Good Mood

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Ways to Overcome Depression
Conquering Depression, Enjoying Life
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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 5

cont.

Goals and goal-setting are very complex. If your goals are too high, you will fail to reach them; negative self-comparisons and sadness will ensue. But if your goals are not high enough, you may not stretch your capacities to the fullest and thereby deny yourself full and satisfying self-realization. But you cannot know in advance which goals are reasonable and which are not. Furthermore, your goals are interwoven with your values and beliefs, which -- if they are really values and beliefs-- are not chosen simply on the basis of what will be most comfortable for you. We can be sure, however, that parents who press high goals on their children, and condition their love on the achievement of those goals--thereby creating a situation in which the adult cannot alter his goals to fit his capacities--may predispose the child both to adult depression and to significant accomplishment. That's complex! One more complication: Some people will, as adults, more frequently be in the coping-evaluating mode than will others because of more competitiveness and pressure applied to them as children.

Values, which are closely related to goals, get special treatment in the following chapter.

Summary

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This chapter discusses the relationship of earlier learning and experiences, and especially those in childhood, upon the propensity to be depressed. Understanding the various mechanisms can sometimes throw light upon one's present makeup in a manner that can help one alter one's self-comparisons to overcome depression.

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