Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 12

cont.

If this child psychologist has a reasonable idea of the odds facing her, it would be most presumptuous for a therapist to try to "straighten her out," or "show her the errors in her thinking." Rather, her best chance of cure may lie in Values Treatment of the sort described in Chapter 18.

Cognitive treatment of the numerator sometimes shades over into just plain lying to a person. "You are bound to find a job if you keep on looking for another month," or "There are lots of women who are less attractive than you who have made it in the movies," or "You weren't really trying to hurt your wife when you broke her jaw, you were just trying to give her a love tap." But such lying is likely to be disastrous with a depressed person, even aside from its ethics. Depressed people are experts in avoiding even true facts which would show them in a good light, and a fortiori they are even more effective at spotting falsehoods of that sort.

If a person is good at accepting self-supportive lies or half-truths in order to avoid the pain caused by negative self- comparisons, the person is unlikely to be a depressive; rather, schizophrenia or paranoia is the likely illness in such situations. And a depressive becomes even more depressed when he or she comes to feel that the truth as seen by other people is not flattering, and lying is necessary to construct an attractive picture.

Let's assume you understand that eliminating inaccurate self-assessments will reduce sadness and depression by improving the numerator in your Mood Ratio. Let's also assume that you have uncovered one or more ways in which you frequently bias your numerator against yourself. To benefit from this discovery you must develop the habit of correcting your biased assessments whenever they spring into your mind, or even better, adopt the habit of not even allowing such negatively-biased assessments into your mind at all. But how may this be done?

The recipe is simple--deceptively simple: By exerting effort, by practice, and by rewarding yourself for doing so, you build a habit of not making incorrect self-assessments. On the one hand this recipe is nothing more than everyday folk wisdom. On the other hand, this recipe is the staple of modern-day behavioral therapy, which uses various ingenious ways of rewarding people for repeating the desired behavior and for not repeating undesired behavior.

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Our power to alter our thoughts by will and practice and suitable "reinforcement" has come to be vastly underestimated, probably because of the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis which emphasizes the power of events in our earlier history to influence our behavior. Columnist Mike Royko conveyed the essence of the method humorously in a column on New Year's Day.

This is the time of year when all sorts of advice is written about hangovers....

It should be remembered that part of a hangover's discomfort is psychological.

When you awaken, you will be filled with a deep sense of shame, guilt, disgust, embarrassment, humiliation and self-loathing.

This is perfectly normal, understandable and deserved.

To ease these feelings, try to think only of the pleasant or amusing things that you did before blacking out. Let your mind dwell on how you walked into the party and said hello to everyone, and handed your host your coat, and shook hands, and admired the stereo system.

Blot from your mind all memories of what you later did to your host's rug, what you said to that lady with the prominent cleavage that made her scream, whether you or her husband threw the first punch. Don't dredge up those vague recollections of being asleep in your host's bathtub while everybody pleaded with you to unlock the bathroom door.

These thoughts will just depress you. Besides, your wife will explain it in detail as the day goes on. And the week, too....(3)

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