How To Counteract Depression

Many people feel sad and depressed for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are one of those people. It is easy to become disillusioned, especially during times of stress or grief. However, it is possible to feel better and enjoy life, too.

When you are depressed or upset you tend to think in ways that are unhealthy, unrealistic or even unreasonable. The thoughts going around in your brain make you feel sad, lethargic and hopeless. There is a strong relationship between what you think and how you feel.

Here is a good example.

One day, I walked out of my house to go to work. I got in the car, turned the key and nothing happened. Of course, I tried again and it still didn't work. I became upset because I didn't want to be late to work. I also was afraid that car repairs would be costly. I remember thinking, "It is going to cost a thousand dollars to fix the car." This is a great example of an irrational, unreasonable thought. Why? Because I know very little about the inner workings of cars. I didn't know what was wrong with the car and I certainly didn't know how to diagnose a car problem. So what made me think car repairs were going to cost one thousand dollars? Who knows? I only know that after having the thought or belief that repairs would cost one thousand dollars, I became very upset.

This event is a perfect example of what I would call mixed-up thinking. It is a particular type of mixed-up thinking called jumping to conclusions. I don't know much about cars. It was unreasonable to believe that the repairs would cost some amount that arbitrarily popped into my brain.

This is the way that depressed or upset people think all the time. There are many different types of thoughts that cause you to be in distress. I will outline these various thoughts so that you can start to recognize them yourself. Once you recognize them, then you can change them.

The title of this article is "Sing For Your Sanity: How to Counteract Depression." Now for the singing part. One of the interests I have in life is music. I like to sing in the church, listen to music, and see musicals. One day I noticed that many songs are great demonstrations of unhealthy, mixed-up thinking. Here is one of my favorites. Frank Loesser wrote a song called "Marry the Man Today." The best line is Marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow." Some people believe that it is actually possible to change someone! I hope you don't. If you follow the advice in this song, you are in for a lot of trouble and distress. So the fun part of this article is that when I describe unhealthy or mixed-up ways of thinking, I will use examples of songs to demonstrate the point. Let's get started. I hope you have fun. I know I will. As an aside, if you come up with your own songs that demonstrate irrational thinking, please let me know. I am always interested in new ways to apply these ideas.

Irrational Beliefs

There are many lists of irrational beliefs that have been developed by therapists
over the years. If you look up cognitive-behavioral therapy on the Internet or in a library you will find a lot of information. I have included here the ones that I think are the most powerful and potentially unhealthy.

Irrational Beliefs are ways of thinking that are unhealthy. When you subscribe to these beliefs you are causing yourself distress, such as depression, anger or anxiety. The Snoopy Song from "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" by Clark Gesner
exemplifies this nicely.

It starts off where Snoopy is happy and thinking good thoughts.

"Pleasant day, pretty sky, life goes on, here I lie, not bad, not bad at all."

Everything is good, right?
Then he starts talking about the little birds that visit him. They come

"every day, sitting here, on my stomach, with their sharp little claws which are usually cold and occasionally painful... Sometimes there are so many...Rats!
I feel every now and then that I gotta bite someone. I know every now and then what I want to be!
A fierce jungle animal crouched on the limb of a tree!
I'll wait very, very still till I see a victim come. I wait knowing very well every second counts. And then like the fierce jungle creature I am, I will pounce!"

Poor Snoopy. There he was, sitting happily on his dog house roof with not a care in the world. What happened? He talked himself into being angry and upset!

We are all just like Snoopy. We can talk ourselves into feeling any way possible. That is the bad news. The good news is that we can talk ourselves into feeling good!

So what do we have to do? First, we have to be able to recognize when we are thinking in unhealthy ways. Then we need to replace the unhealthy thoughts with healthy ones.

Here is a list of unhealthy thoughts.

1. Jumping to Conclusions

This is when you decide you know something that you can't actually know. Maybe you think someone is thinking poorly of you. This is not possible because you can't read someone's mind. You can also jump to conclusions by thinking you know what will happen in the future. If you know what will happen in the world before it does, let me know. I want to know the winning lottery numbers, please.

