Think About Work Instead of About Yourself

One of the best ways of avoiding self-comparisons is by substituting work thoughts, which by their very nature focus you on objects of thought outside yourself, rather than on yourself and comparisons with benchmark counterfactual states. After my first year of terrible depression, my ability to dive down into work for two to four hours every morning dragged me up from permanent occupancy at the bottom of the pit, and gave me some respite from the constant pain of sadness and awareness of worthlessness. Many depressed people do not manage to work, however. This may be because they feel hopeless that the work will amount to anything. But others may not work because they are not aware of the enormous therapeutic possibilities of work.

Composer Liz Swados is another depressive who finds refuge in her work. "Even in her depression, she worked - and found salvation in work."(7)

Observe that it is almost impossible to sing and be depressed at the same time. (Singing even a blues song removes the blues!) Does this mean we should sing all the time? The prescription "sing" is not a perfect cure for depression for at least two reasons: 1) The prospective singer must be willing to give up the benefits of depression. 2) It takes the energy involved in "will power" to force yourself to start singing when you feel sad, energy that depressed people often lack.

Helping Others Can Help You

Altruism - which implies thinking about other people's welfare instead of your own, and comparing their numerators to their denominators instead of your own - has saved many people from depression. Vaillant8 documents how turning to altruistic activities saved several of the men in the Grant Study from adulthood hells. Perhaps this is a fair translation of what Jesus meant when he said that in order to save one's life one must lose it - that is, by giving it to others.

How may one become altruistic? All I can suggest is that you may decide to do so, either because you come to realize that one of your most important values is to be altruistic, or because you are so anxious to cease being depressed that you are willing to give part of your time and strength and thought to others, or some combination of both.

Avoid Situations That Induce Negative Self-Comparisons

Staying out of situations that force negative self- comparisons upon you is a habit that can help depressives. Arnold K. is an applied scientist who has done work that is innovative but that has mostly failed to catch the interest of his profession. Every time he picked up any one of three particular technical journals he was depressed for a day or two, because the field covered by those journals proceeds with practically no reference to his work though he has researched and published a large quantity of material in that field. Then he built the habit that each time his eye or hand lights on one of those journals, he turns his eye and hand away and re-directs his mind to his family, which is a source of great satisfaction to him. At first he found this hard to do, but after trying it and finding it pleasurable, it got easier and more habitual each time. (But this habit-building has the disadvantage that if he doesn't look at those three journals, he is hampered in contributing anything more to that field, or in trying to keep his past work in that field from disappearing altogether. This is a drawback of some types of habit formation and behavior modification.)

Two similar examples are given by psychoanalyst Rubin:

I had a patient who had been through a devastating love affair and who for a long time diligently avoided films, plays and books which depicted idealized love relationships, having learned that these filled her with self-recriminations which she could not yet control. This does not constitute avoidance of reality or denial of a problem. It simply, but very importantly, provides pain-free time in which to gather strength for constructive purpose.

I remember a period of time during which I felt particularly vulnerable. I studiously avoided news pro- grams that were especially full of horror then because they demoralized me still further. Again, this is not sticking one's head in the sand ostrich-like. It is effecting a block to self-hate, and this or any kind of block, especially of an early and even anticipatory nature, is a definite form of compassion and constructive caring for self.9

Rubin's method is sound, even though his arcane psychoanalytic language and concepts ("self-hate") are not necessary here.

Writing plays is, of all types of work, the one which most requires that one keep checking the effect of the work on the audience, in the course of the play's being readied for production. Yet such checking the results can bring forth negative self-comparison. Famous playwright William Gibson puts it this way:

I learned...that success is no good and failure is worse - an old wisdom, the work must be done for itself, which in this system is the counsel to "act, but detach from the fruits of action." That is, act without a feedback of conflict over the outcome. But of all the arts the theatre is the most public, it does not exist without an audience, and the will to success is ingrained in its practice. The wooing of the audience is half of the art.10

Study Your Thoughts

Examining your thoughts in an objective fashion, the way you would study someone else's thoughts if you wanted to understand them, can be another powerful device, similar to meditation which we shall talk about below. Watching one's thoughts tends to objectify the process and reduce the sadness attached to the thoughts (if they are negative self-comparisons.)

Prayer

Still another device useful to some is praying, or a prayerful attitude, which may or may not involve belief in a deity. These passages by a Christian minister are illuminating:

When we are melancholy, it is impossible for us to evaluate correctly our personal contributions to our loved ones, our work or to society at large. When we learn to anticipate a bad mood and to accept it philosophically when it comes, when during the period of depression we are wise enough to suspend judgment as to the worth of our achievements, we have made sincere practical advance in managing our troublesome moods.