In Proverbs 4:23, Solomon reminds us: “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” If we are going to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, then we have to keep control of our hearts. Dr. Burns, the clinical psychologist writes: “Depression is not an emotional disorder at all! …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” (Feeling Good, 28).
He goes on to write that it is the negative thoughts that we allow to dominate our thinking that causes our depression. Consider the grievous error made by Judas Iscariot. He betrayed Jesus. Now, consider the grievous error made by Simon Peter. He also betrayed Jesus. One found forgiveness; the other punished himself at the end of a hangman’s noose. The emotions were largely the same: remorse. But the behavior was different because the thinking was different.
Man is a free person; we typically say man has a “freewill.” That means we have the right to make our own choices. We see something happen around us and mentally process it. Then, our emotions react and next, our behavior follows. You can see that it is not the event per se that creates the emotions; it is our thinking that stimulates the emotions.
Dr. Burns writes: “Nearly every depressed person seems convinced beyond all rhyme or reason that he or she is the special one who really is beyond hope. This delusion reflects the kind of mental processing that is at the very core of your illness!” (31). Through this series of Daily Droplets, I am trying to help you identify your self-destructive thoughts, bring them into captivity to Christ, and see how your thinking is being distorted by Satan.
Dr. Burns presents Ten Cognitive Distortions that form the basis of all our depressive thoughts:
1. All-or-Nothing Thinking. We tend to categorize things in extreme, black-or-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization. We arbitrarily conclude that one thing that happened once will occur over and over again.
3. Mental Filter. You pick out a negative detail in any situation and dwell on it exclusively, thus perceiving that the whole situation as negative.
4. Disqualifying the Positive. This is the persistent tendency of some depressed individuals to transform neutral or even positive experiences into negative ones.
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5. Jumping to Conclusions. Conclusions that are not justified by the facts of the situation. We jump to conclusions when we speculate what other people are thinking about us or their motives for what they have done.
6. Magnification and Minimization. Either blowing things up out of the proportion or shrinking them.
7. Emotional reasoning. You take your emotions as evidence for the truth.
8. Should statements. You try to motivate yourself by saying, “I should do this” or “I must do that.” These cause you to feel pressured and resentful. You end up feeling apathetic and unmotivated.
9. Labeling and mislabeling. Whenever you describe your mistakes with sentences beginning with “I’m a …” Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating, it is irrational. Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do – good or bad. For example, think of two good things King David did. Now, give me two bad things David did. Do you see that we are all a composite of good decisions and bad decisions?
10. Personalization. “This distortion is the mother of guilt” (Burns, 40)! You arbitrarily conclude that what happened was your fault or reflects your inadequacy even when you were not responsible for it. You have confused influence with control over others.
Here’s the point we want to especially make in this lesson: “[F]eelings are not facts! In fact, your feelings, per se, don’t even count – except as a mirror of the way you are thinking. …The mental prison is all illusion, a hoax you have inadvertently created, but it seems real because it feels real” (Burns, 48).
Again, I pray this series of devotionals can help you penetrate that hoax and begin thinking more clearly, honestly, and Christ-like. It will help with discouragement and depression.
Paul Holland
