The State of Your Life As You Perceive It To Be

Your "actual" state is what you perceive it to be, of course, rather than what it "really" is. If you think you have failed an examination, even though you will later learn you passed it, then your perceived actual state is that you have failed the test. Of course there are many facets of your actual life that you can choose to focus upon, and the choice is very important. The accuracy of your assessment is important, too. But the actual state of your life usually is not the controlling element in depression. How you perceive your is not completely dictated by the actual state of affairs. Rather, you have considerable discretion as to how to perceive and assess the state of your life.

The Benchmark To Which You Compare Yourself

The "benchmark" situation to which you compare your actual situation may be of many sorts:

1. The benchmark situation may be one that you were accustomed to and liked, but which no longer exists. This is the case, for example, after the death of a loved one; the consequent grief-sadness arises from comparing the situation of bereavement with the benchmark situation of the loved one being alive.
2. The benchmark situation may be something that you expected to happen but that did not materialize, for example, a pregnancy you expected to yield a child but which ends in miscarriage, or the children you expected to raise but never were able to have.
3. The benchmark may be a hoped-for event, a hoped-for son after three daughters that turns out to be another daughter, or an essay that you hope will affect many people's lives for the good but that languishes unread in your bottom drawer.
4. The benchmark may be something you feel you are obligated to do but are not doing, for example, supporting your aged parents.
5. The benchmark may also be the achievement of a goal you aspired to and aimed at but failed to reach, for example, quitting smoking, or teaching a retarded child to read.

The expectations or demands of others may also enter into the benchmark situation with which you negatively compare your actual situation. And, of course, the benchmark state may contain more than one of these overlapping elements.

The best proof that sadness is caused by the unfavorable comparison of actual and benchmark situations is self-inspection of your thoughts. If you observe in your thinking, when you are sad, such a negative self-comparison along with a sense of helplessness about changing the situation, -- whether the sadness is part of a general depression or not--this should convince you of the key role of negative self-comparisons in causing depression.

The Role of Negative Self-Comparisons

Only the concept of negative self-comparisons makes sense of a person being bereft of life's good things yet happy anyway, or having everything a person could want but being miserable nevertheless.

The author of Ecclesiastes -- traditionally considered to be King Solomon -- tells us how useless and helpless he felt despite all his riches:

So I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me; for all is [in vain] and a striving after wind (2-17, my language in brackets).

The sense of loss--which is often associated with the onset of depression--is a negative comparison between the way things were and the way they are now. The American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (in Maud Muller) caught the nature of loss as a comparison in these lines: "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been!" Whittier makes it clear that sadness arises not just because of what actually happened, but also because of the counterfactual benchmark which "might have been."

Notice how, when we suffer from what we call "regret," we harp on the counterfactual benchmark--how an inch more to the side would have won the game which would have put the team into the playoffs which would have led to a championship, how but for one horse's nail the war was lost, how--if not for the slaughter by the Germans in World War II, or the Turks in World War I--the Jews and Armenians would be so much more numerous and their cultures would be strengthened, and so on.

The basis for understanding and dealing with depression, then, is the negative comparison between your actual and hypothetical benchmark situations that produces a bad mood, together with the conditions that lead you to make such comparisons frequently and acutely, and combined with the helpless feeling that makes the bad mood into a sad rather than angry mood; this is the set of circumstances constituting the deep and continued sadness that we call depression.