Overcoming Depression For Dummies

by Smith, Laura L.

  Benefits

  Costs

  I take loads of precautions to maximise safety.

  My wife says I’m like a jailer and that she can’t stand it.

  I’m less likely to be hurt.

  My daughter got so angry with her curfew that she ran away from home for three days.

  I can plan for dangers and what to do when (not if) they arise.

  We never do anything for fun because I feel a need to save every penny I make.

  I do a pretty good job of protecting my family.

  I had a car accident in spite of all my extra care. Perhaps I was a even a hazard to others as I drive so slowly.

  We all just might live longer because of me.

  Sometimes, I wonder whether living longer is that important, if everyone is so unhappy.

  Only eating healthy foods still didn’t prevent me from getting prostate cancer.

  I think that my absolute obsession with safety is probably making me and the entire family miserable.

  After Thomas finishes his cost/benefit analysis, he feels more motivated to remove and replace his problematic life-lens. No matter which lenses cause you problems, a cost/benefit analysis of each lens can help you do the same. You’re probably going to want to use all the lens-replacing strategies we discuss in the following section. A cost/benefit analysis can help you see the value in making the effort.

  Seeing Clearly: Replacing the Distorting Lenses

  If you’ve reached the point where you know that your old, distorted lenses aren’t doing you much good, then now’s the time to try out some new ones. When you look for new lenses, giving them a new name – one that’s more flexible and balanced – is helpful. For example, instead of inferior or superior, you can design a lens you call ‘equal to others.’ Or instead of invulnerable or vulnerable, you may come up with a lens you call ‘reasonably cautious.’

  Hold on to the fact that the process of removing and replacing old lenses isn’t quick or easy. The good news is that you can succeed with patience and hard work.

  You need to proceed with care and attention because acting against the distorted perspective you’ve been seeing through your lenses is like being in a foreign country where you are driving on the opposite side of the road. The ingrained, habitual side of your mind says to drive on the left, and the clear-headed, adaptive side says to drive on the right. Preventing the old habit from automatically taking back control means keeping your mind on the task – no doubt you or some one you know has had experience of driving in Europe!

  We have four separate strategies that are likely to help you remember which side of the road to stay on. Remember to drive slowly and watch the road signs. You may find that one of these strategies works for you, or you may find it helpful to use two, three, or even all four.

  Looking through contrasting lenses

  You can feel overwhelmed with the effects of distorted life-lenses but it’s not impossible to find another, clearer lens that’s been lying in waiting, neglected, in some corner of your mind. Nearly everyone has access to other reasonable, logical, and less distorted ways of thinking. Nonetheless, you may not have explored that area of your mind for quite a while.

  The Looking Through Contrasting Lenses tool is an effective way of getting in touch with the clear-thinking, logical, level-headed side of your mind. (And we do believe that everyone’s mind has a clear-thinking side.) This type of thinking increasingly develops as children grow up. Sadly, all too often it goes into hiding when depression sets in. Sometimes, looking for the clear lens feels like searching for a contact lens that flew out of your hands onto the carpet. Though you think it’s disappeared, be assured that you can find clarity if you just keep looking for it.

  Here’s how looking through contrasting lenses works:

  1. Place two chairs facing each other. Label one chair with the distorted lens that your mind uses all too often, and label the other chair as the clear lens that looks at events logically and objectively.

  2. Sit in the chair labelled distorted lens first and talk aloud to the imagined you sitting in the chair labelled clear lens.

  Tell that logical, clear side why you have every right, and indeed should be feeling as bad as you do. Argue forcefully!

  3. When you run out of arguments, swap chairs and sit in the clear lens chair. From this clear side, tell the negative, distorted chair all the reasons why the arguments you just heard are invalid.

  Use evidence, data, and logic. Point out any distortions you heard from the distorted lens chair.

  4. Keep swapping chairs until you’ve run dry of all the arguments on both sides.

  Notice how you feel in each chair. Ask yourself which chair feels stronger and which side most reflects reality.

  Perhaps the Looking Through Contrasting Lenses tool sounds somewhat silly, and a little muddling. But rest assured that psychologists have used various versions of this technique for decades for one key reason: it works! If the strategy sounds a little confusing, perhaps Jessica’s story can help to clear things up for you.

  Jessica has felt depressed for about four months. About two months ago, she started reading self-help books. In the last three weeks, she’s noticed a significant lifting of her mood, but then her mood plummets again. Her boyfriend says that he has to go away on a four-day business trip. Jessica’s mood plunges steeply downward. She tells herself that she must be crazy to believe that her depression is getting better, and face up to the fact that she’s really a hopeless case .

