Attacking Anxiety & Depression Workbook (2001)_ 6.0

Depression Program Management Details Downloading E-books and Audio Sessions When you purchased the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program, you created a username and password to gain access to the download area where you can get your e-books and audio sessions. You must be connected to the Internet to access these areas. Click here to visit the members’ download area *Note: If this link doesn’t work for you first time, try closing your Internet Browser and click the link again.

Lost Your Login Information? If you have lost your login information, you can have it sent to you from your Account Management Panel: Click here to visit your account management panel

If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Contents Depression Program Management Details ........................................ 2 Downloading E-books and Audio Sessions ........................................ 2 Contents ..................................................................................... 3 The Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program ............................... 5 Acknowledgements ....................................................................... 8 Navigating the Depression Program E-book .....................................10 Internal Links..............................................................................10 Scroll Bar ...................................................................................10 Depression Program Map ..............................................................12 About This Program .....................................................................13 Introduction ................................................................................ 15 How to use the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program ..............15 Take Your Time ...........................................................................16 Session One Understanding Depression ...................................... 20 Understanding Depression ............................................................20 Indeed, Knowledge Is Power .........................................................20 Depression Test ..........................................................................21 Giving Yourself a Break ................................................................23 Setting the Scene ........................................................................27 Future Improvement Indicators Exercise .........................................28 Session Two Basic Needs............................................................. 30 Understanding Your Basic Needs....................................................30 Basic Needs Planning Exercise .......................................................35 Basic Human Needs .....................................................................36 Session Three Overcoming Anxiety ............................................. 40 Overcoming Anxiety.....................................................................40 Location, location, location............................................................45 Curbing Panic Attacks ..................................................................46 Stress ........................................................................................48 Quick strategies to manage anxiety and stress ................................51 Session Four Influence & Control ................................................ 58 A Question of Influence ................................................................58 Control Exercise ..........................................................................63 Control Examples Exercise ............................................................64 Session Five Problem Solving ..................................................... 67 Problems and Depression - Making mountains out of molehills ...........67 Listing Problems Exercise .............................................................69 Depresso’s Secrets: How ‘internal problems’ are created and maintained .................................................................................72 Thought avoidance ......................................................................81 Session Six Explanatory Styles .................................................... 87 What you tell yourself about your world ..........................................87 Explanatory Styles Explained.........................................................90 How to think depressingly.............................................................91 Choosing between a negative and positive bias ................................95 Session Seven Flexible Thinking ................................................ 100 Generating other possible explanations......................................... 100 About collecting evidence ........................................................... 104 Session Eight Catastrophizing ................................................... 106 If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Misuse of the imagination ........................................................... 106 Anti-Catastrophizing Exercise ...................................................... 107 ‘At-Leasting’ Exercise ................................................................. 112 Session Nine Relationships........................................................ 113 Depression and relationships....................................................... 113 True story: Emotional bank accounts............................................ 116 Limit-Setting Exercise ................................................................ 117 Session Ten Communication ...................................................... 121 Communication within relationships ............................................. 121 How to say ‘No’ ......................................................................... 121 Relationship choices................................................................... 122 Some words on jealousy............................................................. 124 Session Eleven Socializing ........................................................ 126 How to get more people into your life ........................................... 126 Developing friendships and being an attractive friend ..................... 127 Making friends and getting along with people ................................ 128 How to get along with people ...................................................... 128 How to make someone feel valued in conversation ......................... 137 Session Twelve Sleep ................................................................ 141 Depression and Sleep: tips and ways to move forward.................... 141 Sleep and depression ................................................................. 142 How to sleep better ................................................................... 143 Session Thirteen Exercise.......................................................... 149 Getting moving and eating right! ................................................. 149 Benefits of moderate exercise for depression ................................. 150 How much exercise? .................................................................. 151 Session Fourteen Nutrition ........................................................ 154 Eating away depression .............................................................. 154 Mind Food ................................................................................ 155 Session Fifteen Humor............................................................... 158 The importance of laughter and humor ......................................... 158 Funny Memories Exercise ........................................................... 162 Session Sixteen Goal Setting ..................................................... 166 Dreaming Out Loud Exercise ....................................................... 170 Steps to Success Exercise ........................................................... 172 Extract More Satisfaction ............................................................ 173 Maximizing Satisfaction Exercise.................................................. 173 Session Seventeen Motivation ................................................... 176 Your life ahead - keeping motivated ............................................. 176 Quick Step Guide to Practical Exercises ..................................... 181 Answers Section ........................................................................ 187 Index of Relaxed Reviews ......................................................... 196 Uncommon Knowledge Products and Services........................... 197


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The Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program Guidelines The Depression Program is a unique resource to help people through depression. It comprises a book, which can be downloaded electronically or purchased in hard copy together with various complementary audio sessions, also available as downloads or recorded onto cds. The book contains a number of tasks and exercises for you to complete. We have set out some basic guidelines to explain how the Depression Program should be used. Please read these guidelines carefully because by purchasing the Depression Program you are agreeing to be legally bound by these guidelines. About Us The Depression Program is published and wholly owned by Uncommon Knowledge Limited, a company registered in England no. 03573107, whose registered office is at First Floor, 69 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2BB, England, UK. Uncommon Knowledge Limited was set up in 1998 and is a well-established therapy centre and we specialise in the provision of therapy resources online and offline in accordance with the education, training and experience that we have. Privacy Policy We respect your privacy. Your contact information and certain other information about you is subject to our Privacy Policy which can be viewed at http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/knowledge/privacy.html Directions for use of the Depression Program – IMPORTANT INFORMATION The Depression Program audio sessions are intended to help you to benefit from the positive effects of relaxation and guided imagery to help you in your quest for optimum health and happiness. Whilst these approaches are known to have achieved exceptional and consistently successful results in the ways described in the Depression Program, they should not be used as a substitute for your doctor’s role in monitoring your health. The Depression Program has not been evaluated by any government or official body. Nothing offered on or offline is intended to diagnose, cure or prevent any disease or disorder of any kind. If you are in any doubt over a health or emotional issue, you should seek the advice of your GP or professional advisor or therapist. You must be 18 years of age or have parental consent before using the Depression Program. You must always follow the guidance notes and advice accompanying any downloads or cds. When listening to the audio sessions, you must be in a place where you can safely relax and sleep. Never listen to these sessions whilst driving or operating machinery. Permitted use of the Depression Program: You may use the Depression Program for your own personal use in accordance with any instructions given to you by us; and If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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If subscribing to the Depression Program on-line you shall be entitled to download the e-book and audio downloads onto a single computer or MP3 player as appropriate or by any other means agreed between us from time to time and save a copy onto a CD, tape, mini-disc, MP3 player or onto the hard drive of your computer for back-up purposes and ease of use. You must not use any content of the Depression Program for any commercial purpose without our prior permission, unless you are a practising or training psychologist or psychotherapist, in which case you may use the audio downloads for the purposes of your own professional development, by which we mean that: • you may use the Depression Program or elements of it as reference materials and suggested scripts for your own one-to-one therapy sessions with clients in accordance with acceptable practices; but • you MAY NOT make available copies or play any of the audio downloads to your clients; and • you MAY NOT claim to be associated with us in any way or to use our name in connection with your own practice. Intellectual Property Rights The Depression Program including all audio sessions or other content provided by us to you (together “Content”) are all protected by our intellectual property rights, including but not limited to copyright and trade marks. Except as expressly authorised by us, you may not copy, download, adapt, alter, modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, communicate or make available to the public or create derivative works of any Content, in whole or in part. Dealings with Third Parties and Links The Depression Program may provide links or cite third party resources or authorities where relevant. As we have no control over such sites and resources, we are not responsible for their availability and do not endorse and are not liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites or resources. Payment terms, warranty and money-back guarantee We require payment in full before dispatch or download and we reserve the right to amend the advertised price of the Depression Program from time to time. However, we are confident that you will achieve positive benefits by using the Depression Program. If you find that the Depression Program does not achieve what you wanted, contact us within 90 days from the date of purchase and we will refund you in full. Please include your transaction ID. Disclaimers Your use of the Depression Program is at your sole risk. The Content is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we do not guarantee that the Content will be suitable for your purposes and requirements.


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In making the Depression Program available, no medical, client, advisory, fiduciary or professional relationship is implicated or established between us. The Content has been compiled from a variety of sources and is subject to change without notice. We use reasonable care in compiling and presenting the Content, but we can give no guarantee that the Content is complete, accurate or up to date. We reserve the right to withdraw your rights to use the Depression Program if you breach any of these terms. Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer. General Information These terms constitute the entire agreement between you and us. Any failure by us to exercise or enforce any provision of these terms shall not constitute a waiver of such provision. These terms and the relationship between you and us shall be governed by the laws of England and any dispute will be decided by the English courts.


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Acknowledgements We would like to thank many people for their efforts that made the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program possible. Firstly to Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell of the Human Givens Institute for their groundbreaking work in helping us all understand Depression better. Next to Michael McLean for his tireless work in creating the Depression Learning Path – without you Michael, we would still be sitting under a mountain of paper! And to the Uncommon Knowledge team – Louise McDermott, Jill Wootton, Lyndsay Swinton, Melissa Lipps, Kellie Fowler for the many ways in which they all helped bring this project to fruition. And finally to Chris Seymour of Network Audio for his work in recording the Relaxed Reviews.


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About the Authors Mark Tyrrell and Roger Elliott are directors of Uncommon Knowledge Ltd, a UK-based company providing training in psychotherapy, emotional intelligence and self help techniques. Since 1996, they have been helping members of the public and other professionals improve their ability to help themselves and others. Mark Tyrrell is well known in the UK for his exciting seminars on self esteem that he teaches to thousands of health professionals every year. His book ‘The Giant Within’ is published by Arrow and can be found on Amazon.com as well as in bookstores. Roger Elliott is the author of the now famous Free Self Confidence Course and co-author of the Self Confidence Trainer. His original background in engineering has brought clarity and rigour to Uncommon Knowledge products, websites and courses, which are unique in their ability to clarify complicated subjects and so empower those who use them. Uncommon Knowledge reaches over 1 million people every year with psychological information that is clear, accurate and above all, helpful. The free online Depression Learning Path that preceded the creation of this program has helped hundreds of thousands of people better understand depression and so take control. You can read some of their comments here: http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/comments.htm Working as therapists in Brighton, England, Mark, Roger and others in the Uncommon Knowledge clinic treat depressed people daily. These people benefit from exactly the same type of information and approaches that you will discover in the Depression Program. Uncommon Knowledge also publish a range of websites and products. Read more about Uncommon Knowledge products and courses here. We thank you for choosing the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program and wish you all the best for the future. Mark Tyrrell & Roger Elliott Uncommon Knowledge Ltd

Navigating the Depression Program E-book The Depression Program contains features to make it easier to use. This section will tell you about how to use them in order to get the most out of the Program.

Internal Links Just like on web pages, the Depression Program contains links that will take you to another place in the Program. Links look like this.

Bookmarks The Depression Program has bookmarks throughout it that you can use to jump to different places whenever you want. Click here to view the bookmarks.

Scroll Bar Click on the scroll box as shown below and hold your mouse button. You can then drag the scroll box up and down to move you rapidly around the book. You will see the page number as you do so:

Clicking just above or just below the scroll box will move you one page back or forward. Clicking on the arrows at the top and bottom of the scroll bar will move you up or down one line at a time. Holding the arrow down will scroll the book continuously.

Going ‘Back’ Everyone who has used a web browser knows how handy the ‘back’ button can be. To get ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’ buttons for the Depression Program, click here.

Viewing Options Depending on the size of your monitor, you may want to make the e-book larger or smaller. Click here to change the Zoom (or magnification) your e-book uses.


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If you have a smaller monitor, choose ‘Fit visible’ – this will make the text as large as possible.

Searching To search the entire Depression Program E-book for a particular word or words, hit Ctrl+f (Windows) or Command-f (MAC) and type in your word. You can also access this through the Edit > Search toolbar at the top of your screen. Click here to try searching.

Printing You can print this whole e-book in the usual way (from the file menu). In fact, we recommend that you do so you can have it handy to flick through whenever you want. If you want to save paper, you can use the free FinePrint utility that allows you to print two or more pages per sheet from here: http://www.pdffactory.com/products/fineprint/ (It looks like you have to pay, but you can get the free version by clicking ‘Download’ )

E-book links Throughout the Depression Program you will find links to other places in the e-book. When you click on these, if you can’t see what you are supposed to be looking at, scroll down half a page or so. You will find the link’s target within the next few lines.


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Depression Program Map This map shows you the ‘high level view’ of the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program so you can see how the Program is put together, and the order in which we are going to do things. We have structured the Program this way for good reason, so although you can jump around the Program using the links we have provided, I recommend that you complete the Program in order first time through.


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About This Program First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mark Tyrrell and although I am not the sole creator of the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program, it’s my voice that will be guiding you through it – in the e-book and the audio sessions. The whole team at Uncommon Knowledge was involved, plus editors, recording engineers and advisors. Now, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. After all, you hardly know me yet; however, there is something terribly important I have to say to you before you start this program. This program is not short. It is not a ‘quick fix’. Neither is it so easy that you will get it all first time. But, if I ask you to think back to the last time you learned something that changed your life profoundly; you will undoubtedly remember that you did not learn it overnight. As you are already aware, most things in life that are worthwhile take a little time and effort. Sometimes you need to read things more than once to understand them properly. Sometimes you need to do related exercises, and additional thinking, before the real impact of the desired information hits you. And sometimes, something that appeared obvious the first time takes on a whole new perspective after you have worked to better understand other important related information. As Guy Claxton says in his 2004 book about learning ‘Wise Up’, the idea that learning has to be fast comes from the memorization culture of our education institutions. In fact, true life learning often takes time, and a variety of experiences and practical application before it ‘sinks in’. The Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program is designed to deliver just that. I am asking you to treat this program as a serious project for the coming weeks and months. Why? Because I don’t want it to simply lift your depression. Instead, I want you to defeat your depression for good. And I want you to be confident, 100% confident, that you know exactly why your depression has finally lifted, and how you are going live the rest of your life depression-free. Since we and our colleagues have used the techniques here with thousands of depressed people, and frequently (and I mean really frequently) get feedback that it’s the only treatment that has made sense to them, then you can rightly have more confidence that it is worth investing your time in. So if at any stage you start to feel pessimistic (and with depression, that’s almost inevitable), put the Program down, take a break, and then return to it later with renewed determination to get rid of the life-sapping, relationship-ruining, happiness-destroying parasite that is depression.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you will take my advice to heart and get the very most from this proven program – for yourself and for all those around you.

Mark Tyrrell


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Introduction How to use the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program You have made a wise decision to invest your time and effort in the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program. While you might be feeling bad at the moment, our shared goal is to get you feeling better quickly and to teach you the skills you need to conquer depression once and for all and to finally enjoy life to its fullest.

Life Events There’s no doubt that life throws us curve balls. There’s no doubt that life is full of surprises, not all of which are good. And, there is no doubt that during these more trying times, many people experience symptoms of depression. What enables these people to endure challenges, frustrations and setbacks without becoming depressed? You’ll be happy to know that there are specific, learnable skills that you can develop which can help combat depression and to prevent you falling back into its grip. The skills and strategies outlined and explained in this e-book show you how to break the pattern of depression once and for all.

Understanding Depression When people are depressed they often find it hard to get motivated – personally or professionally. They may not eat properly or socialize much. They may become disorganized, with the result being a home or office space that is in total disarray. Part of this program is dedicated to providing you with skills for sorting everything out, showing you exactly how to plan ahead and to again start enjoying the things you used to find pleasure in.

Depression Thrives on Exhaustion and Anxiety Did you know that exhaustion and anxiety actually sustain depression? Throughout this program, we help battle these catalysts for depression with restful, relaxing audio downloads that follow each session. These important downloads are designed to ‘retrain your brain’ so that you begin to feel different, while you simultaneously start to think differently, creating a true win-win situation for you!

Of course, not every word in the following material will apply to you but, if you’ve been depressed, you will find that much of it will. And you may well benefit from any information you think does not apply to you, as it will help you better understand the behavior of other people. So, take your time working through the problem and make a commitment now to stick with it!

Take Your Time Please take your time too. Don’t skim-read this book, it’s just too important. You owe it to yourself to make sure you understand and absorb the points as we go along, and if you are finding it hard to concentrate, take a break and use one of the Relaxed Reviews (remember, these downloads are at the end of every session). There are full instructions on how to get your downloads, so don’t worry if you’re not used to downloading files from the Internet. All the information you need can be found in your members area. Now, before we begin, allow me to introduce a few of the characters and features of the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program.

Relaxed Reviews

To download Relaxed Reviews, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here Every time you see the above icon, there will be a Relaxed Review for you to listen to. Relaxed Reviews go over the important points from the previous session in a way that makes it easier for your mind to absorb. During these sessions, which are usually 15-20 minutes long, I will talk to you in a calming way that will allow your brain some recovery time from the rigors of depression, plus help you learn in an effortless way. It is best that you do each chapter before listening to the Relaxed Review, but if you are feeling particularly low or lacking in energy, you may want to listen to the Relaxed Reviews first to give you the energy you need to progress with the Program.


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Keeping Notes

As you progress through the Program, I will ask you to keep notes. Please get yourself a small notebook or open a document on your computer to use for this purpose as you progress.

Your Enemy and Mine – It’s Depresso (a.k.a Depression)! OK, so this might seem a little silly, but there’s a good reason for it. Bear with me for a moment. Here is Depresso…

The reason I have a character for depression is that when you are taking steps to get rid of depression, it is vital that you can separate out the things that depression is telling you from the things you are thinking yourself. Of course, depression isn’t actually a ‘thing’, but it makes you think and feel so differently that it is extremely useful to see it as something separate to you.

How to Spot Depresso You can easily spot Depresso. He will say things like: o

“Yeah, but I tried that and it didn’t work!”

o

“This always happens to me!”

o

“Who would want to talk/be with me?”

o

“I’ve never been any good!”

o

“There’s just no solution to this problem!”

o

“I just can’t get over the past!”

o

“Everything is ruined!”

o

“There’s just no hope/future!”

o

“Something bad is about to happen!”

o

“Nothing good has ever happened!”

o

“What’s the point in doing this?” If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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You are going to become an expert at ignoring Depresso, training him to behave and not poke his nose in all the time! He talks in absolutes ‘nothing, always, never’ etc. He can’t see a wider vision, or the shades of grey in life. He’s a bit of a simpleton and is not too great at picking up subtleties.

Basically, Depresso rains on your parade.

Your Depression Diary

Keeping a diary of depression might sound, well, depressing. However, it’s not like your usual sort of diary. This one will take just 30 seconds of your time a day! All you need to do is rate how you feel each day with respect to your depression symptoms. Your scale is from 1 to 10, with 1 representing the worst day you’ve ever had and 10 representing the very best you could imagine. You can start this now. You can put the number in your normal diary if you keep one, or just use a piece of paper if you like. Simply write today’s date and put a number (that is reflective of how you feel) next to it. The reason for this is that depression (as you know by now from the Learning Path) makes you think in ‘all-or-nothing’ terms. Often, when I see a depressed client, and ask them how their week has been, they will say something like “Just awful”. And if I ask “What, all of the week was awful?” I get “Yes, all of it.” Then later in the session, it comes out that a couple of the days were actually a lot better. Depresso had his tight grip on them and made them think in that damaging ‘all-or-nothing’ way! Grading your days from 1-10 will help defeat Depresso, for he hates flexible thinking! Keeping a diary in this way will also stop depression from fooling you by altering your thought patterns. For the duration of this course, you should take a few seconds each night before going to bed to “grade” your day. This will give you an important sense of your progress and improvement. It will also help you take control back from Depresso, as he normally only deals with ‘completely this’ or ‘completely that.’


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Action Points This funny looking fellow will let you know it is time to do something.

Depression will not go away simply because you have read or listened to this Program. To beat depression for good, you have to ACT! These action points range from writing something in your notebook to doing something in the ‘real world’. Please do them; your success in beating depression depends on it.

“What’s all this with the silly cartoons? I’m serious you know! You’d better take me seriously!”

Ah, our first visit from Depresso… “Yes, you’d love that wouldn’t you Depresso? The more serious the better. Well, the only thing we’re taking seriously is getting rid of you.” OK, so that’s all for now - let’s get on with the Program!


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Session One Understanding Depression

Session One Understanding Depression Understanding Depression Depression and the reasons for it vary from person to person. As you progress through the Program, you may think that some of it doesn’t apply to you. This may well be the case, but please take the time to complete each session, just in case it contains something you can use. This program is also an opportunity for you to see what you are doing right. There may be healthy strategies that you are already using that you can do more of to reap the positive results you desire. It’s important to revisit sections of the program as often as you feel necessary and to replay the Relaxed Reviews as much as you need to ensure your new knowledge sinks in, and to help increase the amount of day-to-day relaxation you are getting. You see, depressed people always have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood streams. By relaxing properly and often, you will lower your stress hormone levels and therefore feel happier, making your fight against depression an easier one.

Indeed, Knowledge Is Power By this stage, you should have read the complete Depression Learning Path – you may have done this online at www.clinical-depression.co.uk, or by reading the e-book that came with this Program. It is essential that before progressing any further, you understand completely some of the main points from the Learning Path, so here’s a quick self-test to make sure you’re up to speed. Knowledge is power! Write your answers in your progress book.


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Depression Test Purpose: To ensure you understand how depression works. This enables you to understand what is happening to you and why you feel the way you do. Once you have this knowledge, it becomes much, much easier to know what you have to do to beat depression. Success Indicators: You will score well when you look at the answers! You will also know what I mean when I refer to how depression works during the Program itself. 1) Write down five signs (symptoms) of clinical depression. 2) Most depression is not due to a chemical imbalance, or genetic factors. True or False. 3) Write down three changes in society that have occurred since the end of World War II, and may account for the huge increases in clinical depression. 4) Why are you likely to wake up in the morning feeling exhausted if you are depressed? 5) Why is ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking a possible cause and also a sign of clinical depression? You can find the answers to these questions here. Please check your answers to make sure they are correct before going any further. Your understanding of depression is likely to strongly affect your success in getting rid of it for good, and this exercise will help with this.

Now that you have completed the quick quiz, I’d like you to spend a moment reflecting on how your understanding of depression has changed since you began the Depression Learning Path, and more importantly, how this change has improved the way you feel about depression.

Learning Path Improvements Exercise Purpose: In order to break down the all-or-nothing thinking of Depresso (“It’s all terrible” or “It’s all perfect”), you need to start noticing changes in the way you feel. Since you have completed the Learning Path and progressed to the Depression Program, you found something helpful. Noting this will help you continue your progression. Success Indicators: You will actually have something concrete written in your Progress Notebook that you can refer back to. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Some people report feeling more hopeful, some say that it is a relief to finally understand what is going on, and some note that they feel less depressed because they have gained more control over the situation. Please go to your Progress Notebook now and record how reading the Learning Path has improved the way you feel. (You might make a note of the current page number so your notes make more sense later).

Monitoring your own progress is critical to beating depression for good. This is because: o

o

o

o

You stay in control: If you find yourself slipping into depression in the future, you will be able to spot the signs early and know what to do to stop them. You understand how it works: You will see that beating depression is a process, not some magical happening, and because of such will feel much more confident that you can deal with it. Depression is as much something you ‘do’ as ‘experience.’ You will know you can stay well: Your confidence will increase as your understanding of the ‘first principles’ on how to beat depression grows. You will have the facts: You will have hard evidence to help you challenge the ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking that depression can create. It is common for depression to make you think that nothing is improving when, in fact, you have made many advances.

If you have progressed to this point without opening your notebook, please go there now and write a sentence or two about how your understanding of depression has changed and how that makes you feel better. Also, go back through the first few pages of the Program and complete the Notebook exercises – it is absolutely essential you do this. After all, you are worth it! Once you have done the exercise, see the Answers Section for my ideas on the Learning Path Improvements Exercise.

“What’s the point in that? Once you know something, you know it, it’s not like you’re going to forget is it?”

Thanks for your input, Depresso, but you know you’re wrong on that one. Apart from anything else, you interfere with thought processes and memory so it’s harder to think clearly when you’re around. Nice try, but you lose this time! ☺ If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Great, all done? OK, let’s move on.

Note: It is quite normal to want to rush along to get to the ‘meat’ of the program, to find the part that will make all the difference for you. If you are feeling like that now, please take a moment to reflect on this. I can promise you that if you take it slowly, and do things in the order you are asked, the Program will be so much more effective for you.

Giving Yourself a Break You’ll remember from the Learning Path that the tiredness and demotivation accompanying depression comes from several sources: o o o

Over-dreaming causing poor sleep quality Avoidance of pleasure-creating activities, causing lower serotonin and dopamine levels Exhaustion of your body’s stress hormones through too much emotional arousal and over-dreaming

However, the ‘reasons why’ are less important than what we are going to do to break this cycle. Here’s a reminder of how the depressive cycle works. Please take just a minute to make certain you understand it completely:

And here’s a more detailed version. The intervention points are just some of the places where you can break the cycle. (Note how the core cycle is the same as that above):


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Depression makes thinking clearly very difficult Depression can make it difficult to think clearly, to maintain concentration, and to remember things properly. That’s why it can feel as if you are getting nowhere when actually, you are progressing. Depression creates a sort of ‘trance state’ within which things are different to the ‘outside world’.

Too much dreaming (which stems from depression) causes exhaustion So our first task is to help your brain begin to recover from the effects of too much REM sleep, exhaustion and lack of rejuvenating slow wave sleep. The best way to do this is through deep relaxation, as this closely parallels the sort of rest your brain is missing. If you are able to do this yourself through meditation, yoga, or some other exercise, that’s great.


