Depression – Getting Out and Staying Out. Part 2
So, what would be the most effective way to generate this kind of change?
Here’s where I tend to lean toward Strategic Intervention as my number one choice of therapy. This methodology, starting to be called Activation Method, is about empowering someone who feels and even IS disempowered to get out of a negative state.
I’d like to discuss more on this later but for now I leave you with this thought. Mothers might relate to this more. Have you ever seen a baby boy crying desperately while his mother tries in vain to calm him down? It could be at the shopping mall, while visiting friends, or just before the baby is due for a nap. The mother becomes increasingly stressed, especially if in a public place and then, someone else, perhaps a carefree young woman, approaches the child and starts distracting him by pointing to something imaginary on the ceiling while calling out “What’s that?? What was that?” The child will often stop crying immediately and follow the pointing finger with his head.
On numerous occasions I have done this exercise, and the fascinating thing is, for how long I am able to keep the child distracted—andno longer sad—while the mother is wandering “How did he do that?”. Of course chances are, these same mothers are able to achieve the same results when it’s not their kids that are stressed out. So… here’s the question. If babies are able to respond to an external distraction that breaks their negative emotional pattern, isn’t it reasonable to assume that adult humans have an innate means to break their own pattern too? Could we learn to break our own negative focus patterns? And if we could tap on to this resource, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that we could reactivate it at will?
Having coached hundreds of people worldwide I can confidently reveal that the answer is YES!!
And that’s the catch about getting out of depression. Let’s repeat my initial shocking statement, followedby some clarifications.
Getting out of depression is easy.
But… controlling ourselves from returning to that familiar state after a few minutes… that part is hard. Yes, very difficult. Depression is not your fault. And depression is unfortunately addictive. Many of the people who had come to me for help on the subject of depression had often experienced one of two extremes in endeavouring to deal with it.
Extreme 1: Friends and family could see that depression wasn’t the fault of their loved one but.. in expressing that, they convinced the person that as depression wasn’t her fault, therefore, she was condemned to be a helpless victim of the cancer of depression which would eventually consume her. Unless of course, she be saved by medications, or psychologists, or coaches or gurus or anyone else for that matter.Or, even worse, unless the person received a change of circumstances that was outside the circle of influence of the mentally ill person. The damage this has caused would merit a separate blog. Essentially it is associating “Depression is not your fault” with “You can’t get yourself out of depression because it is not your fault.” To me that never made a lot of sense. It’s like saying… “It wasn’t your fault you fell into this hole. Someone else pushed you, or the ground was slippery. Or there was a trap set by someone. But because it wasn’t your fault… you can’t do anything to get out of the hole.”
Extreme 2: This is where depressed people had friends and family contributing to the thought that “Hey… depression is indirectly your fault. If you were just more positive. You brought this upon yourself. You are just a very negative person.” Of course, family and friends probably didn’t say these exact disempowering comments. But they behaved in a way that showed that, this was exactly what they were thinking and believing.
And chances are that, if a person is deeply depressed, they are probably more likely to reflect the perception of their loved ones. They are more vulnerable to have a fragile ego and fragile inner-self that will tend to define itself by the perception of their closed ones. Even if that perception is distorted. This of course explains the case of the abused housewife who sadly has come to believe that she doesn’t deserve better than her abusive husband. Or the teenager being consistently told he is useless, and, who after struggling with drugs, often fails to believe in a version of himself better than what he is accustomed to.
These two extremist schools of thoughts can lead to serious emotional damage.
Extreme 2 might be obvious. If the person believes the depression is “his fault” he might attach a negative label to not just his depression but to himself as the “carrier” of this disease. Or dis-ease. She might become angry with the world for blaming her for a “crime” she didn’t commit. It may even lead her to want her depression. Now while there may be the odd case where that anger can be channelled into an upward spiral of positive action, often, the opposite is true. Anger leads to lack of clarity. Lack of clarity leads to two things
to lack of self-control
This in turn leads to unwise decisions regarding eating, work, business, dating, child-rearing etc. all of which lead to greater depression and
disempowerment.
Disempowerment leads to inaction—paralysis by analysis—which will lead to a downward spiral of victimization and further depression. This belief goes contrary to what the person’s loved ones wish to convince her of… that because it was “her fault” she could somehow change it. Instead the opposite becomes true.
Extreme 1 will provoke less anger in the depressed relative because he is not being attacked. But it will develop frustration because it starts on the basis that the depression, by not being his fault, must automatically be outside of his control. Fault and control are different. If the depressed person is passive and accepts this premise, to the extent that he depends on family or friends to “survive” physically in the world, he will feed this own disempowering feeling growing within.
One definition of depression to help differentiate it from sadness, could be that, depression is the belief that my sad state of being cannot be controlled or changed. And that if by any chance it could be… I don’t deserve to not feel depressed.
So you can probably see by now why both extremes are not a healthy way to interact with a person who is depressed. Thus, going back to the initial example of the little baby crying and the young girl who distracts the baby to keep it joyful, what would be the way to replicate that in an adult? That’s a question worth thinking about.
Do not miss my next article, part 3, we will continue talking about this topic.
