Marcus Mecum - How To Survive A Mental Breakdown
Daniel 4, Daniel 4 and let's look at verse number 28. Earlier on in this chapter Daniel is hearing about a dream that Nebuchadnezzar has had, and this is the fulfillment of that dream. In verse 28, it says, "All this happened to king Nebuchadnezzar. Twelve months later," so twelve months after the dream, "The king was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon, and he said, 'is this not the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my own majesty'? And as the words were on his lips, a voice came from heaven, 'this is what is decreed for you, king Nebuchadnezzar: your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people, live like a wild animal, eat grass like an ox. Seven years will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all the kingdoms of the earth and he gives them to anyone he wishes'".
I wanna use this story, really this dream and the fulfillment of a dream in the book of Daniel to talk to you about how to survive a mental breakdown, how to survive a mental breakdown. I wanna use this story really to focus in on the plague that's affecting so many of depression and living in a cloud of darkness. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream earlier on in the chapter and he's sleeping, and he sees this enormous tree. I mean, this tree is so massive, it touches the sky. Its branches reach out so far and wide that it can be seen, in his dream, he sees this tree and it can be seen from the ends of the earth.
This tree is prosperous, it's flourishing, it's filled with fruit. Its branches are so great that the birds of the air can find refuge, wild animals come and find shelter under this great tree. And as he's dreaming about this, he hears a voice saying to an angel to go and cut the tree down, and the angel comes with a great axe and cuts the tree down. The tree has this great fall and then he begins to cut the branches off one by one, and then something unique happens, the angel then takes chains and bronze and iron, and he ties off the stump of the tree. He leaves the stump and the roots intact in this dream.
And Nebuchadnezzar wakes up, and when he wakes up from the dream, he's distraught, he's disturbed. He knows something is unique about this dream. This is not a normal dream, someone or something is trying to speak to him. He reaches out to the prophet, Daniel, and he says, "Daniel, do you have any idea what this dream could possibly mean? Would you go to your God, and would you pray and would you tell us what the dream is and what it means"? And Daniel goes to God, he prays, and he gets the interpretation. He reluctantly shows up in front of the king and gives him the message. And he says, "King, this dream is a personal message to you, God is sending this message to you, you are that great tree. And because of your pride and because of your arrogance, the tree is going to be cut down. You've got 12 months, you've got 365 days to change, to turn to God, to turn from your wickedness, and to be kind to the oppressed, and if you'll do that, God might preserve you".
The king ignores Daniel's wishes. Twelve months goes by, 365 days, he's out on the rooftop of the royal palace. He's looking out over his kingdom and what he has built. And, like he's giving a toast to himself. He says, "Look at what I have built, look at what I have done, and I've done it all for my own glory and for my own majesty". And the Bible says while those words were on his lips, he hears a voice from heaven that says, "I'm taking it all from you," and the moment that he hears it, the second he hear, even the idea that he's losing what he built, he has a mental breakdown and he collapsed. Nebuchadnezzar's background is he is a great king, he is a mighty warrior.
I want you to think about his accomplishments. He was considered a architectural genius, not just in his day, but in our day, he invented one of the seven wonders of the world. Maybe you've heard of the hanging gardens of Babylon, a garden that would be suspended in midair. Not connected to the ground in any way, but yet it would sustain itself, and that hanging garden still boggles the mind of men today. Nebuchadnezzar was an inventor, he was a genius, he was a brilliant administrator. And the Bible says at the time of this writing, he was in the palace of Babylon that he had reigned and ruled over for 70 years. This empire was the greatest empire on the planet. And he enters his house, he's relaxed, he's contented, he's comfortable, but yet he's also prideful and arrogant.
And God, as a result, took his kingdom. And when he has this mental breakdown, I want you to think about this, it says his hair begin to grow so long that it dragged on the ground. That his hair would cover his body like feathers cover the body of an eagle. His nails, his fingernails and his toenails would grow out to be like claws of an animal. And on all fours, he would run through the forest and the wilderness and he would make the noises of animals.
In other words, his mind would no longer compute, he had no rationale, he didn't see himself correctly or accurately. He thought of himself wrong, he couldn't read or write, he couldn't talk, he couldn't speak the language of Babylon. And for seven years, he's talked to no one, for seven years, he's been isolated. For seven year, we see this great king is a broken man. This once mighty man is so broken, he's completely isolated and he's acting like something that you would never imagine. And C.S Lewis said that, "Mental pain, though less dramatic than physical pain, is more common and also more hard to bear". The frequent attempt to conceal metal pain increases its burden. It's easier to say, "My tooth is aching," than it is to say, "My heart is broken".
