Fighting Depression Cognitively
Since realizing my depression is (has been) the cause of much of my mood swings and a lot of the anger I feel, I have been working to change my thinking. When I was reading the article from WebMD (which Amber informs me she found while looking for something else), I was shocked and pleasantly surprised to find a description of me and how my mind works:
"When you're depressed, you become trained to see the world and yourself in a negative way," says MacKinnon. These patterns of thought can have a lasting impact. They can linger on months or years after you've resolved the biological cause of the depression, MacKinnon says.There is an example in the article, but I thought I'd give you one from my life. A bill comes in the mail and I don't have time to record it in my spreadsheet at the moment, so I set the bill down on my desk; the paper gets lost in the shuffle and never gets entered and consequently doesn't get paid on time. The end of the month rolls around and the next bill comes in and the amount is double what we expected and the money is not there to cover it. I dwell on the fact that I didn't enter the bill right away. Then I get angry because I cost us extra money on late fees. I am lazy. I am disorganized. I can't pay a simple bill. My desk is a mess. My house is a mess. It's no wonder that J would rather be out with his friends. Who would want to come home to this disaster, cranky kids, and a lazy wife? He might as well leave me. So he gets home, and I act in such a mean spirited way that we fight and say things we don't really mean and both regret later.
My depression has been and is continuing to affect my marriage. I have to cognitively get my depression under control! So what are the steps needed to do this? I was so glad to see that the suggestions in the article are ones that J and I have been working on over the last few years but more vigorously in the last couple of months.
At first, it’s very hard to catch yourself engaging in automatic thinking, says Cook. By definition, you’re not completely aware that it’s happening. Instead, Cook says it’s often easier to look back on a bad day and figure out what happened in hindsight. How did you get from feeling pretty good in the morning to feeling horrible by noon? What events -- and what thoughts -- led you to such a depressive state of mind?I am to the point now, where I can catch it before I get in too deep. Instead of going to bed in a foul mood, I can stop midway through the day and say, "why am I so miserable? what happened that made me angry?"
Another tactic mentioned and one that I've started to use again is to get a change of scenery. My depression (among other things, including our change of routine) had taken from me our daily walks. We don't go daily right now, but we are walking more often, getting out of the house and creating "a break in the mental process" of the day.
When I think through the example I gave logically - I lost the bill, so what? Everyone is entitled to mess up now and then. It's not a regular thing. Am I lazy? Hardly. I have 5 kids; there is not really time to be lazy. Is my desk a mess? Maybe, but it is fixable. Is my house a mess? Sometimes, but it's fixable. Would J rather be out with his friends than at home? Sometimes, but he'd rather me go with him; I know that he loves us all and wants to spend time with us. It's a false statement to say that he may was well leave me over an unpaid bill. Therefore, I have no reason to be cranky over this issue. Logically, I need to let it go.
I'm not really a very logical person, especially when I'm "in the depths of despair" (to quote Anne of Green Gables). I tend to operate solely on my angry emotions. I am so glad that God blessed me with a very logical man, someone who hates extreme emotion but has actually been blessed with patience, wisdom and understanding. J has talked me through and interjected logic into my emotional roller coaster. I need to focus on reality when I get "like that". I need to think through my automatic "tapes" that run in my head and ruin my day. I need to think about what I'm telling myself and logically work through each statement - true, false or indifferent. And then take appropriate action - fix what needs to be fixed, throw out what needs to be tossed in the trash and let go of what I can't change.
Stay tuned for Depression Part 3 - The Community and Managing Depression
Striving to learn and live God's purposes,
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1 comment:
Thank you for this series on depression. I've always been a "sunny side" up person for the most part, but I'm married to someone who constantly struggles with depression. Four close-together babies and a few traumatic life events later, now I've had some run-ins with it, too. I see so much in your experiences that sounds an awful lot like me, and, like you, I'm beginning to appreciate the value of positive routines. I think it's interesting that I had to lose nearly all of my positive routines, though, before I finally caught on. I'm working on rebuilding, though, and am glad to have found your blog so I can draw support from your journey.
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