What We All Need to Know About Depression with Zac Allen
Today I get to talk to my best friend and husband, Zac Allen. We’re going to talk about what it looked like for Zac to walk through a pretty intense season of depression. So if you’ve walked through a dark season or your spouse has, or anyone you’re close to, you’ll want to hear this.
I want to start with that 18 month season of doubt I talk about in the book, where I was waking up in the middle of the night a lot. How were you experiencing me in that time and when did you get worried?
I never got worried to the degree that I probably should have. I probably minimized what was going on much like you did. You gave me hints, you did share doubts, you did share that they were happening more and more. You were more often asking me to pray over you. And so there was a sense I could tell that you were more fearful of the dark and you were fearful of your thoughts in the middle of the night. But at the same time, I don't think I fully realized the level of pressure you felt and the fact that this was now shaping your thoughts during the daytime as well.
Yeah, I do remember asking you a few times, “are you sure that it doesn't go to black?” I think I was letting you into those thoughts. As much as I knew I was having them, I don't think until it got really dark. I developed some pretty intense fears. Did I begin to confess and admit how long it had been going on?
Well, I'll go back to your statement. The evil longs to go unnoticed. That's kinda how we would sum up that season when we were talking about your doubts. You have the 60,000 thoughts a day. So I just assumed that that was part of the 60,000 and not a dominating majority of those
I think it started that way and then it became more. Do you see a difference in me now?
Oh, for sure. There's a freedom and a security and a confidence and a steadiness and a hopefulness and in many ways I say, “I got my Jennie back.” Because God has given you a big faith believing that he can do anything. There was a sense that I lost that in you during that season. There's something that happens on the backside of going through darkness. When you go there and you find that God is still there with you in those times, when he brings you out, all of a sudden it's like you've gone to war with God and he's carried you out of the battle. There is a real security in who he is and his love for you. That's the wife that I got back.
I was at IF:Gathering and Beth Moore was there and she looked at me and said, “I think you’ll fight other things in your life, but I don’t think you’ll ever fight doubt again.” I think that’s true. I think on the other side of this, there is more of a clarity and a steadiness that I walk with. Pilgrim’s Progress does such a good job of explaining it. That season was part of my journey. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there, but it was something I passed through. It’s not something that will have power over me again. Okay, next question. When you read the book, what was your response? I know you cried. I mean, I saw you that day, but we haven't really talked about it.
I don't feel like I can remember one time of reading the book because I was involved in the book the whole way. I would read pieces of it at a time. What I could remember is that this was a message and this was a topic that I think my wife is maybe the most helpful human being on the planet to help people walk through this because you have so many thoughts. That means you've probably thought every thought that any of the listeners or the readers have thought. And you have the ability to put language to those thoughts that people have never taken time to do or have the ability to do. You were giving people a language to talk about what was in their head. And I thought, “oh, this is so helpful.” Secondly, not only were you giving them a language, you were combining how God has wired our brains and then just giving really helpful tools that we can utilize to take our thoughts captive. So big picture, how did I feel? What you have always said, Jennie, is “don't just let me put another book on the shelf.” So that’s part of my job is to ensure that it’s actually helpful. I want God to really use it. Get Out Of Your Head is part really helpful tool and almost part memoir.
I think that's because I needed it personally. The practical handles that I used to crawl out of that season myself are resonating with other people. Let's talk about this dark season for you because I know that you don't talk about this very much. We are those people that do the counseling, we do the work and then we kind of move forward and live our lives. I’m actually excited to hear you process years later what that season looked like for you. So let’s just start with how that season began, what it looked like for you, and how long it lasted.
We’d been in Austin for about five years, and we were planting the church and I was pastoring. I think you told me that you sensed I was tired. I don’t think I had admitted that. The truth is, when God has given you a mantle of leadership to pastor, it really doesn't matter how tired you are. You just have to lead. I don't know that I gave heed to your words. But what happened on the backside was we merged our church with another church in Austin. It was a win-win. I gave my last sermon and stayed on as campus pastor, but effectively handed the mantle of leadership to another church. What I didn't see coming on the backside of that was a crash - a burnout type crash. The best way I can describe it is that all my faculties just fell. It felt like my brain broke. I always describe it like I was sitting on the bottom of a murky lake looking up to the surface. But there was nothing that I could do to get to that surface. The only thing that you can think when you're down in the bottom and you're looking up is, “I don't care.” And so making destructive decisions, it doesn't matter the consequences because you are not concerned about that. I didn’t see burnout and depression coming. It hit me all of the sudden.
