Overcoming Depression For Dummies

by Smith, Laura L.

Reduce anxiety

  Reduce the risk of breast and colon cancer

  Reduce the risk of diabetes

  Walking is the most basic form of aerobic exercise. To turn it into an even more effective aerobic exercise, all you have to do is increase your walking speed so that your heart rate goes up. Of course, you can also do other aerobic activities, such as jogging, skating, cycling, dancing, and even aerobic workouts – at home with a DVD or video, or at an exercise class. Basically, an activity qualifies as aerobic if it speeds up both your heart-rate and your breathing to the point where you feel a little winded, but you can still say a short sentence without gasping for breath.

  Health care professionals often recommend that you establish a target heart rate for your aerobic exercise. You can find out your target heart rate zone by first subtracting your age from 220. That number represents your absolute maximum heart rate, a rate you want to avoid going above. Your ideal zone lies between 0.5 and 0.8 of your maximum heart rate, depending on your fitness level. Your doctor can help you determine your fitness level and your ideal zone.

  Relaxing and strengthening with yoga

  Practising yoga may conjure up images of bodies being twisted into impossible-looking contortions. Or maybe you visualise rows of robed monks seated cross-legged on mats, chanting ‘Ommmm. . . ’

  Nowadays, you’re more likely to find practitioners of yoga dressed in the latest gym gear, straining and sweating at a local health club. And although some people with highly advanced yoga skills may twist their bodies like pretzels, most yoga exercises don’t require such awesome flexibility.

  As with many exercise routines, you won’t know how you feel about yoga unless you try it. You can take yoga classes at your local health club or a Buddhist centre, or even by attending an adult education centre. You can also find all you need to know about yoga by reading Yoga For Dummies by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne (Wiley), or exercising with a video or DVD, such as Basic Yoga Workout For Dummies by Sara Ivanhoe.

  Chapter 11

  Rediscovering Healthy Pleasures

  In This Chapter

  Feeling good all over

  Figuring out what’s fun

  Stopping what’s stopping you

  When you’re feeling depressed, everything seems flat and lifeless. Food doesn’t taste as good, music doesn’t soothe you, and comedians aren’t the least bit funny. Even the activities you used to enjoy seem pointless. So, what can you do to bring back pleasure into your life?

  In this chapter, we talk about the beneficial effects of pleasure on your mood and body. Next, we help you rediscover a few of your favourite activities from a time when you weren’t depressed, and even find some new ones. We explain why we believe enjoying life is your natural right. And even though you may believe you’ve lost the knack of having fun, we show you how to defeat your negative predictions and start enjoying yourself again.

  Taking Fun Seriously

  When depression overtakes you, managing the normal demands of daily living seems impossible. You may not even feel like getting out of bed. Having fun’s totally out of the question, even frivolous.

  Nevertheless, we suggest that you take a serious look at pleasure. Why? First, because pleasure lifts mood. Although the effect may initially be only temporary and slight, you’re likely to find that with time and persistence pleasurable activities can help you overcome depression.

  As well as the positive effects of pleasure on your emotional and mental states, pleasure can also have positive physical benefits, such as:

  Reducing chronic pain

  Decreasing risk of heart attacks

  Improving overall health

  Increasing immune function

  Prolonging life expectancy

  Second, pleasure helps reduce stress. People who do enjoyable activities typically feel happier, more relaxed, and calmer. After taking all these factors into account, the pursuit of pleasure isn’t in the least bit frivolous. Consider pleasure-seeking an essential activity for getting your life back on an even keel.

  Identifying Activities You Enjoy

  When you’re depressed, you may not even be able to remember what fun and pleasure feel like. And coming up with a list of possible pleasurable activities may seem unimaginably difficult. Don’t worry – this section helps you get started.

  If you’re feeling depressed, take a look at the fun things we list in this section. Obviously, not all of these activities are going to appeal. However, we suggest that you circle each of the items that you currently or used to find enjoyable. You can rank the activities: from the ones that appeal the most down to the absolutely unthinkable. Then think about which activities are possible for you. For example, if you currently don’t have a partner, making love may not be at the top of the list this time round!

  The Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment (www.arise.org) carried out a survey of adults from all over the world and what gave them the most pleasure. It seems that simple pleasures provide the most enjoyment. These activities include:

  Drinking a glass of wine

  Eating chocolate

  Entertaining friends

  Exercising

  Going out for a meal

  Having a cup of tea or coffee

  Making love

  Playing with children

  Reading

  Shopping

  Spending time with family

  Taking a hot bath or shower

  Watching TV

  If you’ve ever been to France and gone into a bread shop, it probably won’t surprise you to discover that the French have a particular fondness for indulging in pastries. Italians rank sex high on their list of pleasures. And Brits apparently really enjoy a nice cup of tea and drinking alcohol (No! You don’t say!).

