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Some people, however, are not flexible in their choice of dimensions on which to compare themselves; they now cannot choose at will the best "product line" for them to carry. For some people this is a matter of basic values: they refuse to accord importance to characteristics simply because it is psychologically convenient to do so.
In some cases people seem to get stuck with dimensions that cause them sadness because of values implanted in childhood and unexamined since then. For example, that one should get maximum formal education, or that one should not think ungodly thoughts. In some other cases, people seem to purposely focus only on dimensions which make them look bad in their self-comparisons; people who live fine lives but insist on being guilt-ridden because they think they don't do enough, say, for the community or for their aged parents or relatives.
How can you, even if you are the type that doesn't typically change dimensions of evaluation to suit your own psychological convenience, do so anyway? One way is to force yourself to do so in the name of a higher value. This is another example of Values Treatment (see Chapter 18); this tactic cured me of my 13-year- long depression. The higher value was the welfare of my children, which I came to believe was being threatened by my continued depression. In my hierarchy of values, the welfare of my children is most-important.
Another fundamental value for me, I discovered, is that a person enjoy life for the gift that I believe it to be, rather than to live as if life were no better than death. Therefore, I decided that I simply would not allow myself to make comparisons of my actual occupational achievements to the aspirations I have had for my work, or to the achievements of some others whose work has been better received than mine. I determined that whenever such comparisons came into my mind I would either turn my mind toward other comparisons, such as the wonderful health of our family relative to the bad health that luck could have given us, or to the happy home life I mostly have, or to the useful role I play in the lives of some friends and colleagues, or the peacefulness of our community--or else I would make no comparisons at all. (More about this later.)
Change What You Pay Attention To
You may wonder: Is it really possible to alter your own thinking so as to change your ratios of comparison--just by effort and will? Yes, it is. This may be easier to accept if you notice that how we feel and what we think about is influenced by what we pay attention to. And we have some choice about what we pay attention to, just as we choose one television program or another. For example, one year I had annoyed feelings toward the neighbors on our south side, while I was very fond of our neighbors on the north side. Why is it that some weeks I thought more often about the south-side neighbors than in other weeks, while not changing how much I thought about the north-side neighbors? I found I could alter this pattern by deciding to do so. And by doing so I could influence how much of the time I was angry.
Investigating your personal history for the origins of the dimensions on which you evaluate yourself can sometimes help you give up some dimensions that have held you prisoner in depression. Psychotherapy can sometimes discover these origins.
And you may then be prepared to acknowledge that you need not be stuck with your old dimensions, but rather are free to choose dimensions that fit your needs for a happy life. Once having made the decision to shift to one or more new dimensions, the various devices of habit formation, as discussed in Chapter 10, help you implement your resolve to turn your back on the old dimensions, and turn your mind toward the new ones.
Over-generalizing one or more specific dimensions of comparison to the dimension of you as a person is very common for depressives, and it is extraordinarily destructive. Instead of saying "I was not able to do what was required to succeed in that job" a depressive says "I'm worthless as a person." Ellis and Harper emphasize this mechanism, referring to it as "rating yourself." They urge you instead to focus on the specifics of your performance on particular dimensions, and upon the specific implications of poor performance where it occurs, rather than generalizing to overall lack of personal worth. I'll quote one of Harper's cases at length, partly because it offers another chance to see their sort of counseling skill in action:
Geraldine [was] a highly intelligent and efficient thirty-three-year-old female client who came to see me (R.A.H.) about six months after she obtained a divorce. Although she had felt decidedly unhappy in her marriage to an irresponsible and dependent husband, she had gotten no happier since her divorce. Her husband had drunk to excess, run around with other women, and lost many jobs. But when she came to see me, she wondered if she had made a mistake in divorcing him. I said: "Why do you think you made a mistake by divorcing your husband?" "Because I consider divorce wrong," she replied. "I think when people get married, they should stay married." "Yet you do not belong to a religious group that takes that position. You do not believe that heaven somehow makes and seals marriages, do you?" "No, I don't even believe in a heaven. I just feel wrong about getting divorced and I blame myself for having gotten one. I have felt even more miserable since I got it than I felt when living with my husband." "But look," I asked, "where do you think your feelings about the wrongness of divorce originated? Do you think you had them at birth? Do you think that humans have built-in feelings, like built-in taste buds, that tell them how to distinguish right from wrong? Your buds tell you what tastes salty, sweet, sour, or bitter. Do your feelings tell you what proves right or wrong?" The young divorcee laughed. "You make it sound pretty silly. No, I don't suppose I have inborn feelings about right or wrong. I had to learn to feel as I do." Seeing a good opening, I rushed in where less directive and less rational therapists often fear to tread. "Exactly," I said. "You had to learn to feel as you do. Like all humans, you started life with tendencies to learn, including tendencies to learn strong prejudices--such as those about divorce. And what you learned you can unlearn or modify.
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