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But to make it as easy as possible, we have created Relaxed Reviews for you to download. All you need to do is click on the link below. This review will help you absorb the information we have covered thus far, while the relaxation techniques help you feel better immediately, providing you with the energy you need to continue with the Program.

To download Relaxed Review Session One, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here

Note: If you have been very tired, you may well feel like falling asleep during this session. It is better that you don’t, as part of our aim is to ensure your sleep patterns normalize. However, if you do, don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world, and you will get better at relaxing while staying awake. (If you do fall asleep, next time you listen to a session do, it sitting up in a less comfortable chair!) It is possible that you will feel drowsy afterward, as well. Don’t drive or do anything else that requires concentration until you feel fully awake again. Remember, depression puts an incredible strain on your mind and body. Don’t be surprised if your brain decides to make the most of the break! However, the good news is that you can expect to feel much better and revitalised after this session. If you are on a slower Internet connection, it will take a while for Relaxed Reviews to download, so while that is happening, you can continue with the Program. In addition to the rest and recuperation, another benefit of using Relaxed Reviews is that while deeply relaxed you don’t ruminate, which decreases the emotional arousal, and so the amount of dreaming you do. And it’s not just for the duration of the session either. The after-effects will leave you feeling calmer for a good time afterward, as well. If you happen to suffer from anxiety (as most people with depression do), you will find that this is also reduced by learning how to relax properly on a regular basis.


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To Recap… So, I would like you to listen to your Relaxed Review now. If you feel like doing more after the first time you listen to it, please go ahead and listen to the session again.

Note Your improvements

Right after you listen to the audio session, please go to your Progress Notebook and write down the ways in which you feel better. It may be that you have a quieter mind, more energy, feel more optimistic, or something else entirely. Whatever it is, just make sure you make a note of it now. From now all the way through to the end of the Program, I would like to ask you to make sure that you do a Relaxed Review at least once a day. I will give you reminders as you go along, but please give yourself the time to do this. It is an essential part of beating depression, especially early in the Program.

Special Note – On Coping with Mornings Many people with depression find mornings the hardest part of the day. As you know by now, this is due to the exhaustion caused by over-dreaming. It is important that you do not oversleep, as this will only increase the amount of dreaming you do. Instead, try listening to a Relaxed Review after you have awaken and had some breakfast. This will give you back some of the benefit you missed if you suffer from disturbed sleep patterns, and serve to make you feel better.

(A good idea is to make a note of the current page number in your Progress Notebook.)


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Setting the Scene As you may have noticed, depression tends to make you think about all the things that are wrong, have gone wrong, and are likely to go wrong. Although depression tends to get in the way of thinking clearly, if you spend a lot of time thinking in this way, you are bound to feel depressed. To counteract this, and to begin to set down a ‘template’ for improvement, I would like to ask you to now do a task.

“Don’t talk rubbish, they’re thinking like that because their life is in such a state. You should always find the cause of a problem before trying to solve it.”

“Now you’re on really thin ice there Depresso; although some depressed people are depressed because of major life problems, many others can’t figure out why they are depressed because from the outside, their life looks fine. This is why they assume it must be something to do with chemistry or genes.” “But we know differently; we know that you make peoples’ brains work in a different way, which causes problem solving to become very difficult and make people are more prone to asking ‘Why’ rather than focusing on solutions.” “So, I’m afraid I’m going to ignore you on this one Depresso; it’s a line I’ve heard too many times before.” As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we’re going to work now on the beginnings of a ‘roadmap’ to get you from where you are now to where you want to be.


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Future Improvement Indicators Exercise

Go to your Progress Notebook now and under the title ‘Roadmap’, write down 3 things that will indicate life is improving for you. These are commonly things like: o o o o o

Waking up with some energy Feeling more hopeful about beating depression Once again participating in something you enjoyed previously Being able to feel calmer in stressful situations Feeling more like ‘the real you’

Incredibly Important Note: Please ensure that you write these in the positive. As I mentioned, depression tends to make you think in the negative; “I don’t want to do this, I want less of that, I just don’t want to feel…”, you know the sort of thing. Your improvement indicators should be in the form: “I will know things are improving when I feel like getting out of bed before 9am”, or “Things will be looking brighter when I start going walking again.” They should be specific to times, places and people.

This is a key step in the process, because the things you write here will be your signposts on the road to recovery. They will let you know that things are improving, which will keep your motivated and increase your hope. Remember to write at least 3, and if you get on a roll, keep on writing! You can return to this any time you have a thought about something else you’ll be doing when you are starting to feel better. Once you have done this exercise, you might like to look at my ideas about the Improvement Indicators Exercise. Another note: You can write anything here, as long as it is a SMART goal. Read more about these here (this is a part of a larger guide about setting goals): Writing Smart Goals Don’t worry if as soon as you have thought of something positive, Depresso rears his ugly head and says: “Oh, I could never do that, I just feel too bad.” Of course you may feel bad now, but we are not talking about just now, we are talking about your future, a time when you will be feeling better. So, allow yourself to dream a little now and enjoy just exploring the possibilities! If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Excellent! You have completed the first session! In the next section we’ll be looking at practical problem solving, or how to make mountainous problems into molehills.

Session One Summary o o o o o

Depression is a cycle that needs to be maintained by introspection and inactivity Depression makes clear thinking hard, due to exhaustion and emotional arousal changing the way the brain works Depression creates a sort of ‘trance state’, within which things are different to how they are in the ‘outside world’ Relaxation is essential to give your brain a break, help your body recuperate, lower anxiety levels and help you think more clearly To recover from depression, you need a clear idea of you want things to be, not just thoughts of what you want to get rid of


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Session Two Basic Needs

Session Two Basic Needs Understanding Your Basic Needs When you are going through a depression, it can feel as if you have an illness in the same way as when you have a cold. However, most depression doesn’t really work like this. The vast majority of depression has to be maintained - that is, you actually have to do something to keep depression going (and in fact, you have to work really hard at it! This explains why depression is so exhausting).

“Oh, now wait a minute! You’re giving away all my secrets! It’s much easier for me if people think they have an illness that they can’t do anything about!”

“Yes, I know, Depresso. That’s exactly why I’m telling them.” In this session, we are going to take a more in-depth look at how depression is maintained. You will already have a good idea about this from the Learning Path, but it is vital that you know this both inside and out. Then, you can stop doing the things that maintain depression and start doing those that serve to combat it. So, before we start, I’d just like to know if ugly old Depresso has been niggling at you since you completed the first session. You know - perhaps trying to tell you that this is a waste of time? Or, that although this program has helped others, it can’t help you because you are different? Remember, Depresso tries to make you think in ‘all-or-nothing ways’. So I’d like you to take a moment now to make a few notes in your Progress Notebook.


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Honest Achievements Exercise Purpose: To help you be more realistic and less ‘all or nothing’ about the things you achieve as you beat depression. Success Indicators: You will begin to be able to give yourself credit and feel satisfaction at the small tasks you complete, such as those within the Program. This is in contrast to listening to Depresso making ‘all or nothing’ comments such as, “Yeah but it’s hardly climbing Mount Everest is it?” or “Normal people can do this, why can’t you?” I need you to become better at spotting when you have achieved something.

So in your notebook write: o o o o o o

I have decided to tackle depression and acted by starting this program I now understand how depression works, which gives me hope that I can get control of it I am doing the program properly by writing in my Progress Notebook I am starting to become aware of Depresso’s voice I have listened to the Relaxed Review and am learning how to relax properly, which will help me in many ways in the future I am keeping a depression diary which will help me get out of the ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking that depression creates

And, if you can’t honestly write any of the above, go back now and complete the task that allows you to do so. This may seem unnecessary. Just bear with me. Keep in mind, I know how depression works and how it can undermine you. Once you have given the exercise a good try, my thoughts on the Honest Achievements Exercise might be helpful.

“Look, what’s the point of that? It’s already written here, why do I have to waste my time writing it out again?”

“Ah, the perfect opportunity for you Depresso, a ‘what’s the point’ situation. It’s so easy for you to stop people doing things that will make them feel better by being cynical isn’t it? But cynicism isn’t intelligent is it? As the psychiatrist Theodore Rubin said, ‘There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.’”


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Maintaining Depression Your depression diary will help you pinpoint the fluctuations in how you feel, which will equip you to better battle depression. So, when you notice that you had a particularly good or bad day, make a note in your Progress Notebook of what you were doing the day before that might have precipitated such feelings. For example, if you wake up one morning feeling particularly exhausted, and the day is therefore more difficult, it might be because you spent a lot of time the day before ruminating about something. If you had a particularly good day, perhaps waking up with more energy, it may be something to do with the fact that you did a little exercise the day before, or completed a task you had previously been putting off. Keeping a depression diary will allow you to quickly spot patterns in the way depression responds to what you do. It will also help you feel more in control of the way you feel, and that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? Note: Although feeling better is progress, so is understanding why you have been feeling worse, if indeed you have. That’s why you can write it in your Progress Notebook. :-)

“Hold it, hold it. They don’t ‘do’ or ‘not do’ anything. Depression just happens and they feel down! They don’t do it on purpose you know!”

The thing about Depresso is that he’s so predictable! “Of course they don’t do it on purpose.' You make them do it! Stop trying to get others to jump to your conclusions Depresso (I know that’s something you’re very good at). You make people think in certain ways that make them feel anxious. You make people avoid doing things and thinking in ways that would make them better.”

How We Respond to Life Research tells us that depression doesn’t result from having problems. Instead, it is more about how we think and feel about the problems. There is nothing so bad that someone somewhere hasn’t managed to survive without depression getting the better of them! What we need to focus on is what these people do to stop themselves from getting the symptoms of clinical depression.


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On Selective Memory In addition to making the present seem depressing, we also know that our little ‘fiend’ Depresso can also change the past! Or, more accurately, he makes us remember in narrow, selective and biased ways. Depression makes you recall more negative events and forget the more positive things. It also puts a negative spin on things that were good. Remember the explanatory styles section of the Learning Path? (We’ll cover explanatory styles in more detail in Session Six) Blowing things out of proportion applies to memory as well. One rainy day does not ruin a week’s holiday. One disagreement does not destroy a whole day out together. One mistake does not make you ‘an idiot’. This is a trick of Depresso’s. Don’t fall for it! If you hear these types of statements in your mind, you need to say to yourself “That’s Depresso talking, it wasn’t really like that. There were actually good bits, such as this and that.” Yes, it takes a little more effort, yes it is less exciting in a strange way, and yes, this sort of constant steady effort to change your thinking style actually works!

Take Time to Relax – Daily! Now, as we’ve already covered, depression can make it difficult to take in new information. Focused relaxation helps you learn better and extends your concentration span. And, as Depresso loosens his grip on you, you are going to rediscover how well your brain can work! Comment: I find it astounding how quickly our opinion of ourselves can change. If you are ill for a couple of weeks, say with the flu, you can come to the conclusion that you are an idiot who couldn’t have an intelligent or creative thought if you were paid. Of course, all that is happening is you are saying: “Right now, I am like that”, while wrongly extending it to the rest of your life! Learning to stop thinking about yourself when you feel bad is a great advantage when it comes to getting rid of depression.

“This is pointless. I can’t relax! And how can relaxing help anyway?”

“Ah cynicism again, Depresso. Don’t you have any more strings to your bow? Well, since you ask, deep relaxation lifts mood for good scientific reasons, it lowers emotionality within the brain and allows people to be more objective about problems and possible opportunities.” If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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To download Relaxed Review Session Two, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here

As you learned from the Learning Path, we all have basic emotional and physical needs. When these needs aren’t met, we feel bad. So as long as you have done the last Relaxed Review, you can move forward and on to looking at the basic elements we all need to remain healthy.

Are Your Needs Being Met? When looking at emotional problems, it is always a good idea to check the basics first. As you may have heard me say before “If your car won’t start, check to make sure there is fuel in it before taking the engine out!” For this next section, it is helpful for you to think of yourself as a system that needs certain things, over and above what you think you need. For example, if you were too hot, you may think you need to take off some clothing, when your body is actually overheating due to dehydration. Instead, what you actually need is a drink! Just like a garden, which on the outside appears to ‘run itself’ without any special requirements, we all need certain things to stay healthy. A garden needs enough water and sunlight. It needs nutrients, it must be weeded if it is to remain attractive and tidy, and even the soil must be of the right type for the plants. We can consider ourselves like this to a great extent. Both physical and psychological problems can be caused by neglecting to meet our basic needs. Of course, individuals vary in their requirements of each need. One person may be highly outgoing and gregarious and therefore require a lot of human contact and attention, while another may be perfectly happy seeing only a few people. However, just as with the garden, we all need these elements in our life to a greater or lesser extent.


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Basic Needs Planning Exercise Purpose: To help you see the importance of basic needs and get you to begin planning to meet more of them in your day-to-day life. Success Indicators: If you start to feel worse, you may be able to tie it back to meeting fewer basic needs. You will also know what to do should you begin to feel depressed again in the future. Don’t worry about the needs you are missing – you won’t be alone. In fact, any one of us may be missing out on one or two at times. And, you can rest assured that all over the world there are people with exactly the same missing needs as you, worrying in exactly the same way!

As you read through this section, do the following: 1) Write down each need from the list below. 2) Note how well each need is currently being met in your life. For example, even if you only see one person a week, this counts toward meeting your need for attention. 3) Grade how well each need is currently being catered for. A 10 would be ‘completely’ and 1 would be ‘hardly at all.’ 4) If you feel it will help, write some practical ways to improve how you meet that need, writing down actual steps that could be taken.

Example The need: To give and receive attention Current situation: I speak to my mother once a week on the phone. I see people in the store. I see my husband. I feel I am not getting as much interaction as I need and would like to spend more time with girlfriends. 4/10 Three realistic ways I can better meet this: o

o o

Start calling my friend Ann again and plan to go for a coffee with her more regularly. In fact, I’ll see if we can meet weekly at the same time every week. Start going to aerobics again (which will also meets other mind/body needs and increases serotonin levels). Start saying ‘hi’ to my neighbours – if they don’t speak to me, it doesn’t mean I can’t speak to them. Besides, I think it is important for people to keep a sense of local community. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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o

Get in touch with my local volunteering center and volunteer a halfday each week.

Note: This will require a bit of concentration, but the results will be worth it, perhaps even more than you can imagine. If you are feeling a bit tired, try listening to the last Relaxed Review again, or just do the first 2 or 3 needs and come back to it tomorrow.

Basic Human Needs Basic Need 1: The need to give and receive attention Fulfilled through: Friends, family, colleagues, pets, acquaintances Consequences of missing out: o Feelings of isolation o Less physical affection o Less practical support o Fewer creative opportunities o Less of a sense of meaning o Less feedback on one’s own ideas, behavior and aspirations o Increased focus on the self

Basic Need 2: The need to look after mind and body physical needs Fulfilled through: Sleep, rest, exercise, healthy diet, fresh air, physical touch, adequate health care Consequences of missing out: Stress, illness, depression, anxiety

Basic Need 3: Being connected to something greater than yourself Fulfilled through: Belonging to a community, an association, a club, a group of like-minded friends, even family; and just knowing there are other people ‘out there’ who feel and think the same as you do. Consequences of missing out: o o o

Feelings of isolation Missing sense of meaning Fewer creative problem-solving opportunities


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Basic Need 4: A sense of meaning - purpose and goals Fulfilled through: Having a strong sense that your plans for the future are worthwhile and that you can achieve them. Having beliefs and values that you hold dear and can stand up for. Having shared goals. Consequences of not getting need met: o o o o

Feelings of apathy Depression Despondency Loss of confidence and self-esteem due to lack of ‘proof’ that one is capable

Note: It is good practice to do every week something that you are good at, or can do without thinking. This could be a sport, writing, cooking, or working in the garden – anything as long as it reminds you of your abilities.

Basic Need5: Being ‘stretched’, but not ‘stressed’ Fulfilled through: Learning new skills. Feeling that you are making progress. Being creative, having fun and humor. Pushing yourself outside your ‘comfort zone’. Consequences of not getting need met: o o o o

Boredom Loss of energy Depression Loss of humor

Basic Need 6: The need for status Fulfilled through: Having a clear role professionally, within a relationship, community or family. Having a basis for positive self-esteem and the thinking styles to enable that. Consequences of not getting need met: o o o o

Loss of confidence Low self-esteem Lack of purpose and meaning Depression and despondency


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Basic Need 7: The need for intimacy and positive regard Fulfilled through: A loving partner, friend, relative and even a pet. Consequences of not getting need met: o o o o o

Loneliness Loss of confidence Feelings of isolation Lack of stimulation Feeling unloved

Note: You may be in a relationship, but this need will not be met if the relationship isn’t working very well. Depression also tends to suck the fun out of relationships, causing distance between partners. If this need is currently missing for you, it can seem impossible to ‘solve’. Don’t worry. This need will ‘fix itself’ as your other needs are met, as the depression lifts, and as you take positive steps to meet more people.

Basic Need 8: The need for a sense of control Fulfilled through: Organising finances, controlling emotions, being assertive in relationships, making decisions and acting upon them, learning practical skills, devising long-term goals. Consequences of missing out: Depressed people almost always see themselves as having no options, although their options may be perfectly apparent to someone who is not blinded by depression. The consequences of this are: o Anxiety o Feelings of helplessness o Loss of self esteem and confidence o Depression Note: The ability to relax with uncertainty also gives you a sense of control. Someone acting as a ‘control freak’ is demonstrating a lack of fulfilment of this need.

A Useful Exercise This should be a useful exercise. Communities where depression is rare tend to be organised in such a way as to meet these basic needs for their members.


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“This is just depressing – now you’re on my side, right?”

“Depresso, you’re missing the point! Knowledge is power! Now we know what we need, we can start making efforts to meet life’s basic emotional needs. And, besides, few people have all their needs met all the time! So we can relax, whatever the outcome of the exercise.” What you need to do is to simply start making allowances for the fulfilment of these needs in your life. After all, you are human. Over the coming weeks, just start to notice how you can nurture your basic needs and how much better you feel for it.

Important Point on Spreading Risk Don’t put all your eggs in one basket If you find that many of your needs are being fulfilled by one person or by a single job, you should strongly consider ‘spreading the load’. Too much pressure on one source puts you at risk of ignoring your own boundaries and personal requirements in favor of this ‘all providing source’. This one person or particular job simply becomes too important in your life, causing imbalance and inequality in the power balance. And, if something does go wrong with this source, your basic needs may be heavily impacted. Strive to meet your needs from different sources. Develop friendships away from work, get interested in projects in different areas of life, and focus on gaining satisfaction in different ways.

Session Two Summary In this session you have learned: o o o o

What your basic needs are Why these needs are important What happens when you miss out on these needs How you can best meet these needs


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Session Three Overcoming Anxiety

Session Three Overcoming Anxiety Overcoming Anxiety The aim of the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program is to get you feeling better as quickly as possible. Anxiety plays such a huge part in depression that it is absolutely essential to also take a look at ways you can lower your anxiety levels quickly. Depression is basically a state of exhaustion caused by too much arousal (remember the cycle of depression?) Later in the Program, we look in greater depth at problem-solving and your thinking style, but first you need a clear understanding of anxiety.

A watery metaphor – Seeing calmly, seeing clearly A wise man once sat by a pool of clear water. A storm blew in and the surface of the pool become rough. It rippled and sprayed and he saw that his own reflection was distorted. The storm passed and the water became calm. Now his reflection was smooth and looked much more like who he really was. And so it is, he thought, with the human mind. When calm, a person can see reality as it actually us, but a stormy or anxious mind distorts perception – making seeing clearly difficult. It is only when all is calm that the mind reflects reality accurately. So when you are depressed and anxious, although it may seem that things are hopeless, or there is no solution to your problems, you can’t trust your perception – this is basically Depresso talking. Before assessing your situation or your problems, you need to be calm.

The brain under stress Whenever you are emotionally aroused – anxious, angry, excited – your brain changes the way it operates. The more emotional you are, the more you tend to operate through the ‘limbic system’. This is a primitive part of your brain that evolved for the essential, and not very subtle purpose of keeping you alive.


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Therefore, being emotional makes you think more in ‘all-or-nothing’ terms. It is designed to help you make simple decisions very quickly. (Mostly the decision would have been “Should I stay here, or run away?”, which is an extremely simple thought process!) However, when you try to use this part of your brain to solve complex problems, it can get you into trouble. For complex problems rarely have only two potential solutions to choose between; yet, your emotional brain will still try to solve them in this way. For example: “She didn’t call back after I left a message. That must mean she is avoiding me. No, she won’t be avoiding me will she? She might be!” And so on. Little consideration for the multitude of other possibilities, such as: 1) A broken answering machine 2) Not having picked up messages 3) Not noticed a message has been left 4) Will call at a time they consider to be more suitable 5) Waiting until they feel in a good mood to call 6) Just too busy to remember 7) Forgot! 8) Lost your number 9) And so on… Here’s what you must remember: When you are highly emotional, you can’t trust your own thoughts or judgement unless it is an extremely simple choice, such as “Stay here, or run away”. Remembering this will actually help you calm down too, as it interrupts the ‘feedback cycle’ – the more you continue to try to solve the problem, the more emotionally aroused you will get at the seemingly futile task.

Panic and ‘background stress’ As we discovered above, any anxiety will make you less able to think clearly. Now it may be that you don’t suffer from intense bouts of high anxiety, or panic, but instead are struggling with an uncomfortable level of ‘background stress, which causes you to worry a lot or even imagine the worst. Remember: it’s the emotion that drives the worrying thoughts. Becoming deliberately relaxed on a day-to-day basis will help you feel happier, and lessen the worrying thoughts. But, we’ll deal with worry and destructive thinking patterns later. For now let’s look at worry, anxiety and panic.


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On being human There is an ancient analogy that tells of what it is to be human. It describes a coach, a coach driver and horses. o

The coach represents the total human being - you.

o

The horses describe the emotions that carry the coach forward. They supply the energy and vitality.

o

The horses are directed by the driver (who represents your calm thinking brain).

o

The horses provide essential energy and motivation, but they serve the coach driver - not the other way around.

What it means is that you should be the one directing your emotions, not your emotions controlling you. This has been a problem for all of man’s history, and so has passed into metaphor and story, as above.

The biology of emotion As you may know, an emotion involves a complex symphony of electrical activity, neurochemicals (brain chemicals) and hormones. Being anxious isn’t just a few thoughts, it is a whole body/mind phenomenon. Your nervous system has two main ‘branches’, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Simply put, the sympathetic nervous system gets you aroused and the parasympathetic system calms you down. The sympathetic nervous system increases your heart rate and diverts blood to the muscles ready for action. Suffering from ‘background anxiety’ means that your sympathetic nervous system is being used more than it needs to be. It gets over-used during depression. The parasympathetic nervous system is what we use to get you deeply relaxed. It is activated during deep sleep and during periods of relaxation (during your Relaxed Reviews). It promotes energy storage, digestion and healing of tissue in the body. Your parasympathetic system slows your heart rate and diverts blood away from the muscles towards other ‘system maintenance processes.’

The power of relaxation When you relax, your parasympathetic nervous system creates a wealth of beneficial effects:


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o o o o o o o

Breathing slows down Blood flows back to the digestive system Muscles relax Your brain starts to work differently Your creativity increases, allowing new perspectives Your immune system starts working better And much, much more…

So, when we talk about relaxation, it is no small thing. In fact, it is potentially your greatest weapon in the fight against depression. Using your Relaxed Reviews regularly will train your mind and body to relax, even if you find it difficult at first. Repetition is key.

Fear is our friend Fear is essential, whether intense or background. Without it, the human species would have died out millions of years ago. It enables us to: o o

Respond to an emergency with high levels of energy in order to escape a threat or fight fiercely. Predict potential dangers in the environment. This we call ‘worrying’ and, in its place, is a good thing (although it’s over-used by Depresso).

Anxiety is accompanied by bodily changes that prepare you to run or fight (the ‘fight or flight’ response). Heart rate and blood pressure rise as blood is pumped into the major muscles for heavy exercise. Blood flow is reduced to the head, gut, skin, hands and feet to minimise bleeding if you are injured. Sweat increases to lose heat in case of heavy exercise and there may be an urge to defecate or vomit - which would prevent predators from eating us! Fear is an extremely efficient survival response for situations that require a physical response.

An ancient response in a modern world The anxiety response is programmed deeply into us because our ancestors were surrounded by real physical threats. You had to be able to summon the energy to run from a lion, for example. And, you had to summon it quickly. Nowadays, most threats are abstract and not physical. A final mortgage demand, the wait for medical results or an upcoming job interview can all trigger this ancient response to what is not actually a ‘physical’ situation. Indeed, we tend to respond to these life situations as if they were physical threats.


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How harmful is anxiety? People experiencing extreme anxiety, or a ‘panic attack’ often think one of the following (especially the first time it happens). o o o o o o

“I’m going to die! I’m having a stroke/heart attack.” “I’m going crazy/insane.” “I’m going to humiliate myself/make a complete fool of myself.” “I might die from suffocation.” “I'm going to faint.” “I feel so weak I can’t move or I might fall down.”

These are all misconceptions, but feel very real, especially if you are not used to being hijacked by high anxiety. Occasional anxiety isn’t harmful; however, prolonged anxiety can be damaging to your health. Prolonged anxiety is often labelled ‘stress.’ We’ll come back to stress in a moment.

Destructive Anxiety How do you know whether your anxiety levels are normal or not? Well some signs of excessive anxiety are: o o o

Anxious feelings that are out of proportion to the real danger. Anxiety that interferes with your work, pleasure and relationships. Anxiety that interferes with effective problem-solving.

