Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

If you can pry yourself loose from dimensions that draw you to negative self-comparisons, and shift to other dimensions of evaluation, you can thereby shake loose from your depression. Chapter 14, and also Chapter 18 on Values Treatment, show how this may be done.

The healthy-minded person picks out characteristics on which she rates well, and then argues to herself and to others that those are the most important dimensions on which to judge a person. This is how most people fight sadness and depression--by skillfully choosing the dimensions by which they judge themselves, together with wisely selecting the standards on particular dimensions against which they measure themselves.

Some people, however, are less flexible in their choice of dimensions on which to compare themselves; they cannot choose at will the best "line" for them to carry. For some people this is a matter of basic values. Some people get stuck with dimensions that cause them sadness because of destructive values implanted during childhood. Other people purposely focus only on dimensions which make them look bad in their self-comparisons.

An important tactic in battling depression is to choose dimensions that allow you to make positive self- comparisons and are consistent with your basic system of values.

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