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

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 1

cont.

A New Hope: Values Treatment

Let's say that you feel you're at the end of your rope. You believe that your numerator is accurate, and you see no appealing way to change your denominator or your dimensions of comparison. Avoiding all comparisons, or drastically reducing the quantity of them, does not attract you or does not seem feasible to you. You'd prefer not to be treated with anti-depression drugs or shock treatment unless there is absolutely no alternative. Is there any other possibility open to you?

Values Treatment may be able to rescue you from your end-of- the-rope desperation. For people who are less desperate, it may be preferable to other approaches to their depressions. The central element of Values Treatment is discovering within yourself a value or belief that conflicts with being depressed, or conflicts with some other belief (or value) that leads to the negative self-comparisons. That is how Bertrand Russell passed from a sad childhood to happy maturity in this fashion:

Now [after a miserably sad childhood] I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having discovered what were the things that I most desired, and having gradually acquired many of these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire-- such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about something or other--as essentially unattainable.11

Values Treatment does exactly the opposite of trying to argue away the sadness-causing value. Instead it seeks a more powerful countervailing value to dominate the depression-causing forces. Here is how Values Treatment worked in my case: I discovered that my highest value is for my children to have a decent upbringing. A depressed father makes a terrible model for children. I therefore recognized that for their sake it was necessary to shift my self-comparisons from the occupational dimension that led to so many negative comparisons and sadness, and focus instead on our health and the enjoyment of the day's small delights. And it worked. I also discovered that I have an almost religious value for not wasting a human life in misery when it can possibly be lived in happiness. That value helped, too, working hand in hand with my value that my children not grow up having a depressed father.

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That description makes the process seem much easier than it really is, of course. Focusing your mind upon your chosen values requires effort, often very great effort. Sometimes the required effort is so great that you cannot will yourself to make it, and instead you let yourself remain in the slough of despond. But the method of Values Treatment teaches you what has to be done, and gives you a reason for making the effort to do what must be done.

The depression-fighting value may be (as it was for me) the direct command that life should be joyful rather than sad. Or it may be a value that leads indirectly to a reduction in sadness, such as my value that my children should have a life-loving parent to imitate.

The discovered value may lead you to accept yourself for what you are, so that you can go on to other aspects of your life. A person with an emotionally-scarred childhood, or a polio patient confined to a wheelchair, may finally accept the situation as fact, cease railing at fate, and decide not to let the handicap dominate. The person may decide to pay attention instead to what he can contribute to others with a joyful spirit, or how he can be a good parent by being happy.

Values Treatment need not always proceed systematically. But a systematic procedure may be helpful to some people, and it makes clear which operations are important in Values Treatment. In Chapter 18 I'll describe such a systematic procedure for Values Treatment.

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