A woman sits across from me in our Greenwood Village office. She’s been struggling for months — low energy, difficulty sleeping, loss of interest in things she used to enjoy, a pervasive sense of heaviness. Her spiritual director has told her she’s going through a “dark night of the soul.” Her friend suggested she might be depressed. She doesn’t know which is true, and the uncertainty is making everything worse.
This is one of the most common dilemmas we encounter in Catholic mental health care. And the answer is not always one or the other — sometimes it’s both. But distinguishing between the two is critical, because the appropriate responses are different. Major depressive disorder is defined in the DSM-5 by the presence of depressed mood or anhedonia plus at least four additional symptoms (sleep, appetite, energy, concentration, psychomotor changes, worthlessness, suicidality) for two weeks or more, representing a change from prior functioning; NIMH maintains accessible patient summaries.
What Does Spiritual Dryness Look Like?
Spiritual dryness, as described in the Catholic contemplative tradition, is a normal and often necessary stage of spiritual growth. It is characterized by a felt absence of God in prayer — the consolations you once experienced dry up, and your prayer life feels empty, mechanical, or pointless. The saints describe it as God withdrawing the felt sense of His presence to deepen your faith beyond feelings.
Key markers of spiritual dryness: the primary experience is in prayer and worship, not in every area of life. You still desire God, even though you can’t feel Him. Your daily functioning — work, relationships, self-care — remains largely intact. You may feel frustrated or confused, but not hopeless about everything. And the experience, while painful, tends to produce spiritual maturity: deeper humility, less attachment to consolations, a more purified faith.
What Does Clinical Depression Look Like?
Clinical depression, by contrast, is a whole-person experience. It doesn’t affect just your prayer life — it affects everything. The hallmarks include persistent sadness or emptiness that lasts most of the day, nearly every day. Loss of interest or pleasure in activities across the board, not just in prayer. Significant changes in sleep, appetite, or weight. Fatigue that rest doesn’t resolve. Difficulty concentrating or making decisions. Feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt. Psychomotor changes — either agitation or a marked slowing down. In severe cases, recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.
Depression affects your neurobiology. It changes how your brain processes reward, threat, and motivation. It is not a spiritual condition, even though it has spiritual consequences.
How Do Depression and Spiritual Dryness Differ?
Scope of symptoms. Spiritual dryness is primarily localized to prayer and the spiritual life. Depression is global — it touches work, relationships, physical health, hobbies, and spiritual life alike.
Desire for God. In spiritual dryness, the desire for God remains, even though the felt experience of God is absent. In depression, you may lose the desire for everything, including God — not because your faith has weakened, but because depression flattens all desire.
Functioning. People in spiritual dryness generally maintain their daily functioning. People with clinical depression often struggle to get through the day — work suffers, self-care deteriorates, relationships strain.
Physical symptoms. Spiritual dryness does not typically produce significant physical symptoms. Depression routinely involves disrupted sleep, appetite changes, fatigue, and sometimes physical pain.
Duration and trajectory. Spiritual dryness, while it can be prolonged, tends to fluctuate and eventually yields spiritual fruit. Depression, untreated, tends to persist or worsen, and it does not resolve through spiritual effort alone.
What If It’s Both Depression and Dryness?
Here is the complication that many resources leave out: depression and spiritual dryness can coexist. A person can be going through a genuine stage of spiritual growth and experiencing a clinical depressive episode at the same time. The depression may even be triggered by the spiritual experience, or vice versa. This is not unusual, and it means that both need to be addressed — the spiritual dimension through direction and prayer, the clinical dimension through therapy and possibly medication.
The danger lies in treating one while ignoring the other. If a clinically depressed person is told they’re simply in a dark night, they may not seek the treatment they need. If a person in genuine spiritual dryness is given only clinical intervention, the spiritual growth that God is working may be short-circuited. The wisest approach is integration: a spiritual director who respects the reality of mental illness, and a therapist who respects the reality of the spiritual life.
What Should I Do If I’m Unsure?
If you’re struggling and you’re not sure whether what you’re experiencing is spiritual or clinical, the safest course of action is to pursue both avenues. Talk to your spiritual director about your prayer life. And talk to a therapist about your symptoms. A good Catholic therapist — like the clinicians at Denver Catholic Counseling — can help you sort through the overlap without dismissing either dimension.
If your symptoms include significant disruption to sleep, appetite, energy, concentration, or functioning, or if you are having thoughts of death or self-harm, please prioritize clinical evaluation. These are medical symptoms that require medical attention, regardless of what else may be happening spiritually.
We serve clients throughout the Denver metro area and across Colorado via telehealth. If you’re caught between these two realities and need help figuring out what’s going on, we’re here.
“In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.” — Psalm 18:6
Sometimes that help comes through a professional who can see what you can’t see from the inside.