Maybe you've heard the cliché having the blues, and they say that this may be tied to maritime history. In the 17th and 18th century during long voyages, ships would often sail, and they would lose their bearings at sea, most of the time because their captain had died. And when they're trying to find their way to some port or some unknown land, they would raise a blue flag or they would paint a blue line on the hull of the ship, and what they were saying to those ports that they were entering that what they were trying, the message they were sending to unknown land is they were saying, "We've lost our captain, and we've lost our way".
That's the imagery behind having the blues. Just feeling off. And I think it's important that we begin by saying depression is very real, mental illness is very real. It's as real as cancer, it's as real as diabetes, it's as real as heart disease, it's as real as arthritis, it is as debilitating as any disease or physical injury that you can experience. I love this. One person said that depression is the inability to construct a future. Almost like you're frozen in time, unable to make any moves, unable to make any progress. And Daniel teaches us five things about mental breakdowns.
Number one, anyone can suffer a mental and emotional breakdown. It can happen to the strong and powerful, it can happen to the educated and intelligent, it can happen to the accomplished and successful. The date Bible says that Nebuchadnezzar had a mental disease, this is a verifiable disease called Lycanthropy and date says it's a disease where the person imagines they are a wolf. Think about that. Here is a guy that's so brilliant, he can invent one of the seven wonders of the world, but now he's so broken and so down, he thinks of himself like he is a wolf. He's out howling at the moon in the middle of the night, completely isolated on all fours running through the wilderness.
And what I want you to see is here's this mighty king that breaks mentally. I'm not trying to imply that that's what our mental breaks look like, what I'm trying to say is a mental break can happen to anybody, and the swing can be significant. You can go from being on top to feeling like you can never survive the hole that you find yourself in, and it can happen in a moment. One in fifteen people suffer from major depressive disorders. A study at the Washington university school of medicine discovered the hippocampi, which is a part of your brain, is in depressed patients, excuse me, is atrophy. The amount of years depressed determine the degree of the atrophy. Like a leg that's broken in the cast, and you can daily watch it shrink. An atrophy.
And over time, it gets to be so abnormally shrunk that you look at it and you wonder can it ever function again? They say that depression can cause the hippocampus to slowly waste away inside of our brain. Less and less you feel human, and more and more you lose your way. Nebuchadnezzar was in this state for seven years. Depression crippled a king, mental illness crippled a king. His enemies could not cripple him, great armies could not cripple him, other great nations around the earth could, in no way, touch him, but depression and mental illness brought this king to his knees. So, depression does not mean you're weak, depression does not mean someone in your sphere is weak. It can happen to anyone, it can happen to all of us.
Number two, trauma or chronic trauma triggers a mental break. For Nebuchadnezzar, it was the loss of everything he had built. A voice just said to him, "Your kingdom is taken from you". He just heard just the idea that he was going to lose it triggered a mental break. In this story, it was because of his own arrogance. So many times, the trauma in our life is self-inflicted. We can't blame someone else, we can't put it off on someone else, we brought it on ourselves, that's the story of this king. Other times, it's trauma beyond our control. We had nothing to do with it, we were the victim of the trauma, the trauma found its way into our life, we did nothing to bring it or invite it, but yet the trauma hit us.
And whenever you have a significant loss or a trauma, it can trigger a break. For most, it's a chronic series of trauma. It's over and over and over. This trauma and that trauma and this trauma leads to this one, and over time, it's like the cumulative overlapping of one trauma leads to a wave of depression. They say it's a complex series of external and internal or biological disconnection. So, yes, the external things that we face can create chemical imbalances and hormonal imbalances. Yes, it's, at times, something that medically needs to be addressed without question, but the point is simply this, it's normally not just one thing.
Imagine a bridge, if you will, and one trauma adds weight to the bridge and then another trauma adds weight to the bridge, and then another trauma. And each trauma piled on top of each other over time, the strength of the bridge is challenged. And then one great cord that's holding up the bridge snaps, and then another cord snaps, and then another trauma hits. And at first, the bridge is holding. At first, the bridge is surviving the weight and the impact, but over time, as trauma upon trauma is added, at some point, the bridge collapses, and that's what happens during a mental break. It's just the overlapping traumas begin to add a weight that the mind breaks under.
