Depression Doing the Thinking

It has been estimated that we have in the range of 25,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day.  If they are predominately negative, imagine how many negative thoughts you generate daily--thousands upon thousands.  That is the case with depression.

One of the features of depression is pessimistic thinking.  The negative thinking is actually the depression speaking.  It is what depression sounds like.  Depression, in fact, manifests in negative thinking before it creates negative affect.

Most depressed people are not aware that the despair and hopelessness they feel are flowing from their negative thoughts.  Thoughts are mistakenly seen as privileged, occupying a rarified territory, immune to being affected by mood and feelings, and therefore representing some immutable truth.  But feelings are not facts, they are just feelings.

Compounding the issue is that negative thinking slips into the brain under the radar of conscious awareness and becomes habitual.  People come to generate negative thoughts so automatically they are unaware that they are happening, and that most of the time it is actually a choice they are making.

One of the most powerful actions that can be taken to combat depression is to understand how critical the quality of your thinking is in maintaining, and even instensifying your depression--and that the quickest way to change how you feel is to change how you think.

Often enough you can't control how you feel, but you can almost always control how you think.  Thought-processing errors contribute so much to depressed mood.

It is possible to take action and to change patterns of thinking on your own, without necessarily turning to anti-depression medications.  Following are six action strategies that will bring results in breaking out of the negative thought patterns that maintain depression.

• Know that is possible to control the quality of your thinking.  Controlling the quality of your thoughts contributes more to how you feel than any other factor.  It is a rather widespread belief that you have to change your feelings in order to change how you think; it actually works just the opposite way.
• Keep track of how many negative thoughts you are actually having.  This is most easily accomplished by keeping a "thought journal."  You write down as many instances of negative thinking at the end of the day as you can remember. Write down names you call yourself, when you label yourself as worthless or helpless or hopeless.  Keep track of generalizations you make in which you take a singular bad event and project in onto the future.  Write down instances when you use terms like never or always, or when you think black and white thoughts.  It helps to ask a loved one or a trusted colleague to point out to you instances of negative thinking, and then record them.
• After getting an idea of the negative thinking and its frequency, identify the situations that trigger wuch thinking.  Writing them down helps you to focus and to be aware of your triggers.  Often,  certain types of events are particularly likely to set off a chain of negative thoughts, such as a perception of being ignored or not responded to, or a negative remark or an actual setback at work. 
• Practice converting negative to postive thinking.  Some people like to think of it as "flipping a switch."  Think of a light switch, and mentally switch it from the down position to the up--to the "light."
• Utilize a partnership strategy.  Tell your partner or trusted colleague that you think you are sounding too pessimistic in your thinking and that you want to be more optimistic.  Ask them to help you out be gently cueing you when you are sounding negative, and then asking you to instantly convert it to a positive statment.
• In keeping your diary of negative thinking, create a separate column for writing the corresponding positive thought.  "I'm too old" vs "I'm getting better and wiser with age."  If you do this for a few days, you will get the hang of converting negative to positive thinking.

              By Hara Estroff Marano, published on July 01, 2001, and edited, with original thoughts, by Robert E. Davis.

Today While the Blossom Still Clings to the Vine

The Triplets One Year Ago At Our Home

         Way back when I was a 19 year old serving a mission for the LDS Church, I really struggled with beating myself up.  Part of my problem was worrying about and being anxious about the future.  I would worry about what I wasn’t and how I couldn’t possibly be effective going forward.  It would affect my mood and it would affect my body. 

In fact, I don’t think that I was diagnosed on my  mission as having ulcers in my stomach from my anxiety, but I do know that I would experience terrible abdominal pains during my mission that would put me in bed for long periods of time.  My mom had ulcers because of her anxiety and I just thought in my young mind that I had inherited her malady.  I have come to understand that my family of origin, and my mother in particular, had a significant role in how I did or didn’t handle my anxiety in those early years.

Something happened towards the end of my mission that changed me.  In an interview with my Mission President, he challenged me to “stop worrying about myself and just do the work.”  As I thought about it after, and in the days that followed, I knew that he was right, and I began to remember a line that a girl friend had mentioned to me before my mission as she observed me being anxious.  She would cleverly say, “don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.”