Most of us experience one or all of the above, at least occasionally. If these signs of destructive anxiety sound familiar and have become a regular feature, then experiencing more calmness in your life will prove to be very beneficial and will surely lift your mood on a day-to-day basis. As you may have noticed, we encourage deep relaxation as part of an effective depression-beating strategy. Hopefully, by now, you will understand exactly why; both in terms of how anxiety fuels depression and how relaxation counters anxiety (and therefore depression).

Panic attack: Scary words Think of the term: ‘Panic attack.’ Two of the scariest words in the English language – ‘panic’ and ‘attack’ combined and given to the most anxious members of the population! That is hardly helpful. Like many things, anxiety has become labelled as a pathological problem rather than a natural response. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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I know it will never catch on (cause it just ain’t catchy, right?), but I like to refer to ‘panic attacks’ as ‘inappropriate exercise responses.’ Why? Because that’s all they are! If you are on a running machine in the gym then the following feels perfectly natural: o o o o

Fast heart rate Excessive sweating Dry mouth Rapid ‘high in the chest’ breathing

But wait. Isn’t this exactly the same experience as a panic attack? Well yes, and no. There is one key difference. Context, or the situation you are in when these symptoms occur.

Location, location, location If you are on a bus, in your car or waiting at the checkout when this happens, it can feel very strange and pretty unpleasant because you are obviously actually exercising. Which is why, at this point, you feel like running away. Your mind/body is now in the perfect state for heavy exercise – and that’s what it expects you to do! But, of course, running away when you have a panic attack simply reinforces the impression that the situation is a dangerous one. Sitting it out and ignoring the anxiety as much as possible feeds back the message that your system doesn’t need to produce this response for you to stay safe. So, a panic attack is your body acting like it’s doing heavy exercise when it’s not.

“And why would someone’s body produce your ‘exercise response’ when not actually exercising?”

“Glad you asked that, Depresso! Your body can take the lead from your mind. If you perceive a situation as threatening, your body (as it is very efficient) will produce the exercise response in preparation for the activity you need to perform to best deal with the threat. So you sweat, breathe fast and pump blood in preparation for fleeing the situation, or fighting.”


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Curbing Panic Attacks Panic shouldn’t be cured! (It’s too useful a response – and anyway, we couldn’t ‘get rid of it’.) But panic attacks should.

A car alarm that is always going off shouldn’t be dismantled but it should be adjusted so it is not over-sensitive. Similarly, panic attacks are basically the alarm bell going off when there is no real emergency.

Freeze, flight or fight Although everyone talks about the ‘fight or flight’ response (including us in this program) it’s actually not just a question of flight or fight. There is always a ‘freeze response’ first. Imagine you are in your home and believe yourself to be in alone. You suddenly hear a noise. You don’t instantly go into fight or flight you ‘freeze’ first. You may stop moving and become statue like. Maybe only your eyes move. At that point you realise you’ve left a window open and the curtains are flapping in the breeze, so you allow yourself to relax again. But why did you freeze? Well, one answer could be that during the majority of our evolution as a species, the large predators who threatened us daily could only see movement. By standing still, you become ‘invisible’.

“Oh Yeah? How can going all weak help me fight a predator?”

“Thanks, Depresso. I’m coming to that. If you feel genuinely trapped in a situation then energy may actually shut down temporarily so you can remain still for a longer period.” If this happens, you may feel very weak rather than flooded with energy. This makes sense in survival terms. If you were trapped in the jaws of a predator you may ‘play dead’ (as many animals do). The predator is then more likely to let its guard down (thinking you are dead or helpless), giving you another chance to escape. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Freezing and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is characterised by nightmares, flashbacks (memories of the trauma as ‘if it is happening again’) and extreme terror around anything that resembles, even slightly, the original trauma or details surrounding it. This is important in the context of depression, because left untreated (or treated wrongly), the hyper-arousal caused by PTSD can lead to depression, (as illustrated by the Cycle of Depression diagram). The brain of someone with PTSD is constantly stressed, making this person think in ‘all-or-nothing’ terms, and effectively disabling them from operating normally. If, when panicking, you get ‘stuck’ in the freeze response (perhaps because of feeling trapped and therefore unable to go into fight or flight mode), you may later develop PTSD. This needs to be de-conditioned by a well-trained psychological practitioner. Note: Approaches where the original incident is ‘re-lived’, such as critical incident debriefing, have been shown to be ineffective, perhaps even damaging treatments for PTSD. The most effective treatments involve pairing relaxation with a calm and dissociated review of the traumatic incident, allowing the memory to be processed by the higher cortex, often stopping flashbacks and panic attacks after a single hour-long session. For more on this, see: www.rewindtechnique.com A version of this is available in our panic attack program.

Panic attacks and ‘faulty pattern matching’ If your brain has ‘learned’ that a situation is life-threatening (whether in reality it is or not) then it may start producing ‘inappropriate exercise responses’ in situations that resemble the original in any way. For example: A man who had been in a train crash was making a faulty pattern when he saw cars. Cars are enough like trains (they’re metal, carry people and make noise) for his instinctive brain to make a ‘sloppy match’ and produce the ‘fight or flight’ response. o

A woman who had been mugged by a man in a red jacket has a frightening ‘flashback’ every time she sees men wearing red.

o

A woman who had suffered brutal treatment in one relationship still feels frightened and angry with her newer, much gentler boyfriend.

o

A boy who was terrorized by bullies at school feels fear twenty years later on entering an adult education classroom. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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o

A woman who has sat feeling depressed in a certain house feels depressed just by going into the house. When the old associations are changed (by redecorating) she feels better.

All emotional life has to do with pattern matching. If you feel you are suffering in this way, you need to see someone who is trained in the ‘Rewind technique’ as they should be able to relieve the PTSD comfortably and rapidly. Click here to learn more about the Rewind technique.

Phobias Phobias are simply panic attacks triggered by specific objects. This is why people can literally be phobic of anything! For example, a young child puts a plastic button in their mouth. A concerned adult screams at the child to take out the button. The scream shocks the child and henceforth it feels scared of buttons. Alternatively, a child may learn a phobia from a parent. Seeing your mother respond with extreme fear to a spider for example, often teaches a young child to respond in the same way. A third way phobias can develop is when high background stress levels ‘spill over’ and create the panic response. For example, a woman who has always been comfortable flying finds that, due to work pressures, she’s more ‘stressed’ than normal. Hence, the added arousal caused by taking off in a plane ‘trips her already taught tripwire’ and causes a panic attack. In a survey of 1000 people via our panic attacks website, over 80% of these people had been going through higher-than-usual periods of stress when they had their first panic attack.

Stress Despite how they may appear from the outside, internally depressed people are always ‘stressed’ (their hormonal profile clearly shows this). This is why learning effective stress management is so important. We’ve seen that anxiety is excellent as a short-term emergency response. Now, let’s have a look at what happens in the body when a threat is perceived.


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The stressor First in the chain comes ‘the stressor’, which can be real or imagined. This, of course, is a key point. The imagination of “what will happen if I lose my job?” can be almost as terrifying as facing a mugger unless you have effective stress management techniques. Key point: Your instincts will respond to your imagination the same as to a real experience.

The first two minutes During the first couple of minutes after perceiving a threat, your body produces the hormone adrenaline, amongst others. This basically mobilises you to be ready for exercise and be hyper-alert, plus the other changes we have already discussed. As part of this response, long-term functions are de-prioritised. You may have noticed that when anxious your stomach feels strange and you may get a dry mouth. This is because to run away from a lion you don’t need to be eating a hamburger! So: o

Digestion and salivation get switched off.

o

Sex drive is switched off.

o

Immune function diminishes.

o

Growth hormone is turned off, as are many of the normal ‘housekeeping’ functions.

o

Higher logical thought is also put on hold; we don’t need to be too intellectual when fleeing an attack – it’s not the time to be thinking “Now just how dangerous is this?” – much better to err on the side of caution.

o

Blood sugar is made available and used up quickly, which can lead to ‘dips’ in energy. (Regular protein intake can help this as it digests more slowly and provides a more steady flow of energy to your system.)


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Short- vs. long-term response This is great for a short-term survival situation, but when the emergency is over, presumably after a successful fight or flight (usually lasting no more than a few minutes), little is lost as a result of this brief diversion of resources. If the perceived threat continues for longer than a couple of minutes, the adrenal glands produce something called cortisol, which is basically your long-term stress hormone.

Cortisol and depression It may seem strange to talk about depression as a state of high arousal as depressed people often look flat and inactive. However, blood samples show increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol. If you work to hard for too long without proper rest, your levels of cortisol rise. Eventually, this can cause ‘burn out’, which is when people typically take time off work for ‘stress.’

Stress can make you feel stupid If your anxiety goes on for weeks without a break, then the stress response becomes ‘maladaptive’. In other words, it is no longer an effective response as it is not curing the problem it was generated to solve. Because this leads to an ongoing inhibition of your ability to use your brain’s higher cortex, you can end up feeling stupid. But of course it is not ‘you’, it is the anxiety getting in the way of your normal abilities.

Stress is a physical condition So, if someone is suffering from ‘stress’ they are suffering on a physical, as well as a psychological, level. Their body is responding as if they are under constant physical threat and therefore inhibiting the proper functioning of much of the normal ‘housekeeping’ of the mind and body. This is why long-term stress can result in slowed healing from physical wounds etc.

“This is all very depressing! I thought you were supposed to be helping!”

“Well, of course you would say that! But information is power Depresso, and once a person can see that they are responding perfectly naturally, and they understand what is happening, they are in a much better position to get rid of you!” If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Quick strategies to manage anxiety and stress Happily, there are plenty of techniques you can learn to calm everything down and feel better fast. First, let’s examine a different way of looking at anxiety that should be encouraging (if Depresso can keep quiet for a second or two!)

Anxiety is fragile Someone emailed me recently asking why they felt calmer when they chewed gum. I wrote back replying that I guessed it was because the feedback they were giving their instincts indicated that there was no real emergency. If your body is really under threat, it will not have the ‘luxury’ of being able to eat. Chewing gum produces saliva therefore the feedback is that there is no real threat. This only worked because the stress level was relatively low (not life-threatening), but it worked for this guy nonetheless.

Toppling dominoes

Think of a row of dominoes. Line them all up and give them a push and what happens? They all topple. But, take just one out and they stop toppling. It’s the same with anxiety. But with anxiety, the dominoes are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Little or no saliva production All-or-nothing thinking Taught, hard muscles Rapid, panting breathing

If we take one of these away, the ‘panic topple’ stops. Your system calms down again. Which makes it nice and simple; to stop panic, we need to: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Encourage saliva production Ignore or question ‘all-or-nothing’ thoughts Relax physically Deliberately breathe in a relaxed way

So let’s take them one at a time… If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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1. Encourage saliva production This is fairly simple, you can: 1. Chew gum 2. Imagine your favourite food – something strongly flavoured such as curry (or lemons!)

2. Ignore or question ‘all-or-nothing’ thoughts This can take a little practice, but essentially what you are trying to do is ‘separate yourself’ from the catastrophic thoughts caused by anxiety. The easiest way to do this is to reassure yourself by saying: (in your head of course), “That is the anxiety talking.” Or, you could remember the story of the wise man and the pool earlier and say to yourself: “Because the water is not calm just now, I can’t see clearly. I will think again when I am calm.” This may sound simple (and it is), but it is also powerful. Anxiety has to be maintained and when you stop responding to anxiety-provoking thoughts, the anxiety subsides very quickly.

3. Relax a tense body Tense muscles are a major part of the overall anxiety picture, particularly around the neck and shoulders. Being ‘tuned-in’ to notice this and possessing the skills to deliberately relax gives additional feedback to your brain that reassures it there is nothing to fear. First though, you need to know how your body feels when it is properly relaxed, otherwise you won’t be able to tell the difference when it is tense. You can start this by noticing how your neck and shoulders feel after a Relaxed Review, then tensing them up deliberately, and relaxing them again. In addition, and this is something I highly recommend, you can take a class in Tai Chi, Yoga, or some other focusing and relaxing discipline. Because these classes typically run over 10 weeks or do, you gradually train yourself to notice your body more and have more control over your levels of physical tension. In addition, you will repeatedly experience the process of choosing what to focus your mind on – another key anxiety management skill.


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4. Breathing in a relaxed way Out of all the anxiety ‘dominoes’, this is the most important. Learning, practising and utilising when necessary, the correct breathing techniques can stop anxiety in its tracks. Not just ‘deep breathing’ Often, we find people have been misinformed when it comes to correct breathing techniques used to rid yourself of anxiety. The ‘deep breathing’ methods sometimes taught can actually contribute to hyperventilation, and increases arousal, rather than decreasing it. ‘Breathe Easy’ by Dr David Lewis gives all the research-based reasons why breathing is the quickest way to alter your own physical state.

“Oh, everyone knows about breathing – it’s hardly groundbreaking is it?”

No, you’re right Depresso. Everyone does it (even animals do it) but done correctly it is a powerful tool in our comprehensive anti-depression toolkit; which is just what you don’t want to hear, right?” Before we go on to learn about the right way to breathe in a relaxed way, let’s take a look at how and why this works.

Breathing in vs. breathing out When you breathe in quickly, you mobilise your sympathetic nervous system. And when you are anxious you tend to gulp air, which is your body flooding your bloodstream and muscles with oxygen in preparation for heavy exercise. If this oxygen is not used up (by exercise), you can start to feel as if you haven’t got enough oxygen, resulting in hyperventilation. Question: Does that sounds strange? Well, it should! How can having too much oxygen in your bloodstream make you feel as if you haven’t got enough? It’s because your body actually needs a certain amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in order to uptake oxygen effectively. That’s why people who hyperventilate are told to breathe into a paper bag – so they re-inhale their own carbon dioxide and restore the balance. Now, when you breathe out you mobilise the parasympathetic nervous system – the part that calms you down. So then it becomes a simple balancing act:


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Breathing in for longer than you breathe out = increased anxiety Breathing out for longer than you breathe in = decreased anxiety

The 7:11 Breathing Pattern From this scientifically validated principle has come a breathing method that is both simple and effective. It is called the ‘7:11’ technique, meaning that you breathe in for the count of 7, and out for the count of 11. (In fact the only reason these numbers are chosen is because it is easy to remember! Some people find this means they have to count too fast and so prefer to use 3:5, or something like that. The other key part (other than the timing) is that you should breathe ‘with your diagphragm’. That means that rather than using your chest muscles to breathe, you are using the muscles lower down. You can tell if you are doing it right by placing a hand on your stomach. As you breathe, your stomach should rise and fall. Now, Depresso is most likely to make you think “It’s not working, I have to try something else.” Not so! With this technique, you don’t need to try something else, you just keep doing it until you get the hang of it. It might be a mind-blowing experience the first, second, or even third time you try it; but, as we already know, nothing worthwhile comes without perseverance. So to 1. 2. 3. 4.

summarise: Breathe in to the count of 7 (or 3) Breathe out to the count of 11 (or 5) Breathe ‘from your stomach’ And if you feel like pausing between breaths, pause at the end of the ‘out breath’.


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I’d like you to commit, right now, to doing this for 2 minutes, twice a day, until you are confident you can use it whenever you need to. Admission: I don’t suffer from anxiety and I often use the 7:11 before giving a presentation or going in to an important meeting. I want my brain to be nice and calm for these situations.

It may take a few minutes, but the body will respond regardless of what your mind is thinking.

7:11 Breathing Exercise Purpose: To give you the skills and confidence to bring down anxiety levels whenever you need to Success Indicators: You will feel less at the mercy of anxiety and will automatically begin using the 7:11 breathing technique whenever you need to feel more relaxed.

So now, please go to your notebook and write under the heading ‘Relaxation Breathing’: “I am going to practise 7:11 breathing twice a day until I am confident I can relax myself with it whenever I need to.” And then write down at least 3 times during your day that you could do this. For example: 1. Lying in bed at night 2. Sitting on the toilet 3. While watching TV And when your body begins to relax, your thoughts become more relaxing too! Remember, Depresso is counting on you to give up easily – as soon as it feels a little difficult. He likes you to quit things and not try for long. So, ignore him for now and get used to doing this.


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And start now… sit down and close your eyes for a little while. Just become aware of your breathing down in your stomach. Do this now for two minutes... Hello again! (two minutes later I hope!) Good! You have started your practice, whether you feel more relaxed now or not, you have taken the first step towards becoming expert at controlling your own physiology. What’s more, it helps you control your thoughts, too!

“You’re not trying to get too positive on me, are you? I hate that!”

“Whoops! ‘I wouldn’t dare Depresso! The reason I say this is that thinking about something while relaxed makes that thing more relaxing! It’s called conditioning, or association. We can even begin to get comfortable with the idea of you! Imagine that, people no longer being afraid of you! What will you do?”

Relaxed worrying! Any time you feel a little tense or start to worry about something, just take a few moments to do 7/11 breathing. It brings arousal down very quickly.

Session Three Summary In this session you have learned about: o o o o o

What anxiety is and how it works How anxiety feeds negative thoughts and vice versa Why anxiety is linked to depression What panic attacks are 4 techniques to manage anxiety and panic

For more information on anxiety and panic visit: www.panic-attacks.co.uk


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Now, you have absorbed a lot of information during this section. It will be useful for you to revisit this section a few times until it really sticks. Listening to this section’s Relaxed Review now will also help that happen, plus it contains a training session for 7:11 breathing.

To download Relaxed Review Session Three, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Four Influence & Control

Session Four Influence & Control A Question of Influence You may remember from the Learning Path that we talked about ‘control’, or ‘influence’ and how important it is that you have a realistic perception of your amount of control when working to overcome depression. As we’ve seen, the need for a sense of control is an important basic need, which is why it can have such a strong effect on us when it becomes unbalanced. In this session, we are going to delve deeper into the issues of control and influence. It is well known that people who experience depressions often report feeling powerless over their situation, or feeling that there is little they can do to influence outcomes in life. As I’m sure you realise by now, Depresso seriously warps your perception and thinking abilities. This knowledge can enable you to be a little sceptical if you hear yourself saying: “This is hopeless”. That’s just Depresso talking. Memory point: Depression makes many people feel that they have little control in life, when in fact they do have influence. It’s just that Depresso keeps them looking in the wrong places for that control, and thinking in the wrong way.

Or too much control? The flip side of this coin, also common in depression, is the feeling that you should be controlling things that you can’t or shouldn’t control. You then waste vast amounts of energy trying to control the uncontrollable, or worrying about it when there’s nothing you can actually do! This session will give you tools and strategies to become more flexible (and therefore happier) around issues of control and influence in your life.

Flexible thinking People who are good at controlling Depresso tend to be flexible thinkers. They limit the damage of a setback by not over-generalising or ‘globalising’ (see next session). Instead, when something goes wrong, they see it as just one thing. They don’t feel ‘Now everything is ruined’! If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Flexible thinking is a skill that is learnable. It’s part of the way we put Depresso in his place.

When to influence Flexible thinkers don’t fall for the illusion that they have to have total control in a situation. They also don’t assume that they have no control. They are good at knowing the difference between things they can influence and things they can control. In fact, when you think about it, you don’t really control anything. Now, if that sounds bleak (and it will if Depresso is still lurking around), no worries. It certainly doesn’t have to be! You influence whether a light comes on when you press a light switch but you don’t ultimately control the outcome. If the fuse is blown, you can change the fuse, if the bulb is blown, you can change the bulb. If there is some other problem then you can call an electrician, but if there is a power cut, there’s nothing you can do to make the light go on (unless you own a generator!). But having influence is fine. Who needs total control anyway?

The ‘Control Freak’ While I don’t think that ‘control freak’ is a particularly helpful label to give someone, it is a common idea, so it’s worth looking at. Some people do try to control almost everything around them. They do this to help themselves feel less anxious. They tend to be perfectionists who, as we already know, are all-or-nothing thinkers (unless something is ‘perfect’ it is ‘ruined’). They often end up accidentally bullying other people (and themselves!) by demanding perfection. Of course, once they become more flexible they begin to experience that having real control means knowing what you can influence and when you can relax, without being in control. Ultimately, life is much more enjoyable that way!

Examples of the illusion of too much control o

Feeling guilty if someone else is in a bad mood (although you may be able to influence the moods of others you can not control them).

o

Feeling that you should be perfect. The perfect weight, appearance, intellect, morality etc. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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o

Feeling that physical illness/unfortunate life events are down to an individual’s attitude or behavior. The idea that ‘positive thinking’ is all you need.

o

Fear of making a ‘fool of oneself’ or being humiliated. ‘If I do something wrong then every one will laugh at me and think I am stupid!’ Again, this is all-or-nothing thinking. Nobody can totally control what others think or don’t think by doing or not doing something.

o

Feeling that someone else’s predicament or problem is completely your fault. Feeling the need to take or assume blame for someone else’s depression, addiction, mood etc.

o

Feeling that there is no such thing as bad luck, and that we should have total control over what happens to us.

o

Feeling that you can and should ‘make’ someone else act a certain way or change themselves.

Emotional consequences Of course, there are emotional consequences to going about life in this way. If you had been thinking in the above ways then you are more likely to have feelings of guilt, disappointment and anxiety. You are also likely to catastrophize (see session seven).

The illusion of too little control ‘Learned helplessness’ was a term coined by the psychologist Martin Seligman in the early 1970’s. He learned from his research that people (and animals) can learn to act helplessly after experiencing a lack of control. This feeling of an absence of control was then ‘carried over’ into new situations, so that they responded as if they were helpless when in fact there was plenty they could do to influence the new situation. Important learning: If you feel helpless to influence a situation, think a little harder, considering this: What do other people do to influence similar situations? How you could do the same? In fact, in the new environment, they do have influence but they don’t use it because they still feel as if they don’t have control, which stems from the learning from the first environment.


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For example, a child may grow up in a family in which she is not allowed to contribute to decision-making. Then, when she grows up, she may still feel, that their thoughts count for little – say in the workplace or relationships. She is applying learning from one area of life to an area where it doesn’t apply. Fortunately, this is often relatively easy to overcome. It simply takes recognition of this fact, and then some effort to start exerting influence. As with all new things, it feels uncomfortable at first, but once feedback comes that shows their opinion is valued, the pattern is broken.

Wings of freedom I sometimes use the analogy of the caged bird who hasn’t yet realised the cage door is now open. The bird can fly to freedom but is still behaving as if it is trapped.

Examples of the illusion of too little control o o o o o o o o o

o

Not being assertive. Not stating personal opinions. Being ‘put upon’ by others. Feeling that you can’t or shouldn’t say no. Over-blaming other people for one’s own problems. Feeling that everything in life – health, finances, choice of partner, is down to ‘fate.’ Feeling that one’s health, weight and personality are solely a case of genetics and cannot be influenced. Feeling that life has dealt you a poor hand and it’s not possible to ‘play a poor hand well.’ Feeling that passed a certain age there is a rapid and inevitable decline in mental and physical powers. Hoping others treat you well and are nice to you. Feeling that you have no influence over this at all. Day dreaming of life being better, fantasising of winning the lottery or being ‘swept off your feet’ by a beautiful stranger. Feeling that these things would ‘make everything right’ and these are the only chances (entirely down to luck) of things getting better. Fear of taking even reasonable risks: “How could I possibly…?”, and “What little old me do that…?”

Emotional consequences o o o o o

Loss of the basic human need for a realistic sense of control in life. Giving up, despondency, “What’s the use in trying?” Living life in fantasy – avoiding making and acting on practical plans and strategies. Sense of ‘life passing me by’. Boredom, under-stimulation and stagnation. Defeatism in sports, politics and love. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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o

o o

Anxiety - hoping desperately that other people and events are nice to you. Feeling that life happens to you and that you are a passive rather than an active agent. Loss of hope. Depression. Feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteem and confidence with the accompanying detrimental effects. For example, optimists tend to have better functioning immune systems, sleep better and report overall better health.

True Story A woman came to me complaining that her boyfriend constantly put her down and criticised her. She also said her boss hated her, constantly finding fault and bullying her. She said that there was nothing she could do about these situations (illusion of too little control). She said she hated her job but there was no hope of her doing anything else (illusion of too little control) and that she felt guilty that her boyfriend was obviously so grumpy and dissatisfied with her (illusion of too much control). She would avoid responding to the nitpicking of her partner or boss thinking to herself: “What’s the use? It wouldn’t make any difference anyway!” (illusion of too little control).

What we did We explored her perceptions of what she could and could not influence in life. We rehearsed what she could say to her partner and boss. We did this during deep relaxation so she could learn to feel calm when communicating assertively. She gave her boyfriend an ultimatum for stopping his critical behavior. His attitude began to change. She began to challenge his unfair criticisms every time they arose. She began to enjoy being an active agent in life and discovering her influence. She began to be more assertive and forthright with her boss who sensed the change in her. She found the confidence to re-train as a florist. She went part-time at work as she developed an Internet business selling flowers online. She felt she had discovered a new part of herself with power and influence that she never knew before. Result: A happier person with a healthier relationship and a better job! Lesson: How much influence you feel you have is important. You need to know what you can’t influence much (the weather, global economy, how much your kid actually enjoys academic work) and what you actually do have influence over (your communication with others, your anxiety levels, your income). If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Control Exercise Purpose: To help you identify if you have problems determining realistic levels of control or influence, and if you do, to be more flexible in your interpretations. Success Indicators: You may start exerting personal influence in situations where you previously felt helpless, or conversely you may ‘let things be’ at times when before you felt you should be able to affect the outcome. Generally, you should be more subtle in your assessment of how much you can control in any situation, and Depresso will get less of a chance to do his ‘all or nothing’ thinking. This will have the effect of greatly reducing your emotional arousal, such as anxiety or anger. Ok, now grab your pen, pencil, writing tool of whatever kind you prefer and prepare to write in your progress notebook.

