Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

The Benchmark to Which You Compare Yourself

The "benchmark" situation to which you compare your actual situation may be of many sorts:

1. The benchmark situation may be one that you were accustomed to and liked, but which no longer exists. This is the case, for example, after the death of a loved one; the consequent grief-sadness arises from comparing the situation of bereavement with the benchmark situation of the loved one being alive.
2. The benchmark situation may be something that you expected to happen but that did not materialize, for example, a pregnancy you expected to yield a child but which ends in miscarriage, or the children you expected to raise but never were able to have.
3. The benchmark may be a hoped-for event, a hoped-for son after three daughters that turns out to be another daughter, or an essay that you hope will affect many people's lives for the good but that languishes unread in your bottom drawer.
4. The benchmark may be something you feel you are obligated to do but are not doing, for example, supporting your aged parents.
5. The benchmark may also be the achievement of a goal you aspired to and aimed at but failed to reach, for example, quitting smoking, or teaching a retarded child to read.

The expectations or demands of others may also enter into the benchmark situation with which you negatively compare your actual situation. And, of course, the benchmark state may contain more than one of these overlapping elements.

The best proof that sadness is caused by the unfavorable comparison of actual and benchmark situations is self-inspection of your thoughts. If you observe in your thinking, when you are sad, such a negative self-comparison along with a sense of helplessness about changing the situation, -- whether the sadness is part of a general depression or not--this should convince you of the key role of negative self-comparisons in causing depression.

Only the concept of negative self-comparisons makes sense of a person being bereft of life's good things yet happy anyway, or having everything a person could want but being miserable nevertheless.

The author of Ecclesiastes -- traditionally considered to be King Solomon -- tells us how useless and helpless he felt despite all his riches:

So I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me; for all is [in vain] and a striving after wind (2-17, my language in brackets).

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