  If nothing on the previous list captures your imagination think about choosing from the good things in life that appeal to the senses, such as:

  Eating spicy foods

  Having a massage

  Listening to music

  Looking at beauty in nature or art

  Smelling fresh flowers

  Spending time in a sauna or steam room

  Strolling through the great outdoors

  Possibilities for enjoyable activities include experiencing the great outdoors, while indoor activities can be equally great! Here are some suggestions:

  Camping

  Cinema/video/DVD

  Dancing

  Hiking

  Theatre, concerts, musicals

  Reading groups

  Participating in sports

  Playing games

  Playing with pets

  Spectator sports

  Travel and holidays

  Pain or pleasure? Some like it hot

  You may have heard the perhaps surprising survey results concluding that curry – a spicy dish with meat, fish, or vegetables – is now Britain’s most popular meal. According to David Smith, on the website Curryhouse.co.uk, the most popular curry in UK restaurants is Chicken Tikka Masala. While many imagine this to be a typical Indian dish, David Smith, says that Chicken Tikka Masala is actually a restaurant invention created in the UK by Bangladeshi restaurateurs, and one he calls ‘A true hybrid and a recent chapter in the long history of curry.’ He quotes Brent Thompson, who is highly knowledgeable on the subject of curries and has lived in India :’the term curry itself isn’t really used in India, except as a term appropriated by the British to generically categorise a large set of different soup/stew preparations ubiquitous in India and nearly always containing ginger, garlic, onion, turmeric, chilli, and oil (except in communities that eat neither onion or garlic, of course) and which must have seemed all the same to the British, being all yellow/red, oily, spicy/aromatic, and too pungent to taste anyway’ .

  In New Mexico, pain is considered a flavour! The pain comes from the hot chilli sauce that chefs liberally pour – the hotter the better. At a New Mexican restaurant, ‘Red or green?’, is a question referrin
g to the colour of the pepper in the sauce. The gourmet replies ‘Which is hotter?’

  Newcomers and visitors don’t understand this, and many plates stay untouched after the first bite or two. Visitors frantically attempt to ease the pain (solutions like sour cream or honey work well). Diners sit bewildered, watching other, more experienced chilli enthusiasts wolf down huge quantities of fiery foods. But if they’re willing to try the food again many people do find themselves, like the local population, actually craving chillies.

  Science has discovered a cause for the craving of hot, spicy foods. Chillies are addictive. Here’s why: when you bite into something peppery, capsaicin (the portion of the chilli that makes it hot) is released into your mouth. When capsaicin contacts the nerves in your mouth, pain signals rush to your brain. The brain releases a flood of endorphins (go to Chapter 10 for more about endorphins), blocking the pain and also inducing a state of wellbeing and pleasure. The brain also releases endorphins when you take part in the other pleasurable activities, we describe.

  Vanquishing the Joy Destroyers

  When you’re wrestling with depression, putting pleasurable activities back into your life isn’t all that simple. In fact, you may experience the very opposite when trying to reintroduce them. Recognise any of the following?

  Feeling guilty: This occurs when you believe that pleasure is wasteful, frivolous, undeserved, inappropriate, unproductive, or even downright sinful. We explain more about guilt in the next section.

  Negative predicting: Depression increases the likelihood that you see future events as bleak and joyless. You can find out more about negative predictions in ‘Tackling self-fulfilling prophecies’, later in the chapter.

  You aren’t going to get very far in your attempt to backer-introduce pleasure into your life if guilt or negative predicting are getting in the way. Here are some suggestions to unblock your path to progress.

  Getting to grips with guilt

  Guilt can be a good thing. When you do something truly wrong, guilt tells you not to do it again. And knowing that you’re probably going to feel guilty can stop you from acting in ways that are unhealthy or morally wrong. Guilt functions as a moral compass, when it works effectively.

  When you wave a magnet around a compass, the needle spins wildly. In the same way, too much guilt causes the needle on your moral compass to wave about wildly, and then point you in the wrong direction. Out-of-control guilt grossly exaggerates real or imagined wrongdoings. For example, excessive guilt may tell you that a single bar of chocolate is a sign of uncontrolled gluttony. Also, guilt may make you feel that you are undeserving of pleasure.

