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Depression The top two things people come to counseling for are Anxiety and Depression. Nothing else even comes close. Well I’ve given you all a mountain of anxiety tips and tricks so let’s tackle the other one. Depression… I hate depression! I’m going to go ahead and declare war on it right here from the start. Maybe you’re struggling with it yourself but I know that all of us at least know someone who is. Let’s face it, life sucks sometimes. If life hasn’t kicked your butt and wrestled you into submission yet, just wait; it will at some point. The “whys” behind the anxiety and depression are literally limitless because it’s unique and it’s very personal. But this idea of depression can mean 100 different things to 100 different people So I’m planning 12 weeks of ideas and topics related to depression. Now, this information isn’t therapy. These are going to brief and to the point and they’re starter ideas meant to spark ideas within you. We’re barely scratching the surface here AND most importantly, we’re talking mostly about high-functioning depression here. We’ll define that in another post. If you’re teetering on the edge of suicide, call someone right now. Don’t wait. We kind of like having you around and we’d like to keep you around for awhile. Call or Text 988 today and real live person will connect with you. But if you’re dragging through life and just want to run away and quit, you’re going to get some good stuff out of the next 12 weeks. Finally, the algorithms in internetlandia are all based upon interaction. If you want more people to see this stuff then share it, comment on it, and interact. I’d appreciate it and I’ll see you all next week. Homework: Think of a person in your life right now that could benefit from these upcoming posts. Do you think it might help them if you shared it with them?

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Nguyen is interesting. It’s one of those books where you need to grab hold of the concepts that are of benefit and toss the ones that aren’t. There’s some new-agey stuff in it that sounded like fluff to me but I had one big takeaway that I’ll use. Here it is: THOUGHTS are great! THINKING can become problematic. When you have a thought, that is neutral. It’s a fact. It’s what we do with that thought that then becomes helpful or harmful. When I take that factual thought and I begin over THINKING, JUDGING myself, SPIRALING into worst case scenarios, then the thought ceases to be productive. I’m confessing to you here. I’m raising my right hand. “Hi, my name is Daniel and I am an overthinker.” And then the crowd at the meeting replied I unison, “Hi Daniel.” Accept the thought but keep an eye on it because if the thought begins to get squirely and become self-critical or catastrophize then we need to snap ourselves back to reality. He gives you a little practical help with this but it’s only a 2 hour audiobook so it’s limited. Hey, that’s why you should come see me for counseling though. As an overthinker, we can work together to find ways to help your overthinking. It’s worth a read though. “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Nguyen.

“Born Again This Way” by Rachel Gilson is a beautiful and deeply personal book about her struggle between her identity in the LGBT community and how that came into conflict when she became a person of faith. Talk about two very polarizing ideas in our world today! I would say it’s ½ memoir and ½ theology in its makeup. Gilson doesn’t hold back from getting into the nitty gritty of her own story as well as the Christian scriptures. The book is pointed but respectful. I can’t see any well-meaning person coming away from it offended. Sure, there are those who will read it and disagree with her ideas. It will sadden some and give hope to others. I’ve said before that we need to be reading things that challenge us. Read things to sharpen your beliefs. This means you should read a lot of things that are IN alignment with your beliefs so you can further clarify them. Also, read something that opposes your beliefs though. If we always live in our own echo chamber/ algorithm how will be learn how to interact with people who believe differently than we do. This is a great one for families lovingly trying to understand a child wrestling with LGBT ideas. This is a great one if you have friends in the LGBT community and wonder if or how to approach matters of faith. This is a good one for those in the LGBT community who want to read something from a Christian who bridges that divide that often exists. It’s a good one! “Born Again This Way” by Rachel Gilson.

