DEPRESSION – WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SIGNS?

Feelings of overwhelming sadness
Crying spells
Mood changes – anger, rage
Pessimism and negative self-talk
Lack of satisfaction
Feelings of loneliness or despair
A sense of failure or of worthlessness
Guilty feelings
A sense of punishment
Self dislike
Self accusation
Suicidal thoughts
Irritability
Social withdrawal – feeling that you don't want to go out
Indecisiveness
Distorted body image
Work inhibition, inability to get going
Tiredness
Loss of appetite or increased appetite
Weight loss
Sleep preoccupation or an inability to sleep
Loss of sex drive
Loss of motivation
Slowness in movement
Change in ability to tolerate pain or being more sensitive
Change in capacity to experience pleasure
Noise sensitivity
Alcohol abuse
Panic attacks

If you experience a number of the above symptoms, remember you are not alone. If you haven't sought medical help, then do so now. Anti-depressants can help us to feel better. However, they may not cure the problem ... that's up to you.

This is because only by changing ourselves, can we actually affect a cure.

Recovery begins when you consciously decide you've had enough, and you want to stop doing whatever it is that's causing your self destruction.

Keep reading ... all will be revealed!

MOOD QUESTIONNAIRE

Below is a mood/feeling exercise. Please fill it in before you begin. You will complete another at the end of the course.

Circle the number which indicates how you are feeling right now. Under is a negative mood (the lowest), above is positive (the highest).

Keeping score of how you feel out of ten

Name Date

Mood

I feel sad and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I'm the happiest
gloomy I've ever felt

Confidence

I feel like hiding in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I could stand up
a corner and give a public
speech

Self esteem

I feel worthless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I'm on top of the
world

How much I feel like changing

I can't be 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I want a big life
bothered to do makeover
anything

Hope for the future

I can't believe 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I'm very hopeful
anything will get life will be better
better

Add up the numbers and record your score......................

But, do not judge. As you are recording what you are feeling right now, this exercise is just a simple way to keep note of your progress and improvement. It shouldn't involve any judgement.

If you're reading this book then your mood may be in the lower areas. At the end of this course one would hope and expect that your score will improve.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with only one step

Lao Tzu

HANDLING MIND CHATTER

The mind is the master controller of your body – the primary source of your thoughts and actions. What you think becomes your reality. What you concentrate on, you will bring about.

The first step toward recovery is simply to notice what the mind is saying. For some of us, this is the hardest part, because many of us do not notice what we think.

To enable you to get well you must now begin to take control of your mind and thoughts.

What is a negative emotion? A negative emotion is one that is toxic to the body and interferes with its balance and harmonious functioning. Negative emotions include fear, anxiety, anger, intense dislike, hatred, jealousy, sadness, resentment and envy. All these disrupt energy flow in the body, affecting the immune system, digestion, and the production of hormones, thereby contributing to physical and mental disease.

Alternatively, joy, love and peace are states of being which come from within your true nature, and strengthen your immune system, invigorating and healing the body.

Up until now it's possible that the voice inside your head has been telling sad, anxious or angry stories about yourself and your life, about other people, and about the past, future or imaginary events. The voice may be blaming, accusing, complaining or imagining. Perhaps you have been believing the distorted things your inner voice says. At this point the unhappiness has set in and a vicious circle ensues.

You can now learn to break the habit of accumulating and perpetuating of old emotions. You must learn to continually return to the present moment, rather than be obsessed with your mental `stories'. If you don't, your mind will go on and on spinning its tales, continually reviving old emotion.

Humans limit themselves through grievances, hostility, regret, guilt and shame. It is time to learn how to squash the self sabotage. Using logic and rational responses you can begin to change these unwanted thought patterns.

Let's make a start. We will begin by just noticing what your mind is saying, that is, the types of thoughts that go through your mind. There must be no judgment about this, just observe what you notice about your thoughts.

DISTORTED THINKING STYLES (COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS)

Psychiatrist A.T. Beck and Dr. David Burns' in-depth research has identified a number of common cognitive distortions. See references below for further recommended reading on this subject.

