Overcoming Depression For Dummies

by Smith, Laura L.

  Inappropriate must, ought, or should statements are guaranteed routes to guilt. These irrational statements imply you’re expected to be perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful – which, of course, you aren’t. If you think that people don’t use these words a great deal, try really listening to what others say. Tune in and notice whenever you hear any of these words. Some people use them continually. The problem’s not only that the depressed mind use these three words frequently, but it takes them very seriously indeed.

  What’s so awful about musts, oughts, and shoulds? Nothing really, if you only mean must in the sense of I would like to, and ought as in it would be good if I could, and should in the sense of conveying an expectation of what’s to come, such as, The package should arrive today. But when you use the words in a threatening way and then judge how you are behaving the words can result in high levels of self-criticism.

  Start tracking your ‘musturbations’ today. See if you can use other terms such as ‘I’d rather,’ ‘I want to,’ ‘it would be better if,’ and ‘I’d like to.’ See the following examples for ideas:

  Must statement: I must get down to those Dummies exercises.

  Alternative statement: It would be good if I schedule in a time to do the exercises later today.

  Ought statement: I ought to visit my grandmother.

  Alternative statement: It would be a good deed to visit my grandmother.

  Should statement: I should have done a better job on that project.

  Alternative statement: I would like to have done a better job on that project.

  Another approach to ‘shoulds’ is to ask yourself where you’ve seen it written that you should or shouldn’t do this or that. Is the rule one you’ve made up for yourself? And if so, is it written somewhere in stone? If not, think about rewriting the rule. Finally, ask yourself if ‘should-ing on yourself’ (from a great height) helps you or just makes you feel bad. Keep in mind, as we note earlier in this section, that guilt and shame do little to motivate positive behaviour, especially when used to excess.

  Conjuring unfair comparisons

  Comparing yourself to others in unfair or inappropriate ways is a pretty good way of making yourself really depressed! Many people make such comparisons with alarming frequency and without much thought. Their feelings of personal worth slowly disintegrate each time they put themselves down and compare themselves negatively with someone else. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

  You have a friend who’s more successful financially than you are. Therefore, you decide that you’re a failure.

  You’re a student, and you receive an A– for an exam, but you belittle your performance because a few others got an A Star grade.

  You don’t go out on as many dates as a few of your friends, so you decide that you’re undesirable.

  You’re a teenager who isn’t as popular as some of your friends, so you assume that you’re a total reject.

  You’re a successful writer of self-help books, but a friend of yours writes a Sunday Times bestseller, so you decide that your writing isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

  You’re overweight, and you have friends who are positive stick insects, so you decide that you’re a fat pig with no self-control.

  Your neighbour buys a new 60-inch plasma TV, so you think of yourself as inadequate and deprived because you can’t afford one.

  This list contains great ways of beating yourself up! But you may wonder how such comparisons distort reality. After all, in each case, one or more people are in a different place to you on the ladder of ‘success’ for a given action or personal quality. But the distortion doesn’t lie in noticing that some are doing better than you. That fact is true and absolutely fine, as far as it goes. The problem arises from the self-destructive conclusion that if you don’t equal or surpass others, you, as a consequence, amount to nothing. The issue is similar to all-or-nothing, black and white thinking we discuss earlier in this chapter in the section ‘The mind’s seven misleading misperceptions’.

  Further distortion occurs when these comparisons focus on one single factor that the other person has, which you don’t have. The comparison zooms in on that one isolated issue, and ignores the bigger picture. For example:

  The highly successful friend also happens to overwork himself to the point that he feels miserable and utterly shattered.

  Your extremely slim friends don’t have your level of energy, and one has some pretty serious health problems linked to an eating disorder.

  The neighbour with the new, expensive TV happens to have huge credit card debts.

  If you focus on a single issue, you can always find someone you know who has more, or is doing better than you. For example, we, the authors, have no doubt that none of us has a sole quality, trait, success, or achievement that someone else couldn’t improve upon. Whether we look at our intelligence, personality, writing, appearance, income, or any accomplishments, certainly we’d have no trouble finding others in the world who rank higher. If we compare ourselves on each quality, we can quickly dig ourselves into a black hole by turning these comparisons into personal failure.

  When you find you’re comparing yourself to others, try doing the following:

  Tell yourself that focusing on single issues where others do better is a waste of time and only saps any remaining feelings of self-worth. Instead, look at ways of appreciating both your strengths and weaknesses.