  Excessive guilt is a key feature of depression. You not only feel low and miserable, but guilty as well. The combination of guilt and depression limits your ability to experience happiness, because depression drains you of the energy needed to enjoy life and guilt tells you that you don’t deserve to feel good in the first place.

  Increasing your awareness

  Increasing your awareness of how guilt can influence your decision to take part in in the good things of life is critical. When guilt starts to interfere with those activities designed for enjoyment, certain thoughts may repeatedly run through your mind. Do any of the following thoughts sound familiar?

  I’m not good enough; I don’t deserve to be happy.

  I feel that pleasure is a frivolous waste of time.

  If I beat myself up enough, I just may become motivated to do something more productive.

  I should have done things differently (there are about a million or so variants of this thought).

  I’m a loser. Pleasure’s for the successful.

  I’m a burden to the people I care about.

  Putting yourself down brings on powerful feelings of guilt. But how can you tell if your guilt is indicating an appropriate, healthy response based on a well-functioning moral compass, or is excessive, encouraging self-criticism and self-defeating thoughts and actions? Actually, identifying the specific type of guilt you’re experiencing isn’t that difficult – as the following section shows.

  Guilt isn’t always inappropriate. For example, it’s perfectly reasonable to feel guilty if you have done any intentional, unnecessary acts that cause harm to you or someone else. But appropriate guilt has a time limit. Prolonging the bad feelings beyond this actually intensifies your depression. Holding onto guilt simply leads to negative thinking and self-criticism.

  Breaking guilt’s grip and reclaiming pleasure

  Ask yourself if your pleasurable indulgences are really deliberate, harmful behaviours. If they are, perhaps a little short-term guilt may remind you to watch out for such behaviour in the future. But before you reach that conclusion, be sure to ask yourself the following Guilt Querying Questions:

  Was my indulgence aimed at harming myself?

  Is it possible that a little enjoyment can be a good thing rather than a bad thing?

  Is it possible that I’m magnifying the ‘awfulness’ of my indulgences?

  Am I blaming myself for something that I have no control over?

  Am I telling myself off just for having normal human imperfections?

  Where is it written that I should have done something different?

  Here’s an example of how you can put the Guilt Querying Questions to use. Connie works as a nurse at a busy hospital. The stress of working long hours (which are filled non-stop caring for and dealing with the needs of patients) builds up and up for her. The shortage of healthcare workers in her community pushes her to accept extra work shifts on a regular basis. She has little time for friends or fun. Her fatigue and loneliness gradually turn into depression.

  Some close colleagues notice Connie’s deteriorating mood. They advise her that she needs to do something for herself once in a while. Their suggestions include:

  Drinking wine

  Eating chocolate

  Having a massage

  Seeing a musical

  Renting an up-lifting DVD or video

  As Connie mulls over her colleagues’ suggestions, negative thoughts churn through her mind. She thinks, ‘Great, I’m already ten pounds overweight, just think of how fat I’m going to get eating chocolate and drinking wine all day. And I’d feel horribly guilty spending my hard-earned money on something as self-indulgent as a massage. Massages are for the wealthy. So that leaves going to a musical. In my mood? Bet I’ll hate it – and then the ticket’s just another waste!’

  Connie feels guilt in advance of indulging in a few simple pleasures such as eating chocolates, drinking an occasional glass of wine, or having a massage. After answering the Guilt Querying Questions we list earlier in this section, Connie’s feelings of guilt alter slightly:

  Was my indulgence primarily intended to harm myself? Connie’s response: ‘Well, actually I haven’t even done it yet. But my intention is to enjoy something, not to harm myself.’

  Is it possible that a little enjoyment can be good rather than bad? Connie’s response: ‘I suppose I rarely give myself any freedom to indulge in much of anything. What’s so awful about a little pleasure? I’m starting to sound like my mother! I’ve read in that Dummies book that pleasure’s actually good for the body and mind.’

  Am I magnifying the ‘awfulness’ of my indulgences? Connie’s response: ‘I suppose an occasional chocolate, glass of wine, or massage doesn’t exactly mean I’m a mass murderer. Even Benjamen Franklin argued the benefits of taking all things in moderation.’ She then says thoughtfully, ‘Everything in moderation, including moderation.’

  Am I blaming myself for something that I don’t have control over? Connie’s response: ‘Well, in the case of my weight, I admit it’s down to so many factors – genetics (most of my relatives are overweight), insufficient exercise, daily lunches courtesy of the pharmaceutical sales reps, processed foods, too much fast food, to name but a few. Just a couple of sweets or a glass of wine really makes little difference.