This exercise is going to make you flex your thinking muscles and help you increase your ability to think creatively and realistically about control. It will take some concentration on your part (although it should be fun, too). So if you feel like you need it, go and listen to last session’s Relaxed Review again to give yourself a boost, then come back here and continue. So onto the exercise… For the list below, I want you to write the amount of control you feel you have from 1 to 10. 10 equals total control and 1 equals absolutely no control. Next to your score write why you have scored it this way. Control too low Then, I want you to get creative and flexible. If you mark something as lower than you would like, then write ‘Practical steps I can take to increase my sense of control’. Write down all the steps and strategies you can think of to increase your control over that item. For example if you score 1 for ‘Physical fitness’ you could write “I can take up walking/jogging/aerobics.” If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Control too high If you feel that you are exerting too high a sense of control (for example if you score 10 for ‘weather’!) then write ‘Creating more flexibility around my issues of control’. For example: “I am not all-powerful, bad weather is not entirely my fault... etc.”The list o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

The weather The mood of your partner or good friend The quality of your diet Your physical attractiveness Your height Your intelligence Your physical fitness Your health The quality of your work How much you enjoy your work How much you earn How happy people in your life are How long you live How creative you are How much sleep you get The quality of your work relationships Your emotional state

In a similar exercise that I did with a group of trainee therapists, we had everything from 0% to 100% control for ‘How long you live’ (the truth is clearly somewhere in the middle!) Once you have completed this, check out my thoughts on the Control Exercise.

Control Examples Exercise Purpose: To make the learnings from this section real. For this Program to be effective, the exercises must ‘come off the page’ and integrate with the way you do things in ‘real life’. This exercise will help that happen. Success Indicators: You will start noticing more how control issues pop up all over the place, and how much easier life is when you can quickly and accurately decide whether to exert influence or not. Over the next few days, I want you to write in your progress notebook examples of issues of control in your day-to-day life and how you used flexible thinking to make things more comfortable for you. This is an essential step as it integrates your new learning with ‘real life’ and begins to help you alter your thought processes deliberately. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Write down the heading: ‘Examples of issues of control in my life and how I flexibly negotiated them.’

Yes, do that now! At the end of the next three days, retrospectively look at your day and write down examples. Example Sue has a teenage daughter who comes home and tells her that she failed a math exam because she ‘couldn’t be bothered to revise hard enough.’ Sue instantly feels racked with guilt. How could she have let her daughter be so lazy? What kind of a mother was she in that she didn’t even know her daughter wasn’t working hard enough? Then Sue remembers her three-day assignment and starts to get flexible! “Wait a second!” she tells herself, “My daughter is seventeen. She has a mind and a will of her own. It’s not entirely my fault if she didn’t work hard enough. In fact, it’s mainly down to her. I tried to influence her by encouraging her to work hard enough but it’s ultimately down to her. I refuse to take full responsibility. And now I have something positive to write in my progress book for those nice people at Uncommon Knowledge!”

“Oh, come on! How do you expect a little thing like that to have any effect on me? I’m bigger than that, you know!”

“Heh, heh, I was just thinking we hadn’t heard from you in a while, Depresso. Again, you rear your ugly head with the damaging ‘all-ornothing’ thinking. You know perfectly well that we will get rid of you by building a Depresso-proof way of thinking, and a Depresso-proof life. That will come bit-by-bit with ongoing effort. The thing is, the same human attribute that allows you to succeed is going to get rid of you. People get into the habit of thinking the way you teach them to. Now, they are going to get into the habit of thinking differently, so it becomes easy. Plus, then they’ll be inoculated against you because they know what you sound like, and all the destructive tricks you use.” Now, as an end to this session, you can use the Relaxed Review to further absorb the information on control. As I said earlier, it’s good to relax deeply at least once a day.


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Session Four Summary In this session you’ve learned about: o o o

The problems of assuming too little control over situations The problems of assuming too much control How to make your perception of control more realistic

To download Relaxed Review Session Four, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Five Problem Solving

Session Five Problem Solving Problems and Depression - Making mountains out of molehills If you are feeling depressed, I would predict that you frequently feel overwhelmed by problems. This is something we consistently see to be true with our depressed clients. Because of the way depression works, it makes problems appear worse than they really are. (Remember ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking?) With depression, problems are either ‘easy’ or ‘impossible’. With depression, there is no in-between. And whenever the solution to a problem involves a few steps, depression will tend to make you throw your hands up in despair. (Can you see how this also ties in with exerting too little influence?) Depression gives us the sense that problems are insurmountable, mostly by creating so much confusion around them that they never get broken down into ‘do-able’ chunks, and so remain at the ‘overwhelming and huge’ stage. Remember that people used to build gigantic cathedrals by hand! When you get better at problem solving: o o o o o

Thinking about problems will not cause emotional arousal You will feel more in control You will have less anxiety You will dream less and have better sleep You will feel much happier during the daytime, because you will feel in control of problems, rather than them controlling you

Problem solving Depression can be seen as a signal to your self and to people around you. The signal or message basically states: “I am stuck in my life and don’t know where to go from here.” As we know, depression makes you see life’s difficulties as permanent, which leads to pessimism. Alternatively, developing good problem-solving skills makes us less depressed, dare I say happier, and more relaxed. So, whether it’s emotional problems or practical problems that plague you, you need to become good at solving them.


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The nature of problems There are two types of problems: o

Practical problems

o

Psychological problems

But, of course, practical problems and psychological problems overlap and influence one another. You need to be clear as to which of your problems are psychological and which are practical and therefore need practical solutions. Practical problems include: o o o o o

The car breaking down Money difficulties Physical difficulties such as illness Having more work than you can cope with Your kid behaving badly

Ways to overcome practical problems include: o o o o

Learning good problem solving approaches Learning new skills Knowing who and how to ask for help Overcoming psychological problems to make practical problems easier to solve

Examples of psychological problems are: o o o o o

Feeling very low even when practical problems have been solved Feeling guilty a lot of the time Constantly mulling over stuff from the unchangeable past Experiencing regular anxiety Being addicted to some substance or activity

We are going to call practical problems ‘external problems’ and psychological problems ‘internal problems’.


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Regardless of the nature of the problems in your life, one thing is sure. Being calm helps problem solving Or put differently: Your brain works better when you are calm, and makes problem solving much easier Or… When your brain is emotional, it makes you feel and think that problems are insurmountable I know, I know, I’m repeating myself. I don’t want to be a pain, but this is just so important. If you can bear with the uncertainty of not knowing how a problem will be solved, you will be able to react in a calmer state. Likewise, if you can accept the fact that you can look at a problem and have no idea how to solve it, yet come up with a solution later, you will be able to persevere without panicking. After all, we know that all sorts of people can deal with all kinds of things in life without becoming depressed. How do they do it? The answer is an easy one. They stay calm when presented with problems.

Listing Problems Exercise Purpose: Problems can only feel overwhelming when you fail to break them down into solvable steps. This exercise is the first step to gaining control over problems so Depresso can’t use them to add fuel to his fire. Success Indicators: Whenever you start thinking about a problem, instead of feeling anxious or overwhelmed, you will simply add it to your problem list. You will start to feel more in control of your life, and feel more optimistic about the possibility of solving the problems that have been plaguing you.

Ok, now in your notebook, write down two headings: External problems and Internal problems. Under each heading, write every problem you can think of in your life. If Depresso’s been getting to you recently, this should be easy as he makes you focus on problems. Depresso also makes you see things as problems when they don’t really need to be. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Do this now.

Now, write down how each problem is connected to a basic human need. For example, ‘financial problems’ can block the need for control. Shyness can block the need for attention and intimacy, etc. And remember to lock Depresso in another room while you do this. You need to be clear and calm in your mind. If you need a rest before doing this, listen to last’s session’s Relaxed Review. Once you have done this (and please give it a go yourself first), you might like to read through my ideas about the Listing Problems Exercise.

Internal problems Some difficulties we can’t help having. Many are worsened by the way we feel, think and behave. Depression can prevent people overcoming practical problems by: o o o o

Stopping them from taking necessary action because of loss of energy Distorting their perceptions so they believe the negativity of their imaginations Over-reacting or acting too soon because of an inability to relax with uncertainty Impairing their thought processes through over-emotionality and making problems seem worse than they are

Once you have learned how to overcome internal problems, the external problems of life will become much easier to handle. To illustrate how depression can blow problems out of proportion, consider the following true-life case study:

True Story – A Major Problem? A man I was treating for depression came in to see me one day. He said he had been feeling very low and at times suicidal over the past couple of days. I asked him why he thought this was and he said that he had been getting his spectacles free (through his sickness benefit), but then two days ago


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he had received a letter from the Government’s benefits agency telling him that he should have been paying for them himself. He was told he would have to pay back the money and that there may have to be legal proceedings. He panicked at this thought and Depresso began to play with his imagination. He imagined himself being prosecuted for fraud, going through the whole court case in his head, all the way up to the point where he ended up in prison! I asked him whether he had actually contacted the agency and he told me he hadn’t. So I asked him to phone them from my office, which he did. They told him that there was no problem, but that a small amount would be deducted from his benefits over the next few months. And so the problem resumed its rightful size and importance. Practical problems need practical solutions! If you ever feel yourself becoming emotional over a practical problem, you can take a moment to calm down (using 7:11 breathing if you like), safe in the knowledge that emotion won’t help you solve it! If this man had done this, he would have been able to think things like “This must happen to people all the time! If they were sent to jail, there would be a terrible outcry about it, so it can’t be as serious as I had feared”. Thinking style: As you will no doubt have recognised, his depression caused him to think in ‘all-or-nothing’ ways about the problem. Instead of breaking it down and thinking about the steps needed to tackle it, he imagined the possible outcomes, which caused his anxiety levels to rise and further impeded his ability to solve the problem at hand.

It’s vital to remember that Depression maintains faulty ways of perceiving reality. These have more to do with feeling than thinking. Remember, your knowledge is your power. Take a look at some of Depresso’s tricks and see if they look familiar.

“Hey! What are you trying to do to me!! Don’t give my secrets away!

“That is just what we are going to do, Depresso. When we understand how you operate, we take back the control.”


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Depresso’s Secrets: How ‘internal problems’ are created and maintained 1 - Pattern matching Trigger > Pattern match > Emotion > Thought Despite the fact that it may feel different, it is vital that you understand internal problems are actually caused by ‘faulty pattern matching.’ You respond emotionally to life events before you think. This is how past emotional learning can affect your present life. How it works Through experience, the instinctive parts of your brain learn to respond emotionally to specific triggers. This is called ‘pattern matching’ (remember this from the session on anxiety?). When a pattern in life matches up to a pre-learned pattern, an emotional response is produced. For example, if you learn through experience that a certain look means someone is angry with you, then a similar look from someone else, even though it may mean something different, can trigger the old emotional response. And, it may continue to do that until you ‘relearn’ a different way of responding to that look – either by experience, or by deliberately remembering just why this person is different at the times they give you that look. Another example would be a kid who witnesses their mum being terrified of birds. While they haven’t had the bad experience themselves, they still learn to match the ‘pattern’ of a bird with the pattern of fear. They may then grow up with a bird phobia, unless at some stage they ‘relearn’ how to respond to birds. Faster than thought Pattern matching occurs quicker than the speed of thought and outside your conscious awareness. That means that the first thing you are aware of is the feeling, or perhaps just the thoughts resulting from that feeling. (In fact, neuroscience has shown us that it can happen up to half a second before we have a conscious awareness of the thing we have ‘pattern matched’ to!) So for example, if you feel sad in a particular type of situation encountering a similar situation in future can produce the same emotion whether appropriate or not. This we call ‘faulty pattern matching’. It’s not that it is ‘wrong’, just not appropriate for you. This is how music can be so evocative. Your brain matches the pattern of the music to the emotional state you were in when you heard it last, especially if that emotional state was a strong one. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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This instinctive response is precisely why we have included the Relaxed Reviews as part of your program. They are designed to help you update your instinctive response to situations so you don’t respond automatically in negative ways. Illuminating a clear way forward This insight gives us a clear way forward. Since we know all thinking patterns are driven by emotional responses, we know that as part of our strategy to tackle depression, we must calm down emotion.

The way Depresso thinks Depression makes people think in very predictable ways. Once you fully understand what is required to maintain depression, you will quite easily be able to tackle it. Strong emotions lock our attention and produce extremes in thinking and perception. Take a few minutes now to read and absorb the following thinking styles and really think about how they work to keep you depressed.

“Oh right, so all depressed people are stupid then?”

“A neat cynic’s trick, Depresso. Taking an argument to the extreme so it looks silly is yet another example of your counter-productive all-ornothing thinking. If you read the paragraph again, you’ll see that’s not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that YOU are predictable.”

Overgeneralisations Overgeneralising is basically drawing an overly broad conclusion from a single piece of evidence, or taking something specific and making it general.


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Examples of overgeneralisation: Specific statement “Ann doesn’t like me!”

“I’ve had a bad day.”

“I failed my maths exam”

“She isn’t attracted to me”

Result

Overgeneralisation Result

Information that you and Ann are not going to be friends. You can act on this and look elsewhere for friendship. Information you can act on to give yourself a break – maybe a long hot bath or an exercise session.

“Nobody likes me!”

Anxiety – fear that you will ‘always be alone’. Paralysis of problem-solving activities.

“My whole life is terrible!”

Anxiety sending you on a mental search for all the other bad things that have happened to you, ever. Impacting your sleep quality that night and the way you feel the next day, further supporting the overgeneralisation. Feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. No reason to try anything new, or to persevere, when in fact most things require perseverance. Leading to depression from impact on basic needs.

Information that you can act on – either you didn’t study hard enough, you are not cut out for maths, or perhaps something else got in the way. Information that you can act on – you approach different women, or do it in a different way.

“I can’t do anything right-I’m completely stupid!”

“No women are attracted to me!”

Feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. Leading to failure to meet more potential partners and impacting on basic needs, leading to depression.


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More critical thinking required! It’s funny that depression tend make people highly critical of external things; medical evidence, for example: “What studies were performed to come to that conclusion?” or “It’s all drugs company hype”. But when it comes to their own overgeneralisations, they are accepted without question (and even argued for). Take this program, for example, if we had said “We have tried it out on 2 people and it worked”, you would have thought (quite correctly): “That’s not a reasonable test – that’s no proof it will help me.” But, as I said at the beginning, since we and our colleagues have used these techniques with thousands of depressed people, and frequently get feedback that it’s the only treatment that has made sense to them, then you would be right to have more confidence that it is worth investing your time in. Sweeping statements about yourself should almost never be accepted. After all, they are almost always inaccurate (even when positive!). You should make it a point to drive overgeneralisations from your brain! The next time you hear yourself making one, simply say “Now hold on a minute Depresso. There is simply not enough evidence to make that size of statement.”

Overgeneralisations keep the emotional temperature high No wonder Depresso loves to overgeneralise. The more you do it, the more emotionally aroused you become. The more emotionally aroused you become, the more likely you are to overgeneralise. It’s a viscious cycle perpetuated by damaging Depresso!

Overgeneralising

More emotion


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To counter overgeneralising and its effects 1) Examine the evidence for vailidity 2) Look for counter evidence Specific statement “Ann doesn’t like me!”

“I’ve had a bad day.” “I failed my maths exam”

“She isn’t attracted to me”

Examine the evidence “Hmm..That may or may not be true. She certainly seems to be avoiding me, but without hearing it from her, how can I be certain?” “True, there have been rough patches, but it wasn’t all bad.” Pretty clear-cut this one, but you can still watch out for unwarranted conclusions. “How do I know that? Is it just because she hasn’t phoned? Without speaking to her about it, how can I be sure?”

Counter-evidence “We have had good times together in the past. Maybe she’s going through a bad patch. I’ll ask her if anything is wrong, then at least I’ll know for sure.” “I did write that email, and the meal I made tonight was nice. Plus, that meeting actually went OK.”

“She did talk to me for a long time that night, and she hasn’t told me not to call.”

All-or-nothing thinking We have already talked about all-or-nothing thinking in the Learning Path, and I have mentioned it quite a bit during the program. It is so important though and there are still a few more things I want to say about it. All-or-nothing thinking (sometimes called black and white thinking) is typical of a depressive thinking style. Something is ‘completely’ this or ‘completely’ that. Words like ‘perfect’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘disaster’, ‘failure’, ‘dumb’ and ‘happy’ denote all-or-nothing thinking. As we have seen, thinking in all-or-nothing terms can cause problems and woefully distorts reality.


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It leads, for example, to the feeling that you have failed completely if just one thing you have done isn’t perfect. This happens because the shades of grey are missed out. On failing an exam, all-or-nothing thinking leads to: “I am completely useless at this!” rather than “I’m not as good as I could be at this.” Some more examples of all-or-nothing thinking: o

‘You never do anything nice for me!’

o

‘You always criticise me!’

o

‘I am terrible at making conversation with people!’

o

‘Nothing ever goes right for me!’

o

‘Everything is now ruined.’

To counter all-or-nothing thinking Instead of the ‘extremist’ words like always, never, terrible etc., try using relative terms. For example: o o o

‘Often’ or ‘frequently’ (or even better – be precise about exactly how often) rather than always ‘A pain in the neck’ rather than ‘a disaster’ ‘Rarely’ rather than never

Magnifying and minimising This refers to the tendency to overemphasise or underemphasise the meaning of an event or problem. If Depresso has his way, he will have us magnifying our weak points and minimising our strengths. Examples: o

“I did quite well in that exam (minimising success), but I’ll probably still fail in my over all mark” (maximising possible future failure).

o

“Yeah, I’m ok with people (minimising strengths), but terrible at organisation.” (maximising weaknesses).

o

“The holiday/vacation was ok (minimising positives), but it was all ruined by the uncomfortable journey home.” (Maximising negatives).


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o

“When I do my presentation, some of them may think it’s alright (minimising positives), but most of them will probably think it’s awful.”(maximising negatives)

To counter this: Again, it’s about not accepting the first thing Depresso feeds you. Examine whether there is external evidence for the interpretation. When little or no evidence is found for the conclusion, its impact is weakened. Thus, deliberately using your thinking brain at this point will help further. Note: The thought: “This is just like the last time it happened” is NOT evidence. Your memory of the ‘last time’ was based on inconclusive evidence, as well. Evidence means actual external proof – the type that would stand up in court!

“If there’s no evidence, it ain’t getting in my brain!”

Negative past focus – selective memory Have you noticed that when you are feeling depressed it is extremely difficult to recall good times in your life? And, even if you do, somehow depression manages to make them seem bad anyway? This is a classic aspect of depression, and one you need to be aware of.


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Countering negative past focus: If you are feeling depressed: 1. Avoid going over your history to ‘prove’ that things are bad. Remember to remind yourself that you can’t trust Depresso’s interpretations of things. 2. If there is something you want to think about, write it in your Notebook and think about it when you have more energy, and when you are feeling more upbeat. 3. Remind yourself (again and again) that when Depresso takes the shine off a memory, it is just him talking, not you! That way you can leave your good memories intact.

Rumination We covered rumination in the Learning Path. Basically, it is a process of thinking and reacting emotionally. (Rumination, in fact, is what cows do when they repeatedly chew the same piece of food!) Rumination is unproductive, tends to go around in circles and as you know, produces the over-dreaming which results in next-day exhaustion and ‘flatness’ (see the cycle of depression).

To counter rumination There are essentially two things you can do: 1. Think less 2. Think in a less emotionally arousing way


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1- How to think less a) Remind yourself that emotional rumination doesn’t work. Simply put, problems don’t get solved that way. b) Do something that makes it difficult to think. This may include exercise, or a task that requires a great deal your attention; even following a recipe will do it! Engage in satisfying behavior that allows you to harnesses a positive outward focus of attention, thereby removing the focus of attention from yourself.

Use the ‘STOP’ technique. Whenever you catch yourself ruminating (usually, the first thing you will notice is that you feel anxious), simply imagine a big red STOP sign in your mind and gently remind Depresso that there is no point going over and over things. It will take time, but this does work. It’s much like quietly but firmly reminding a child that tantrums don’t work. Eventually, they get it and so will you (not to mention Deepresso)! d) Relax regularly, and especially when you are feeling low. A relaxed brain simply doesn’t ruminate as much. c)

“Awww, but I LOVE picking at old wounds! Scratching and scratching at things until they bleed is just so satisfying!”

“Hmmm… Showing your true colours now Depresso, aren’t you? Taking pleasure in others’ suffering is not an attractive trait, you know?”

2 – How to think in a less emotionally arousing way a) This entire section focuses on how to think in a less emotionally arousing way. Learn about all these thinking styles and get into the habit of challenging them. b) Again, relax regularly. A relaxed brain is a less emotional brain, and as you know, your thinking brain can only operate subtly when your emotional brain is not running the show!


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Thought avoidance

You get the picture! Thought avoidance is when we fail to deal with a problem that only gets worse the longer we leave it. This usually happens simply because it is more comfortable at the time to ignore the problem. Of course, in the long run, the ongoing stress caused, plus the final outcome is usually much, much worse than having dealt with the problem as soon as it arose.

Countering thought avoidance a) Keep on doing this course! You will become better at problem solving, more realistic about taking practical steps to overcome problems, and more confident in your ability to do so. b) Learn from experience and when you next encounter this sort of problem, deal with it then and there. If you feel inclined to avoid it, take a moment to remember how painful it feels when you put important things off, and just how proud of yourself and satisfied you will feel that you dealt with it straight away. Even if it doesn’t work out perfectly!

Perfectionism – a perfect piece of imperfection Perfectionism is a type of rigid, inflexible ‘absolutist’ thinking. There’s just no two ways about it. Perfectionism is simplistic and damaging. It is characterised by thinking about your own performance or that of others in all-or-nothing terms. The results of this are: 1. You are constantly disappointed 2. You fail to extract emotional satisfaction from achievements 3. To fail to attempt new things because “you’ll never be good enough” 4. Others are afraid to do things around you because of your unattainable standards and harsh criticism This is not the way to happiness. People with ‘perfect’ figures, incomes, and partners still have their ups and downs. Getting your needs met through living in a balanced way is how you get Depresso to lose interest in you and look elsewhere to cause trouble! If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Perfectionism is an imperfect strategy because it bleaches the pleasure from life. It’s also inherently unrealistic. Rather “I did the very best I could given the difficult circumstances’ than: “I screwed up completely!”

Important Point on Expectations Many people have unrealistic expectations. We constantly see movie star lifestyles portrayed in the media. We all have greater expectations as to what we should own and how we should live. However, basic needs can be met at all kinds of levels. A trick of Depresso is to make you think things like: ‘I can only be happy and life will be perfect when I meet the right man/or woman!’ Or: ‘I’ll only be happy and life will be perfect when I’m earning--------amount!’ Or: ‘I’ll only be happy and everything will be perfect when I’ve had cosmetic surgery!’ This is called Utopianism. It’s the feeling that everything will be perfect in life once one magical thing has been gained or accomplished. Again, this is another form of all-or-nothing thinking.

How unrealistic expectations damage people Now, as you’ll know from the Learning Path, the rates of depression have risen hugely in modern societies. This may partly be because of what we all now expect from our lives. We have greater expectations for instant solutions to all problems. When questioned, many children say they want to be ‘celebrities’ when they grow up, but when asked for what reason, they don’t always know! TV, film, magazines and the influence of those around us bombard us with images and ideas of what we should have and be and how we should look. There is a feeling that somehow we are all ‘entitled’ to the good life. However, the commercials for beautiful products and lifestyles don’t indicate to young people the work, self discipline, sacrifice and perseverance that need to go into obtaining the so called finer things of life. The result can be a feeling that we have been ‘short-changed’ by life or that the inclusion of one desired thing in life will cure all ones problems.


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Wants versus needs We all have more, while feeling that we have less. For example, statistics show that people in the U.S. previously desired 20% more in income. Since the 1980’s most people surveyed express a want up to three times more than this. And, maybe they feel they should have it, regardless of effort and perseverance. This is a little like the illusion that everyone is just having such a wonderful time on New Years Eve except you!

Examples of unrealistic ideas. ‘When I meet my perfect partner, my life will be perfect forever!’ ‘Once I buy the perfect self-help product then, my life will be perfect forever, regardless of how much effort I put into the program!’ ‘If I could only win the lottery then my life will be perfect!’

Absolute thinking /catastrophizing When people catastrophize, they imagine the very worst possible scenario and this misuse of their imagination makes them feel bad. Rather than imagining things that would be ‘slightly inconvenient’ or a ‘bit of a drawback’ they imagine future things being bad to the maximum extreme. Catastrophizing also has to do with not relaxing with uncertainty. It’s easier to assume the worst than to feel: ‘Hey I don’t know the meaning of this so I’ll just have to wait and see if its meaning becomes clearer.’ Examples: ‘Sheila hasn’t called me back!’ I knew it - she hates me!’ (catastrophizing) ‘Sheila hasn’t called me back!’ Maybe she hasn’t picked-up her messages or she’s too busy!’ (Relaxing with uncertainty) ‘Peter is late coming home from work. He must have been killed in a crash!’ (Catastrophizing) ‘Peter is late coming home from work. I wonder why he’s late!’ (Relaxing with uncertainty) ‘I bet I failed that exam!’ (Catastrophizing) ‘I’ll have to just wait and see how I did in my exam!’ (Relaxing with uncertainty) If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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We’ll look more at the way the imagination can be misused as we go through the program. All of these ways of perceiving and thinking really depend on all-ornothing thinking. So what’s wrong with all-or-nothing thinking? Nothing is wrong with this way of thinking, in context. Certainly, it’s fine for newspaper headlines. Seriously, there are times in life when we need to make snap decisions and be definite and extremely sure of one fixed viewpoint. However, in the realm of the emotions, all-or-nothing thinking can cause problems. The more emotionally upset we are the more ‘either/or’ we are. This is because all-or-nothing thinking is aligned to the fight or flight response within the emotional centres of the brain. Likewise, if we think in all-or-nothing terms we are more likely to feel bad. So all-or-nothing thinking manifests as: • • •

Utopianism (see above) Catastrophization (making up bad stuff about the future, the worst possible scenario then believing your imagination) Perfectionism characterised by unrealistically high standards for yourself and others.

