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

Good Mood

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EPILOGUE: My Misery, My Cure and My Joy

cont.

Perhaps the first big step was my concentrating on the idea --which I had understood for a long time but had simply taken for granted--that I'm never satisfied with myself or what I do; I never allow myself to be satisfied. I have also known the cause for a long time: With all good intentions, and though we were (until her death in 1986) quite fond of another even if not very close, my mother (with the best of intentions) never seemed satisfied with me as a child (though perhaps she really was). No matter how well I did something, she always urged that I could do better.

Then this startling insight came to me: Why should I still pay attention to my mother's stricture? Why should I continue dissatisfied with myself just because my mother had built that habit of dissatisfaction into me? I suddenly realized that I was under no obligation to share my mother's views, and I could simply tell myself "Don't criticize" whenever I begin to compare my performance to the level of greater achievement and perfection urged by my mother. And with this insight I suddenly felt free of my mother's dissatisfaction for the first time in my life. I felt free to do what I wanted with my day and my life. That was a very exhilarating moment, a feeling of relief and freedom which continues until this moment, and which I hope will continue for the rest of my life.

This discovery that I am not obligated to follow my mother's orders is exactly the idea that I later discovered is the central substantive idea in Albert Ellis's version of cognitive therapy. But though this discovery helped a great deal, by itself it was not enough. It removed some of the knives I felt sticking into me, but it did not yet make the world look bright. Perhaps the depression persisted because I felt I was not succeeding in making a real contribution with my research and writings, or perhaps it was because of other underlying connections between my childhood and my present self-comparisons and mood which I do not understand. Whatever the reason, the structure of my thinking was not giving me a happy life-loving life, despite my discovery that I need not keep criticizing myself for lapses from perfection.

Then came another revelation: I remembered how my depression lifted on one day each week, on the Sabbath. And I also remembered that just as Judaism imposes an obligation not to be anxious or sad on the Sabbath, Judaism also imposes an obligation upon the individual to enjoy his or her life. Judaism enjoins you not to waste your life in unhappiness or to make your life a burden, but rather to make of it the greatest possible value. (I am here using the concept of obligation in a rather vague and unspecified fashion. I am not using the concept in the way that a traditional religious person would use it--that is, as a duty imposed upon a person by the traditional concept of God. Nevertheless, I did feel some kind of a vow in which there is a compact, an obligation which goes a little bit beyond me and me.)

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After it occurred to me that I have a Jewish obligation not to be unhappy, it occurred to me that I also have an obligation to my children not to be unhappy, but rather to be happy, in order to serve as a proper model to them. Children may imitate happiness or unhappiness just as they imitate other aspects of their parents. I think that by pretending not to be depressed I had avoided giving them a model of unhappiness. (This is the one part of our relationship in which I have falsified and play- acted, rather than being openly and truthfully myself.) As they would have gotten older they would, however, have seen through this play-acting.

And like the happy ending of a fairy tale I promptly became undepressed and have (mostly) stayed undepressed. It was a matter of pitting one value against another. On the one side was the value of trying with all my strength, and damn the personal consequences, to create something of social value. On the other side was the value that I derived from Judaism: life is the highest value, and all have an obligation to cherish life in others and in oneself; to allow oneself to be depressed is a violation of this religious injunction. (I also got some help from the sage Hillel's injunction. "One may not neglect the work, but one is not required to finish it, either.")

Those, then, were the main events in my passage from black despair, then to constant gray depression, then to my present state of non-depression and happiness.

Now a few words about how my anti-depression tactics work out in practice. I have instructed myself, and have pretty much got into the habit, that whenever I say to myself "You're an idiot" because I forgot something or don't do something right or do something sloppily, I then say to myself, "Don't criticize." After I start to browbeat myself because I didn't prepare a class well enough, or I was late for an appointment with a student, or I was impatient with one of my children, I say to myself, "Lay off. Don't criticize". And after I say this, it's like feeling the yank of a reminder rope. I then feel my mood change. I smile, my stomach relaxes, and I feel a sense of relief run all through me. I also try the same kind of plan with my wife, whom I also criticize too much, and mostly for no good reason. When I start to criticize her about something--the way she cuts the bread, puts too much water on to boil, or pushes the children to get to school on time--I again say to myself "Don't criticize."

Since the start of my new life, there have been several family problems or work failures which previously would have deepened my depression from grey to black for a week or more. Now, instead of these events throwing me into deep and continuing depression, as would have happened before, each of them has caused me some pain for perhaps a day. Then after doing something active to deal with the event--such as trying to improve the situation, or writing a letter blowing my top at the responsible person (usually not mailed)--I have been able to forget the matter, and to leave behind the pain caused by it. That is, I'm now able to get over these unpleasantness fairly easily. And taken together, this means that I enjoy most of my days. When I wake up--which has always been the hardest time for me, as for many depressives--I'm able to draw a mental picture of the oncoming day which seems reasonably free of events that I'd have to criticize myself for, such as not working hard enough. I look forward to days mostly of freedom and tolerable pressures and burdens. I can tell myself that if I really don't want to do all the things that are more-or-less scheduled for that day, I have the right not to do a fair number of them. In that way I can prevent much of the dread I used to have when looking forward to duty-filled days with no sense of coming pleasure.

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