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by SYD BAUMEL Over the years, I've developed a model of how we become depressed and, by inference, how we recover. The model is essentially my own, but it draws on some of the insights of theorists like Albert Ellis and Martin Seligman. As I see it, depression is a dysphoric (emotionally unpleasant) retreat from enthusiastic engagement in life that happens whenever three psychological conditions are met: The first condition is discontent, the perception that something is wrong. We cannot become depressed unless there is something in our lives we wish were otherwise—a problem, as we see it. There are, I believe, three kinds of problems that can depress us. The first are problems involving what we (or other people with whom we closely identify) have or don't have. These are problems of pain, loss, and lack. Here is where we throw up our hands and cry, "I can't bear this [pain, loneliness, unrequited love, abuse, injustice] anymore!" This is the land of "when bad things happen to good people." The second kind of problem involves not our experiences, but our deeds. Here is where feelings of guilt and perceptions of failure or sins of omission or commission come in. "I'm failing to live up to expectations" is the problem here. Finally, we have problems of identity—not how we feel, not what we do or don't do, but who we are or think we are. This is where shame, low self-esteem, poor self-image, or feelings of inferiority come in: "I'm not good enough." "I'm not worthy." I doubt there is a single being who is ever free of problems for more than a few minutes or hours. It's our nature to be discontent-meters, problem definers. But this is why merely having a problem, even a dire one, is not enough to make us depressed. For that we need to meet two other conditions. The first condition is loss of hope that our problem can be solved. To become depressed, we have to feel a problem is a lost cause, that there's nothing we can do about it. We have to stop believing the person we love will love us back; to abandon hope that we will be able to do what we feel we must do (or stop doing what we must not); to give up on attaining that personal quality we so wish we possessed. As tough as this predicament may be, it's still not enough to carry us into the land of depression—that altered state where we are more than just sad, unhappy, discouraged, or pained. We have a safety valve. It's called living with things we can't change (or think we can't change). It's called taking things philosophically. It's called having the serenity to accept the things we can't change. If we can accept that what we so want to be will not be, and move on, we won't become depressed. If not, we have fulfilled the third and final condition for depression, and we will be. That condition is irreconciliation: the inability (at least for the time being) either to live with the problem and accept it (which redefines it as a fact of life and no longer a problem to solve), or to walk away from the problem, to cut our losses, detach, put it on the back burner—and get on with the rest of our lives. Irreconciliation means we reject all of life because the persistence of our problem and our abiding love of life are incompatible. "This town ain't big enough for the two of us. If the problem won't go, then I will." So there is the portrait of a depressed person. She has at least one major self-identified problem. But she has become convinced that the problem is not going to go away no matter what she or anyone else does. Yet she can neither live with it nor forget about it. Instead, she is locked into the notion that the problem must be solved, or all of life is without meaning, value, or purpose. Now that we have a model of how we get depressed, we have a map to help us get undepressed. The first landmark on the way is that each of the above three conditions is a necessary condition for depression, an ingredient in a recipe without which the cake can't be baked. Take away any one, and we will no longer be depressed. Every depression treatment addresses and, if successful, eliminates one or more of these "ingredients." This may come as a surprise if you think I've just presented a purely psychological model of depression. On the surface, it is psychological, because I believe depression's center of gravity is the psyche. But psyche, body, and environment are all of a piece. We cannot have a depressed psyche in a nondepressed body—not for long—any more than an ice cube can stay frozen in a bucket of water. Sooner or later, the energy state of the one diffuses to the other. Sooner or later, the states of connected bodies or beings (and nothing is more intimately connected than psyche and soma, mind and body) become equalized. This is true whether it's a pain-wracked body draining the cheer from a serene mind or a troubled soul sapping the vitality from a fit body. It's also the case when a physically toxic or spiritually demoralizing environment rubs up against a vulnerable body or personality. We do have defenses, but they're not made of steel. There is a positive side to this "Biopsychosocial First Law of Thermodynamics." Just as depressing influences tend to spread from one part of the mind-body-environment continuum to the others, so too do uplifting, antidepressive influences. If, as hundreds of studies indicate, physical inactivity makes for a bodily state that is conducive to mental depression, it's also true that a physically active body is an inhospitable medium for depression. For every vicious mind-body-environment cycle that can spiral us down into the blues, there is a corresponding benign cycle that can help us rise up. What does this have to do with my model of depression? Those problems that depress us can originate anywhere in the mind-body-environment continuum. We could be failing at school or at work because our thyroid gland is failing to keep our brain perked up, or because we can't get enough sleep because we live near a busy airport, or because we're working or studying in a chemically sick building. We could be depressingly shy and lonely because we weren't loved enough in childhood, or because we're short of a brain chemical that facilitates social ease and comfort, or because we feel hopelessly inferior to a cultural ideal of attractiveness. Our depressing problems might not even be problems, were it not for something else that's eating us: a chronic pain disorder that makes everything seem sour and wrong; a chip on the shoulder that makes us see hostile or mocking faces behind every bush. Not just our problems themselves, but how we cope with them can be influenced by factors along the mind-body-environment continuum. Whether we take a problem in stride or are crushed by it can depend on something as elemental as elements in our diet. Not enough magnesium can make us too weak, listless, and achy to cope. A drug we're taking or a chemical we're sniffing in the workshop can make us shadows of our usual problem-solving selves. A heavy load of problems we're just barely handling can make one new problem the straw that breaks the camel's back. A seemingly minor problem that reminds us too much of a big one that shattered us in the past can overwhelm us with echoes of unresolved trauma. Finally, there is our inability to be reconciled with problems we can't solve. Deeply held cultural or religious values can prevent us from accepting that we are successful enough, thin enough, normal enough, or pure enough to be happy. Perfectionism can make it hard for us to tolerate problems that others shrug off or don't even notice. Even a physical condition that upsets our equilibrium—menopause, "andropause," a severe chronic illness—can make it harder for us to not sweat the small stuff, let alone the big. In one way or another, every antidepressant strategy—including the many dozens discussed in this book—helps us to overcome or be reconciled with our problems. And when we can live with those problems, we can live again. Copyright
© 2000 by Syd Baumel.
Dealing with Depression Naturally
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Dealing with Depression Naturally Complementary and Alternative Therapies for Restoring Emotional Health Amazon.com | Chapters.ca
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