This is majestic understanding. The spirit put inside man is not an immortal soul; it is spirit essence—like air and water are essence on Earth. To distinguish this spirit from God’s Holy Spirit, Mr. Armstrong called it the human spirit. Since this spirit is non-physical, it can never be discovered by science. Its existence must be revealed by its Creator. In Job 32:8, we read, “[T]here is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” This is an awesome truth, understood by only a very few!

How does the human spirit work with human brain? The human spirit cannot see; the human brain sees through the eyes. The human spirit cannot hear; the brain hears through the ears. The human spirit cannot think; the brain thinks—yet it is powered to think by the human spirit. Animals, not made to have a special relationship with God, do not have this spirit essence and cannot think and reason like a man except in a very simple way (article, page 28). This human spirit enables man to acquire knowledge and understanding of the material world around him. It is truly awesome what mankind has been able to do with matter taken from the earth. No animal is capable of accomplishing such material progress.

Yet, the human mind is not complete. Even with the human spirit in place, man’s mind is “not all there.” God has provided a way to complete and make all human minds fully sound.

Let Us Reason Together

The Apostle Paul explained how the human spirit works with the human brain. He stated, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Think on this wisdom. Men have come to understand and apply the laws of chemistry and physics. As a result, they have built skyscrapers, constructed bridges and manufactured automobiles out of the earth’s materials. Animals have no such capacity. Men can do all these things because of their intellect made possible by the human spirit. Yet, there is knowledge man can never gain through his five senses—spiritual knowledge!

Mr. Armstrong made it plain for us: “Yet this human mind is limited to knowledge of the physical. It cannot know—comprehend—the spiritual things of God. Why? Because even the human mind only can know, naturally, what knowledge comes to it through the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling” (ibid). Why is this so?

“[E]ven so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). To understand spiritual knowledge—the product of God’s mind—man must also have God’s Holy Spirit mixed with his human spirit!

This is reality. Men and women who do not have God’s Holy Spirit are not complete mentally.

Hence the paradox! The great minds of this time can do miraculous things with matter—yet they cannot solve their human problems. Why? Because human problems are spiritual in nature!

God offered Adam and Eve free access to His Holy Spirit, yet they refused God’s offer. How did God make His offer to them? Recognize that God explains deep spiritual matters in parables or symbols to hide His knowledge from the smug, worldly wise scoffers (Matthew 11:25; 13:11; 1 Corinthians 2:14). Adam and Eve were offered God’s Spirit symbolized by the tree of life (Genesis 2:9). The two trees of Genesis 2 have been made fun of and ridiculed. Yet their simple imagery carries serious meaning for all mankind. Discussing Adam’s fatal rejection of God’s offer, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “The spirit of man was in him—but not the Spirit of God. God offered him freely the fruit of the tree of life—which symbolized God’s Holy Spirit” (ibid).

What was the result of Adam’s rejection of that tree? Our suffering world full of nearly unsolvable evils!

Realize that God wants to share His mind and knowledge with every human being. God tells everyone willing to listen, “Come now, and let us reason together …” (Isaiah 1:18). Are you willing to let God instruct you, counsel you and direct your life? Adam and Eve were not, and most men and women today are not. The tragic result is that the number and severity of our personal problems—including depression—are mounting and are ready to destroy us. We desperately need God and His mind to give us solutions to our catastrophic personal problems.

What does all this knowledge have to do with depression? Absolutely everything!

Develop Right Character

As David Burns tells us, depression—that dark and personally debilitating mood—is brought on by self-destructive negative thoughts that trigger negative emotions. In reality, depression can be best described as emotional immaturity gone haywire! An emotionally immature person cannot control his or her moods.

Mr. Armstrong explained, “More and more I am impressed that one of the most important truths we humans overlook is that human beings are not equipped with instinct, like dumb animals, to guide us into the proper course …. God endowed man, in His own image, with mind. Man must first learn and acquire knowledge. He is endowed, also, with capacity to reason from that knowledge—to think, to plan, to arrive at conclusions, to make decisions. God intended man’s mind to direct his actions. But man must learn to do this, and he can never achieve God’s purpose in placing him on this Earth until he does” (Good News, March 1985). You must get this vital teaching. The number one human need is right education! Each of us must learn how to think rightly. If we don’t think correctly, our lives are sure to be filled with continuous disaster!