I haven't yet come up with a song for this one. Does anybody have any ideas?

2. All-or-Nothing Thinking

This type of thinking is very rigid. It is when you view the world in very rigid, perhaps legalistic, terms. Sometimes this is helpful, ie a belief that robbing banks is wrong. However, most of the time people upset themselves over things that don't have to be black and white. There is a lot of gray in the world. Look for that and you will be mentally healthier.

A good example of this type of thinking can be found in the song "Oh, How I Hate To Get Up I The Morning" by Irving Berlin.

"Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning,
Oh! How I'd love to remain in bed
For the hardest blow of all is to hear the bugler call:
'You've got to get up, you've got to get up,
You've got to get up this morning!'"
Someday I'm going to murder the bugler
Someday they're going to find him dead
I'll amputate his reveille and stomp upon it heavily
And spend the rest of my life in bed!"

This soldier basically thinks it is the worst thing in the world to get up early in the morning. He is so upset about it that he is willing to kill the bugler. Now admittedly, I have never been in the army so it is entirely possible that I could feel the same way myself. I don't like to get up early either. But please notice that his hatred for the morning results in a homicide! It is far better to tell yourself that although getting up early is unpleasant, you can do it if necessary. I do this every day when I have to get up and take my daughter to school at 7:30 a.m.

3. Should Statements

Should statements are demands that people or circumstances behave the way that you think they should. This is, in essence, having rules for how other people, yourself or the world should behave. Rules are all well and good but other people don't have to follow your rules most of the time. The world doesn't either. For example, I believe that the car in front of me should drive faster. Does my belief make this happen? Of course not. All my belief does is get me angry. And truly, why does anyone have to do what I want? I am not that powerful. I will let you know when I am Queen of the world. Then everyone will have to do what I want. Actually, again in "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown," Lucy sings a song about becoming a Queen. I think this is only in the original version, not the new one. Anyway, she sings about becoming a Queen. Her little brother Linus comes along and says that you have to inherit a royal position and Lucy is not in line to inherit. Lucy replies that she will buy a Queendom. She believes she should be able to do this and no amount of logical argument from Linus will persuade her otherwise. She wants it to be so, so it should be.

4. Exaggeration

When you exaggerate, you blow things out of proportion. We do this all the time in a harmless way. "I'm starving," we might say but of course we aren't really. Or we say, "This is terrible," or horrible or awful or any other term denoting doom. Most of the time something is not as awful as we portray it to be.

An example of exaggerating comes from "No, No, Nanette" again. Nanette, who is a teenager says,

"No, no, Nanette,
that's all I hear!
I get it the whole day through.
'No, no, Nanette,' regales my ear
no matter what I may do.
Sometime, perhaps,
I'll have my way
when I am old and turning grey.
But just as yet it's always
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Nanette!"

Any of you have teenagers? Does this sound familiar? It does to me.

5. Blame

You can blame yourself or others for bad things that happen. The problem with blame is that it makes you powerless. Blaming yourself or another for a problem does not help solve the problem. Some people blame themselves unnecessarily for a problem that they really don't have control over. "My daughter failed her English test. I should have made her study more." Ultimately she is responsible for studying, not you. Actually, if you take the blame for this, you are helping her get out of the responsibility she really has for her grade.

Blaming others, on the other hand, is when you make someone else responsible for your behavior. In either case, you can not solve the problem. You have taken someone else's problem as your own, or given up your problem to someone else. See how that makes you powerless? You can blame yourself or others for bad things that happen.

A great song that demonstrates taking too much blame is "I Want to Be Happy" from "No, No, Nanette," a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach and music by Vincent Youmans. In this song, the singer Nanette refuses to be happy unless her boyfriend is happy. She sings,

"I want to be happy
But I won't be happy
Till I make you happy too.
Life's really worth living
When you are mirth giving
Why can't I give some to you?
When skies are gray
And you say you are blue
I'll send the sun smiling through
I wanna be happy
But I won't be happy
Till I make you happy too."