  Jessica realises that her scared of abandonment life-lens has led to her intense feelings of hopelessness. Here’s how the Looking Through Contrasting Lenses tool works out for Jessica in tackling her scared of abandonment lens:

  Scared of Abandonment Life-Lens chair (Talking to the Logical, Clear Life-Lens chair): ‘Why did you even bother to hope? You’re a loser, and you know it. Jamal makes loads of out-of-town trips. One of these days he’s going to find someone else, and that’s going to prove that you’re a loser who’s never going to have a successful relationship. Besides, the fact that your depression has returned also shows that Jamal is eventually going to leave you. After all, who’d want to stay with someone who’s always depressed?’

  Logical, Clear Life-Lens chair: ‘Did you really think that your depression is going to go away, like that, and stay away for ever? It doesn’t work that way – you’ve read that in any number of books. Jamal’s stuck with you through thick and thin for over a year now. He says that he wants to spend his life with you. He’s concerned about your depression, and he says that he’s going to do anything it takes to help. Why not believe him?’

  Scared of Abandonment chair: ‘Well, you’ve had other boyfriends who left you after they said nice things. Why is Jamal any different? Remember how hurt you were when Simon dumped you?’

  Logical, Clear chair: Hold it right there! Firstly, you know that a couple of those guys who left were actually pathetic nobodies; and you didn’t really want them any more than they wanted you. And yes, you were hurt when Simon left. But let’s face it, most of your friends have had a great guy leave at some point or another. It doesn’t mean that all men are going to walk out. Natasha broke up with five guys over the years, but then she got married four years ago, and things are still looking just great for them. Besides, you know that you practically drove Simon away because of your fears and your desperate need for reassurance. Don’t do that again!

  Scared of Abandonment chair: ‘But I won’t be able to stand it if Jamal leaves me! I’d die.’

  Logical, Clear chair: ‘Well guess what? You felt hurt, but did you really die when Simon left? Did you? What have you got to lose by hanging in there, trusting, and not pushing Jamal away?’

  Scared of Abandonment chair: ‘I guess you have a point, but I’m afraid.’

  Logical, Clear chair: ‘Of course, you’re afraid, but you can handle it. Hang in there with me and let’s try something different for a change.’

  Repea
ted practice with the Looking Through Contrasting Lenses tool is an effective means of convincing yourself that the new, clear lens is more accurate and also feels better to look through than the old, distorted life-lens. Repeat the exercise every time you waver in your attempts to use the new way of looking at yourself and the world.

  Trying a new look

  This strategy for finding clear life-lenses is like going clothes-shopping. One of the most common ways people decide what they like in clothes is by looking at friends, acquaintances, and models for ideas. If you see an outfit that looks good on someone else, you may decide you’d like something similar. Then what do you do? You try it on to see what it looks like and what it does for you.

  If you have a life-lens that isn’t giving you the results you want, look around for someone you know who has a clear lens that would suit you. We call this the New Look Technique. Trying on a new lens is surprisingly, pretty straightforward:

  1. Find someone you know who seems to look through a clearer lens than you do.

  2. Give that new, clear lens a name and decide what it means to you.

  3. Try on the new lens just like you’d try on a new outfit.

  Howard’s story illustrates how to use this approach. Howard hardly looks like someone who’d fall into depression. He got his membership of the Royal College of Orthopaedics eight years ago and now is nearing the top of his profession in terms of both income and prestige. However, in the past six months, he’s been waking up at 3 a.m., unable to go back to sleep. His energy drains away, his appetite disappears, and he loses interest in sex.

  Howard’s wife persuades him to get help for his depression. Though he isn’t convinced that he’s depressed, he agrees to see a psychologist. After four sessions, the psychologist manages to get Howard to accept that he really is seriously depressed. And much of his depression seems to stem from his perfectionistic life-lens that causes Howard to work excessive hours and beat himself up relentlessly for even the most trivial of mistakes.

  Howard berates his psychologist: ‘You don’t get it, do you? I can’t possibly stop being a perfectionist; I’m a surgeon for crying out loud! If I don’t go over every detail time and again, patients could die!’

  ‘Yes,’ Howard’s psychologist agrees, ‘but do you know any colleagues who work hard, do an excellent job, and yet aren’t so completely driven by perfectionism?’

  When pushed, Howard manages to think of his friend Michelle. She’s a successful surgeon too, but she doesn’t work the hours that Howard does. And Michelle doesn’t appear to beat herself up over tiny details. Howard agrees to try out Michelle’s life-lens.