“Wait a second, wait a second. Just what is wrong with having high standards may I ask?”

“Thank you, Depresso, for demonstrating that absolute ideas of ‘wrong and right’ can be somewhat rigid!” “In answer to your question, there is nothing wrong with having high standards. In fact, that’s great. However, if we expect ourselves to do everything perfectly, we always get disappointed. We never benefit from the feel good factor of being pleased with a job well done. Because, let’s face it, everything could be done better. You could sip your tea more elegantly or walk into a room with more panache!” As we have shown, all-or-nothing thinkers are more likely to become depressed. This makes learning how to think more flexibly a must if you want to defeat depression once and for all.


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Flexible Thinking Exercise Purpose: To enable you to spot ‘all or nothing’ thoughts quickly, before they get a ‘foothold’ and to give you practice in forming more flexible interpretations. Success Indicators: You will begin to automatically reject ‘all or nothing’ thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones. You will notice how this enables you to think about potentially stressful topics much more calmly. Consider the following and write down your thoughts in your progress book. As well as answering ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, jot down your thoughts on each statement. For example: “Can an intelligent person still do stupid things sometimes?” Answer: Yes. Everyone makes mistakes. It would be inhuman not to, and sometimes something that looks stupid at the time, may not be so stupid later. Besides, who am I to say that someone else is stupid just because they don’t fit with my idea of intelligence?

1. Can an intelligent person still do stupid things sometimes? 2. Can I fail at things, but still gain something from trying? 3. Can I occasionally scream at my kids, but still generally be a good parent? 4. Can partners have intense rows sometimes, but still love one another very much? 5. Is there more than one kind of intelligence? 6. Is it possible to be a total failure? 7. Can my child sometimes disobey me and still be a basically good kid? 8. Can a person let me down and be forgiven? 9. Can I do a bad thing, but still be a good person? 10. Can something that is generally seen as a bad thing to do, on occasion be the right thing to do? Once you have completed this, see how it compares to my answers to the Flexible Thinking Exercise. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Session Five Summary In this session, you’ve learned how to think in a non-depressive way. We’ve talked about the importance of balance and non-extremism in thinking, and how to structure your thinking to avoid creating unnecessary emotional arousal.

To download Relaxed Review Session Five, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Six Explanatory Styles

Session Six Explanatory Styles What you tell yourself about your world During the Learning Path, we looked at ‘explanatory styles’ – basically a breakdown of how you explain the things that happen to yourself. You will see how this ties in with the last session on depressive thinking styles, and how it gives you another powerful tool to get rid of depression and keep it away.

Maintaining depression Despite the feeling that depression is something that happens ‘to us’, the fact is that depression has to be maintained. The clever thing about Depresso is that he makes you continue ways of thinking, feeling and behavior that can both produce and maintain depression. These may include self-destructive choices such as abusing food, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, lack of exercise etc. These choices may provide comfort in the short term but the consequences over longer periods of time tend to promote depression (more on this later). For now, we are going to focus on ‘explanatory styles.’ You should be familiar with these from the Learning Path, but just a quick recap here.

“Oh, no! this looks complicated!!”

“That’s what you rely on, Depresso, people giving up easily. Well, we’re well aware of your techniques by now. Get back in your box!”

The meaning of things “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare As old Bill so wisely said, until we put our own meanings onto events, they are just events. It is up to us to add the vital ingredient: explanation.


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Consider the following…

A cute little alien is whizzing through space in its cute little space rocket, happily buzzing along, admiring the beauty of the stars. Then, without warning, it drops dead. Nobody knows about it. Nothing is done. It just happens. A couple of days later, along comes a bunch of humans in their big human space rocket…

They notice the baby rocket drifting aimlessly through space and so decide to investigate. They grab the alien’s ship in their tractor beam and pull it aboard. When they get the ship open, they find the cute little alien – dead. Oh, how sad! What a terrible shame! (And all of a sudden, the event has meaning! Human beings will tend to do that to a situation!) Such is the sadness aboard the ship that they decide to have a proper funeral in a day’s time. While the funeral is being prepared, a party explores the alien craft to see if they can discover anything else about this lovely little creature. And when searching the ship’s computer, they discover something truly terrible. The alien had been on its way to Earth to deposit a virus that would have wiped out the entire planet within a month!!! In the blink of an eye, love among the human crew turns to disgust, thoughts of cuteness to realizations of deception, interest turns to repulsion and the alien’s body is discarded into outer space along with its ship.


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So we have gone from: No meaning => Meaning (Oh, what a shame!) => Different meaning (How lucky!) This just shows how the explanations, or interpretations we make are unique to us. We all interpret occurrences in different ways, be it a divorce, marriage, lottery win, promotion at work, whatever. However, Depresso is less unique than most in the way he explains things to us. In fact, he is very predictable, indeed. When agitated and emotional, we don’t tend to interpret reality accurately, which we all know from seeing others upset. The important thing is to be able to transfer that knowledge to ourselves and to be able to say: “I am not calm right now, so my take on things is likely to be ‘off the mark’.

Back to the calm pool Just to reiterate, we encourage so much relaxation for two main reasons: 1. Depression is exhausting, so you need to relax to help your body recover. 2. As we have just seen, when you are calm, you ‘see’ reality more accurately.

Remember back to the wise man and his pool of water. Imagine that pool. If there is a strong wind blowing, the surface of the water will be choppy and rough. Any reflection from the agitated surface of the pool will be a ragged, rough and inaccurate reflection of the reality around the pool. Once the wind has passed, the water becomes calmer and starts to reflect reality more accurately. If you feel anxious, you are more likely to interpret neutral things in life as being threatening or ‘unsafe.’ Learn to make relaxation part of your ongoing lifestyle. In addition to helping the completion of your basic needs, it will improve other areas of your life greatly. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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“Wait a minute! I’m not a pessimist! I’m a realist!”

“Oh, come on, Depresso, you can be more original than that! Pessimists always think themselves to be realists! How you view reality partly makes things how they are. How can ‘everything be ruined’ just because one thing goes wrong?”

Explanatory Styles Explained Here’s a quick recap on explanatory styles before we go any further: When something happens, you can give it an explanation that is: 1) Internal or External – Internal if you were responsible for making it happen; External if something or someone else caused it 2) Global or Specific – Global if it affects a large proportion, or all of your life; Specific if it is limited to one particular area 3) Stable or Unstable – Stable if the effects are going to last ‘forever’ (or a long time); Unstable if the situation could change quickly

Depressing explanations As I said, Depresso is incredibly predictable when it comes to how he interprets events. See how many of these you recognise:

o o

o o

o

o

Internal / External Internal for negative events – a bad thing happens, you blame it on yourself External for positives – a good thing happens, you assign responsibility for making it happen outside of yourself (‘just lucky’ etc) Global / Specific Global for negatives – a bad thing happens, you say ‘everything is ruined’ Specific for positives – a good thing happens, you say ‘I may have a new job, but the rest of my life is awful’ Stable / Unstable Stable for negatives – a bad thing happens, you assume the effects are going to last forever (‘We broke up, I’ll never have another relationship’) Unstable for positives – a good thing happens, you say ‘it’ll never last’

Let’s have a closer look at each of these…


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How to think depressingly In each of the three sections, I am going to show you Depresso’s way of thinking about things. The aim of this is to help you get good at spotting when he is doing your thinking for you. This will enable you to deliberately take control over your own thought processes.

Internal vs. external This means taking more than your fair share of responsibility when things go wrong (and remember, if you use a perfectionist approach, nothing seems to work out right – which puts you in a pretty tricky position!). Examples of internal explanations for negatives (or blaming yourself for bad things) o o o o o

“That person is upset - I must have upset them in some way!” “Everything is ruined and it’s my fault!” “Bad things always happen to me!” “The relationship ended and it’s my entire fault!” “I was made redundant because I’m basically a failure!”

In the examples above, the self is blamed exclusively. Not surprisingly, this will make you feel hopeless and depressed! This style is often characterised by feelings of excessive guilt and low self-esteem. Examples of external explanations for positives (or ‘blaming’ others for good things) o o o o o

“The party I organised went well because of what other people did!” “I got the job. They must have been desperate to hire anyone.” “The relationship is going well because my partner is so caring!” “It was fortunate that my speech seemed to go well.” “That person seems to be in a good mood. They must be pleased about something else (rather than enjoying my company).’’

In these examples, the causes for positive events are seen as having nothing to do with the self. This causes you to miss golden opportunities for improving your own opinion of yourself (your self-esteem), and gaining emotional satisfaction, which we all need!


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Just imagine what would happen to Depresso if he internalised good things and externalised bad things!

Poof! No more Depresso!

The other side of the coin: The ‘Blamer’ or victim mentality Blaming oneself is a common feature of depression. However, sometimes depression makes people feel that all their misfortunes are caused by outside factors, or other people. This is depressing because it makes you feel a lack of influence over your life. This results in the blamer feeling helpless to change things themselves. And, as we know, helplessness is one of Depresso’s favourite tricks! When you are calmer day-to-day, you tend to see more accurately the extent of your own and other’s responsibilities – what you can and can’t influence.

All or Nothing Thinking for Special Occasions Only! So, as we know, ‘all-or-nothing thinking’ is for emergencies, not everyday life. Therefore, we are not saying you should blame others for everything that goes wrong, or take total responsibility for everything that goes right. (That would be ‘all-or-nothing’, right?) Rather, I am saying: Don’t overly blame yourself; look to outside factors also, but be responsible and acknowledge the part you play in events. This may already be easy for you (although if Depresso is hanging around, I doubt it), but I have seen too many depressed people who have serious difficulty appreciating the many subtle influences involved in the things that happen to them. You must get good at understanding that you can play a part in something without it being all your fault. And, you must get better at acknowledging the unique contributions you make, however small. And you must start doing it NOW! If you think I am being over the top, think again. Simply put, I want Depresso to leave you alone, and this is one way to send him packing. The important thing is that you do it all the time and refuse to accept depressing explanations from Depresso.


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Each time you acknowledge that you have contributed to something, you push Depresso a little further away, and as my granny used to say: “Many a mickle maks a muckle” Or for those of you unfamiliar with ‘Old Scots’… “Lots of little bits add up to a big bit!” Personally I prefer the first one ;-) Seriously though, beating depression is not about making a few great big changes to how you think about yourself, it is about making lots of little ones that change the overall picture so radically it becomes impossible for Depresso to creep back in. Note: If you are not sure whether you blame yourself too much, or fail to take credit where credit is due, why not ask a friend? Usually, it is only too apparent to those around you when you do this sort of thing. Remember, outside evidence is the best way to double-check your take on things. And, it is rarely anywhere near as painful to hear as you might imagine. Usually, it is a great relief.

Global vs. specific Depresso likes to over-generalise negatives. So, if one thing goes wrong, then everything is ruined! If the food wasn’t great on vacation, then the whole vacation was ruined. Hardly a strategy for feeling good! Examples of global explanations for negatives (or making bad things big) o o o o o

“If I can’t go to university, my whole life is ruined!” “Everything goes wrong for me!” “Nobody likes me!” “Why am I useless at everything?” “All my friends’ lives are perfect.”

It is important to realise that because Depresso is ‘working from the inside’, even when he is making such huge over-generalisations for you, it feels as if your own perception of situations is balanced and accurate. These sections will help you become aware of these inaccurate thoughts and question them.


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Examples of specific explanations for positives (or making good things small) Minimising the positives is the basis of pessimism… o o o o o

“Yeah, the hotel was ok, but the rest of the vacation was a disaster!” “My job’s ok at the moment, but the rest of my life stinks!” “The only thing that’s good in my life is my marriage!” “I’ve only ever been happy once in my life!” “All I’ve got in life are my pets!”

Just imagine what would happen if Depresso globalized the positives and specified the negatives in life!

Byeeee…!

Stable vs. unstable Depresso makes you feel that bad things are going to be permanent, but good things are temporary and unstable. This is really ‘the structure of hopelessness’ – or ‘how to make it seem that things will never get better’. Examples of stable explanations for negatives (or making bad things last a long time) o o o o o o o

“I’ll never find someone I can be happy with!” “Everything goes wrong all the time!” “Nothing has ever gone right for me!” “I’ll never feel that way again.” “I always screw everything up!” “I’m just a born loser!” “That’s just the type of person I am!”

So, as we can see, these negative explanations are fixed. The inference is that they are stable (permanent) and therefore unchangeable. However, as we’ll see next, Depresso does the complete opposite with positives making them unstable. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Examples of unstable explanations for positives (or making good things last a short time) o o o o

o

“Yeah my relationship is wonderful but what worries me is that it’s just too good to last”’ “I’m just waiting for something to go wrong!” “Yes things are better at the moment!” “They seem to like me at work but when they discover that I’m not as good as they thought I’ll probably lose their respect... It’s just a question of time!” “I’m just waiting for the next disaster!”

Just imagine if Depresso explained negative things as temporary and changeable and positive things as stable and fixed! You know what’s coming next…

Poof! He’s gone!

“Hey! What are you trying to do to me?’’

“I thought that would be clear by now, no?” So, that is the end of our section on explanatory styles. It may seem a little complicated at first, but with a couple of readings, it quickly becomes clear, and it is a terrific tool in doing away with depression. This session’s Relaxed Review will help ‘embed’ this important knowledge further.

Choosing between a negative and positive bias In order for Depresso to work his little tricks reality has to be ‘bent’ in very specific ways to fit in with Depresso’s miserable views on life. This means that good things have to be bent out of shape to fit with Depresso. This we call negative reframing and here is a list of examples:


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Warning: If you feel depressed just now, you may find yourself inwardly agreeing with Depresso’s re-frames. If you do, have a laugh at him! •

Fact “I’ve just passed my driving test!” Depresso: ‘Now you’ll have to pay road tax!”

•

Fact: “My son is so confident!” Depresso: “Yes cocky little so-and-so isn’t he!”

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Fact: “I’ve won the lottery!” Depresso: “Oh now you’ll never know who your real friends are!”

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Fact: “I’m good at sports!” Depresso: “Yes all muscle no brains!”

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Fact: “I’ve just retired!” Depresso: “Mmm waiting to die!”

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Fact: “I’m going on vacation/holiday!” Depresso: “Yes there’s been a spate of burglaries lately!”

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Fact: “I feel happier!” Depresso: “You’re in denial!”

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Fact: “You look nice!” Depresso: “What do you want?”

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Fact: “I’ve found peace at last!” Depresso: “Ah you’re going senile!”

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Fact: “I’m getting married!” Depresso: “Am I invited to the divorce?”

As we have seen, if you use a negative bias (pessimism) you will tend to see the bad things in life as your fault, as affecting a lot of your life and as unchangeable. If you use a positive bias (optimism) you are more likely to see negatives as due to outside factors (although taking fair responsibility), as localised and as time limited. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Is one way any more accurate than the other? Well, people using a negative bias tend to: o o o o

Feel powerless where they in fact do have power Underestimate and undervalue positive occurrences Over-blame themselves when things go wrong Feel that things are too good to last, but bad enough to continue forever!

This is clearly not a balanced view of reality. People using a positive bias tend to: o o o o

See negative events as setbacks rather than disasters Blame them partly on outside factors Focus on the unaffected areas of their life Feel that things will get better soon!

Again, it could be argued that this is not a balanced view of reality. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT! Sorry to shout, but this is so important. A positive bias is better than a negative one for one reason: it works better for life! Let’s put that in a note box so it’s not ignorable: Note: A positive bias is better than a negative one for one reason: it works better for life! And here’s why…

You get what you focus on What do we mean when we say someone is happy? Well, one way of defining it would be to say that they deal with whatever life throws at them without becoming despondent or depressed. Due to the way they explain things to themselves, optimists tend to keep going and refuse to give up, instead developing more friendships and so gathering more sources of help and support. They also are more likely to make use of the opportunities that come their way! Which means that their optimistic view of life is often further backed by their experience.


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Pessimists tend to give up sooner. They also blame circumstances that they feel are unchangeable (such as their genes, family, job, etc.), as well as blaming themselves. They may also ignore opportunities or see them as threats. Which means that their pessimistic view of life is often backed-up by their experience!

“Oh no I’ve been invited to the ball, but I’ll probably get really nervous and make a fool of myself and no one will dance with me.’’

‘Exactly!’

The effect on negative rumination The more you explain things negatively, the worse you feel. The worse you feel, the more pessimistic your explanatory style tends to be and the more you worry. And, as you know, the more you worry, the more you dream at night and the more depressed you feel. This is why optimism is not only good for your work and social life, but also great for your physical health!

Optimism can be learned “I don’t believe that. You are either born an optimist or you are not. It’s as simple as that!’!

“Woah, Depress! Wait a second! That is one massive assumption. Fortunately, there has been much research in this area, so we don’t have to listen to your opinions. Instead, let’s look at where explanatory style comes from.”

The origins of pessimism According to research conducted by eminent psychologist Martin Seligman, around 25% of pessimism may be genetically inherited from parents. But, even this genetic pessimism can be altered through the right training!


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The rest is learned from parents, teachers and other adults, or from experiences in which you felt hopeless and then globalized this learning to other situations. This goes for optimism, as well. An optimistic child may have a small genetic advantage, but will also have learned positive explanatory styles from adults, their lives, and from situations they felt they mastered. If you hear people around you when you are growing up using a certain explanatory style, you are likely to learn it and do it yourself. And, what can be learned can also be unlearned!

“Oh, I can’t take all this in. It’s too complicated. I might as well give up.”

“You’re right that I’m asking for a little concentration here, Depresso, but you’d just love it if we gave up right now, wouldn’t you? I mean, who knows what depression-busting ideas lie just around the corner?” Certainly, depression is exhausting and it has been a longish session. You can relax now to a download designed to promote flexible viewpoints of reality and to help you embed your knowledge about explanatory styles.

Session Six Summary In this session, we talked about explanatory styles: o Internal / External (my fault / not my fault) o Global / Specific (all of life / just this bit) o Stable / Unstable (just for now / forever) We looked at how these styles combine to create optimism or pessimism and why optimism is simply more useful and effective for life.

To download Relaxed Review Session Six, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Session Seven Flexible Thinking

Session Seven Flexible Thinking Generating other possible explanations Now, the last section on explanatory styles took a bit of explaining! The most important thing, as with all of this Program, is that you actually know what to do with what you have read. So, this session is dedicated to making that knowledge more ‘hands-on’ – giving you things to do so you can tackle Depresso when he starts explaining the world to you in a depressing way As we saw with our not-so-friendly alien, when something happens, it doesn’t have meaning until we give it meaning. The meaning we give it is what determines how we feel about the event. People who get depressed, angry and anxious often have two things in common:

1st thing They assume that their interpretation is correct before collecting enough evidence.

2nd thing They don’t relax with not knowing. (Or, in other words, they jump to conclusions.) Here’s how it usually goes: 1) Something happens, the meaning of which is unclear (perhaps someone is offhand with you on the phone) 2) You explain to yourself the reason for that (they don’t like me) 3) You assume you are right 4) You react emotionally (I am not likeable – anxiety / how dare they? - anger) At this point, the most valuable skill is to be able to relax with this ‘meaning vacuum’. That is, not to feel you have to know right now why the person was offhand. When you don’t know the meaning of something, you can only guess the meaning, or wait until more evidence emerges. And, basing an emotional reaction on a guess is a dangerous thing to do! Anxious or depressed people often assume negatives on the basis of too little evidence.


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Alternative Explanations Exercise Purpose: A huge part of getting out of depression is lowering your general emotional arousal levels. This exercise will help you practice generating multiple explanations for events, which when applied will stop ‘all or nothing’ interpretations making you anxious or angry. Success Indicators: You will notice that you no longer accept Depresso’s extremist views without question. You will be able to say “Wait a minute, that’s not necessarily true” and go on to generate multiple possible explanations for events. The result of this will be that you are calmer more of the time. Look at the following scenarios. The characters jump to negative conclusions based on too little evidence. In your progress notebook, write alternative explanations for each – either neutral or positive ones.

Example Twelve-year-old James phoned his friend Mike and left a message asking him if he wanted to go and hang out at the skate park. It’s been three hours and Mike hasn’t phoned back. James assumes: “Oh I knew it. Mike hasn’t phoned me back. I bet he doesn’t really like me! Maybe I upset him or maybe he’s just mad at me! Why am I so unpopular?” Alternative non-depressive explanations •

Maybe Mike is out and hasn’t picked up his messages yet

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Maybe Mike’s message machine isn’t working probably

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Maybe Mike is in, but just hasn’t picked up his messages

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Maybe Mike did try to phone back when I was on the phone to granddad


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Maybe Mike just doesn’t feel like going out with anyone today

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Maybe I could just wait and see if any evidence emerges to suggest that Mike doesn’t like me and relax until then

Now you do it!

Scenario One Sue thought she was doing fine at work, but her boss Joan has just told her that she wants to see Sue in her office on Monday morning. No reason was given. Sue assumes: “Oh my God! I knew things were going too well! Maybe Joan doesn’t like my work! What if she’s going to give me a warning! Maybe she even wants to fire me for something! I’m going to have an awful weekend now!” Write between three and six alternative non-depressive explanations into your progress book and how Sue could have coped with it.

Scenario two Fifteen-year-old Kay has just heard from another friend that her best friend Judy is throwing a party. Kay hasn’t received an invite: Kay assumes: “I can’t believe Judy hasn’t invited me! I thought she was my best friend. She can’t like me any more! Maybe it was what I said to her about Mary, or maybe she thinks I’m arrogant or something!” Write between three and six alternative non-depressive explanations for why Kay may not have received an invitation, and what she could have done to sort the situation out.

Scenario three James walks into the school canteen and sees his friends Rick and John whispering and gigging as he enters. He feels they are laughing at him. They ask him to join them, but he refuses. At break time, they again ask him to join them. James refuses again and spends the time alone feeling miserable.


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James assumes: “Rick and John don’t like me. They are making fun of me! No one ever likes me!” Write between three and six alternative non-depressive explanations for the situation into your progress book and what James could have done differently.

Scenario four Nineteen-year-old Kathy likes Dave at college. She gets the chance to speak to him, but he doesn’t say much to her and looks awkward. Kathy assumes: “Why don’t guys ever like me? He probably prefers Cindy to me, anyway. He couldn’t even be bothered to say much to me and was obviously embarrassed because he knows I like him. He hates how short I am; I know it. I’ll never find anyone to go out with!” Write between three and six alternative non-depressive explanations into your progress book.

Scenario five 45 year-old Geoff is off work with a broken leg, just when redundancies are being announced at his firm. Geoff thinks, “I’m definitely going to lose my job because I’m not there to defend myself and they’ll just forget about me here.” Write down other ways of looking at this that would be more hopeful (and more accurate!)

Scenario Six Linda, a 32 year-old first time mum-to-be is exhausted during the first 3 months of her pregnancy. She thinks “If I am exhausted now, I’ll never cope when the baby comes!” Write down other ways of looking at this, or relevant information that will help Linda feel better.

Searching for evidence Now, I imagine that you spotted the negative over-generalisations, the internal and permanent negative thinking styles in these scenarios. Of course, all the assumptions above could be true. Almost anything could be true. But, even if Dave didn’t like Kathy, that doesn’t mean that no one ever will.


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The characters in the above scenarios have one thing in common. They reach for just one interpretation of events, and not only that, but they reach for the very worst possible explanation! They cast themselves in the worst possible light and then assume it must be true. Because this causes an emotional reaction, it is then much more difficult to find other possible reasons, even if they tried to think of some (which they probably wouldn’t!). Here are my thoughts on the Alternative Explanations Exercise.

About collecting evidence You cannot conclude the meaning of something until you collect more evidence. If someone doesn’t say hello to you one morning, you don’t necessarily know why. Maybe they are deep in thought, maybe they are worried about something, and maybe they didn’t see you. Who knows? The people in these scenarios are too sure of themselves. I want you to really start getting flexible with your guesses about the meaning of things. I also want you to think about what it means to relax with uncertainty. What things about yourself and your life do you assume? Could you possibly be wrong – either partially or totally? What other possible causes and reasons for things could there be? Remember, we’re not talking about definites here, just possibilities, because until you have external evidence, your explanations can be nothing but possibilities.

Relaxing with uncertainty Of course, none of us know exactly how things are going to turn out. Although we can do our best to influence a positive outcome, there comes a time when all we can do is relax and wait, be cool with not knowing and avoid jumping to premature and inaccurate conclusions.

True story – public speaking nightmare! I once had to travel to the north east of England to present a seminar on self-esteem. By 9:45 a.m., there were well over a hundred delegates, all health professionals, seated and waiting for me to begin. That’s when things started to go wrong. The seminar was to last around six hours. To my mounting concern, I realised we were having technical problems. The technician couldn’t get my microphone to work. My slide presentation wasn’t working, either! Yikes! I depended on my slide presentation for the whole speech! The audience started off looking expectant, then bored and finally agitated as we struggled to solve our technical problems. I didn’t know how things were going to work out, but I decided to relax. I couldn’t control the technical problems (I am your classic techno-phobe!), but I could control my reaction to the situation. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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I figured that if I relaxed and showed the audience that I am relaxed, maybe they, too, would relax. I explained about the problems, (without a microphone!), and said that I didn’t know when they’d be fixed, but whatever happened we’d all have a good day if they could bear with me a little longer. At that point, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Everything was uncertain and I couldn’t control it, so I focused on what I could influence – my emotional state and the audience. As it happened, the technician did eventually fix the sound and the technical aspects of my presentation and I was able to continue as normal. Had I assumed that I was headed for disaster, things surely would have been much worse. Idea: If things are going wrong and you have to assume something, why not assume things will be ok?

