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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 11

cont.

Cognitive-behavioral therapists tend not to seek the original causes of a person's depression. And I agree that depression can often be cured without knowing the original causes, by focusing only on the present thought patterns. But sometimes learning the original cause illuminates the present situation. For example, when I realized that my over-demanding work goals stemmed from the ought's my mother urged on me, I immediately saw that I should not continue to enslave myself to them, and in that moment I gained a great sense of freedom which sent me on my way out of depression.

In this diagnostic stage you must use your entire store of wisdom, insight, and experience. Counselors have a store of experience that non-psychologists lack, and that is one way they can be helpful. Another way they can be helpful is to offer a less biased interpretation of events in the past and present than a person has himself.

Step 3): Check whether there are any "beneficial" aspects of depression which act as obstacles to letting go of your depression (see Chapter 9).

If there are--for example, the desire for the fruit of depression-causing overwork, or the pleasantness of self-pity-- then you must choose between staying depressed and giving up the benefits of depression.

If you discover such a benefit which presents an obstacle to the cure of your depression, you must be honest enough to acknowledge that you can't have it both ways; you can't have both the cure and the fruits of depression. With this acknowledgment may come some sensible compromises. In the case of the depressed adult who fears punishment for some actual deed, it may be possible to tackle the possibility of legal or moral punishment head-on to ascertain what (if any) punishment may really be warranted, and to get it over with if possible. In the case of overwork, understanding the obstacle to a cure may lead to a choice of work level that will be an optimal combination of work output and depression.

Giving up the state of depression, and fighting it off when it threatens to come back, has costs. I repeat this because it is important to understand that it is so. An important cost is the energy required to grapple with the depression, just as it takes work and energy to staunch the bleeding from a wound. It is often easier to let the blood flow, than to repair the wound-- that is, easier to let the negative self-comparisons course through one's mind than to examine them and either rebut or repress them.

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Depressives are not skilled at staunching their mental bleeding--their negative self-comparisons. Everyone gets battered and cut in the world of people and work, but the depressive tends to let the bleeding go on and on. And it takes much work to change one's habits in this respect. But it must be done; it is the price that must be paid if you are to escape from depression. More about this in the next section.

Step 4): Address your sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

It is an accompanying sense of helplessness that converts negative self-comparisons into sadness and eventually depression. Therefore, if you can acquire the attitude that you are capable of altering your life situation, rather than simply accepting it, you can reduce sadness. Tactics for dealting with helplessness are discussed in Chapter 17.

Step 5): Intervene in the depressed person's thinking with the aim of reducing negative self-comparisons and the sense of helplessness.

Let us assume that drug therapy will not be used for now. Yet something stronger than rest and distraction is necessary. The type of intervention must then be determined by the causes of the depression diagnosed in the previous steps. The chapters to come discuss specific ways of intervening for specific sorts of problems.

As a review and preview, here are the various ways of battling your depression: (a) Improve the numerator in your happiness ratio by altering your perception of the facts of your life. (b) Sweeten your ratio by changing the benchmarks you use for self-comparisons. (c) Change the dimensions on which you evaluate yourself. (d) Reduce the number of self-comparisons you make. (e) Diminish the sense of helplessness and increase your sense of competence to change your actual circumstances and hypothetical benchmark states. (f) Change aspects of your life that lead to negative outcomes. (g) Use Values Treatment.

Several sorts of interventions may be useful for any particular sort of cause. For example, one might intervene entirely in the present by creating habits to shut off the past, or one could also delve into the past to help relieve the problem. But one mode of intervention may be more efficient and successful than others.

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