Since those early years, I have attempted to not “trouble trouble.”  I believe that for the most part, I have been successful at doing that.  I will occasionally feel anxiety about something unpleasant that needs to be done, but I have learned not to worry about issues or events over which I have no control.

However, as I have raised four children, been married for quite awhile, and have had to make decisions along the way in employment and living quarters, I have had occasion to reflect on what I did well and what I didn’t do well.  My challenge through much of my adult life has been to beat myself up and feel depressed for poor choices.  As I have said numerous times in my work in addiction recovery, if I have an addiction, it is the addiction of beating myself up emotionally and feeling sad and depressed about my actions, or inactions as the case may be.

Reflecting again on my upbringing, my mom suffered from severe depression.  She had a nervous breakdown not long after she had colon cancer and was given a colostomy, which back in those days in the early 60s was a permanent and traumatic solution.  She took anti-depressants—such as they were back then—for the rest of her life.  I remember her as being sad, experiencing crying jags, and feeling sad and depressed often.

Some clients that I deal with will often inform me that the depression that they feel was likely passed on to them genetically from a parent/parents, and occasionally, from grandparents, and even aunts or uncles.  I’m not sure if depression is in fact passed on from generation to generation; I’m not sure what the latest research would inform me about that.  What I am pretty sure of is that descendents can have a disposition to have depressive thoughts, just like children/grandchildren of alcoholics and other addictions can have a tendency to surrender to those chemicals and behaviors.  But just because one has a disposition or tendency to be depressed, in most cases it doesn't necessarily mean that they must be depressed--or addicted.  One may have a physical issue or may be taking medication that makes them feel depressed, but often, skills can be learned to enable one to function and not feel the storm cloud in their life.

In my life, especially in the last few years, I have really been developing the skill of challenging my tendency to feel sad and depressed—emotionally beating myself up.  As I educate my clients about challenging and interrupting their automatic, negative thoughts, I have likewise been practicing the same action on my thoughts.  I acknowledge the automatic, negative thoughts that I experience but then ask myself either or both of these questions:

Where did this thought come from?  This involves mindfulness and introspection about my family of origin and my life experiences, and recognizing that I might be dealing with dysfunctions of my childhood or using a ego defense/survival thought to supposedly take care of myself.  

Where will this thought take me and do I want to go there? This again demands thoughtfulness about what actions could occur as a result of these thoughts.  I ask myself if those actions are congruent with who I am and what I want in life.  I ask myself if any harm could arise physically or emotionally within me or my loved ones if I act on the thought.

             Particularly in the past year, I believe I have been given to understand an important truth about being depressed about who I was or what I did/didn’t do in the past, and about being anxious about what might happen in the future.  This is the existential truth:  If I live in the depression of the past and the anxiety of the future, I miss out on the present.  So if I am powerless to change the past and am ultimately powerless over what will happen in the future, why not surrender the depression and the anxiety and live in the here and now?

             As I have attempted to live in the present, surrendering my past and my future, I have experienced great serenity.  I believe I am trying to do what AA teaches—“to let go and let God.”  I am learning better how to live and love.  I find that I notice, enjoy, and appreciate more the common day-to-day occurrences and tender mercies.   I have realized that this paradigm is incredibly liberating. 

             I certainly don’t live this way all of the time.  But I do manage to espouse this way of looking at life most of the time.  It is part of my transition to a better life.

A Daughter's Work on Shame

For those who have recently read my blog, you will remember a post about my desire to investigate my shame.  That work continues.  Also, many of you who know me will know that I have a hard time believing in coincidences.  To find out that my #2 daughter Emily is presently on her own journey of investigating her shame, just as my #1 son BJ (Robert) is presently on his journey to addiction recovery, IS NO COINCIDENCE!  

Just as I decided to include my son's thoughts about addiction, I feel impressed to likewise include Emily's recent blogpost about her "awakening" to the shame that has governed her life.  It made me feel privileged to have her as a daughter (I am grateful for all of my children) and for her vulnerability to share her struggles with the world. I hope this can in some way be of benefit to you. 

Emily's Awakening: Part 1

    As many of you know, I am not one to shy away from talking about my struggles with anxiety and depression. I’m always glad to talk to someone who has dealt with similar issues, so I figure it’s helpful to others, not just therapeutic to me, to share my experiences. I also think society as a whole needs to suck it up and start being comfortable dealing with mental and emotional health issues, just like it is with medical issues. We shouldn’t feel embarrassed to acknowledge that we struggle with anxiety any more than we should feel ashamed to tell others we have high blood pressure. Privacy I can understand. But shame, never.