  Having done the first step in the New Look Technique, Howard moves onto the next step of naming the new lens. He certainly can’t consider looking through a lens labelled ‘adequate,’ yet he knows that the perfectionist view is destroying him. He settles on a perspective that he decides to call ‘productive and proficient.’ He defines this new lens as meaning that he wants to be highly competent and work hard, but not nearly as driven and obsessed as before. Howard tries on his new life-lens for a week. Thus, he essentially tries out acting ‘as if’ he is his friend, Michelle. After a fortnight, he decides that he likes this new lens a whole lot more than his old one, and – lo and behold! – he hasn’t lost a patient.

  With the New Look Technique, you find someone you know who has a different lens from you. You try on their lens, and give yourself the option of going back to your old one if it feels better.

  Taking direct actions

  Now comes an even scarier approach – behaving (rather than thinking) in ways that directly go against the perspective seen through your distorted life-lenses. Although it may feel a bit frightening, Taking Direct Actions against your lenses isn’t complicated. What you do is:

  1. Ask what your old, distorted life-lens has been causing you to do/not do that’s self-destructive, not useful, or fails to give you what you want.

  2. Make a list of a few different things to do – actions that are likely to lead to long-term benefits.

  3. Start doing them, one at a time.

  Starting with small steps is always a good idea. You’ve been looking through your old life-lenses for a long time; there’s no rush!

  Adelaide’s scared of abandonment life-lens causes her to hang on so tightly to every new relationship that invariably her partner ends up feeling smothered and eventually leaves. Her distorted lens results in the very outcome she fears most. Adelaide feels lost without someone in her life, and her cost/benefit analysis (see ‘Carrying out a cost/benefit analysis’ earlier in this chapter) tells her that her scared of abandonment life-lens is doing far more harm than good. She then makes a list of self-destructive behaviours that her life-lens has typically directed her to do:

  If I’m in a new relationship, I phone or text the guy frantically several times every day asking for reassurance.

  I do almost anything to keep from being alone, including sometimes going to the pub and letting myself get picked up.

  I wear really sexy outfits and make sure I attract guys because I so hate being alone.

  I neglect my friends.

  Adelaide decides that she wants to do something different to her past patterns. After looking over her list she thinks of some things she can do to change:

  I’m going to phone a female friend once a week and meet up with her, rather than always brooding about men.

  I’m going to spend at least three evenings a week at home and plan a range of activities to occupy the time I’m alone.

  I’m going to quit trying to find guys in bars and stop wearing sexually overt clothes.

  If someone does come into my life, I’m going to force myself to call him no more often than he calls me and I’ll get a couple of my friends to help me on this one.

  Adelaide works hard at carrying out her new actions. Sometimes she succeeds, and sometimes she doesn’t. But by frequently reviewing her list, she manages to maintain her focus on where she’s headed. Slowly but surely, she starts to see the world through a new life-lens that she decides to call ‘intimacy comfortable.’ For her, intimacy comfortable means discovering that she’s fine when she’s by herself, and equally so when she’s involved in a relationship.

  Taking direct actions simultaneously allows you to take off your old lenses and put on new ones that let you to see life from a different perspective. It’s not that easy when you first start, but you’re likely to find this approach rewarding in the long run.

  Writing a letter to the source

  When you were a child, did you ever try on lenses at the opticians, finding everything looked out of focus and telling the optician that you couldn’t see? Now imagine the optician saying to you, ‘These new glasses have lenses which were made specially for you. That’s how things are supposed to look! Give the glasses time, eventually they’ll feel just right.’ And, because you were a child, imagine you had no option but to go on wearing them. And even though you fiddled with them, you just couldn’t make them right.

  Later in life, you’d figure out that you’d been had by that optician. And you’re likely feeling angry about having been forced to wear the wrong lenses for years. Writing a letter to the optician can’t change what’s happened, but it does allow you to release your pent up feelings, set the record straight and let the other person see things from your point of view.

  That’s what the Writing a Letter to the Source exercise is about. Have a go at writing a heartfelt letter to the person or persons most closely linked to the development of your distorted perspective. Include details about what the person did and how you felt. After pouring out your emotions, tell the person your plans for creating a new, clear-sighted life-lens – your plan for positive change.

  In the majority of cases, you won’t actually post the letter to the source. If you do decide to send your letter, give yourself time to think over the decision. And discuss your intention with a trusted friend, minister, or professional. Ma
ke sure that you’ve thoroughly thought through the advantages and disadvantages of sending the letter.

  If the source that you’re directing your letter to is one or both of your parents, you may feel reluctant to express anger. Perhaps you feel guilty and think that it’s wrong to express such feelings towards a parent, even if you don’t plan to send the letter. You may be tempted to defend your parents’ actions. It can be useful to write about your anger and distress nonetheless. You also may benefit from finding forgiveness for the source of your life-lenses. But forgiveness usually comes only after first letting the steam escape and evaporate from the boiling emotional caldron.