She makes her happiness dependent upon the happiness of her boyfriend! And while I am in complete agreement that it is nice to do nice things for your loved ones, it is possible to be happy when your loved ones are not. Otherwise you have to always be a people pleaser. That is not a healthy way to live. It is especially bad if you are raising children. To be a good parent, you have to make your kids unhappy sometimes. Otherwise you are setting no limits for them.

So in order to be less depressed you need to identify your unhealthy beliefs. Once you do that, then you can change them to healthy ones. You will feel better and enjoy life more. Be happy!

copyright Angela K. Williams 2010

Facing Your Depression

Depression is an illness and needs to be acknowledged as such. It is not a reason to be ashamed. The reason so many people fail to seek help for their depression is that they are ashamed, confused or don't know exactly where to turn. Unfortunately, these are some of the feelings associated with depression anyway and make the illness difficult to face.

If you are constantly feeling particularly low, stressed and/or anxious, well-meaning friends might tell you to "snap out of it" or even start to get irritated by your mood. Your depression will feed off this negativity and you start to wonder why you can't just "snap out of it". You then start to feel that there's something wrong with you because it should be so easy and it's just "not right" that you feel so bad all the time. Well, it's not right and there is something wrong with you. You have a medical condition and you deserve treatment in the same way as any other patient. If you had a cold for six months would you ignore it and hope it would pass? No, you would dose yourself up with anything you could find and maybe see a doctor to find out if there's an underlying reason for it to last so long.

In my case I let my depression go far too long thinking it would go away. Well it didn't go away. It got to the point where it built into panic attacks, restlessness and then severe anxiety to the point where I could not function. I could not work; deal with people, or even deal with my family. I was finally forced by my wife to see a doctor.

I was eventually hospitalized, and I admit that it was a low point in my life, but I got treatment and it was only up from there. Sure it didn't happen overnight. It was hard, but little by little I had begun to feel better, lighter, like a weight was being lifted off of me. The better I felt, the bigger the strides I could take to overcome this illness. Before long I felt like a Superman compared to where I was.

Depression is sadness that lasts too long. Everyone is sad at some point in their lives but depression is more than that. It is a feeling that you can't bring yourself up from the bottom. In the end you give up trying. People start to avoid you. You feel worse. You need to find external help to treat the problem in the same way as you would if you had a long-lasting cold. Don't wait like me until you are at a point where you can no longer function in daily living. You could try herbal remedies, or all natural programs, or you could see your doctor. There may be an underlying physical cause for your depression.

If your doctor cannot help you they may refer you for counseling. Don't be embarrassed to go for counseling but do make sure you are comfortable with your counselor. If not, try another one. It is important you find someone to talk to. It feels better to get things off your chest. Counseling should not be discounted because you don't feel comfortable with your first choice of practitioner. In everyday life you will naturally find that you get on with some people and clash with others. You cannot afford to have a personality clash with your counselor. On the other hand you must be sure that it is a personality clash and not just that you don't agree with what they are saying. A general rule is to go with your instincts. If you like the person and seemed to get on well in the first couple of sessions then stick with it because they might just have touched on the root cause of your problem.

In some cases, acknowledging depression may be difficult because you have lived with it so long that you don't know whether it is depression or not. If you have grown up with depression it is possible not to realize that you are actually depressed because you have no concept of how normal people should feel. You may feel angry all the time or you may feel like going to the middle of an empty field and simply screaming. You may feel anxious, have trouble sleeping or even sleep too much. You may think that your family would be better off without you (and actually believe that to be true) and may have considered running away or suicide. You may worry about death all the time (yours or someone else's) and not let yourself be happy just in case…… (Or even "I must enjoy this now in case……….."). If you are feeling any or all of the above then you need to consider talking to someone. Even if it is just a friend or family member to start with, they may be able to advise you and encourage you to seek professional help.

Once you have acknowledged that you have depression please remember that it is a medical condition and can be cured. You don't have to feel this way for ever. Nobody actually thinks of you the way you think they do. Talk to someone. Seek and accept help and you will find that there is a different way of seeing life. The bottom line for me was that I dealt with it, and conquered it and you will too. Again, don't wait to be forced into dealing with it. Attack it now and live the life you deserve.

To your health and well being,

Terry Poster