Luke 13:11 tells a story of a woman who has been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She's bent over, and the Bible says she could not straighten up. The Phillips translation says that this was a result, this illness was a result of a psychological cause. So, something psychological happened 18 years before that, we don't know what it was. But look at the imagery. She's bent over, her head down, her shoulders slouched, and for 18 years, this is what she's like. And we would know that this meant, according to Leviticus, that she couldn't even attend worship in the temple. She was forbidden to go into the temple because of this physical illness that she was struggling with, this psychological illness that was physically showing up in her body.
So, she was completely isolated from God's people. And the Bible says in Luke 13 that Jesus showed up, he went into the synagogue, and when she heard about it, she actually broke the law that was causing her to be isolated and she walked into the temple, risking her own life and future. And the Bible says when Jesus saw her, he commanded that illness, and that spirit, and that condition to leave her, and immediately she was straight, and immediately she was set free from that spirit, and she begin to praise God and she begin to feel a connection back to God and a connection back to God's people.
And I want you to see the picture of depression. Isolated, unable to straighten up, bent over, disconnected from God's people, disconnected from meaning and purpose, disconnected from your true self worth, disconnected from a hope for a better future, disconnected from relationships that can lift you up, and it was all brought on by a significant moment or trauma, 18 years before in that woman's life. And for 18 years she carried it, for 18 years she struggled under the weight of that depression and that trauma and that psychological illness. I love the fact that Daniel teaches us that there are things we can do to avoid or heal from a mental breakdown.
Daniel 4:7 says, "Turn to God," I'm paraphrasing. "And be kind to the oppressed". In reading about depression, I read that they've discovered the neuroplastic nature of the brain means potential is not set at birth, I love this. You can actually strengthen and improve your brain in ways once believed impossible. Dr. Rebecca gladding, author of "You are not your brain," wrote, "The brain and how we are able to mold it is fascinating and nothing short of amazing". Listen to what they said in this article, "There are a few things that can anchor you".
Now, these things that are mentioned that can anchor you, think about what Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, he told him the dream, and he said, "Listen, you gotta turn back to God, turn from your wickedness, turn from your sin, connect to God". And then he said, "And be kind to the oppressed". So, with that in mind, now let's look at the science behind how you heal your brain. The first thing that the article said is feeling connected to others will strengthen your immunity.
Years ago, Sara and I had a friend here in the church. And if I've ever seen, I would know a ton of people of that have ups and downs, I know a lot of people that have severe mental illnesses that they're dealing with, but this was the most severe I had ever seen. And someone that is such a strong person, such a godly person, and in every way you could ever think about, this person was handling that situation the best that they could. Unable to sleep, unable to find the medicine to properly straighten things out. Every imaginable thing they had exhausted.
One Sunday we're in church and we're worshipping, and God speaks to Sara to go to this person and give her an encouraging word. I don't even know what was said, but I can remember the moment Sara went and hugged and prayed and talked with this woman. Months later, the husband sent me a message and said, "For the first time in years my wife is sleeping again. For the first time in years she is making it through most days in a positive way". He said, "Though she's still working her way out of this issue, I just wanted you to know that the moment Sara went and prayed for her saved her life". Think about it. The feeling of connection. It was the moment where she knew, "I'm not at this alone. I'm not facing this alone, I'm not going at this alone".
And that, and I'm sure many other moments of connection, anchored this woman during the darkest time of her life. God told Nebuchadnezzar, "Connect to me and be kind to others". What was he saying? He was saying life can get worse than you could imagine if you stay isolated. Neuroscientists say when we feel isolated, our parietal lobe becomes overheated. Think about this. Like a car engine needs a radiator to keep from burning up, we need to cool down our parietal lobe and our mental and emotional radiator is, the article didn't say God, it said meditation, but yet connecting to that which is greater, connecting to God and connecting to others is the radiator that cools down the part of your brain that if you don't, it'll overheat and cause significant damage.
Again, listen to what God said to Nebuchadnezzar, "Connect to me and be kind to others". Before we had any neuroimaging of the brain, before we could ever understand neurons and protons and how it's all wired together, though we still have a long ways to go, the point is God made us, and he knows how to heal us. Another study said daily mediation can reverse depression and bullet proof your brain against future attacks. It's no mistake that God said, "Meditate on my word day and night".
Day and night. Meditate on my goodness, meditate on my faithfulness, think about my mercy and my compassion. Get your mind off all the issues and all the problems and all the pain. Just try to even find a little space of time where you can begin to mediate on the good things of God and that you're still here and you're still alive and you might just be, you might be slumped over and you may not be that straight, and it may have been one year, two years, or even 18 years, but you're here, somehow. You broke the law of isolation, you've walked into God's house. And I just want to say to someone, if you'll meditate on his goodness, it can begin to heal your mind and your brain.