Cognitive distortions or inappropriate, distorted thoughts are prevalent and negative ways that our mind has developed to convinceus of something about us that is not true. These inaccurate core beliefs, or illogical thoughts about ourselves, act to reinforce negative thinking and create distressing and unwanted emotional responses.

We continually tell ourselves things that sound rational and accurate, but often they are untrue, and really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves and others. They perpetuate emotional disturbance and sickness.

Remember that your emotions follow your thoughts, and negative emotions are not actually reflective of the real or true situation. They reflect only what you have just thought.

Below are some common cognitive distortions, also called `inappropriate thought patterns'. `Inappropriate' may even be too bland a description, because some of these thoughts become toxic. That is, they become dangerous, destructive and harmful to our health. They keep us feeling bad and sad.

• All-Or-Nothing thinking

You see things in black and white categories. The thought is that the event is either perfect or totally useless. This reinforces negative feelings. There is no middle ground.

• Overgeneralisation

The word `always' often accompanies overgeneralisation. For example, "I always fail", "I'm always a loser" or "Everyone thinks I'm stupid". In this thought pattern, you think one single negative event is a continual pattern. If you make a slight error you conclude you're stupid, and this is what you say to yourself.

• Mental Filter

You pick out a single negative detail and focus on it exclusively. For example, if your partner doesn't love one of your meals, you tell yourself you're a useless cook and they hate your food.

• Disqualifying the Positive

When someone praises your appearance or your work, you might automatically tell yourself "They're just being nice" or "They must be blind", thereby rejecting any positive evidence. The price you pay for this way of thinking is intense misery and the inability to appreciate the good things that happen in life.

• Mind Reading – Jumping to conclusions

You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

For example, you automatically conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you. If your partner is particularly quiet you may wrongly conclude, "He is ignoring me so he must not like me anymore". Or you think your spouse or partner is mad at you because he or she isn't talkative, thinking "What did I do wrong?" See how it's all about you? You're not checking out what is really happening. You may then respond to these imagined negative reactions by withdrawal or counterattack. This creates trouble when there was nothing going on in the first place.

• The Fortune Teller Error

You predict a bad outcome. Perhaps you have been invited to a party. You convince yourself that no one would be interested in talking to you and so decline the invite.

• Magnification (Catastrophising or minimisation)

You envisage worst case scenarios. This occurs when you turn your own errors, fears or imperfections into larger problems, exaggerating their importance. If you make a mistake you conclude "This is a total disaster". You also discount your own good qualities or other people's failings.

• Emotional Reasoning

You assume that the way you feel reflects the way things really are. In other words, because things feel so negative to you, you assume they truly are. (Remember, your thoughts create your emotions, so you cannot rely on your feelings when you are depressed.) It doesn't occur to you to challenge the reason that you feel bad. That is, you don't question or dispute the things you are saying to yourself.

In essence, just because you feel it's true, doesn't mean it is. You cannot trust your feelings right now! These thought patterns are typical of a depressed state of mind.

• Should Statements

In this inappropriate thought pattern, you believe you have to live up to ridiculously high standards, and you may also reflect these onto others. For example, you may say "You should do it this way" or `I'm stupid, I should have done it that way", making yourself and others wrong.

The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct `should' statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment. When you direct them to yourself, you will also feel guilty and frustrated.

• Labelling and Mislabelling

For instance when you make a mistake, you may think "I'm a born loser" instead of "I just made an error, no sweat". Labelling yourself is not only self defeating, it is also irrational and untrue. Your life is an ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, moods and actions. Stop trying to define yourself with negative labels – THEY ARE WRONG.

Labelling others (name calling) will invariably generate hostility too, plus these are judgments, which we shall discuss later.

• Personalisation

You see yourself as the cause or assume responsibility for events that really had nothing to do with you. For example "It's all my fault" or "Everything I do is wrong". You are left feeling guilty for no genuine reason.

Your feelings are not facts. If your distorted thoughts make no sense, the feelings they create will be also false.

So, the key to releasing yourself from your emotional prison is simply this:

Your thoughts create your emotions, therefore your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate. In fact, they are most assuredly WRONG. Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it.

Your emotions follow your thoughts. Yes, your emotions follow your thoughts.

