Tag Archives: depression

The psychological habit that is as unhealthy as smoking: Rumination.

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"Allegretto" by Mimi Stuart Live the Life you Desire

“Allegretto” by Mimi Stuart ©

Rumination

Have you spent too many sleepless nights or distressing days dwelling on bad feelings and experiences of the past? Rumination is the compulsive focusing on causes and consequences of your distress. While worry focuses on potential bad events in the future, rumination focuses on past and current failures, disappointment, or suffering.

Rumination interferes with the confidence you need to problem-solve and move forward in your life in a positive way. Moreover, ongoing repetitive circular thinking about failures and distress often leads to depression as well as addictions.

Solution

The solution is to learn to notice each time you start ruminating. Then immediately distract yourself with a healthy activity for at least two minutes. Only two minutes of distraction will stop you from ruminating. You may have to do this countless times a day when you first start, but if you keep it up, your ruminating will diminish and then disappear.

Depending on your personality, effective distraction may have to involve your mind, your body, or both. Think of a mental or physical activity that is engaging enough to distract you.

Here are some examples:

• Organize papers or your accounting.

• Read a book.

• Do fifty sit ups.

• Clean your house while listening to your favorite music.

• Call a friend.

• Do a sport or take a walk while listening to a book on tape.

• Do an interactive video or game, such as a language or geography game, or lumosity.

• Clear clutter, focusing on what should be thrown out or where to put things.

• Catch up on social media or emails.

• Plan a dinner party or a trip.

Remember that you only need to distract yourself for two minutes. But if you distract yourself with something positive or productive many times a day, you’ll also have accomplished something worthwhile in the meantime. You’ll be better read, in better shape, caught up with friends, and you will have a cleaner house. These small satisfactions will also help you to stop ruminating about past negative events.

If you don’t have two minutes to spare, consider doing what a friend of mine did during a painful break up to keep her from dwelling in negative thinking. She wore a rubber band around her wrist and snapped it each time she started to ruminate about the past or worry about the future. Her wrist turned red, but her emotional health remained stable and empowered despite the losses and transition she faced.

by Dr. Alison Poulsen
@alisonpoulsen

Read “Fear of failure: ‘I’m worried about failing.’”

Read “Regret: ‘I shouldn’t have yelled at my friend.’”

Read “’I don’t have time for this huge project.’ Ten minutes: One box, one call, one block.”

James Hillman: Depression in a Manic Society—“I have to stay busy. If I stop, I’ll feel sad and empty inside.”

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"Percussion" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

There are many good things about being active and working hard. Yet, some people display a mania in the busy-ness of their lives as a manic defense against depression. They fear that their energy and purpose will suddenly collapse if they slow down. And it might, at least temporarily.

Those people often carry many of the characteristics of mania: excessively outgoing, optimistic, euphoric, aggressive and argumentative. Their lives are so complex and fast paced that they have no time to reflect. They move with a speed that leads to an absence of inwardness. If there is no time for introspection and loss, the losses will mount until they eventually become unbearable and overcome us.

Slowing down even to experience sadness can be restorative of psychological health. James Hillman* said that “through depression we enter depths and in depths find soul.” Melancholy and sadness can bring refuge, focus, gravity, weight, and humble powerlessness—all necessary to discover consciousness and depth.

Hillman suggests that by slowing down and finding depth in our lives, we can find a way of living multiple-mindedly rather than single-mindedly. By pausing, we find what’s interesting—depth, fantasy and image.

Most changes are undertaken more successfully if approached incrementally and with moderation. Rather than abruptly ending an on-the-go lifestyle, taking some time each day to do nothing or to stroll leisurely without an agenda will allow unconscious contents to bubble to the surface.

The unconscious is like a rebellious teenager. If you repress either for too long, you’re in for some unpleasant surprises. It’s less risky to make time for hidden feelings and thoughts to arise, than to stay too busy to deal with them.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

• Renegade psychologist James Hillman died last week on October 27. The notes included here are from his seminar I attended in Santa Barbara called “Depression in a Manic Society” in 2000.

Read “Mild Depression and the Blues.”

Mild Depression and the Blues: “You should be happy! Look at the bright side!”

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"Gravitas" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

While optimism tends to attract happier states of mind, we should avoid being judgmental toward those living through darker moods. It’s important to ask if a friend needs help or wants to talk about problems. Yet simply being there can be more beneficial than jumping in quickly to “fix” someone’s mild sadness and gloom.

In addition to being compassionate, we need to be able to give others space to process their own emotional states. There is a place and purpose for melancholy, heartache, and disenchantment.

Psychologist James Hillman claims that the “gravitas” accompanying mild depression may allow us to discover consciousness and the depths of the soul. “It brings refuge, limitation, focus, gravity, weight, and humble powerlessness.”

Rather than giving in to a dark mood or blaming someone else, a person undergoing the blues has an opportunity to listen to what the unconscious is trying to say.

For instance, someone who identifies with being action-oriented may ignore grief and loss. Those neglected feelings may gain energy in the form of a shadow that one day will burst to the surface as emotional outbursts or depression. Mild and temporary depression can be a wake up call to the sleepwalker within us, allowing us to take time to mull over our life’s journey.

If a friend’s melancholy goes on too long or becomes severe, however, it may be time to intensify concern about his or her inability to get out of the depressed state. Dark moods push people away and prolong isolation and solitude, which can perpetuate a cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to break. If depression is leading to atrophy and degeneration, it’s important to encourage the friend to get help or see a health care professional.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “You’re so grumpy. Why don’t you go take a hike!”

Guest Author Dr. Hedaya: “Why do you keep smoking pot? It’s making you more depressed and will cause schizophrenia.”

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"Trepidatious" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

Many times, because they don’t know what else to do, people use drugs as a way of medicating themselves out of depression or anxiety. In the beginning it seems to work, but eventually the effectiveness diminishes.

To try to recapture the earlier benefit, people will use more and more of the drug, which backfires. Their lives fall apart, and the depression and anxiety come back in full force.

Pot in and of itself can cause loss of motivation, increased obsessiveness, panic, anxiety, loss of memory and of course weight gain.

Pot does not cause schizpophrenia, but if someone is vulnerable to schizophrenia, it sure can bring it on, make it worse, and prevent recovery. Use of drugs can be the person’s way of trying to medicate the early symptoms.

If you are close to him or her, start going to Alanon, which helps those who come from dysfunctional families or who are close to a substance abuser. Also see if you can get your friend into counseling and a 12 step program. If he ‘gets it’ he will thank you down the line.

by Robert J. Hedaya MD, DFAPA, Founder, National Center for Whole Psychiatry; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine; Faculty, Institute for Functional Medicine; Author: “Depression: Advancing the Treatment Paradigm;” “The Antidepressant Survival Program;” “Understanding Biological Psychiatry.”