A Brief Manual of Ways To Overcome Depression

Written by Julian L. Simon

This appendix contains brief descriptions of a variety of methods of intervention in cases of depression, which follow from the theory set forth in the main body of the paper. The appendix is written for vividness in "you" language aimed at the sufferer.

Improving Your Numerator

Are you actually in as bad shape as you think you are? If you have an incorrect unflattering picture of some aspects of yourself that you consider important, then your self-comparison ratio will be erroneously negative. That is, if you systematically bias your estimate of yourself in a manner that makes you seem to yourself objectively worse than you really are, then you invite needless negative self-comparisons and depression.

Keep in mind that we are talking about assessments of yourself that can be checked objectively. An example: Samuel G. complained that he was a consistent "loser" at everything he did. His counselor knew that he played ping pong, and asked him whether he usually won or lost at ping pong. Sam said that he usually lost. The counselor asked him to keep a record of the games he played in the following week. The record showed that Sam won a bit more often than he lost. This fact which surprised Sam. With that evidence in hand, he was receptive to the idea that he also was giving himself a short count in other areas of his life, and hence producing fallacious negative self- comparisons and a Rotten Ratio. If you can raise your numerator- - if you can find yourself really to be a better person than you now think you are--you will make your self-comparisons more positive. By so doing you will reduce sadness, increase your good feelings, and fight depression.

Sweetening Your Denominator

When told that life is hard, Voltaire asked," Compared to what?" The denominator is the standard of comparison that you habitually measure yourself against. Whether your self- comparison appears favorable or unfavorable depends as much upon the denominator you use as upon the supposed facts of your own life. Standards of comparison include what you hope to be, what you formerly were, what you think you ought to be, or others to whom you compare yourself.

"Normal" people--that is, people who do not get depressed frequently or for a long time--alter their denominators flexibly. Their procedure is: choose the denominator that will make you feel good about yourself. The psychologically-normal tennis player chooses opponents who provide an even match--strong enough to provide invigorating competition, but sufficiently weak enough so you can often feel successful. The depressive personality, on the other hand, may pick an opponent so strong that he almost always beats you. (A person with another sort of problem picks an opponent who is so weak that he or she provides no exciting competition.)

In the more important of our life situations, however, it is not as easy as in tennis to choose a well-fitting denominator as the standard of comparison. A boy who is physically weak and unathletic relative to his grammar-school classmates is stuck with that fact. So is the child who is slow at learning arithmetic, and the big-boned thick-bodied girl. A death of a spouse or child or parent is another fact which one cannot deal with as flexibly as one can change tennis partners.

Though the denominator that stares you in the face may be a simple fact, you are not chained to it with unbreakable shackles. Misery is not your inexorable fate. People can change schools, start new families, or retrain themselves for occupations that fit them better than the old ones. Others find ways to accept difficult facts as facts, and to alter their thinking so that the unpleasing facts cease causing distress. But some people--people we call "depressives"--do not manage to free themselves from denominators that hag-ride them into depression, or even unto death by suicide or other depression-caused diseases.

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Why do some people appropriately adjust their denominators while others do not? Some do not change their denominators because they lack experience or imagination or flexibility to consider other relevant possibilities. For example, until he got some professional career advice, Joe T. had never even considered an occupation in which his talent later enabled him to succeed, after failing in his previous occupation.

Other people are stuck with pain-causing denominators because they have somehow acquired the idea that they must meet the standards of those pain-causing denominators. Often this is the legacy of parents who insisted that unless the child would reach certain particular goals--say, a Nobel prize, or becoming a millionaire--the child should consider himself or herself a failure in the parent's eyes. The person may never realize that it is not necessary that she or he accept as valid those goals set by the parents. Instead, the person musturbates, in Ellis's memorable term. Ellis emphasizes the importance of getting rid of such unnecessary and damaging "oughts" as part of his Rational-Emotive variation of cognitive therapy.

Still others believe that attaining certain goals--curing others of illness, or making a lifesaving discovery, or raising several happy children--is a basic value in itself. They believe that one is not free to abandon the goal simply because it causes pain to the person who holds that goal.

Still others think that they ought to have a denominator so challenging that it stretches them to the utmost, and/or keeps them miserable. Just why they think that way is not usually clear to those persons. And if they do come to understand why they think so they usually stop, because it does not seem very sensible to do so.

I'll tell you later about a six step-procedure that can help you change your denominator to a more livable standard of comparison than the one which may now be depressing you.