“The development of right character is the purpose of human life. And character is ability to come to right knowledge and wisdom and then to direct the mind and body into this right course. But we poor humans act as though we believed man to be merely the highest of the dumb brutes—as if man were equipped with instinct, and the purpose of life were merely to enjoy such feelings, sensations, emotions and moods as impulse attracts us to, without thinking or mental direction!” (ibid). Our world is full of people and nations that are acting like dumb animals.

So how should we define emotional maturity? It is “the technical art of putting into practice the Ten Commandments …. One author defines emotional maturity as development from the state of taking to the state of giving. Taking is the way of Satan. Giving is the way of God, and the principle of His law. Love is giving” (ibid).

Do you get it? Living by the Ten Commandments is essential education this world needs. These 10 simple laws define right thinking.

You must admit this next fact: Modern Christianity does not provide such education! In fact, most ministers and other Christian leaders teach that God’s law has been done away. People are not taught to practice the only way of life that produces true happiness—the way outlined by the Ten Commandments.

Securing Sound Mindedness

To truly solve our mental and emotional problems, which are all spiritual in nature, we must have the spiritual knowledge that can only come from God through His Holy Spirit. Yet the Bible states emphatically that God will only give the Holy Spirit to those willing to obey Him (Acts 5:32). Realize also that the Holy Spirit, actively living in a human mind, is sound mindedness (2 Timothy 1:7). A sound-minded person is in control of his thinking, emotions and moods.

Here are some tough questions you must ask yourself. Is God’s Holy Spirit residing in me? How do I know for sure that I am obeying God? The answer to both of those questions is found in the practice of the Ten Commandments. If you are not actively keeping all of God’s Ten Commandments, you can be certain that the Holy Spirit is not actively leading, instructing and helping you. If you are depressed—meaning you have lost control of your thinking, emotions and moods—then look at your life. Where are you disobeying God? Study His Ten Commandments to find the answer.

When it comes to obeying God, here is one vital issue you must face. If God’s Holy Spirit is not in you, then the Bible says you are operating with the natural mind only. This puts you at a severe disadvantage. Why? This natural or carnal mind is antagonistic to God’s way of living (Romans 8:7). The carnal mind refuses to yield to and obey God in all things. The natural human mind is heavily influenced by Satan the devil (Ephesians 2:2-3). Satan’s top goal is to control your mind.

Satan’s broadcasts—the nearly irresistible bombardment of evil thoughts, emotions, moods and impulses on human minds—influence our minds and actually become what is known as human nature. The truth is that human nature is Satan’s own nature, which embraces a sinful way of life. This way of life is graphically discussed in Galatians 5:19-21 (read these verses in the esv or Revised Standard Version). The Apostle Paul shows us that the natural mind is capable of pursuing a life filled with shocking sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy and drunkenness. You must understand that from these sins and negative emotions grow anxiety, depression, fear and worry, and even poor health (Proverbs 17:22).

Do emotions such as anger, envy, jealousy and rivalry dominate your mind? There is a different and better way to live.

Repentance Means Growth

Paul also tells us the advantages of the spiritual mind: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace [including peace of mind], patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23, esv). Which way do you want to live for the rest of your life? Most people struggling with depression can’t see a way out—yet there is a way out.

God actually created man out of clay so we can change our thinking and life direction. The Bible calls this kind of change in thinking repentance. Simply put, repentance is turning to the opposite direction one is presently going. To turn from a life of sin means to grow spiritually. Spiritual growth produces the joy and happiness that all men, women and children desire.

God offers you a sure and lasting way to control your emotions, thinking and life—with eternal rewards. Realize that it is God’s purpose for you to have the ability to think as positively, powerfully and creatively as He does (Matthew 5:48).

The point is, you can change! Of all things, get control of your emotions by changing your thinking. Doing so will open up for you a better, brighter and more positive outlook that will arm you to face any and all challenges ahead.