Session Seven Summary In this session we: o o o o

Explored your explanatory styles further Talked about the danger of jumping to conclusions Practised generating more helpful explanations Looked at relaxing with uncertainty

Now, take a little time to relax and absorb what you have just read. Your Relaxed Review will help you integrate this new information and implement it into your everyday life.

To download Relaxed Review Session Seven, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Eight Catastrophizing

Session Eight Catastrophizing Misuse of the imagination Misuse 1: Catastrophizing - imagining the worst and scaring yourself silly If Depresso has a best friend, it is catastrophizing. Catastrophizing, or imagining the worst, will enable Depresso to turn the most insignificant difficulty into a toweringly serious problem.

Making stuff up then believing it Catastrophizing can be described as imagining the worst outcome, then believing it! This sort of worrying makes life harder than it needs to be. Our imaginations are what make us unique; it is such a shame to use them only to create waking nightmares!

When it is good to worry Some worrying can be a good thing, of course. Worrying is a skill that allows you to think about what might go wrong so you can do something to stop that happening. Worrying is a useful tool as long as it is within your control and leads to appropriate action. For example, if someone you have never met before tells you they would like you to invest all your savings in their sure-fire business proposal, that would be a good, or appropriate time, to worry. If your friend has been drinking alcohol and then insists on driving a car, this presents you with an appropriate time to imagine the possible negative consequences and to act accordingly.

Misuse 2: Wotifing People who worry too much use the ‘Wotif’ technique. You know the sort of thing… “What if I can’t afford to pay this bill”, “What if I can’t find my way to the interview room and I arrive late?”, “What if the Earth is taken over by aliens?” The fact is you can Wotif anything! o o o o

What What What What

if if if if

I I I I

go out to post this letter and am hit by a car? stay home and my house is struck by lightening? go to college and nobody wants to be my friend? never leave home and become an old maid?


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o o o o o o

What if I travel and get sick? What if I start a business and it goes bust, and I am left owing money? What if I lose my job? What if my husband/wife/partner leaves me one day? What if I never get a job? What if I never meet someone to have a relationship with?

Say ‘So what?’ to ‘Wotif?’

It’s time to do something about Catastrophizing and Wotifing – deprive Depresso of his allies and he will go away…

Anti-Catastrophizing Exercise Purpose: One of the ways Depresso keeps you hostage is by scaring you with imagined outcomes of imagined scenarios. You can take the wind out of his sails by looking seriously at these outcomes and planning for them, rather than trying to ignore them and so feeling more anxious. Success Indicators: You will begin to feel more in control of your own thoughts and imagination. You will be able to refuse to use your imagination to scare yourself and will be more realistic about the likely outcome of events and their true impact. Ok, now grab your pen or pencil, and prepare to write in your progress notebook.

The main reason that ‘Wotifing’ can continue is that you never follow it through properly. Most people simply have the initial ‘Wotif’ thought then imagine how bad it would feel, over and over again. The way out of this is, strangely enough, to take your Wotifs seriously enough to spend some time problem-solving them. So, what we are going to do is write out ‘contingency plans’ for the above Wotifs. It doesn’t matter how fanciful or unlikely they are.


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For each of the above scenarios, write down what you (or anyone else) could do if the above wotifs came true. The plan should be constructive. Write a couple of sentences for each one.

“What’s the point in this?”

“Well I could ask you the same question, Depresso. What’s the point in worrying all the time without acting on those worries? The effects of an exercise like this are many, but as with most things in life, you won’t really know until you have done it. You, of course, are the world expert in ‘knowing’ what things are going to be like and so stopping people from doing them.”

“Yeah, right; you’re just saying that because you don’t know what the benefits of the exercise are.”

“Hmm…Well, here’s three good reasons (seeing as you’re being so obtuse)… When you solve a worry, it is like plotting a chart; the next time that worry comes up, you have the path to its solution ready so it no longer has any power over you The more someone practises resolving their worries, the quicker and more effective they get at doing so, until they can quickly resolve the problems you throw at them without getting anxious, so reducing your hold over them Doing this repeatedly can actually make worrying boring so it occurs less and less There, I bet you wish you hadn’t asked.” OK, onto your notebook. I’ll see you back here in a few minutes.


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What to do with your wotifs 1) Grade how likely you think the wotif is

So, if you think it is definitely going to happen, you would score it a 10/10. If, on reflection, you feel it is extremely unlikely, then you would score 1/10.

2) Write your contingency plan Example: Peter spends half the night worrying about the possibility of losing his job. This goes along the lines of: “Oh, no. What if my company make job cuts and I am made redundant? Or: I saw the news tonight and the report said there was going to be a downturn in the economy. I might lose my house and my kids would have to go to school some place else and my wife might not love me any more because I can’t provide for the family….” At this point, Peter remembers his Depression Program material. He gets up, opens his progress book and thinks: “Actually it may be pretty unlikely that I’ll lose my job just yet. The company I work for supplies essential material for hospitals and although there could be job cuts eventually, I don’t think my job would be the first to go.” So, Peter writes: 3/10 for the likelihood of his wotif coming true Then he writes under ‘contingency plan’: “Well, if I do lose my job, I should get some redundancy money which will enable us to pay the mortgage for a few months. During that time, I can look for more work. The kids are old enough now for my wife, Mary, to go back to working in the school and I would take any work while I found something suitable. I can also retrain as I’m thinking of doing that anyway and will make enquiries next week about taking a part-time software programming course. Whatever happens, I’ll handle it.” These simple steps turn Peter’s nightmare into a problem that is unlikely to occur, and one that he knows he could handle if it did. If it had remained at the ‘wotif’ stage, it would be retained its ability to make him anxious, spoiling his sleep and giving Depresso a helping hand.


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Misuse 3: Yeah-but Syndrome Another favourite of Depresso’s is Yeah-but syndrome.

Dr. Yeah-but discovered yeah-but syndrome a long time ago. He observed that some people make a habit of immediately seeing the downside. He noticed that however positive something was, they would go looking for what could go wrong. People suffering from yeah-but syndrome tended to pour cold water on other peoples’ ideas and enthusiasm, any well-meaning suggestions being greeted with the words “yeah but…”

“Yeah but what’s wrong with doing that? “

“The problem is that everything has a possible downside if you look hard enough. Yeah-butting steals opportunities from you and blocks projects that could have succeeded if just a little more optimism had been employed. That’s why you like it, isn’t it Depresso?” Many human achievements had doubters that yeah-butted it to begin with. The Beatles, possibly the most successful pop band ever, were told at the start of their careers that “the public just isn’t interested in guitar music any more!”. In the mid 1960’s, many scientists were still saying that a moon landing was impossible. Sean Connery was told to “forget acting, be realistic and continue working as a milk man!” Yeah-butting has its place, but it ain’t a large one.


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Professor Atleast

Meanwhile, other parallel research continued and Professor Atleast discovered that resilient people see the opportunities in most things. Examples of Atleasts I have heard: “I’m ill but at least I can still communicate with my family!” “My life is so tough at the moment, but at least I’ll appreciate it when things get better!” “My daughter is so stubborn sometimes, but at least she knows her own mind!” “I failed my driving test again, but at least I’m going to be a thorough driver when I do pass!” “I screamed at my kids, but at least they know I’m human!” “I may not be the brightest academically, but at least I’ve got a sense of humor and I care about people!” “I lost my job, but at least now I’ve got some time to consider what I really want to do with my life!” It’s a happier and more productive habit to start looking for the possibilities in things, not just the possible pitfalls.


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‘At-Leasting’ Exercise Purpose: This will add to your ability to be flexible in your thought patterns and so gain control over Depresso’s ‘there’s only one answer to anything’ approach. Success Indicators: Unpleasant events will get you down less. You will bounce back quicker and even be able to help others minimize the impact on themselves. You will begin to see that true catastrophies rarely happen. In your notebook, write down 3 things in your life that really get you down or have served to get you down in the past. Now, next to each situation, write the words ‘at least’, then use your creativity to find some light in each situation. I don’t mind how absurd or ridiculous your atleasting is at this point. What we are looking for is creative optimism. Do this now. There is an atleast to literally everything so start doing it! If you get stuck, look back at the list above. Once you have done that, enjoy listening to your Relaxed Review here:

To download Relaxed Review Session Eight, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here

Session Eight Summary In session 8, we have looked at… o o o

How the misuse of the imagination contributes to anxiety and therefore to depression How always looking for the negatives is depressing and what you can do instead How to challenge Depresso’s assumptions


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Session Nine Relationships

Session Nine Relationships Depression and relationships As we have seen, depression tends to stop you from doing the very things that you need to stay healthy and happy. One such example is socialising, which is essential to emotional wellbeing. Depression, however, tends to make us feel like being alone, or only with people who we know well, and the thought of being with friends, or even family, can be difficult. However, as depression lifts through the other changes you will be making during the Program, it is important to start re-establishing any social ties that have been neglected. Making that phone call even if you don’t feel like it can have knock-on effects that will continue to improve the way you feel. In addition, it is a good idea to revisit the anxiety section often. Social confidence tends to improve as depression lifts, because higher serotonin levels equate with social calm and confidence. The relaxed Review in this session will also help you feel more confident around people if you are having difficulty with that.

Difficult relationships Depressed people commonly report difficulties with their relationships. They may feel used by other people, insecure and vulnerable in relationships or get angry and upset at how they are treated. In the last session, we were looking at how the imagination can sometimes trip us up by catastrophizing and jumping to conclusions. We have talked before about how uncertainty makes us want to instantly assign meaning to events, and why tolerating uncertainty is so important.

Relationships are uncertain Relationships are among the most uncertain of life’s experiences, and the most important, so it is hardly surprising that they can cause so many problems, especially when Depresso is doing our thinking for us.


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Without clear communication, it is impossible to guess what another is thinking, or what they think of us, but anxiety and depression get in the way of clear communication, leaving the way clear for the imagination to run riot. “What did that glance mean?”, “Why hasn’t she called?”, “What does he think of me?”, “What if he leaves me?”… and on and on. In this session, we will look at jealousy, feeling let down by others and assertion and communication within relationships. We are going to look at what to do when your imagination interferes and spoils your relationships and how to communicate assertively, fairly and clearly. We’ll also look at repeating patterns in relationships such as relationship choices and low self-esteem.

Healthy relationships A healthy relationship is always based on reciprocation, or in other words, give and take. So, for example, your manger at work may be above you in the hierarchy, but for it to be a healthy working relationship, it needs to be reciprocal. Your manager helps you and you help your manager. Unhealthy relationships are often based on status. This is characterised by one person taking much more than they give.

Jealousy People who become jealous may start treating a partner as a possession – literally as if they owned them, rather than their being a person in their own right.

“People always do this to me. Everybody lets me down in the end. I must have ‘victim’ tattooed onto my forehead. I only have relationships with people I don’t like that much. I’m always abandoned in the end!” “Yes, thank you, Depresso. Those are typical depressive perceptions around relationships. We’ll be looking at how you, Depresso, influence and disrupt relationships, as well as a few tips and techniques in dealing with other peoples’ difficult behavior.”

Mind reading and feeling ‘let down’ by others You must have heard people saying things like the following… “If he really loved me, I wouldn’t have to tell him!” “People shouldn’t treat other people like that!” “I know what he is thinking: He hates me now because he thinks…” If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Let’s have a look at each, in turn. First, people do have to be told. Not knowing how you want them to behave is not their fault unless you have communicated your desires to them clearly. The next one depends on the situation, but of course, different people have different standards, and it is easy to assume the worst. It is always worth checking (remember external evidence?) whether the impact of someone’s actions is what they intended. And third, you may be a mystic sage but you don’t always know that someone is thinking unkindly or badly of you. If you really can mind-read great! Perhaps you should consider going on TV or a national tour! Realistically, why not just think about what you may be doing with your assumptions and again, get external evidence.

Perfectionism leads to resentment As you know by now, depressed people are more likely to have perfectionist attitudes and to think in ‘all-or-nothing’ terms. A perfectionist attitude will tend to give you strict and rigid rules as to how the world should operate. Then you may assume that everybody should… a) Know what your rules for behavior are b) Follow your rules But, of course, people express love, gratitude, respect and so on in different ways. Broadly speaking, we can have certain expectations of others’ standards of behavior, but if it’s too precise, we are going to feel disappointed and let down time and time again. People need to be told what you expect, how you feel, what you like/don’t like and what you deem reasonable or unreasonable. Otherwise your resentment, anger and anxiety will increase as your relationships develop.

Being clear in relationships When you sit down and think about it, it seems obvious that other people need to be told what you expect. So, why is it that so many of us allow resentment to seethe without conveying the problem to the other party? People have to have the chance to communicate their point of view, and that can only happen when we let them know how we see things. If you don’t let others know what you require and what you feel is right, you end up feeling like a victim. Assertion gives you a sense of control or influence within a relationship (see the session on the basic needs).


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Teaching Tale Once upon a time, a man decided to ask his neighbour if he could borrow his shovel to dig his garden. On the way to his neighbour’s house he got to thinking: “What if my neighbour is a mean man? I’ll be so embarrassed if he says I can’t borrow it! Then he’ll tell all our other neighbours that I am too poor to afford my own shovel! I’ve got my pride!” He knocked on his neighbour’s door and a kindly looking man appeared: “Hello. How may I help you?” he asked. His imaginative neighbour replied “What makes you think I need your help? And you can keep your stupid shovel!”

Giving people a chance If a friend forgets to call, says something thoughtless or occasionally looks a little bored when you are speaking, does this mean they are useless? Does it mean they hate you? Does it mean you are not important to them? No! What do these things mean? Well who knows? They don’t necessarily mean anything much, and without checking you cannot know what they mean. But people still say things like: “Ah, I knew it! He doesn’t really love me!” And they think things like “If he did he would do x, y and z because he should see thing exactly the same way as I do!”

True story: Emotional bank accounts Sally came to see me for help with her relationships. She was a very nice woman. Some people said she was too nice! I asked her in what situation she would say ‘no’ to someone and ‘be firm with them.’ She replied that she couldn’t think of a situation in which she could make a stand firm. She would never set limits on demands and expectations placed upon her by others. She told me of a time when a man (whom she hadn’t even known that well) had ‘made’ her buy a car she didn’t want and then used it himself most of the time. She hadn’t been able to set limits on his behavior. She had just hoped he would do the right thing without her having to say. I talked to her about ‘real relationships’ based on reciprocation, not status and power. Then I gave her the model of emotional bank accounts to use:


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The bank account You have a relationship with your bank. You give to your bank and your bank gives to you. If you just take from your bank and never make a deposit eventually your bank will close your account. Now, generosity is the most wonderful thing and we certainly should be able to help others without expecting favours in return. But, if someone takes from you all the time without putting anything back into the relationship then, actually, there is no proper relationship. How long before you close their account? Consider this... Imagine that you are in your works canteen at lunchtime. A colleague joins you as you stand in line for your food. He pleasantly turns to you and tells you he’s forgotten his wallet, asking whether you can stand them lunch. You agree to pay for their lunch. Fine! After all, everyone forgets things sometimes. The next day they again tell you’ve they’ve forgotten to bring money and you again pay for their lunch. This happens the next day and the next day. Now, think at what day would you set limits for this person?

Limit-Setting Exercise Purpose: In case this is a problem for you, a ‘safe’ introduction to the idea of setting limits. Success Indicators: You will know why it is important to set limits, the sort of situations that require it, and how to go about it.

In your progress book, write down on what day you would set a limit for this person. Remember, your bank will eventually let you know if you just take and don’t deposit. So, if you would say something on the third day simply write ‘3’, if it’s the fourth day write ‘4’, etc.

Then, just write how you would set your limits. What would you say to this person and how? Write it out as if you were actually saying it. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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After you’ve done that, look back at it and see how it reads. Does it come across as angry or threatening? Or does it simply state your position clearly and calmly. If you’re not happy with how it comes across, review it in the light of the next section.

How to be assertive Being ‘straight’ with people can help lift depression. This is because it can create a resolution to a situation, one that you then don’t need to worry about, therefore lowering your anxiety levels.

“Yeah, but it’s easier just to give in to people and say yes.”

“Is it really easier Depresso? Is it easier if the person doesn’t know where they stand and you end up building up resentment? Is it easier when the relationship founders eventually anyway because the other person doesn’t know where they stand with you? Is it easier to suffer all the anxiety and worry because of it? You love people to think it’s easier to avoid saying something because in fact, the long-term effects are much, much harder to deal with.” Now, we are going to look at how to set limits, while being fair on the other person…

Five steps to straight talking Step One: Describe the situation that is bothering you. Don’t talk emotions at this point, just facts: Example: (Sue to her friend Jenny) “I want to talk about you shouting at my son.” There you go - just the facts - no emotion. Step Two: Describe what you see as the disadvantages of the situation. This can be reasonably non-emotional, although if appropriate, you can say how this makes you feel. Example: Sue: “When you do this, it kind of undermines me a bit and also confuses Tommy. When you tell him off he gets confused, as it’s really my job to correct him. Also it makes me feel cross.” Step three: Describe what you would like to have happen instead (again not assuming they are psychic and ‘should know’ or ‘shouldn’t have to be told!’ Again, stick to just the facts.


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Example: Sue: “I’d prefer it, Jenny, if in future you can just let me tell my own child off. I think I’m pretty good at spotting when he’s out of line and if you aren’t happy with something he has done, just let me know.” Step four: Describe the benefits of your proposal. Example: Sue: “If we can agree to leave the reprimanding of my child to me in future, then I’ll feel a lot happier, he’ll be less confused and we will have sorted something out that was really bothering me!” Step five: Seek confirmation. Ask the person if they can agree to your proposal. If they do, then renege on it later, you can gently remind them of their agreement. Points to remember

Steps: One: State the facts about what is bothering you Two: Describe the disadvantages of the behavior of the other person Three: Describe how you would like things to be Four: Describe how the changes will be better Five: Seek agreement Of course, some people will not be reasonable even when you have communicated clearly in this way, but at least you’ve told them fairly, maturely and reasonably. Above all, you need to make it non-personal and non-critical. You are not attacking someone’s core personality, just commenting on a part of their behavior and describing its impact on you. People may not particularly like to hear it, but most people will respond reasonably because you’ve given them a chance to. The five steps assertiveness technique needs to be done calmly, keeping emotions out of it as much as possible. If you just explode at people, whether you are right or wrong, they will just become defensive and you will damage the relationship. So rather than: “You always do this to me! You make my blood boil, I’m furious….etc.”, start with the facts and use ‘I’ statements because they are non-threatening. “I think that”, or “I feel this” is less threatening than “You never do this”, or “You always do that!” and so is less likely to make people defensive. Are you a ‘people pleaser’? You may want everybody to be happy as much as possible but you yourself are a person. And, when you are happier and not overly put upon by others, then you’ll be better placed to help others to be happier.


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Training yourself for assertiveness It’s all very well knowing what you should say when wanting to be firm, but you also need to feel right when you do it, which means staying cool and calm. This Relaxed Review will help you to feel naturally calmer in these situations. Maybe you are already quite happy being assertive, but if not, then you can practice in your mind (training your instincts) right now:

To download Relaxed Review Session Nine, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here

Session Nine Summary In Session Nine, we looked at: o Healthy relationships o Emotional bank accounts o The dangers of mind-reading o Assertive communication


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Session Ten Communication

Session Ten Communication Communication within relationships Because relationships are so important in beating depression, we are going to do a little more work on communication styles in this session. Being clear and assertive really helps make life smoother. Insecurity, resentments, guilt and anger can all manifest when we are not clear about our own needs and the needs of those around us.

How to say ‘No’ It is easy to forget that the word ‘no’ is a complete statement in itself. You don’t need to keep justifying yourself for refusing. The sort of people who take advantage of you will tend to be persistent. (In fact, salesmen tend to assume the word ‘No’ means ‘Not yet’!) Typically, you will give a reason for why you can’t do something. They’ll then give you a reason why your objection doesn’t count. You’ll come back with another reason to which they’ll also counter with logic, then you’ll come up with another reason and they’ll counter this until eventually you’ll run out of reasons and reluctantly agree. This is not the way to do it! Example Sheila: “June, can you baby sit for me again tonight while I go out?” June: (Thinking: Oh no this will be the third time this week! I’ve got to have my own life!) “Ah, well, I can’t tonight. I’ve got to ring my mother she’s been upset recently!” Sheila: “Hey, no problem. You can ring her from my house - the calls are cheap rate.” June: “Well, I really do have to catch up on some work tonight.” Sheila: “Bring your laptop round. Suzie will be in bed by 8.30 and you can work at my house!” June: “Well, I’m really very tired!” Sheila: “That’s fine. You can snooze at my place. Suzie will wake you if she needs anything.” June: “My car has been playing up and may break down if I use it! Sheila: “No problem; again, I’ll come and pick you up and drive you home again afterwards.” June: “Oh... alright then what time do you want me over tonight?” June ends up feeling manipulated, used and very resentful


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Here’s what happens when she states her case and repeats it until clear. She uses ‘I’ statements and repeats like a broken record until Sheila gets the message: Sheila: “June, can you baby sit for me again tonight while I go out?” June: “Oh, not tonight, June, I want to have an evening in by myself.” Sheila: “You can work at my house if you like!” June: “I know Sheila, but I’ve just decided that I’m going to have the evening in by myself tonight.” (Repetition). Sheila: “You can have a rest even a little snooze if you feel tired. Suzie won’t mind.” June: “I appreciate that, Sheila, but I’ve decided I want to have an evening in by myself tonight.” Sheila: “I can pick you up and take you home again after.” June: “That would be fine some other night (good will gesture) but (sticking to guns) tonight, as I’ve said, I really want to have time to myself at home.” Sheila: “Fair enough. Do you think Sally will do it if I give her a call?” Notice how June stuck to her guns? Whatever Sheila said, June just came back to the same original point. She didn’t search for new reasons until she had no where left to hide. She didn’t apologise, or say that she’d never baby sit. Good, clear assertive feedback. In the future, Sheila will come to see June as someone who knows her own mind and will probably trust her more as a friend. On the other hand, if she was just using her, she will move on to easier targets, creating a true win-win situation for June either way.

Relationship choices As far as personal relationships are concerned, it’s certainly true that sometimes the people to whom we are most attracted aren’t always the ones who will bring us long-term happiness. Sugary food tastes nice in the short term, but can harm us in the long-term.

Relationships and self-esteem If you have had problems with self-esteem, then you may have fallen into the habit of selecting partners who don’t treat you that well. You may feel mistrustful or ‘not right’ with people who are nice, supportive and kind to you. The reason for this is simple: we tend to feel more comfortable with what we know. If you have been heavily criticised, under-valued or worse while growing up, you may have been conditioned to seek out relationships with people who fit this pattern.


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Good Qualities Exercise Purpose: Part of building satisfying relationships is knowing what you bring to the table and being confident about your own unique qualities. This will also help you challenge such nonsense from Depresso as “You’re completely useless”. Success Indicators: You will stop accepting ‘all or nothing’ statements from Depresso like the one above, and you will be able to think about yourself in terms of your qualities. This doesn’t mean thinking you are fantastic (that would be ‘all or nothing’ ;-), it just means accepting there are things you can do, and certain qualities you possess. We want you to start to see the possibilities in life for yourself, and part of that includes valuing what is worthwhile within you. This will help you seek out people who support you and treat you decently.

Think about the real things you value in another human being. These might include honesty, integrity, humor, creativity, consideration, sense of adventure, etc. Now, have you ever thought about the qualities you really need in a partner? If this is applicable to you, write down a list of all the qualities you feel would be of real benefit to you in a friend or partner. Do this now in your progress notebook.

Later, when making friends or choosing a partner, you can refer back to these qualities. Ask yourself how you know whether someone - broadly speaking - has the type of qualities you need. You wait and see over time. Of course, you can’t tell much about a person until you get to know them over a period of time. And most of all, remember to watch what people do not just what they say. If you value honesty and a person persistently lies to you, then they are not right for you. If you like kindness and support and someone is mean and puts you down, then that’s pretty clear feedback that they are not right for you.


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“Yes, but they can be so sweet and lovely at other times! The real them is different and they always apologise afterwards.”

“Oh please, Depresso! Someone being charming and sweet at other times doesn’t make regular abuse acceptable. Them being nice isn’t the ‘real them!’ Both the horrid behavior and their nice behavior belong to them. If they know they can win you back with a few stock phrases and a bunch of flowers then the relationship has a large element of manipulation in it! You’ll be telling me next that the few good times are worth all the bad!” Take a really long, hard look at the type of person who gives you what you need. Remember, real relationships are based on reciprocation not status. If someone is emotionally blackmailing you (controlling you through guilt) then they are not relating with you, rather, they are using you as an object to be manipulated.

Some words on jealousy Here’s the sort of thing we typically hear from jealous people… “How can anyone love me? I’m unlovable! There must be something wrong with him to like me so much. I keep imagining he prefers other women to me and that he is seeing other people. It’s only a question of time before he abandons me for someone better! I get so angry and jealous and insecure when he talks to others.” So what do you do if you think in this way? First, it’s a good idea to consider the fact that it is often difficult to tell exactly what someone sees in someone else! Also, you have qualities you have no idea that you actually have. A butterfly doesn’t know it’s beautiful and a diamond doesn’t know how valuable it is. Finally, you need to realise that you can’t totally control who should like us and why.

