No Longer Quivering
Today we are continuing on with Debi Pearl’s let’s just blame people for their own depression tour. In this part she blames addiction sufferers for their addictions before claiming that the gut is the body’s “second” brain. Depressed? It’s your fault part 2. I still need my hillbilly shot glass for this nonsense.
Debi, the brain was never housed in a black box, I think she’s thinking of the cockpit voice recorder in planes. Shorter Debi – you chose to be a drunk or a junkie instead of a hap-hap-happy Christian. Oh please, no consideration for the fact that for many folks they are attempting to self-medicate for a wide variety of reasons, again, something that needs to be addressed by doctors and psychologists, not backwoods ministers.
She follows this paragraph by vaguely mentioning ‘getting over’ childhood trauma, like one of the NGJ writers has – Erin Harrison. Erin used the Jesus thing if you break down and read her article. Lots of crying out to God an praising. Sadly, that rarely works in the real world.
No one is disputing that the gut is important, so I’m not sure why Debi even mentions this save this one paragraph that allows her to throw shade at people who go to doctors for infections, drink properly treated community water and eat foods she disapproves of. Oh yeah, so she can also made the claim with no evidence that stress is self-inflicted, instead of the usual byproduct of difficult circumstances. Some stress is normal.
But of course this cannot be a Pearl approved post without a bit of let’s be cruel to children thrown in. Here Debi claims that being kind and loving is being an enabler that sets up people for depression.
That’s not at all how kindness works.
I wonder what evidence Debi is citing that negative emotions and thoughts kill brain cells. The only legitimate evidence I found was that it can negatively impact your immune system responses. Not one shred that it causes any sort of long term brain damage like Ms. Pearl is claiming here.
The other issue with studies like the ones saying that depression and negative thoughts suppress your immune system is that it does not take into account the fact that depression can make people really suck at self-care. Is it the fact that people aren’t eating right, or sleeping or exercising during depression impacting the immune system health instead of the thoughts? Too much unknown.
I do know that when you’re that far down that getting out of bed and getting dressed is a challenge that you are likely not going to follow up with a healthy breakfast, vitamins or a morning run.
This type of shaming and blaming has no place in treating people with depression. It’s harmful.
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