Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Re-learning That You are Not Helpless

Often, however, people feel helpless because they have "learned" to think that they are helpless in circumstances which another person would feel capable of changing in order to improve the neg-comp. Whereas a "normal" person might decide to change her work-habits so as to remove the cause of a boss's criticism, a depressive might think that she is helpless to alter the boss's judgment.

Sometimes you can change your state of belief about what you can do so, in order to feel less helpless. Athletic coaches often encourage players and persuade them that they can attain goals that they believe are beyond them, and thereby enable them to attain performances they otherwise would not reach. Toward the end of every marathon, there are bunches of bystanders who shout "You can do it" as flagging runners stagger toward the finish, and these shouts may help them along.

The underlying idea is that our judgments are affected by the opinions of others as well as by the experiences that we bring to the judgment; if the others' opinion is that we "can do it", we are more likely to believe that we can, and hence feel less helpless. Teachers in all fields employ to good effect the arts of encouragement and reassurance.

It is important to keep in mind that the very fact of being depressed biases our judgments of our capabilities in a negative direction, just as the other polar mood -- mania -- makes us feel capable of doing anything, including many things that we should not do.

Practice is Important

Another way to increase your sense of mastery and decrease your sense of being helpless is by a graded series of practice exercises which demonstrate that you can indeed do more than you think you can. This is dramatically evident in the physical therapy of persons who have been injured or otherwise suffered diminished physical capacity. Taking one step, then two steps, then four steps, and so on, builds both physical capacity and belief. The same is true of learning to overcome phobias. The person who is afraid of heights can first practice on small hillocks, then hills, then low buildings, and continuing into higher places. This sort of practice is a key tactic staple of behavioral psychotherapy in fighting fears.

Taking a gradual view of improvement is important in occupational and educational matters, too. I once knew a gifted student of mathematics who had dropped out of school several times because he could not stand the pressure. Then each time he would return, vow to make up for all his past defaults, and proceed to work sixteen hours a day -- until he again cracked up, at which point he became depressed. With each crackup he felt more helpless to get back on the track and mold his life into sound order. It would have been much better if he had studied part-time for a while, first just one course while working, then two courses, then perhaps three courses on a "full time basis", and so on, to build his confidence and a record of success.

It is important to arrange the practices in such fashion that they do not arouse the very sense of helplessness that is being attacked. For example, the instruction "Bend down and touch your toes" only discourages a person who cannot now do it. But the instruction "Bend downwards as far as you comfortably can" does not set up an unattainable goal but rather an attainable one.

A Counselor Can Help

A counselor can go beyond simply stating an opinion about our abilities, and can engage in argument with us about our capacities. And a counselor can show us how we are biased in our negative opinions about our own capabilities. The counselor can even get us going on the process of successfully learning from experience that we can do more than we had thought we could. But much more than that another person cannot do for us, and indeed, much more than that one cannot do for oneself. This is not to diminish the importance of the process, but rather to suggest how little there is to say about the process of coming to feel less helpless.

Judging from animal experiments3, it is probably possible to reduce the sense of helplessness in humans with the use of chemicals. And this can constitute a basis for drug treatment of depression; the drugs reduce the helpless feeling, which in turn reduces the sadness, and also perhaps enables to person to learn to overcome obstacles which lead to unlearning the sense of helplessness. Assessing the usefulness of this approach is part of the overall assessment of drug therapy discussed in the Appendix to Chapter 4.

The building of trust in a therapeutic relationship may also have a beneficial effect on the numerator of the Mood Ratio. Believing that you are helpless is equivalent to believing that that nothing you do can improve your actual situation. When you distrust the reliability and goodwill of the world around you, you are more likely to feel helpless and hence depressed. So improvement of the ability to trust--to have hope that the world will respond positively toward your initiatives--can work against depression. And this can sometimes be learned in a patient- therapist relationship.

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