Yeah. For me it felt like watching you just be gone. It was like I was sleeping next to you, you were in the house, but you are emotionally gone. Your personality was gone, your capacity to care about us really was gone. And it was really scary because it actually happened during a season where right after the church merged, I was given the opportunity to write for a publisher for the first time, which was a little bit of a surprise. It wasn't something that we'd worked really hard to see happen. And so it kind of fell into our lives. And then Cooper was adopted that same year and our whole worlds are kind of spinning out. I remember being really scared. But I remember having a lot of grace and compassion and I don't remember taking it personally because I think one, you weren't mean during that time and you weren't making bad decisions. God really spared you from drinking a lot or just coping like you could have. I felt strangely protected during that season, even though it was really lonely and hard. I was just so worried and I was so afraid that I didn't know how to help. I think God made it clear to me early on that I couldn't help. I could support you. I remember just knowing if my happiness is attached to his right now, we'll sink. I just had to kind of give you space to go through that. And it was long. I mean, how long do you think it was?
I would call it nine months of intense depression. I would say that there were three stages of that. There's more to the story that we'll get to, but the three stages are really an “I don't care” stage. For three months, that's all I could say is “I don't care.” I was just a dud. I was a nothing. Then through the help of a great Christian psychiatrist who put me on some medicine to help me surface and kind of helped me surface from the bottom of that murky lake. It went from a season of “I don’t care” to a season of “I care but my brain is still broken.” I didn't feel like I was back to myself, but there wasn't this sense of “this is going to be what my life is like forever.” There were maybe three months of that stage, and then after that there were glimpses of me being back. But I couldn’t have a conversation. I couldn’t look people in the eyes. I would avoid.
You’ve got to understand my husband, if you don't know him. He is one of the most outgoing people in the world. I've never met someone that doesn't like him. He is just joyful and he is fun and he is thoughtful. He’s a pastor and he has pastored people through so many things. He still pastors many of the people I love in my life. I want to say to those of you that are walking through a season like this or someone you love is, it’s gradual. You say it lasts nine months, but I noticed you were getting tired a few years before that. Now you weren't red alert, depressed, but we saw it coming. It wasn't just all of the sudden to me.
Yeah, I don’t know. I didn't self-reflect because I was leading. I couldn’t stop. I remember when I got to the bottom of that lake, I asked God, “I don’t know what I’ve done to get here. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. Maybe it’s forever.” That was a big fear. I didn’t know if I would ever be the same. One of the most hopeful and encouraging things someone said to me during that time was, “Zac, I don’t know how long this will be, but I can promise you you'll be out of this one day.” Those words were the only thing that I had to hold on to because I'd never been here before and I couldn't imagine ever getting out.
I remember that being your biggest fear. You were okay to go through this even if it was years, but you were not okay for this to be your whole life. There was a real desperation, and I would say real intentionality in your life to find healing. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. I want everyone listening to know that this was a multilevel approach. It wasn’t just faith or thinking your way out of depression. The psychiatrist that helped you with medicine, the counseling, the pastoring, that all got you through it. You sought our books, you sought out leaders, you sought out friends. You were so intentional. Maybe not in that first “I don’t care” phase. That was the stage I was really screaming on the inside that you needed to get help. That phase scared me. I was scared of how dark you were. I think as friends of people walking through that, you’ve got to be advocates for them. It may take counseling, medicine, who knows, but there is still hope.