So the answer is: take control of your thoughts.

You can quite easily make yourself upset by reliving in your head a particularly sad or gloomy experience. Go on, try it now ... see how thinking about something negative makes you FEEL BAD. You can even make yourself cry just by thinking about a sad event. Similarly, if you imagine a happy event or a joke you may smile or giggle. The body responds to a thought.

When you shift wrong assumptions you will experience an enhanced emotional life with a greater appreciation for genuine sadness as well as joy.

You must modify the illogical thinking patterns, shattering the wrong ideas you hold about yourself and others, and increase your capacity for a happier life. The only way to achieve this is to monitor what you are thinking.

Moment by moment ask yourself "What thoughts are going through my mind right now? What am I saying to myself? Why is this upsetting me? How can I respond to that thought?" This process will allow you to see the errors in your thinking.

At the beginning, this thought and emotional observation is not easy, but with practice becomes so.

After you start to get the hang of recognising the thoughts that are causing the negative feelings, the next step is to challenge them.

Once you have observed the inappropriate thoughts, you can then learn to install new and positive voices in your head. Through continually pinpointing distortions in your automatic thoughts, you can break a bad habit.

Let's look at how you can modify your negative ways of thinking. I suggest you keep a journal of what you are thinking and feeling. This way, you can see what distorted patterns of thought are stopping your progress.

Homework

Begin by writing down your own thoughts, then next to that write down the type of distorted thought (from the list of distorted thinking styles on pages 8-10). The next step is to substitute a more rational, sensible and less upsetting thought. Look for the truth.

For instance "I'm useless" – this is an overgeneralisation, and also a label, and actually does not make sense when you challenge it. Your more positive rational response could be "Actually I am not useless at all, I can do many things well."

It is crucial to write down your automatic thoughts, together with their rational, logical and sensible responses. This process forces you to develop more objectivity than you could ever achieve by letting responses swirl through your mind.

Sadness and miserable internal states do not prove that you are a worthless person, but merely that you think you are because you are in a temporarily depressed mood. Depression itself causes us to think these wrongful thoughts.

You are thinking illogically and unreasonably about yourself.

All you have to do is reply to that critical, nagging internal voice ... Why?

Because that critical inner voice is wrong!

Remember three crucial steps when you are upset:

1. Zero in on those automatic negative thoughts and write them down. Don't let them buzz around in your head: get them on paper!

2. Read over the list of distorted thoughts. See how you are churning negative ideas and blowing them out of proportion. Decide which of the distorted thinking styles on pages 8-10 fits your distorted thoughts.

3. Respond with a more objective, rational and sensible thought that challenges the wrongful thinking which made you feel bad about yourself.

For example, when I was depressed, some of my negative automatic thoughts were:

"Nobody loves me" which is an overgeneralisation and magnification, and my rational response was "Actually, some people do love me".

"Everyone criticises me". Again, an overgeneralisation and magnification, and my rational response was "That's not true. Perhaps I was criticised as a child, but that is no longer true."

"I must be worthless" – emotional reasoning and labelling. My rational response was "That's rubbish. I have many good qualities and have been successful in many things."

Unfortunately, because we feel so bad, these self-destructive beliefs actually feel true. But they are not. They are illogical and self-defeating.

Whenever you become aware of the illogical thought, that's when you must nail it. If you notice it later, don't worry or berate yourself. Just commit to dealing with it next time it arises.

Please use the headings overleaf to identify some of your automatic and flawed thinking.

Write down in your journal what automatically comes into your mind when you self criticise. Then look up the distorted thinking styles on pages 8-10 to see which fits. Lastly, stand up for yourself with a self-defence or sensible response statement which sounds real to you.

Keep following this process, always writing it down, and you will slowly shift those wrong assumptions and begin to feel better.

Please be aware that you are not suppressing your emotions ... that would be dangerous and counterproductive. Rather, this exercise is to observe your thoughts and take charge before the emotion arises. Having said that, if you feel emotionally charged, angry even, then it is important to address the problem – perhaps you need to go outside and yell at the sky. Better still, read up on assertiveness and the great `I' messages later in this booklet.