  Don’t just compare yourself to the top. Look at the whole picture. How do you rate against the middle, or even the bottom of a normal distribution?

  Allow yourself to accept average, normal, and even less-than-average qualities as part of your self-perception. All people have certain qualities that lie in each range.

  If you struggling with the preceding suggestions, we suggest that you read about the destructive influence of certain core beliefs in Chapter 7. The perfectionist belief, which we discuss in that chapter, may lie behind your difficulty. Work on the idea that ‘good enough’ IS good enough!

  Giving yourself loathsome labels

  The final distorted method for making misjudgements involves finding a particularly obnoxious label to apply to yourself, such as disgusting, pathetic, idiot, pig, clod, misfit, freak, oaf, twit, and so on. And don’t make the mistake of thinking these labels have no consequence. The old adage ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me’ sounds great, but it isn’t true. People frequently do use words that hurt themselves, and others. What do you say to yourself when you stumble, trip, or drop something? Do you call yourself an idiot, or a clumsy clod? Labels like these eat away at your sense of self-worth. And low self-worth is a symptom of depression (refer to Chapter 2 for more information about symptoms of depression). In the following example, Aaron uses many negative self-labels and feels rather horrid as a result.

  Aaron works as a DJ at a popular radio station. People readily recognise him and he’s in demand for gigs. But Aaron doesn’t feel particularly notable, special, or accomplished. He’s a lifelong perfectionist who tells himself off for every mistake. A single mispronounciation, and he calls himself a fool. If he inadvertently says something that a few listeners find offensive, he thinks he’s a total idiot.

  Labels like imposter, freak, monster, a nobody, and fool regularly run through Aaron’s mind. His self-worth is so low that he believes his audience is only temporarily fooled; and that in the not-so-distant future they’re all going to go off him. Thus, he turns down a higher paid job a big city because he’s absolutely positive that the more sophisticated city listeners will see right through him and know what a fraud he really is.

  If you’re a bit like Aaron, start noting down your self-labels. See how often you apply them to yourself in response to mistakes, failures, and even quirks. We call this tool the ‘Label Substitution Strategy’. In your notebook, write down the event in one column and the label you attach to yourself in the next column. Then in the third column try substituting an alternativ
e phrase. By doing so, you can start to see yourself more realistically and stop the pain that’s brought on by negative self-labels. See Table 5-4 for examples of replacing your labels.

  Table 5-4 Label Substitution Strategy

  Event

  Label

  Label Substitution Thought

  You’ve put on a few pounds.

  I’m a pig!

  Okay, I gained a few pounds. So what? I can always do something about it if I choose.

  You were involved in a car accident.

  I’m a lousy driver.

  Well, it actually was my fault. I guess I’m going to have to try and concentrate more. Statistics do say this happens to most people at one time or another in their lives.

  You didn’t get the hoped for promotion.

  I’m a complete and utter failure.

  Although I didn’t get the promotion, I’ve had plenty of other success. I guess I have to find out how to take the good with the bad.

  You got turned down for a date.

  I’m not in the least bit fit or attractive. I’m a waste of space.

  So one person said ‘no’. How does this make me a freak? If I’m going to succeed in the long run, I’ve got to expect some rejections.

  Self-labels may run through your mind so often that you can’t possibly catch them all. If so, don’t worry. Just write down the ones that particularly grab your attention and see if you can substitute other thoughts. If you find this exercise difficult, you may want to read Chapter 6 and return to this exercise at a later date.

  Assigning blame to the wrong source

  Another type of thought distortion involves blaming the wrong source(s) for your problems. This distortion can take one of two forms:

  Most often, people with depression personalise problems – they blame themselves entirely for their current plight.

  Alternatively, some people place blame for all their problems on others, thereby disowning any responsibility for making changes in their lives.

  Try examining all the possible causes of your particular problem and dividing the responsibility in a reasonable, fair manner. You can only do work on the part of the problem that you own – the part that you’re actually responsible for.

  Rosemary tells her psychologist that her son is having big problems with his behaviour at school. Rosemary’s conclusion? She’s a bad mother, full stop. As well as using a global self-label (see the earlier section ‘Giving yourself loathsome labels’), Rosemary personalises the entire problem. She believes that her poor parenting totally causes her son’s behaviour.

