In my last post, Dismantling the Program - Part I, I wrote about discovering that perhaps my diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder is not set in granite - that perhaps by dissecting my diagnosis and analyzing its parts, that there are things behaviorally that I can learn and practice which will keep the depression in remission. I talked a bit about the downfalls of automatic thinking and about what makes a set of behaviors a mental health disorder. I also talked about the fact that humans tend to make their beliefs their reality, even in the face of contrary evidence. And, lastly, I wrote about the cognitive dissonance I experience from holding contrary beliefs about myself. In this post I'm going to write about a few things that I'm finding helpful in keeping depression in remission.
Ok, the first thing to do in order to avoid going back into depressive thinking is to stay sober. I'm going to be real here and share the idea that I've had for a long time that when I am sane and when I'm enjoying living, I have absolutely no desire or reason to alter my mood. This doesn't mean that I don't have to practice a program of recovery - I do. It simply means that my sobriety will be greatly enhanced, and my ability to live a useful life increased, if I do the work of finding true value and joy in life and in myself. That's the spiritual side of recovery, of living.
I learned something new this last time in treatment, which surprised me. It's called Attributional Styles, and I think the linked article does a good job of explaining it. Attributional style is simply how a person explains the causes of events. A person who experiences a lot of depression will explain events in their lives in a manner that reinforces their negative beliefs about themselves. Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the event is negative or positive - I am a master at using life against me. I don't know if I've written here yet about a belief that I hold that says ultimately, it doesn't matter what I do or say, because I'm going to be wrong either way. So the assignment was given me to find examples of my attributional style, and I discovered that I can make the way I'm feeling tank fairly quickly by the way I attribute events to my being useless and an overall failure.
I began to find numerous examples of how my first inclination is to make an event negative about me. And then, what I began to practice was finding alternative explanations. The strange thing to me was that even though I've been using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques for a while, I was still blind to many ways in which I was basically pissing all over myself. And I found that the alternative explanations for things happening often don't have anything to do with me whatsoever! So, yes, a depressive or pessimistic attributional style is definitely self-centered.
Since engaging in this exercise, my self-talk has been much less nagging and condemning, and, on some days, it's loving and supportive. Imagine that.
What I've done that has been very helpful is to isolate situations in my life and deal with them on a case-by-case basis.
Previously, everything that I've done wrong in the past, everything at which I've failed, I've thrown on the pile (by now pretty huge) called, "Proof that Ken is a piece of shit loser." And, not surprisingly, everything I've done skillfully in this lifetime, everything good that I've accomplished, has never been enough to move the Mountain of Loserdom. And this is my own personal example of Attributional Style which prevents me from ever feeling good about me and my life for more than a few moments - every mistake I've ever made is attributable to me being me, and every accomplishment is a fluke. This is a recipe for giving up if I've ever seen one!
Again, if I approach life with the attitude that I'm going to fail, and I'm a bad person, I'm going to fail and continue to be a bad person.
I've been given evidence to the contrary that I'm born to lose; however, I have readily dismissed the contrary evidence in favor of the belief that I can't win.
If my dis-eases don't kill me, they beat me into a state of reasonableness, where I'm able to consider alternative theories of life.
So what would happen if I begin to believe that I've been wrong all of these years, and that I'm actually a very valuable Child of a Loving and Good Creator, and that this Creator supports me in living the best life possible, and that I can give myself permission to love myself and live as if this were true? Well, even if I'm wrong about this, at this point I've got nothing to lose by believing it; and if I'm right, then I can stop going back to the misery that I've called home for the past 1/2 century.
So when situations arise, and they do, in which I want to invoke the old paradigm, I'm giving myself permission and an opportunity to look at things in a new way. I'm able to say to myself, "Even good people make mistakes. A mistake isn't an indicator of who I Am; it's a mistake. Now what am I going to do to rectify the mistake?"
I'm going to interject a couple of ideas here that help with this whole "I'm an imperfect human being and that's ok idea." I've heard it said that since my Creator is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, that there is nothing large nor small in the Universe. All my Creator knows is that it is, because my Creator is Creation and has nothing within Creation with which to compare things. We as human beings place different values on things - we say if you commit this crime, it's worth 30 days in jail, but if you commit that crime, it's worth 20 years in prison. And some things today, like possession of a plant, aren't crimes at all anymore (in certain places), whereas they were a crime 20 years ago. Likewise, if one were to go out and buy some gold today, one would probably pay a lot more for the element gold than they would for the element oxygen; however, if one were having a heart attack and couldn't breathe, which would be of more value to that person in that moment, gold or oxygen? I'm guessing oxygen. My point is that on the material plane, everything is relative, while on the spiritual plane, it's all the same. To human beings, a billionaire is a very wealthy person; however, compared to God, how wealthy are they?
It's stuff to think about, and it really helps in understanding that none of us are all good or all bad, but that God knows us as Its own and can't help but know us as good.
So the challenge here is when I put this theory of living into practical application. It takes effort and commitment and vulnerability and probably a few other things to take a look at something I've done that was unskillful and endeavor to make it better. I will say from experience that it's a lot easier to chuck something I've done on top of Mount Loser than it is to take what I've done, examine it, admit to someone that it is less than my best work, and attempt to make amends. I risk pissing people off; worse, I risk deepening and strengthening a relationship if I bring up a problem and work with another toward it's resolution.
I've mentioned before that I've led a very shallow life, and this is what it's about - instead of working with others to improve, and to move close to my True Self in this lifetime, I've tried to escape conflict. Relationship problems? Get a new relationship. Job difficulties? Find a different job. Or, better yet, find a way to not have to work at all. Because to do otherwise risks being hurt. I was going to put more words there, but I think that's really the bottom line - I have a huge aversion to feeling hurt (dismissed, disliked, rejected, fired, run out of town, disowned, whatever). So applying this theory to situations that come up in life requires effort and risk on my part, but as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. In order to feel good about myself and life and living, I have to put myself out there, and have the faith that it is good and right that I should do so.
Stay tuned - Dismantling the Program - Part III explores a real-life application of these ideas! I hope you stay along for the ride!
Namasté,
Ken
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