“Just cheer up,” “buck up,” “stop obsessing about the negative,” “change your tune.”
You’ve heard all these things before, and it’s maddening because it’s so easy for chipper folks to do, and they think it should be easy for us, too.
They approach it almost as if it’s a moral thing. and I guess they’d call saying all those things “encouragements” or “exhortations,” but actually to us, they sound more like judgments.
Well, brain scans show they’re wrong and you’re right. Hooray for brain scans.
A massive new study in JAMA psychiatry looked at functional MRI scans from 367 prior studies.
They included 4,000 brains with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar, and over over 4,000 “healthy” brains. In other words, folks who hadn’t been diagnosed with those disorders.
Researchers looked at how the brains functioned when participants did basic cognitive tasks.
In other words, what regions were most active, least active etc.,
What did the researchers find?
Brain activity looked a lot alike in participants with clinical depression, anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar, compared to those with “healthy” brains.
In particular, in the Depressed Etc group, there was significant “hypoactivation (slowing) in the inferior prefrontal cortex/insula, the inferior parietal lobule, and the putamen.“
Why does that matter?
Each of those regions are involved in stopping “certain cognitive and behavioral processes and switching to new ones.“
So, in other words, negative thoughts hit all of us, from time to time. But the brains of Depressed Etc folks have a really, really hard time moving on.
This isn’t some kind of failure of will, or stubborn obsession with the negative.
Believe me, if we could stop thinking dismal thoughts, we would. It’s not fun. But this study shows just how hard it is for us.
As the researchers say, our thoughts get “locked in,” because those parts of our brain responsible for moving on just don’t work as well.
This has all kinds of spiritual implications and helps explain why some Christians get stuck in things like questioning our salvation, or sinking in guilt.
One Sunday, we’ll all hear a sermon about “examining ourselves” and as we look at our sin, the hypoactive regions of our brain (described above) make it much harder for us to move on from the guilt part and say, “Okay, but Jesus died for me, and so no matter how much sin I find, his grace is greater.”
Instead, our brains say, “Hold that Good News thought for a moment, and just keep examining yourself and fixating on all the bad things you’ve done.”
This is why it’s absolutely crucial for Christians, particularly church leaders, to read up on these kinds of studies.
One pastor writes, with good intentions but unaware: “Over the course of my ministry, I have found many struggle with assurance because they address their eyes withing rather than without.”
As if the solution is just a matter of redirecting ourselves to right theology. As if we can think ourselves out of the mire.
Well, it’s not because we’re resisting right theology. It’s because our brains get locked into the the guilt, and the rest of the congregation might do a fantastic job moving into the “But now I’m free!” part of the song — not because of superior faith but because of a superior brain.
It’s my huge prayer that cheery Christians will stop judging depressed Christians who struggle shaking the house of mourning off, and I want you and me to at least take some comfort in the idea that it’s not our fault that the guy or girl in the pew next to you can revel in the freedom of forgiveness, while we stay stuck in whatever dark place we are.
Their faith probably isn’t stronger, but their brain is.
That doesn’t mean we just say, “Well, my brain won’t let me accept God’s grace.”
But it does mean that we should show ourselves a little grace when our brain has trouble doing so, that we don’t imagine God, sitting up there, saying, “Oh ye of little faith” to us.
As you read this, you might be in a depressive funk, or battling relentless negative thoughts, or reliving past traumas. Don’t beat yourself up over sinking into those funks!
The part of your brain that helps the others move along so effortlessly just isn’t being very nice to you, and usually snapping out of it isn’t a matter of will or faith, so much as it is your brain being too inactive in the inferior prefrontal cortex/insula, the inferior parietal lobule, and the putamen.
[Photo: Dr. Gregory House, of course. Wikipedia Commons.]