Misusing your imagination (again!) Jealousy is a mix of anxious catastrophizing and anger. When jealous, we make stuff up and then get the person’s behavior to fit in with the madeup stuff. So, someone smiling and having fun with another person is made to ‘fit the fear’, becoming evidence that they want to run off with them and have their babies! The result is often seething silent resentment, horrible worry or an angry outburst.

Reasons for jealousy A person may become destructively jealous because:


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o o o

o

They have always thought they should have complete ‘ownership rights’ over others, maybe from early conditioning in childhood. They have witnessed or had direct experience of deceit and unfaithfulness in relationships. They feel unworthy of being in a relationship and think that the other person must eventually find someone ‘better.’ (Ironically it may be the jealousy alone that drives the other from the relationship.) A combination of the above.

Overcoming jealousy The following will reduce jealousy: o o o

Challenging your imagination. This is the most important step, as the imagination really is the origins of jealousy Treating your partner as a valued person Only taking seriously, real and substantial evidence of their being unfaithful

Not the end of the world The jealous person also needs to feel that, however much they love their partner, they could survive without them. If you have been misusing your imagination and getting jealous, you need to take time to use your imagination constructively to imagine how you would be independent beyond your current relationship. This doesn’t mean it should finish, just that it could, and you would still be fine. Doing this means that you don’t have to feel that ‘losing them would mean losing everything!’ Because it certainly doesn’t!

Session Ten Summary In this session we have looked at: o Saying no o Making relationship choices o Self-esteem in relationships o Jealousy Now, take a little time to relax and enjoy allowing the information to sink in!

To download Relaxed Review Session Ten, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Eleven Socializing

Session Eleven Socializing How to get more people into your life You remember in the session on basic needs just how important social connections are. One of the most common questions we get from clients is how to get more people into your life, so we’re going to cover it here. Of course, this may not be a major problem for you. As with all human needs, some people have a greater need for human contact than others. However, you may find it contains some useful ideas, nonetheless. Sometimes depression isolates you from your friends and family, or makes you feel unable to establish friendships. It is also common for depressed people to feel anxious around people they know.

Social contacts and health Strong communities, which includes towns or villages where people know each other, tend to have healthier, longer living and happier people. Researchers found that a town called Roseto in Pennsylvania had a very tight knit community. The population of Roseto seemed to be unusually healthy. The investigators found that the above average health could not be explained by lifestyle differences, other than the strong support network. This finding is reflected in many studies in this area. The more friendships and social contacts a person has, the healthier they tend to be, both physically and mentally.

“Yeah, but not everyone lives in a ‘close-knit community. Besides, I don’t want everyone to know my business.”

“Always looking for why good ideas don’t apply to you, aren’t you Depresso? Want to prove that somehow you’re different to every other depression. Well, I’ve met them all, and they’re all the same as you.” That doesn’t matter because there is always something you can do. We’ll look at constructive methods to get more people into your life. You can create your own community!


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“Yeah, but what if you don’t like approaching people.”

“That’s the thing with you, Depresso. You try to con people into thinking that not feeling like doing something is a good enough reason for not doing it!” Imagine if you gained just two good new friends a year. In five years, you’d have ten more really good friends! The more friends you have, the more support and fun you can have! Making friends is a numbers game. It’s no good picking a single person and expecting them to be ‘the perfect friend’. You need to develop and maintain multiple friendships. In doing this, it will become apparent which people are right for you to develop good friendships with.

Developing friendships and being an attractive friend So, just how do we make friends? Take a moment to think about your expectations regarding friendship. Do you expect to make friends ‘just like that’ without going through a process? It is common for people to have unrealistic expectations around friendships, including expectations or feelings that friends should just ‘appear’. But, of course, it’s not so. As we will see, there are steps to making good and lasting friendships. We live in a fast society with instant messaging and fast food, but friendships must be fostered and nurtured in order to develop and appropriately strengthen.

Ways to develop friendships First, decide what your friendship is for. What do you want in a friend? Do you want humor, loyalty, someone to share intimacies with? If you are happy to hang out with someone purely because they are willing to be around you, then maybe you need to be more selective. Don’t be too choosy, however, because it’s always a numbers game. If you put all your eggs in one basket (with one person) then if they don’t return your call or ‘let you down’...


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‘People always let me down!’

“Not now Depresso...” ..then too much is invested in the one person. Different friends can serve different purposes. Some people are great to socialise with, others are good for playing sports with or for sharing intimacies. Below you will find a series of tips and techniques, do’s and don’ts for developing your own thriving friendship community.

Making friends and getting along with people This is an article that I wrote and published on www.uncommonknowledge.co.uk while we were developing the Depression Program, and because it is particularly relevant to depression I have included it here.

How to get along with people We all know how it feels to ‘get along with people’, but what is really happening at these times? What are the ingredients of the secret sociable sauce? It is clear that some people are more offensive than others. It seems that either they don’t care or they don’t know what they are doing. If you have problems getting along with people there are three possible reasons why: 1. You know how you are upsetting people but you don’t care 2. You don’t know you are upsetting people 3. You are aware that you are upsetting people but you don’t quite understand why. This article is for the benefit of all you 3’s out there! (And possibly some 2’s too!) Why people get offended "I feel put down, put out, misunderstood, threatened, ignored, cheated and deeply offended." Well not really, but I could - why? Because I am human and therefore have basic emotional needs that can be transgressed by other human beings. We all have basic emotional needs and to feel happpy your needs have to be met at least some of the time.


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As you will remember from earlier in the Program, emotional needs include: • • • • • • • •

The need to give and receive attention The need for a sense of status The need for purpose and goals The need for physical wellbeing The need for a connection to something greater than ourselves community, ideals, beliefs etc. The need for intimacy The need to be stimulated and stretched (but not stressed) The need for a sense of control

So how can you offend people? You offend people by stepping on their basic emotional needs One common way this occurs is by mistakenly assuming that communicating the problem ‘as you see it’ is the only thing to be considered when ‘giving feedback.’ Anyone can say the words, but it takes thought, practice and skill to deliver unpalatable messages without causing undue hurt. Of course, there are situations in which the message is more important than the method. If I’m administering mouth to mouth resuscitation to someone I may yell at a friend or colleague for assistance. Yelling at them normally (in a non-emergency) would infringe upon their needs for: • Status • Safety and security • The need for a sense of control “But as long as they get the message who cares?” Well that depends whether you want to get along with people; on whether you consider friendship and the morale of those around you important or not…

Emotional Needs in Relationships If you have upset someone, consider which of their emotional needs you have trampled upon. If you complain to a member of staff loudly in front of other staff members then they may feel ‘put down’ (impairment to their sense of status). This would hold true for a teenager in front of their friends. If you end a four year romance by text message the recipient of your insensitivity may feel angered to receive such news in this way. Why?


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Because many needs are trampled on: 1 - The need 2 - The need 3 - The need message!) 4 - The need

for status (as respected partner, o.k. ex-partner) for proper attention for a sense of control (you try reasoning with a text for intimacy… and so the list goes on.

How to spot which emotional need you have infringed Of course you may not mean to upset someone but if you do, it will be because some basic need hasn’t been catered for. Here are a few more examples: • • • • •

‘You’re just not hearing me!’ (the need for attention, intimacy, connection to others, ). ‘I never know where I am with you!’ (the need for safety and security). ‘You should have asked me first!’ (need for status). ‘You shouldn’t have lied to me!’ (The need for safety and security, status, intimacy). ‘You’re really dissing me!’ (The need for status).

Over-sensitivity Some people will take offence at almost anything. However if you are clear about why people get upset then at least you’ll know why they feel upset, which will tell you something about what is important to them and illuminate their more sensitive areas. As I’ve said, it’s not always appropriate to consider someone else’s feelings. If you are performing life-saving first aid you may have to scream at people to get out of the way. However once you are clear about emotional needs then you can begin to understand what goes wrong in relationships.

How to Make Friends When making friends, understanding how emotional needs work is essential. Different friends usually meet different needs in your life You may make a friend who is fun and exciting but who you wouldn’t necessarily tell your deepest secrets. They meet your need for stimulation. Another friend may be less exciting, more plodding but a wonderful listener. Another may be someone you can share intimacies with who makes you feel safe and secure because they are so dependable. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Yet another may be a business partner, someone you can share goals and aspirations with, meeting your needs for goals, status, and meaning. And that one person who meets all or many of your needs? Hey presto, it’s your perfect friend or partner! What makes a good friend? People will tend to want to make friends with you if they feel you meet some of their emotional needs. If you make them laugh you stimulate them. If you look out for them they feel safe and secure. If you encourage them and point out their strengths you give them a sense of control and status. If you share secrets and have private jokes you meet their need for intimacy. Think about what you offer people and what others offer you. Basic emotional needs will always play a part. Delivering difficult messages well What about when you need to ‘have a word’ with someone over something you’re not happy about? A common mistake is to criticize someone as a person rather than complain about something specific in their behavior. What’s the difference? Well if you feel strongly about something you want to let the offending person know about it. Fair enough. But if people feel attacked something has gone wrong. You want their behavior to change in the future. This is the desired outcome. You don’t want a new best enemy! How to ‘attack’ someone Have you ever noticed that when giving negative feedback some people just go onto ‘transmit?’ The recipient becomes someone to be acted upon rather than interacted with. Sweeping remarks about a person being ‘lazy’, stupid etc tend not to be forgotten even after later apologies, back tracks and claims of ‘I didn’t mean it - I was angry!’ If you attack someone’s identity as a person (rather than something specific in their behavior) don’t be surprised if they go on the defensive. If you have a problem with someone about something they’ve done (or forgotten to do) you can be firm but fair.

Make friends, keep friends To hold onto the friends you have, keep the way open for good future relations with this person by avoiding causing undue offence. Once you have taken the time to make friends, you don’t want to accidentally drive them away! If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Constructive criticism versus attacking someone as a person Sometimes we have to deliver ‘constructive criticism’ – that is, letting someone know about something they do that you don’t agree with. Constructive criticism is NOT however… • • • • • • • • • • •

Not letting them speak Over-generalising the problem Blaming them, attacking their core identity rather than focusing on the behavior in question Indicating that everything they always do is wrong Raising your voice Invading body space Asking questions without waiting for a response: ‘Why do you always…?, What do you think you are doing?, ‘Why do you never….? Consequences include: Loss of respect, morale, and trust Lack of clarity in precisely what the problem is that needs addressing No clear feedback as to why the problem may have occurred and what can be done about it

Remember: ‘An emotional brain is not a thinking brain.’ Giving specific negative feedback (Constructive criticism or ‘complaint’) Constructive criticism can also be described as a ‘complaint’, which in fact is a clearer way of putting it. The word criticism implies something personal, complaining is more about behavior. Here’s how to do it well… Have a gentle start up to your complaint. The ‘you’ word at the start can immediately switch people into the defensive. Rather start with phrases like: ‘I’ve noticed recently….’ •

Be specific in your feedback. Talk only about the problem with their behavior / performance you wish to address

•

Keep it time limited: ‘Recently I’ve noticed that….’, and ‘I want to talk about the incident last week…’ Not: ‘You always/never blah blah blah (because that is all they will hear!)

•

Don’t make comments about their personality, appearance and don’t make wild statements about how everyone else perceives them. This can be unfounded and crushing. Remember some things you say may be irreparable later on so stick to the point! Keep emotions out of it as far as possible.


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Being respectful and fair doesn’t mean being scared to deliver the message. It is much more skilful to deliver a difficult message well than to bulldozer someone. Learning to do this well means keeping open lines of communication and maintaining relationships, which of course is most important if you have to work with them in future or they are your romantic partner. How to give compliments Mark Twain said he could live two months on a good compliment. This may have been pushing it a bit but giving regular and sincere (most important) compliments cements relationships. Note: Keeping complaints specific limits damage to relationships. Being specific with your compliments maximizes their effectiveness. So a rule for any type of feedback to other people is: Be specific! For example, “You are so wonderful”, does not have the same power as, “The way you handled that meeting showed you have real people skills… especially when you…”. Keeping your compliments specific makes them meaningful and more likely to be believed. A compliment to a young boy such as: “You were so great today winning your race / trying your hardest / comforting your friend” is much more readily accepted and memorable then a vague, ‘You are so wonderful for just being you!’ Criticism (even when constructive) is more likely to be accepted if it is tempered by regular compliments. A ratio of 5:1 compliment to complaint is a handy rule-of-thumb.

Further Relationship Skills Like a popular bank account, people will like you if you pay good interest. Listening properly to people can meet their need for connection, status and intimacy and is a key relationship skill. Let people know you are listening by: • • •

Actually listening to them, nodding, smiling and looking in their general direction. Feeding back what they say; showing them you know they actually said it. And then adding anything of your own. If you don’t agree at least acknowledge they’ve spoken: ‘I understand what you mean, however as far as I see it…..’, or: ‘That’s a good idea---------and it might be even better if….’


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Ask opinions, advice or help People feel important if you ask them what they think. This meets their need for status. Talk to them about their concerns and interests People will feel that you are interesting if you show interest in them. Don’t compromise your own personality but be aware of this basic rapport building rule. Offer help and do favors People like people who are helpful. Helping people practically meets all kinds of emotional needs (you should, by now, be able to work out which ones ;-) And smile, smile, smile Research shows that when you smile at someone ☺ pleasure centers in their brain are stimulated. ☺ People like warmth and will come to associate you with feeling good. ☺ Smiling relaxes people and make them feel they can trust you.

☺

Basic rules on smiling: • • •

☺

Don’t over do it! ☺ Whoops! Don’t smile when you are anxious, angry or giving negative feedback - it’s confusing and can look like a grimace! Don’t smile when someone else has stubbed their toe. You smiling when someone else is having a bad time gives the message that you are glad it’s not you rather than you wish it wasn’t them!

In summary • • • • •

Remember that everyone has similar emotional needs (including you!) Take these needs into account in social, work and romantic situations Keep complaints specific and avoid overgeneralising negatives Make compliments specific; give examples to make them ‘real’ Listen and talk about what is important to people. And smile and look interested.

The more you meet others’ emotional needs, the more they will like you. The less you step on their emotional needs, the less offence you will cause. And if someone else offends you, check out your basic emotional needs to find out why.


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OK, that’s the end of the article – I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. Now on with the Program…

Where to meet friends While it’s possible to make new friends anywhere, it seems that the best situations are those where ‘meeting friends’ isn’t your sole purpose. So friends are met at work, school, through mutual friends, etc., and of course via the Internet. In short, the more you mix with others, the more likely you are to widen your social network. If you find socialising uncomfortable, joining a group of people who have a shared aim, such as a charitable one, will allow you to ‘join in’ and give you common ground to work from.

Take off the pressure Nothing puts people off like obvious desperation. Don’t fly into a jealous rage if someone doesn’t get back to you when you leave them a message. Don’t analyse why they said this or didn’t say that. Your friend needs to feel comfortable with the friendship, not pressured because you are desperate for company.

Give and take As I have said, friendships are based on reciprocation, on giving and receiving. Just as you don’t want a ‘friend’ demanding too many favours from you without giving something to the relationship, don’t demand too many favours from your friends. Likewise, don’t call someone five times in the week after you first met them. Relationships need the right input. Not too little, but not too much. Calling someone once every couple of weeks to see if they want to do something might be more appropriate to begin with.


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Keep personal stuff close to your chest at first You may feel like sharing your innermost secrets and concerns with someone, but at the start of a relationship, this is highly likely to scare people away. Small talk evolved to allow people to get to know each other in order to ascertain whether it was safe to share bigger secrets. By going on to ‘big talk’ too soon, you are giving the message that: 1) Your friend is not that important to you. You share this stuff with everyone, easily. 2) You are desperate, which increases the pressure on them. 3) You don’t adhere to normal friendship rules, which is unsettling for them. A friendship in its early stages can be thought of as a seed that has just sprouted. At first, it needs exactly the right soil, moisture, temperature and light or it will wither and die. Later, as the friendship grows, it becomes hardier and eventually capable of standing up to storms.

Don’t gossip You want people to trust you and feel that what they say to you will go no further. We all talk about other people to some extent, but keep it light, especially at first. Spilling scandals or other’s intimacies may make you exciting in the short-term, but won’t make you a valued long-term friend.

Let people speak People like other people who are good listeners, as well as good talkers. You don’t have to entertain all the time or be a constant stream of amusement. Let others be funny and have their say. This is a form of generosity. Don’t talk over people. Conversation is not competition.

People like fun and humorous people People avoid people who are depressing. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ may be true up to a point. But, if you constantly use your friend as a therapist, then what’s in it for them? Now and then it’s great if you can share problems, but not all the time! When people smile at us, the mood centres of our brains get a boost.


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What to talk about “I don’t do small talk!”

“Why not? Small talk has been called ‘social lubrication.’ Only being able to talk about ‘heavy things’ is a disadvantage. Small talk can lead to big talk. You get to know people gradually through small talk, not by going straight to heavy, meaning of life, state of the world type talk.” So what do you say after ‘Hello’? If you want to build rapport with a person, ask and talk about them! Tell them about stuff you’ve been doing and what you thought about it. Discuss movies you’ve watched, books you’ve read, meals you have eaten or cooked, things that are going on in your community, places you’ve been, and so on. If a friend has worries, ask them if they’d like some time with you just to discuss things. Of course, this should not be the only role you play as their friend, but occasionally your support in this way will cement your relationships.

How to make someone feel valued in conversation When chatting, we often close our ears to what is being said as we prepare in our minds what we are about to say next. You can make someone feel good by: o

o o o o

Listening well enough that you can feed back what they have said to you. Hearing someone paraphrase your words is a wonderful thing. Relating what you say to what they have previously said. Show interest by being attentive and giving them all your attention. Referring back to a point they made earlier. Mentioning a fact they mentioned at a previous meeting and attributing it to them: “Like you said last time…”


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Develop ‘friendship maps’ As your friendships develop, you need to develop a ‘map’ of your friends’ lives. This means that you get to know the details of your friend’s life. You do this by: 1) Showing interest by listening and asking questions 2) Remembering names, facts & figures 3) Feeding back – mentioning these in future conversations If you listen for names, dates, details and concerns that they express to you, you can convey how much they matter to you by asking them about their current concerns, etc. Give quality attention and don’t just talk about yourself.

To have a friend, you must first be a friend Example Jane got chatting to Glenda. They found they got along really well and started doing things together. Glenda liked Jane because she really listened to what Glenda had to say. For example, Glenda once mentioned that her brother George wasn’t very well and may need surgery. Glenda only mentioned this once, but six weeks later Jane asked Glenda how her brother, George, was getting on. Jane had listened, remembered and fed back by asking how he was. Glenda said: “The fact that Jane remembered my brother’s name and my concerns about him really moved me. This made me feel important and valued by Jane.” You need to know what is current and important in your friend’s life. This is partly how you become a valued and important friend. Using quality listening for the important details of their life integrates their life with yours.

Sow and you shall reap Someone has to start the pattern of good friendship. And, it might as well be you! Kindness, concern and interesting activity are the qualities of a good friend. Don’t wait for someone else to be friendly, for they may be waiting for you! If you find it hard to take the risk, acknowledge that to yourself and take the risk anyway. It will prove to be worth it, because there is no real downside. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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You need to invest in your relationship. Don’t expect to reap the benefits of an intimate relationship immediately. Collect telephone numbers and addresses, remember names and details and put some work in! Put time aside in your diary to call friends just to see how they are. Don’t call just when you want something or need a favor. Call to ask them what’s happening and what they’ve been up to. You don’t just need to call to organise a get-together. Do organise events and suggest doing things, though. You may have to do a lot of the running in the early days, but eventually friendships will ‘take’ and people will begin to call you.

Let things go While it’s important to not be taken advantage of, it’s also important to allow your friends to be human. Expecting friends to be perfect is a sure fire way to disappointment. It’s unlikely you are going to like everything about your friends, so make reasonable allowances and focus on what you do like. You can have healthy disagreements, but you should also tell friends what you like or admire about them. Compliments should be sincere.

Be thoughtful Send gifts and cards on birthdays and anniversaries. Don’t overdo it but stay a part of others’ lives. Take extra food or a small gift if you are invited for dinner. Little surprises go a long way in a relationship. If there’s a show on TV you think they’d like, then give them a call or text them and let them know. You certainly can ask for favours in return as a good friendship is always give-and-take, and asking for a favor conveys the message “I consider you a good enough friend to ask this”. If someone is never willing to help you out, they are giving you useful feedback that perhaps they are not friend material.


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Be a good host When you invite people over to your place, look after them. Make visiting you a pleasure and people will want to come back. Remember that people like to relax, so allow them to relax in your home by being welcoming without smothering them.

Session Eleven Summary In this session, we have looked at: • Making friends • The value of small talk • What to talk about • Being a good friend Now it’s time for this session’s Relaxed Review…

To download Relaxed Review Session Eleven, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Twelve Sleep

Session Twelve Sleep Depression and Sleep: tips and ways to move forward You know it’s difficult to keep Depresso in the picture long-term if your sleep is wonderful. As always, we want you to feel well and think better. Depression and sleep quality go hand-in-hand. Depression always (and this is a case where I can say ‘always’) disrupts sleep patterns in some way. Either by spoiling the quality of sleep when you do sleep, or by preventing it or waking you early. Basically, Depresso likes to get his hands on your sleep!

Sleep is a basic emotional and physical need Sleep is a basic human need, just like food and water. Getting less sleep for one night is not a big problem. We can adapt quite well to an occasional shortened nights sleep. Aside from feeling sleepy and a little irritable, your ability to function is not usually that affected. However, if you get less sleep than you require night after night, your quality of mood and life generally suffers considerably.

Poor sleep Poor sleep takes different forms - it may be that it takes time getting off to sleep or perhaps you fall asleep but then over-dream and wake up exhausted. Maybe you lie awake tossing and turning for hours, churning over stuff in your head and shifting restlessly from one position to another worrying about how little sleep you seem to be getting. Even if you feel your sleep is fine, you should learn from this section. Most people have the occasional poor night’s sleep, but Depresso delights in poor sleep patterns!

Three types of common sleep problems: 1. Sleep onset insomnia, which is difficulty actually getting off to sleep. 2. Sleep maintenance insomnia, which is a difficulty in staying asleep. 3. Poor quality of sleep, which is the loss of the deeper, more restful sleep caused by over dreaming and day time worrying.


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Any of these sleep problems can result in: • • • • • • •

Daytime sleepiness Impaired memory Difficulty in concentrating Feelings of depression Slowed thinking Irritability; feeling more emotional than usual Poor health

Sleep and depression Up to now, we have been looking at ways to cut down on over-dreaming by focussing on how you relate to people, how you use your imagination and what assumptions and thoughts you have about life. Now you are going to get essential information about how to encourage deep, restful and comforting sleep that will help your mood and energy levels throughout the day.

How much sleep do you need? It’s true that different people need different amounts of sleep. This can vary from six or seven hours of sleep a night, to eight, to ten. Remember, it is the quality of sleep and not just the quantity that is important. About 25% of your sleep time should be spent in what we call the REM state. The remaining 75% needs to be the deeper ‘slow wave’ sleep in which the mind and body recuperate, refreshing and revitalising you. Your immune system also gets a boost when you relax deeply in deep ‘between dream’ sleep. What counts is how you feel, not how many hours of sleep you’ve had. If you are alert, feel rested and function well during the day, chances are you had the right quality and quantity of sleep the night before.

Some good news If you’ve been sleeping not-so-well and have been feeling overly tired, the Relaxed Reviews in this program will help you recoup benefits for your mind and body. Deep daytime relaxation can offset the loss of energy caused by poor sleep, which help restore health and positive mood! So, keep listening!


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How to sleep better ‘I am such a bad sleeper, I never sleep well!’

“Ah, here we go again! ‘Thank you for revisiting depressive explanatory styles for us, Depresso!” The fact is the self-help techniques we offer do help many people learn to sleep better. However, they are not ‘quick fixes’ like medications, but they’ll give you more effective (and safer) results in the long-run, which is certainly desirable. Develop a long-term focus regarding sleep The most important message here is “Keep at it!” It’s really important not to give up after just one or two nights because at the very least, these exercises will encourage relaxation, which will help you feel better even if you don’t sleep. Allow yourself at least two to four weeks to see some positive results and ten to twelve weeks for significant, long-term improvement. Each morning, on awakening, record your progress in your progress book

Benefits of improved sleep The obvious benefit of improved sleep is that feelings of depression lift. Once you get more of your ‘slow wave’ deep sleep, you start to feel sunnier, brighter and more energetic in the mornings. One study, dated as far back as the 1950’s, found that depressed patients who were woken every time they dreamed had their symptoms of depression lift very quickly. However, this is not an effective treatment because eventually the ‘test subjects’ would sleep again and, because they hadn’t learned any new ways of thinking and being, the depressive symptoms resumed. Also, the brain prioritises REM sleep, so when they slept again, their brain would overdream to get things back in balance. Deep sleep is also connected to immune function. The same chemicals that trigger sleep also stimulate the cells of our immune system, which is your body’s defence against infections.


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Understanding your sleep patterns The first step in getting a good night’s sleep is to correct any misconceptions you may have around sleep. Common myths are as follows: “If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.” Mmm. Actually, this is not a good idea when it comes to sleep. Trying is an awake-type thing. The more you try to fall asleep, the more likely you’ll stay awake. In fact, people are more likely to go to sleep when they are trying to stay awake! “I didn’t sleep a wink last night!” This is a very common perception; however, people in sleep laboratories often report not having slept at all, even after researchers have observed them sleeping four, five, even six or seven hours! It’s unlikely you got no sleep at all. Even during the roughest nights, most people with insomnia manage to get several hours of sleep. We tend to overestimate how long it took us to get to sleep and underestimate how much sleep we actually had.