When you’re depressed, the people that you're looking for are people who have also gone through depression and who have suffered deeply. It feels like everyone else is shallow and they haven't experienced that depth of pain. The only people that feel helpful are the people that can identify with you during that. That's not necessarily right, but that's how you feel in the midst of that. And I had two books that were my companions. One was a diagnostic tool and it was, the book is called Leading on Empty by Wayne Codero. And what Wayne did is Wayne went through a season of burnout similarly. And what he did was he listed the symptoms. So that book was really hopeful to help me know that I wasn't crazy because I saw these symptoms and it was something that a man that I had respected had listed too. I also had the question of, “where is my sin in this?” You remember the story of Job in the bible, where his three friends are trying to explain why all this pain and suffering happened to him. Thankfully, I didn’t have any friends who were looking for the hidden sin that caused my depression. But I was asking God, because I wanted to be right with him, and I wanted to grow. I never wanted to be back in this position again. Whatever he wanted to teach me in this, I wanted to learn. As weird as it sounds, I wanted to get everything out of depression that I could. The second book was where I found my answer to that question, “where is my sin?” The book is called Christians Get Depressed Too by a pastor that was from Northern Ireland named David Murray. He had been pastoring in Northern Ireland where there's not a lot of sunshine and he dealt with a real high depression rate among his congregation and it was like he was talking to me. Yeah, that book was my companion. What David said was he said, “you know, when people come to me in their depression, it is rarely ever their gross obvious sin that got them into depression.” He said what led most of people into depression, 95% of them, is a lack of self care. He said the sin that we don’t realize as people on this side of Genesis 3 is that when Adam fell, all of his faculties fell. He couldn't do everything all the time for everybody. We still have that fallen body. We still have a fallen mind. We still have fallen emotions. And for the first time, I recognized that as a pastor, when I thought of self care before, I thought it was selfish. All I did was think about everyone else. The last thing I would think of doing is a Sabbath. That’s what my sin was. It was a denial of the theology of the fall. That was the first time that someone gave me language that really resonated with my soul.
I get really emotional listening to this because we don’t talk about this anymore. You've come so far, you're a whole different human. You are one of the happiest people I know. You are the rock of our family. You are steady. You have been the person who pushes me out the door to go do the work for the kingdom with joy. Our kids adore you. You've been such a present father. I feel like this is part of what made you who you are and, and I hope that anybody listening doesn't feel discouraged or pressured to fix something, but they feel hope that this could be something that shapes their lives because you are so tender. I wouldn't use that word to describe you before. Tender was not who you were before this. Our kids have this dad they feel comfortable with, even Kate who is 18, will crawl up in your lap and put her head on your shoulder because she feels so safe with you. I think a lot of that safety has come from your struggles. We’re not big reflectors. We move forward in life. So it’s sweet to think back to this and how hard it was. I want you to talk to the men who are listening, because I promise you a lot of men are stuck. Your wives forwarded you this because they’re afraid that you’re maybe in burnout or you’re not yourself. So talk to them a little bit.
There’s a myriad of reasons that people go through depression - chemical reasons, circumstantial reasons, seasonal things. There are things that are happening inside of you. There are things happening outside of you. There are things happening at you. Here's what I learned about myself: the idol that I had, that God went to work with during depression, was performance. I could no longer perform. I had to ask the question, if God never restored me, would I be able to interact with people? To speak publicly? To just do my job well? What if that never happened? Do I believe you’re still there, that you’re good, and that you live me if that never happens? If my answer is yes, then what happened on the backside of depression when God did restore me is all the sudden I became so much more dangerous for the kingdom. I'm still a fallen man, but I don't struggle in the same way with an idol of performance that I used to. There's this kind of freedom that I don't have anything to prove or anything to lose. It’s so much easier for me to celebrate and cheer you on. What if the greatest calling of my life is to shepherd my wife so she can shepherd thousands of others? That's the greatest calling of my life - to be a pastor of my home and to shepherd you. What if that’s it? That’s enough. That’s more than enough. This gospel identity took root in me.
I need to tell everybody that I’m balling, because it’s still something I won’t ever get over. You live this way day in and day out. It's part of that provision to be able to do everything that I do because of your security. That part of you was birthed during that season.