    Over the course of my adult life, I’ve sought help through psychotherapy a number of times. I started in college, my freshman year, when I was having a really hard time making the transition. I also sought help on my mission, when I was in Texas, waiting for my visa to allow me to go to Venezuela (which never happened but that’s another story.) The anxiety was so bad, that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of each other as we’d walk the streets near UNT. It took me six months and a transfer to Florida (and the subsequent sunshine and friendlier folk) to feel slightly normal again. The commonality of these and other events in my life that caused me to seek professional help is that they all brought on anxiety and depression.

    If you’ve ever experienced either, and maybe you didn’t even know that’s what it was, you’ll know what I’m talking about: The feeling of nameless but impending doom; The tightening of the chest; The aching pain of nausea in your stomach; The numbness; The feeling of walking through water; the despair. The complete and total despair—that no one understands; that God has abandoned you; that you’ll never feel good again; that you are going insane.

    In my time in therapy, I’ve figured out that a lot of my anxiety comes from an irrational, though deeply rooted fear that I am not worthy of love. Or, to put it another way, I am not a good ______ and therefore not worthy of love. So all my life I’ve tried to be a good daughter, a good student, a good missionary, and now, a good mother.

    So now, here I am, the mother of four under four, and my life is filled with stress. And I get angry. Very angry. All the time. In fact, it was only recently in therapy that I figured out that the anger is almost constant because I am almost always anxious. It’s not the crippling anxiety I felt on my mission; it’s not anxiety attacks that come and go; it’s more of a baseline anxiety that simmers just below the surface and boils over anytime I get provoked. And living with toddlers is, in case you didn’t know, very provoking. So I lose my temper, I do something I regret, and then fall into the pit of shame and despair over how terrible a mother I am. One time, it got so bad that I had to put all the kids in their beds, for their own protection, and then had to talk myself out of taking the pile of sleeping pills I held in my hand. (Google helped. You can’t kill yourself with 12 sleeping pills. You can only make yourself violently ill.) At any rate, that’s the depth of the pit of shame and despair.

    Several weeks ago, when I was telling my therapist about this incident, I was saying something like, “I used to be such a good mother! With Elizabeth, I was such a good mother! Now I’m a monster!” followed by a lot of sobbing. But then I stopped as I thought about what I’d just said. Wait a minute. I was a good mother? That sounds … actually … really prideful. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t a good mother when it was just me and Elizabeth. I was just a mother with more time and more resources. Now that I have the triplets, I am still a mother, but with less time and less resources. OH. MY. GOSH. You mean, all my accomplishments, all the things in my life that make me feel like I’m so awesome … THEY DON’T MAKE ME A “GOOD” PERSON!??!?! I just am!?!??!?!?!? I. JUST. AM! It’s ironic, but it took me looking at all my successes, not my failures, to realize that they do NOT define me! Think about it. I graduated from college with honors. Does that make me a “good” person? NO! It means I made good choices, yes. But it doesn’t increase my worth in any way. I lost my temper and yelled at my daughter. Does that make me a “bad” mom? NO! It means I made a bad choice, yes. But it doesn’t have to throw me into the pit of shame and despair, because, it doesn’t take away from my self-worth!

    Another way of looking at it is through the Atonement—the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us. God loves us—every last sinner of us—and his love doesn’t depend on how “good” or “bad” we are. He loves us. Period. End of sentence. And by falling into the pit of shame and despair, I was only telling myself, “You are BAD. You can NEVER change. You are not worthy of God’s love.” What the WHAT?! That’s not true! That’s a LIE! Jesus gave his life and suffered for our bad mistakes—our sins—so that we can change and improve and so we’ll have the chance to make our actions match the incredible worth we ALREADY HAVE.

    Sitting in the therapy session, figuring all this out, I felt a physical weight lifted off my shoulders. And it didn’t end there. When I got home and I, once again, got angry and lost my temper, I didn’t fall into The Pit. I took a step back, saw my mistake for what it was—something wrong I did, not something bad I was—and could move forward from there. Incredible.

    This, my friends, was an awakening. It has set me free.