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Good Mood:
The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Introduction

My Personal Story and Negative
Self-Comparisons

cont.

This book emerges not only from the body of new scientific discoveries, others' and my own, but also from my personal experience of deep and prolonged melancholy. Here is my story.

I was depressed -- badly depressed -- for thirteen long years from early 1962 to early l975. When I say that I was depressed I mean that, except for some of the hours when I was working or playing sports or making love, I was almost continuously conscious of being miserable, and I almost continuously reflected on my worthlessness. I wished for death, and I refrained from killing myself only because I believed that my children needed me, just as all children need their father. Endless hours every day I reviewed my faults and failures, which made me writhe in pain. I refused to let myself do the pleasurable things that my wife wisely suggested I do, because I thought that I ought to suffer.

As I look back now, in comparison to re-living the better of the days when I felt as I did then, I'd rather have a tooth pulled and have the operation bungled, or have the worst possible case of flu. And in comparison to re-living the worse of those days in the first year or two, I'd rather have a major operation or be in a hellish prison.

Over the years I consulted psychiatrists and psychologists from several traditional schools of thought. A couple of them left me with the impression that they didn't have a clue about what I was saying and had simply somehow passed the necessary exams to get into a well-paying business. A couple of them were human, understanding, and interesting to talk to, but could not help me. And toward the end of that time, the psychiatrists and psychologists did not even offer me hope, and certainly no hope of a quick cure. My own training in psychology was no help, either.

Then I read about what was, at that time, a new and different approach to psychological problems -- Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy, which in Albert Ellis's somewhat different form is called Rational-Emotive Therapy. (I shall consider them together under the label "cognitive-behavioral therapy" or just "cognitive therapy", along with Frankl's Logotherapy, recent variants such as Interpersonal Therapy, and also behavioral therapy.)

The core of cognitive-behavioral therapy is a thoughtful problem-solving procedure that quickly can get to the root of the depression, and directly yank out that root. Within that vision of the individual as able to change his or her depressed thinking, I then developed an analysis of the cause of depression centering on the depressed person's negative self-comparisons. And I worked out the logic of what I call "Values Treatment," which can provide a powerful force for people to use the resources of cognitive therapy and thereby cure themselves of depression; that is what Values Treatment did for me.

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Within two miraculous weeks I banished my depression, and I have since then been able to keep depression at bay. (Such a quick cure is not usual, but it is not wildly exceptional, either.) Starting April, l975, I have almost always been glad to be alive, and I have taken pleasure in my days. I have occasionally even been ecstatic, skipping and leaping from joy. And I am joyful more often than most people, I would judge. Though I must still fight against depression from time to time, I have not lost more than a minor skirmish since then, and I believe that--if my family and community stay safe from catastrophe--I have beaten depression for life. The Epilogue at the end of the book gives the details of my passage from sadness to joy.

After I had cured myself, I wondered: Could I use my new advances in cognitive therapy --- Self-Comparisons Analysis and Values Treatment -- to help others, too? I proceeded to counsel with other persons who were depressed, and I found that these ideas could indeed help many of them get over their depressions and find new joy in life. Then I wrote a short version of this book, and leading psychiatrists and psychologists who read it agreed with me that the book -- including Self-Comparison Analysis, and the therapeutic approach derived from it -- makes a new contribution not only to sufferers from depression but also to the theory of the subject. And people to whom I have given early copies, some of whose cases I'll mention later, have reported dramatic salvation from their own depressions - not in every case, but often.

*** I hope that there will soon be a smile on your face, too, and laughter bubbling inside you. I don't promise you instant cure. And you will have to work at overcoming the depression. You must exercise your intellect and will in outwitting the traps that your mind lays for you. But I can promise you that cure and joy are possible...A tip for the road: Try treating your fight to overcome depression as an adventure, and think of yourself as a valiant warrior. More power to you, and luck.

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