During that season, I read one chapter of scripture for nine months. Lamentations 3. The prophet Jeremiah is lamenting for the first 20 verses. He’s talking about his enemies that are coming at all sides, basically. He was trying to be the mouthpiece to Israel to call them back to the Lord and they weren’t listening. It was just this breaking point in this honesty of Jeremiah in Lamentations 3 and it was like all hope was lost and he was getting to the end. He says in verse 17, “my soul is bereft of peace. I’ve forgotten what happiness is. So I say my endurance has perished, so has my hope from the Lord.” That’s how I felt. I know there are listeners that feel verse 17 and 18 of Lamentations. But you get to verse 21, and this is why I had to read this everyday for nine months, verse 21 says, “but this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in him.” When you're in depression, you can't think of anything beyond that day. My prayer was just like the Israelites’ prayer in the desert when they're wondering what was manna - it was their portion. God's saying, trust me, you're going to wake up and you're going to have me and I'm going to provide for you. And that's what Jeremiah is saying. The Lord is my portion, therefore I will trust in him. That was what every day felt like. I couldn't get past one day. It was just one day. I would encourage anyone going through depression to commit Lamentations 3 to memory. Or just reading it daily.
I want you to encourage the spouses out there or the friends of people that are going through this. Some people are listening and they don't know what to do and they feel helpless. What would you encourage them to do?
What happens when you're in this season is you have so little confidence in yourself to make decisions. You have to find someone to trust. And literally, it's like you're reaching out your hand and say, take my hand and I will go where you go because I have more confidence that you can take me there than I can take me there. For me during that time, Kevin Peck who was lead pastor at Austin Stone, he was the one that kept telling me this would end. This will not be forever. It was amazing how comforting and hopeful those simple words were. Kevin didn’t know it wasn’t going to last forever, but those words were so powerful for me.
I love Kevin forever for that. I think we needed some people that didn’t put shame around it. They’d seen it before and they told you it was going to be okay. They introduced you to the psychiatrist. If pastors are listening, you all can be the greatest shepherds of people to give them the resources and to give them the connections. Have a great Rolodex of counselors and psychiatrists handy. We've got to view these struggles as physical, emotional, spiritual. We cannot attack one without the others. We've got to do it all. I want to encourage you, I know this is going to feel a little bit off right here, but a huge part of this starts with the physical. You start with a physical because you don't know what your hormones are doing. You don't know. There were so many things we learned in the process of the medical side of things that brought healing to you that if we hadn't had done the work of testing different things, I think we wouldn't have seen as much success with the other things. Start with your body, then go to the emotions, find a counselor, find a Godly gospel centered counselor. Then you fight spiritually. We treat this threefold, it’s not one or the other.
One thing I recognize on the backside of this is how integrated we are with our bodies. Our bodies, our emotions, our souls - they’re way more interdependent on each other than I realized. There's some healing that would not have been possible if I hadn't gone to the endocrinologist and done all the blood work and done all those panels to find out that I had some real deficiencies. Now we don't know where all those deficiencies came from. That could have happened as a result of my season of depression. But the reality was they were deficiencies. I needed to be under the care of an endocrinologist and a physician. There are things in depression that aren’t under our control in depression, but there are some things that are under our control. How God has gifted doctors, he’s gifted us with medicine and with physical training and exercise. I had to take responsibility of those things. Those things that I can control. Then I trust him on the spiritual side. But it's your effort and still a dependence on what God's going to do.
I mean, this is so helpful. I hope every single one of you will forward this to somebody struggling with depression and with anxiety too. I think a lot of these things are similar. My hope is that you won't feel alone, that whether you're walking through this with someone or you are walking through this yourself, that you will not feel alone. And if you feel alone, you don't have to reach out very far to find somebody struggling with this. This is rampant right now. Find the people that have walked through it and found healing. Those people exist. You were so blessed by the leaders and the people that spoke into your life because they'd been there. They gave you so much hope, whether it's through books and we'll put all the links in in the notes here, or whether it is through hopefully trusted friends as well. We don’t do things in isolation. You always bring people in. I’m grateful for what God’s done in our lives through the darkness. Without it, we are not who we are. I love that God truly does work all things together for good, and I can see that tremendously in your life Zac.