“The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to get Smaller in a Growing America” by Tommy Tomlinson might be my must read book of the year. It’s a beautiful memoir by Tomlinson, a coastal Georgia native, and a journalist by trade. He tells his story through the lens of his lifelong struggle with his weight. If you live in the south, then food is at the center of everything. We grieve with food, celebrate with food, and medicate with food. Heck, sometimes we’re sitting at the table gorging ourselves for lunch as we’re discussing plans for dinner. The book is hilarious in parts and heart breaking in other parts. It reminded me that everyone has a story behind who they are. We all have junk. He reminded me that some people’s stuff is internal. They look amazing on the outside but they’re crumbling inside. Other people’s stuff is external on display for the whole world to see though. What if rather than prejudging those we meet, we come alongside them and share our stuff. There’s something about knowing someone’s story that levels the playing field. If you struggle with weight, then this book is going to hit home. If you have a friend or family member who struggles with weight, then you need to read this one so you can better connect. If none of the above is true, you need to read this one because it’s an amazing story of a man who has a similar story to the rest of us. You’ll laugh and cry but most of all you’re connect with another person who is on this same journey we’re all on. Go read “The Elephant in the Room” by Tommy Tomlinson.

Alright folks. I read this one, but my review is more of a warning than a recommendation. Read if you are interested but read with a strongly critical mindset. I read “The Great Sex Rescue” because I’ve heard several people either recommend it or recommend another book by these ladies. It was co-written by three women, Joanna Sawatsky, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Sheila Wray Gregoire. As an aside, another one of their books is called “She Deserves Better.” The title is self-explanatory. Granted I haven’t read this one, but I have a good friend whose marriage was nearly destroyed by this book. When we fill our minds with biased information that fuels ours and others’ confirmation biases, the impact can be extraordinarily powerful. Ok, so a lot of the couples I meet with in counseling are struggling with the sexual intimacy in their marriages and I’m always on the lookout for good resources to recommend. I’m going to just say from the start that this book scares me. From the start, the premise of this book sounds intriguing. It made me nod my head a little. Ok, maybe I’m on board! I think we can all agree that men and women have some differences when it comes to sexuality and that generations past and present have struggled in various ways to communicate about sex, to teach about sex, and to know how to view sex through a healthy lens. Sexuality is an oddity because it is taboo on the one hand but universal on the other. The book attempts to look at sexuality through the lens of Christian women who struggle with sexual intimacy in their marriages. Ok, cool, that’s an incredibly good thing. They conducted a huge survey of women asking them about their sex lives and base some of the book on those statistics. Great! Evidenced based info. I like it! They make some good points such as pointing out that struggles in marital sexuality often have less to do with the act of sex and more to do with arousal. For instance, sex seems freer flowing when dating becaue arousal is easier when dating. There’s that long anticipation before most sexual contact occurs or we’re abstaining entirely from sexual contact until we’re married which makes the arousal that much greater still. Later in married life though, arousal tanks because the goal becomes to sneak a quickie in before the kids barge in. Hmm, good point. What if we focus on improving arousal and anticipation rather than on the performance act of sex? Good insight! I hadn’t thought about it like that. But the positive teaching and insights I gained were few and far between. The majority of the book seems to be a smear platform for the authors to grind their axes. The ax in question is the evangelical male patriarchy who have taught and written about marriage and sexuality over the past 50 years. They don’t hide the fact that they are appalled at the grievous, outlandish, and even abusive teaching that they reviewed in a lot of the Christian sex and marriage literature throughout past decades. The book spends page after page trashing authors and their books by name and pointing out that the problem with sexual struggles in marriage is predominantly with the men. But there’s more. Some of these poor simple-minded husbands in our world who are harming their wives oftentimes don’t even know any better because they were raised by a culture of toxic evangelical male church leaders who pointed them to resources that were all but coaching them to abuse their wives. They quote passages from some of these books and even hint at rape in sections to describe what these books are teaching. A major pattern they suggest the Christian literature teaches is the following: 1. Husbands are sexual, and they can’t help that they need sex all the time. God made them this way. 2. Whether wives feel like it or not, they must give their husband’s sex. 3. If they don’t give their husband’s sex then it causes men to lust and cheat and it’s the wife’s fault if he strays from the marriage. Now I’ve read most of the books they bash. I would like to think I’m reasonably intelligent person. I would also like to believe that my alarms in my brain would go off if I was reading material that was directly or indirectly teaching me to abuse my wife sexually. Reading some of the passages they cite, some do sound a bit appalling, but I wonder if taken in context there is more to it than these snippets they charge the authors with. I’ve met with hundreds of couples, many of whom are struggling sexually in their marriages. I’ve yet to have a wife come to me and say that the main problem is her toxic husband sexually abusing her in the bedroom because he read one of the popular Christian marriage/sex books. It’s just way more complex than finding a singular thing to point our finger at. Most husbands and wives I meet are people who love one another dearly and want nothing more than to please one another. When my friend came to me about the book “She Deserves Better” he asked me scratching his head, “Daniel, am I really this monster that this book tells my wife that I am?” I have to admit, reading “The Great Sex Rescue” made me feel the same way. Have I been an abuser for my whole marriage and I just never realized it? I asked my wife and thankfully she reassured me that the answer is “no.” I can’t do these ladies’ book justice with just a simple brief review. Buy it and read it for yourself. I believe in reading things that we disagree with because it sparks conversation and makes us think critically. Maybe I am a bit defensive toward some of what I read. I’ve wondered why that may be. Nonetheless, there seems to be a pattern emerging within the progressive Christian community in pockets where the enemy isn’t spiritual at all. The true enemy, they might say, is the past generation who traumatized us and triggered us with their male evangelical patriarchal abuse sexually and theologically. If that’s true, then yes, throw it off, rebel, and go find freedom. Is it possible, though, that the truth lies somewhere in the middle? Maybe it’s not all the men’s fault OR responsibility AND maybe it’s also not all the women’s fault OR responsibility. Maybe we’re all more alike than we are different. Maybe we’re all sinner in need of rescue from a Savior. Maybe we’re all sexually and spiritually broken in our own ways and we’re doing our best to help one another heal and find meaning, purpose, joy, and fulfillment in our marriages and relationships. Maybe we can seek resources and find the good in them and discard what is not helpful; eat the meat and spit out the bones. The importance is that we’re communicating about it. We’re doing it together, in community, because that’s how God created us.

“Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community” by Brett McCracken is a great book to read if you’re a church person or if you’ve become somewhat detached and frustrated with the church. McCracken challenges all of us, conservatives and progressives, to think about the WHY behind Christian community and one of the fundamentals of finding the WHY is approaching it with humility. Maybe you having it your way and telling everyone else they’re wrong wasn’t exactly what Christ had in mind when He instituted the church. iPhones and iPads seem to have morphed into iChurch in a sense. American culture has turned Christ’s church into a business that caters to our comforts aesthetically, relationally, and politically. It’s made us consumers, critics, and reviewers of the Church rather than servants of THE Kingdom. It’s not wrong to have preferences and to like some things better than others. Music, décor, and speaking style are all over the spectrum at different churches, but he argues that the point of picking a church and serving in it should be less about does it meet my needs and more about whether I’m showing up and using this place along with this group to glorify God. He annoyed me in parts because he steps on my toes but maybe we need that a little more often. If you’re disenfranchised with the status quo and you feel like it’d be good to be challenged about church then go grab “Uncomfortable” by Brett McCrackin.

Look for beautiful things when you're restless, uncomfortable, or on edge. There's something about acknowledging the good around us that helps us reset and realize that it's not all bad. If you're struggling to see beautiful things in the world, come see me and we can talk more about it. www.danielcrosbycounseling.com

“The Needs of the Heart” by Chip Dodd is a book that will blow your mind. When I picked it up, it’s a very small thin book. Less than 100 pages. I assumed I’d breeze through it in a couple of hours. About a month later I finished digesting it. The truth is we cannot fully live the life God has called us to unless we acknowledge that we do have needs, that these needs are good, and discover the healthy ways of meeting these needs. Chip takes common human needs like Security and Accomplishment and he unpacks what they really are pointing us to in his typical concise but brilliant depth. There’s no fluff here. With chapters just 3-4 pages each, you’re going to want to have a highlighter ready to underline, to ponder these topics, and maybe then to discuss them with someone you know and trust. You’ll come away from this book with a deeper sense what is already fulfilled within you and ones that might be lacking where you need to go do a deep dive with a lot of prayer and introspection. If you liked Chip’s book “The Voice of the Heart,” this is one is your next read. Go grab “The Needs of the Heart” by Chip Dodd.