  The psychologist asks Rosemary to list all the possible causes for her son’s misbehaviour. With some thought, she realises that Lionel’s father has a lot to do with how Lionel is behaving, and also that the school is failing to set limits for Lionel. Also, her son is hanging out with the wrong crowd at school.

  Then Rosemary’s psychologist asks her to consider what overall proportion of the problem she may have responsibility for, and to think of any specific things she’s done within her son’s upbringing. Rosemary discovers she can divide up the responsibility for her son’s behaviour , so only some of it is attributed to her, whole other parts are re-attributed to others. Her task is to take action on the bits that she attributes to herself. The psychologist asks her to think about what she can do with the part of the problem which she owns, and for which she’s responsible. We call this ‘Responsibility Re-allocation and Action’.

  Responsibility re-allocation and action enables you to avoid immersing yourself in guilt and self-blame. It allows you to take responsibility for your part of the problem, and you do what you can with it. If it involves something that’s over and done with, then you can recognise that no action is needed or possible. But you can try to let go of the guilt, because feeling guilty will lead you nowhere.

  To put it into practice, turn to a new sheet of paper in your notebook and draw columns for listing all the contributors to your problem, the percentage of the problem that’s truly your responsibility, your role in the development of your problem, and any specific actions you can now take to reduce your problem. When you complete this exercise, you’re likely to understand that you’re not totally responsible for your problem and you can hopefully forgive yourself more easily. And you can develop ideas for what you can do about your problem for the future.

  Table 5-5 shows what Rosemary comes up with after doing this task.

  Getting enslaved by emotions and fooled by feelings

  Most people with depression have endless negative thoughts about events. The mind then uses the accompanying emotions as cues or evidence for supporting the truth of those thoughts. The reasoning goes something like this:

  I’ve done something wrong. I feel guilty. Because I feel guilty, I decide that I must have done something wrong.

  There’s something the matter with me. I feel ashamed, so there must be something peculiar about me.

  I’m hopeless. Because I feel so horribly hopeless, I must be a really hopeless case.

  I can’t do anything if I don’t feel like doing it, and if I’m just not in the mood!

  The problem is that feelings all too often occur in response to distorted views of events. So the very feeling that you’re using as a way of proving your thought probably arose in connection with a negative or distorted thought in the first place.

  Feelings are not facts.

  If everyone suffering from depression relied on following their feelings, few are ever going to improve even with therapy. If you’re depressed, you most likely don’t feel like putting energy into doing anything about it, because you have so little energy to start with. And if you listen uncritically to feelings of hopelessness (refer to Chapter 3), you’re probably going to conclude that you have no reason to improve your lot.

  Don’t get us wrong; feelings and emotions are important. Positive feelings give you information about what you like and don’t like. Negative emotions can alert you to danger and help you in recognising that something isn’t right in your life. Feelings are what make us human. We value and respect feelings. Much of the intention of this book is to help you find ways of feeling better.

  However, we suggest that you resist using feelings as though they’re facts. Dr David Burns, a psychiatrist, calls the temptation to view feelings as facts, ‘emotional reasoning’. He also notes that a common example of such flawed reasoning is to determine your personal worth based on feelings. Thus, if you feel awful, you decide that you must be awful. But what if you feel really wonderful? Does that actually mean that you are wonderful, or merely that you’re feeling pretty darn good.

  Start exploring your use of emotional reasoning. Become aware of times when your mind tells you to avoid doing something merely because you don’t feel like it. Ask yourself if you’ve felt that way in the past, but successfully pushed through the feeling anyway. Did you end up feeling better when you pushed through, or when you gave into the feeling?

  Also, take a look at Chapter 6 for information on how to answer back to distorted thoughts and the feelings they cause. As you see how many ways these distortions lead to unpleasant feelings, you’re likely to understand that feelings sure don’t equal facts.

  Don’t think that we’re saying all negative feelings are wrong, and all positive feelings are right, and to be blown up at every opportunity. If that’s the case you may easily find yourself eating loads of fattening foods and consuming drugs and alcohol in copious quantities, simply because they feel good! What we mean is that if you allow yourself to be ruled and dominated by feelings, your vision of reality and of yourself can be blocked out.

  Chapter 6

  Dispersing the Dark Clouds of Depressive Thinking

  In This Chapter

  Tracking events, thoughts, and feelings

  Dealing with your thinking