Insomnia Monitor Exercise Purpose: To dispel one of the biggest myths of insomnia – that you get no sleep at all. This will lead to you becoming less stressed about sleep and so improve the chances of sleeping better. Success Indicators: You will have a more realistic (and less extreme) idea of how much you sleep.

If you think you don’t sleep at all, do this simple experiment: • • •

Put your progress notebook by your bed Every 15 minutes during the night, write the time in your notebook In the morning you will have an accurate record of exactly how much sleep you got

“If I don’t get to sleep, I’ll be a total wreck tomorrow!” For most tasks one sleepless night isn’t going to make much difference. In fact, if you haven’t slept, you may find you actually more creative as you are that much closer to unconscious functioning!


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‘Yes, yes, but what should I be doing to get some decent sleep? It’s hopeless isn’t it!

“Right! Depression, will you just listen a minute? That’s typical, jumping to conclusions without finding out facts. Calm down, wait and see, be openminded and please shut-up!” First, there are basic things you can do to encourage nature’s great restorer…

Leave out the stimulants Caffeine: Yes I know this is an obvious one. If you have any issue with sleep, you should avoid caffeine for six to eight hours before bedtime. Caffeine is contained in coffee, tea, chocolate, soft drinks, hot cocoa (often used before bedtime) and some medications. Always look for caffeine on the label. Medications: Some medications can cause restlessness and sleeplessness. These include some decongestants, anti-depressants, asthma medications, beta blockers, steroids and some diet pills, as well as offcourse amphetamines. Obviously, you may have to be on some of these medications, but if you can cut down (only under the supervision of your physician, of course) in any way, all the better! Don’t forget: Consult your doctor on this one. Alcohol: Yes, I know - what about the famous ‘night cap?’ Well, here are the facts: Alcohol can make you drowsy initially and even send you off to sleep, but it can also disrupt your sleep later on. It will also impair the quality of your sleep, which as we know is just as, if not more, important than quantity. Nicotine: Smokers tend to find it harder to fall asleep and they wake up more during the night. Nicotine is a powerful stimulant and is absorbed through the mucous membranes right into the brain in about eight seconds, which is followed by adrenaline production. This is why smokers tend to have more anxiety disorders than non-smokers. If you can quit, do so. If not, steer clear of the old weed before bedtime! Food and drink: Avoid heavy meals right before bedtime. But a light carbohydrate snack just before retiring can actually help you achieve deep sleep. Carbohydrates are contained in pasta, toast and warm milk. Carbohydrates increase brain serotonin, which lifts mood and also is a prerequisite for deep sleep. Fluids: Don’t have too much fluid just before bedtime as this will reduce your chances of waking in the night and needing to relieve yourself. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Handy hints for deep sleep Exercise: As well as being nature’s great antidepressant, daytime exercise will encourage deep, restful sleep at night. As we know, exercise changes brain chemistry and helps relieve depression and anxiety that can interfere with deep sleep. Repetitive exercise such as running increases serotonin production, which enhances sleep quality. People with insomnia tend to be less active during the day. Exercise causes your body to heat-up, causing a greater temperature drop at night. In order to sleep, your body needs to cool and the more effectively it does, the better you sleep!

Cool it! To fall asleep, your core body temperature needs to cool in comparison to your extremities. Not too much of course; being freezing cold will keep you awake. One study showed that the biggest difference people could make was to wear socks in bed. Wearing socks or having a hot water bottle by your feet takes more of the hot core blood away from your body, allowing it to cool. Relaxing for twenty minutes will also stimulate a later cool-down. Do this several hours before bedtime. Exercise five or six hours before bedtime and you’ll also get the cool down effect you need for deep restful sleep. So, a cool room will help you sleep better. It’s also best if your environment is quiet and dark. Darkness helps you produce a chemical called melatonin, which promotes sleep. If you get up in the night don’t go into a brightly lit room as this fools your brain and body into thinking it is morning and making you more alert.

Keep it organised Sleep is a beast that needs to be tamed. It needs to be captured during night-time hours. Go to bed when you are tired, but make sure you awake at the same time every morning and get out of bed when you awake. If you are over dreaming because of too much day time worrying, then staying in bed in the morning for too long will just increase REM time, which means more time not producing serotonin, plus further exhaustion of your hormonal systems and re-orientation response. Daytime relaxation can aid night time deep sleep. However, don’t sleep during the day as this will make you more alert at night.


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Calm the worrying mind - set aside a ‘worry time’ Does a racing mind keep you awake at night? If it does: •

Revisit the section on worry and catastrophizing

•

Designate a ‘worry time.’ This could be early evening after seven or even in the morning if you have time. Do it well before bedtime though.

•

During your ‘worry time’, write down your problems and concerns. Do this for about twenty minutes and try not to think about anything, but your worries.

•

Make a to-do list to get them off your mind. If need be, you can keep this by your bed and note down any that come to mind as you are going to sleep.

•

The purpose of this is to allow you to relax and sleep well again, knowing that any worries you have can be saved for the next day’s ‘worry time.’

What’s your bedtime routine? Research shows that after a stimulating day full of enjoyable activity (seeing new places, enjoyable company, seeing a good movie), people fall asleep faster. However, on top of making your life more interesting during the day, you need to establish a relaxing bed time routine. Some people have a bath, a cup of warm milk (remember the serotonin) and read a cosy novel. Some people write in a diary or even paint or draw or otherwise engage in some relaxing and enjoyable ‘wind down’ activity.

Use your bed only for sleep and sex Your bed and bedroom may have become associated with a place of stress, maybe because you’ve spent hours and hours in there tossing and turning and worrying. Think about changing colours, furniture and the position of your bed. Your bedroom needs to have restful, calming and comfortable associations:


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Use your bedroom just for relaxing, pleasurable activities and sleep. •

Don’t let anything stressful into your bedroom/bed time.

•

Don’t use your bedroom for arguments, eating, worrying, talking on the phone, or other rousing activities (with the exception of enjoyable, relaxing sex).

•

Do not have a television in your bedroom (this is incredibly important for good sleep. If you have kids who don’t sleep well or are grumpy due to lack of sleep, take the TV out of their room too.)

•

If you are regularly using sleeping pills, be warned that they can be addictive and spoil the quality of your sleep. They can leave you feeling tired and groggy the next day. If you want to come off them, you need to consult your doctor. As a general rule, you should taper off slowly, but this can only be determined by your prescribing physician.

Now, if you start to put these steps into practice, you’ll reap the rewards of deep nightly refreshment! In may take time, but the benefits of deep slow wave sleep will transform the way you generally feel (let’s not be extremist about it) day-to-day. Now, we are going to give you a beautiful relaxation tool to encourage deep rest and comfort as you sleep at night.

Session Twelve Summary In this session, we looked at: • The vital nature of sleep • What sleep does for your mind and body • Tips for good sleep

To download Relaxed Review Session Twelve, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Thirteen Exercise

Session Thirteen Exercise Getting moving and eating right! We are now going to look at more basic physical needs, which are closely connected to your feelings of well-being. It’s a cliché to say that our ancestors didn’t need to go to the gym. They lived in a world without cars, planes and elevators. They had to exercise as part of their every day activity. Things like obesity and inactivity were unheard of. People were active for longer. Now, as you know, serotonin is a chemical related to feelings of wellbeing, satisfaction and motivation. When you dream, it stops being produced. When you over-dream, it becomes depleted in your system, causing depression. Indeed, exercise is a very powerful antidepressant In fact, new research from Duke University in North Carolina shows that exercising three times a week can be just as effective as drug therapy when it comes to relieving the symptoms of major depression. But, don’t over do it! Depression and exercise don't like to share the same life space. If you move exercise into your life, depression will move out. This is true for many kinds of exercise. New research shows that you don’t have to over do it, which is maybe what you were tempted to do if you had perfectionist tendencies and were an all-or-nothing thinker (two attitudes closely linked to depression – as you know). Moderate exercise confers great benefits. It makes you happier, healthier and raises self-esteem and confidence. Moderate exercise can give you most of the benefits of really intense exercise, and is easier to keep doing in the long-term.

An epidemic of inactivity UK citizens eat less than they did ten years ago, but are fatter. This has been put down to inactivity. Twenty five percent of adult Americans are completely inactive. Another 50 percent could strongly benefit from more activity.


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Now, we can’t blame inactive life styles on the huge increase in rates of depression, but it certainly doesn’t help!

“But, I’m too old/fat/depressed to exercise!”

“Oh the old ‘I’ve got an excuse’ approach. Listen Depresso, exercise is for everyone! Fat, thin, old, disabled - anyone and everyone. It’s not just for the lean, muscular and beautiful! All that stuff about exercise having to be intensive is not true! A little exercise on a regular basis will raise your serotonin levels and get you feeling and looking better!”

Benefits of moderate exercise for depression During the last 15 years, several hundred studies have looked at the effects of exercise on depression and found that exercise increases selfesteem, improves mood, reduces anxiety levels, increases the ability to handle stress, and improves sleep patterns. As we get older, it is even more important to stay on a regular exercise regimen. While this can be a bit of a challenge, recent research suggests that it may be an effective antidote to major depression. A small study done at Harvard of 32 depressed people over the age of 60 compared the effects of resistance training to no training. The resistancetrained group showed significant gains in social functioning, vitality, and mood, and they also increased their strength by 33%. Similarly, a Norwegian study of depressed patients enrolled in an exercise program found that more than half of them stayed in the exercise segment a full year after the rest of their treatment finished. Many of them rated the exercise as the most important part of their program Experts now admit they were mistaken in saying that exercise had to be intense and continuous to provide the sought-after benefits. Not only is there clear evidence that moderate exercise is better than none, but there is also evidence that moderate exercise results in many of the health benefits of vigorous exercise. One study revealed that men who took part in thirty minutes of light moderate exercise a day had lower rates of heart disease and death than completely sedentary men. In fact, they were as protected from fatal heart attacks as men who exercised three times as much! Exercise produces serotonin and dopamine, both of which are natural antidepressants and can also focus the mind away from unreturned tax demands and a dodgy relationship for a while!


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‘When do I have the time to exercise even ‘moderately’, as you put it?

“Ah, yet another original excuse from Depresso – you really don’t want people to exercise do you?” Normal activities count! As I’ve said, intense or vigorous exercise is not necessary to get the antidepressant affects from exercise. Normal activities such as chores, tasks and walking, instead of going by bus or car, certainly give you great benefits. Other normal activities (not too strenuous) that will get your serotonin levels up include: • • • • • • • •

Climbing stairs Brisk walking Dancing Playing catch Cycling to work or for pleasure Cleaning the house/apartment Gardening Washing windows/the car

“You’ve got to be kidding! Everyone knows you need an expensive gym membership, to start wearing lycra and spend hours a day exercising!”

“If I didn’t know you better Depresso, I’d think you were joking! Exercise is simply about moving your body. Pushing a lawn mower counts, but riding on one doesn’t!”

How much exercise? Experts recommend about thirty minutes of exercise a day. However, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be all at once! The concensus is now that ‘collecting’ short bursts of activity throughout the day can give as great a benefit as continuous thirty-minute efforts!


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Anything is better than nothing! One piece of research found that men who walk a mile a day had a 30% lowered risk of a stroke; those who walked more than a mile a day had a 50% lower risk! Every bit of activity counts, no matter how small. If you really want to be more vigorous, that’s fine. Maybe you want to look and feel extra sleek, but remember, it doesn’t matter how brief your periods of activity are, as the benefits are cumulative. It’s the total amount of activity that counts, not the manner in which you do it! You don’t have to knock yourself out in order to greatly improve your life! Also, after a period of calorie burning exercise, you are still burning off more calories and have more energy up to eighteen hours after you finish exercising. So, you certainly don’t just get the benefits while you are doing it!

Activity Monitoring Exercise Purpose: To keep track of how much physical exercise you are doing and so enable to you increase it and enjoy the depression-lifting effects. Success Indicators: You will have a history of your activity in your Progress Notebook and will have realised how much sustained increased exercise can improve your energy levels, sleep quality and mood stability. If you used the motivation reward scheme, you will have more CD’s or DVD’s in your collection!

Ok, so now you need to start increasing your daily physical activity. Even if you are already exercising or doing a lot of activity, increasing it will help, at least while the rest of the program takes effect. At the end of each day, in your progress book, write down all the physical activity you have done that day. A typical list might go like this: • • • •

‘Climbed stairs at the shopping mall (instead of riding the elevator) Raked leaves for 15 minutes Walked a mile round trip to pick the kids up from school Walked half a mile after dinner

Total activity time: Approximately 55 minutes.


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Or, it might include more structured activity and look something like this: • • •

Swam 10 lengths at the swimming pool Jogged for two miles Did aerobics video for 30 minutes

Total activity time: Approx one hour and 45 minutes. Phew, that would be quite a heavy day, but you get the idea! Motivation Tips • •

If you find your self putting-off exercising, let your mind focus on the good feelings that are in store for you after you’ve finished the activity rather than the effort of doing the activity. Incentivize yourself by creating your own reward scheme. For every 10 hours of exercise you do, treat yourself to a new CD, DVD or something else you enjoy. That way, you can focus on your reward to get yourself to do that bit of exercise each day.

Now, you can relax deeply and enjoy the benefits of deep, refreshing calm as you listen to this visualisation download designed to encourage physical exercise.

Session Thirteen Summary In this session we looked at: • The benefits of exercise • How to increase your exercise levels

To download Relaxed Review Session Thirteen, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Fourteen Nutrition

Session Fourteen Nutrition Eating away depression Part of stopping doing things that encourage depression is to regain a sense of pleasure in life. We’ve already seen that the happiest people tend to be those who can gain small pleasures from simple things. A beautiful sun set, a baby’s smile or a cool summer’s breeze can be more readily enjoyed than having to be absolutist and only gain pleasure from winning the lottery or meeting Mr. or Miss. Wonderful. Eating can be highly pleasurable and (shock-horror!), healthy too! Certain foods, as we shall see, act on your mood. They do this by releasing certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.

Eating regularly to relieve depression Depressed people have more of the stress hormone (cortisol) in their blood systems. If you miss meal times, your body behaves as if it is under stress and you are ‘hunting’ for the next food source. It produces more cortisol to help you cope with the increased stress of famine and hunting. So, part of combating depression is to alleviate stress on your mind and body by eating regularly and well. Irregular meals also cause fluctuations in blood sugar that can strongly affect your mood, making you prone to black-and-white thinking, anxiety and catastrophizing.

Enjoy eating Eating involves more than just taste. When you eat, you use all your senses. Eat slowly, savor food, and pay attention to the different tastes, textures and aromas. Eating slowly allows you to get full quicker and helps you resist the temptation to overeat. Overeaters nearly always eat too fast. They literally eat so quickly that their brain does not get the message quickly enough that they are full. By slowing down, you’ll know more accurately when you’ve had enough to eat. ‘Empty food’ – that is food that is lacking in the right vitamins and nutrients can also leave you with cravings that make it hard to control your eating patterns and in the long term, potential malnutrition. This is one reason why a healthy, balanced diet is so essential.


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Serotonin, depression and eating ‘Yes, what is all this serotonin I keep hearing about?’

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, which has received a lot of attention in the last few years (see the Learning path). The reason is that low serotonin levels have been linked to depression, lack of concentration, obesity, sleeplessness, and, of course, migraines. The fact is that not getting basic needs met, negatively ruminating and over-dreaming all serve to lower serotonin levels. So low serotonin levels aren’t so much a cause of depression, but more a consequence, although once they are low, they feed back into the depressive cycle. Your body doesn't get serotonin from foods, but makes serotonin from tryptophan. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid. Tryptophan is present in turkey, black eyed-peas, walnuts, almonds, sesame or pumpkin seeds, wheatgerm, granola, cottage cheese, eggs, as well as cheddar, gruyere or Swiss cheeses. Also, helping to a lesser extent are whole grains, brown rice, and other dairy products.

Mind Food Foods high in protein release chemicals that keep us alert, suppress appetite and get us more mentally energetic. Which perhaps explains why eggs and milk are often favoured morning foods. As a general rule, you can absorb more protein early in the day and more carbohydrates later, as you are winding down for the evening. You should use this information. It may be that you have been instinctively using food to alter your mood. Food is no substitute for getting emotional needs met however, it’s important to understand the impact certain foods have on your brain and body. As I mentioned earlier, blood sugar has a strong impact on your moods. If you find that you have mood swings or food cravings, make sure you are taking protein at every meal. Here are some ideas: • • • • •

Eggs for breakfast Nuts for snacks Cold meat for lunches Nut / cereal bars for snacks Lentils & pulses in vegetarian meals


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Carrying nuts with you for example, will allow you to have protein whenever you have a snack, so you don’t eat simply carbohydrates and then experience a blood sugar spike and dip. As well as being bad for your mood, the long-term effects of too much sugar can be obesity and diabetes.

A special note for women Food and serotonin may be especially important for you, because oestrogen levels are linked to serotonin levels. When oestrogen levels fall, so do serotonin levels, and that may be just what it takes to trigger a migraine. (During the average 28 days cycle this occurs at the beginning of ovulation –around day 9/10.) So why not pay close attention to the food and serotonin link, and make sure that you're eating healthy foods, especially when you know your oestrogen levels are falling. Remember that eating healthy for much of the time can greatly improve the quality of your life all of the time.

Eat regularly Please, for goodness sake, don’t miss meals! For all the reasons above, and many more besides, this is one of the worst things you can do!

Spicy food can be good for you Chilli’s can also be very healthy. Spices and herbs boost flavours without boosting calories or fats. Spicy foods can increase feelings of energy. The ingredient in chilli peppers is capsaicin, which can burn off extra calories, loosen congestion due to colds, thin the blood to help prevent heart attacks, and trigger mood elevating endorphins.

Make sure your food isn’t hurting you If you find that you have chronically low energy, gas, flatulence, bad breath, irregular or poorly formed stools, it may be that you have a food intolerance. The symptoms can be similar to depression and it essential that you get tested by your doctor if you have any concerns about this. The correct diet can make all the difference in the world if your body is allergic or intolerant of certain foodstuffs.


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It is worth noting for example, that the average diagnosis time of celiac disease in the United States (a genetic condition causing intolerance of gluten in wheat, rye and barley) is currently around 10 years from onset of symptoms, yet in Italy it is around 2 weeks. The US simply hasn’t caught up with this common condition, despite the fact that studies now put its prevalence at around 1 in 100 in European populations.

Session Fourteen Summary In this session we looked at: • The effect of poor nutrition on depression • What good nutrition means • The effect of food on the brain

To download Relaxed Review Session Fourteen, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Fifteen Humor

Session Fifteen Humor The importance of laughter and humor “Life is too important to take seriously.” Corky Siegel, musician

“No way! What have I got to laugh about? Depression is no laughing matter. Any way you can’t just tell a depressed person to “Cheer up”!

“I thought you wouldn’t like this, Depresso! As the lecturer and writer Anne Wilson Schaef said: ‘Humor isn’t for everyone. It’s just for those who want to have fun, enjoy life and feel alive!” “Of course, you don’t just say ‘cheer up!’ But the fact remains that humor and laughter are very powerful, healthy antidepressants and as such deserve inclusion in this program so if you don’t mind...”

“But laughter is just a ‘defence mechanism’ I’m interested in the serious things of life!”

“Laughter isn’t ‘just anything’ (Unless you’re an all-or-nothing thinker). It certainly can defend against rigid thinking and low moods. Serious things in life can also be understood through the use of humor. Creativity, humor, lateral thinking and serious subject matter can all mix and match in a blend in life without having to be strictly segmented. Humor can give us unexpected shifts in perspective and a wider frame of reference, all of which are ‘serious’ concerns as far as personal development is concerned!”


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The benefits of laughter Laughter is a massive antidepressant and its ‘side effects’ include being more fun around others, better health and more flexible (less ‘all-ornothing’) thinking. Here are some of the benefits: • • • • • • • •

Reduced physical pain Lower stress levels Provides exercise for your heart and cardiovascular system Improves immune function meaning you get sick less Brightens your mood and sense of well-being Reduces anxiety, depression, hostility and tension Reduces blood pressure Eases and enhances social interaction (being with people)

It’s true folks. You heard it here first...

“I’m way too cynical for this nonsense!”

“I’ll ignore that predictable interruption, Depresso!” Laughing is a great work out! A good laugh can burn off calories and exercise your organs. Your abs and chest get a wonderful rejuvenation from a good belly laugh.

Pain relief A man called Norman Cousins wrote about the experiences of nursing himself back to health from a debilitating and extremely painful arthritic condition by every day watching comedy videos of the Marx brothers and other favourite comedies. People who listen to comedy tapes have been found to be far less sensitive to pain than people who were not exposed to comedy.

Stress relief People who use humor a lot are less likely to get as upset as their more humorless counterparts when faced with negative events and circumstances. You can think of your sense of humor as a muscle – the less you use it, the weaker it gets. Start your humor training regime today! Remember what makes you laugh. Seek out ways to enjoy humor more – through books, DVDs, shows – whatever!


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Flexible thinking Having a great sense of humor means seeing unexpected avenues and possibilities in things. Good problem-solving skills and humor often go hand-in-hand. Obviously, there are times when you need to be serious but, having said that, it’s surprising how much of life can (and needs to), include humor. It is often the case that through making a joke we find a solution or discover a new useful and helpful angle.

Boosting your immune system If you’ve been depressed then you know you have been over dreaming (despite the fact that you may not remember your dreams). This means that you were missing out on the deep, restorative ‘slow-wave’ sleep. Relaxation and also laughter can help restore the balance, bringing you a greater sense of health back. One study found that those who watched a comedy video had higher levels of bacteria-fighting antibodies in their bloodstream afterwards. Also, people who reported using humor often to cope with stress had consistently higher levels of these protective antibodies and so were better equipped to fight infection. In parts of India, tens of thousands of people start the day by attending ‘laughter clubs’ before going off to work in the mornings. Here they begin by doing ‘crazy’ things like rolling around on the floor and faking laughter until real laughter takes over and becomes infectious. Pretty soon, every one is rolling around on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter! What a way to start the day!

Developing your sense of humor “I’ve already told you I’ve got nothing to laugh at!”

“Hold it, Depresso! Anything can be laughed at. In fact, there are no rules as to what can and can’t be laughed at. Dictatorships such as Nazi Germany in the 30’s and 40’s actually suppressed comedy because it offered an opportunity to laugh at the absurdities of the repressive Nazi regime.”


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“Are you calling me a dictatorship?”

“Mmm... yes, it appears that I am!”

Laugh at yourself Perfectionists and all-or-nothing thinkers tend to take themselves too seriously. Start to focus humor on yourself sometimes. If you expect to do everything right all the time, then you can’t afford to have a sense of humor. But if you can allow yourself the inevitable mistakes and stupidities we all make on occasion, your self-esteem and enjoyment of life will improve dramatically. If someone teases you all the time, it can get wearing. However you should be able to take and even enjoy a bit of light-hearted teasing. As some one once said: “All of us, the great and wise, the super fit and beautiful, the gifted and the clever, we all without exception visit the house of stupid several times a day. Why not get some enjoyment while you are there?”

What makes you laugh? Start collecting and watching funny videos. Plan to watch one every night. It doesn’t matter what it is. It might be your favourite sitcom or footage of a favourite stand up comic. Try watching (or listening to audio tapes) of comedians you’ve never seen before. Good comedy can teach about a flexible approach to life, as well as entertaining you. Make this a priority. You need more laughter in your life.

Hang out with happy people Who you socialise with has a big impact on your views, well-being and even physical health, to a much greater extent than we know about consciously. In one study, a group of students were shown a series of photographs of very elderly frail looking people. Afterwards, when timed walking to a designated spot, the students on average walked much more slowly than they usually did! Hence, we are greatly influenced by the type of people we associate with and as that study revealed, even seeing pictures of a certain ‘type’ produced dramatically different behavior!


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So, ensure there are people in your life that you find it fun to be with. You know - people who lighten the atmosphere and make you feel good about yourself. Funny people can inspire you to be funnier. Or, you may bring out the humor in certain individuals. Others make you feel gloomy and downbeat. Make it part of your progress to, as much as possible, begin to associate with fun, enthusiastic and good-natured people.

“But they won’t want to hang out with me. I’m Depresso.”

“Oh really? So now you know things about people you haven’t even met yet? You’ll notice I said “good natured people”. These people would be insulted to hear you say that they won’t help someone who needs a bit of fun in their life. Let other people make their own decisions Depresso.”

Smiling for health Just changing your facial expression sets off a cascade of physiological changes. Even fake smiling improves mood. It can also trigger happier and funnier thoughts.

Funny Memories Exercise Purpose: To get your brain working in a different way to how Depresso runs it. To remind you of how to recall good memories instead of just bad ones. To remind you of your sense of humor, a powerful weapon against Depresso – in case you hadn’t noticed, he wants you to take everything seriously! Success Indicators: You will enjoy thinking about times that made you laugh. You will notice that you can ‘glide over’ things in the present that used to annoy you. You will notice yourself making more jokes, or thinking amusing thoughts about things. Grimace with an angry or tense face for 40 seconds, and see what thoughts come to mind.


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Now smile for 40 seconds and see what thoughts come to mind. When you smile (even fake smiling) you change your neurohormonal levels. Blood flow to the brain increases and the production of positive neurotransmitters is stimulated. So, when you look happier you actually feel happier! Make a point of smiling in the mornings for five minutes continuously (privately) and you’ll start to stimulate feel-good hormones!

Remembering funny times So often, amusing things happen in life and maybe they ‘tickle’ us for a while, maybe even for a few days, but then we forget about them.I want you to get into the habit of revisiting funny, hysterical and even slightly amusing times and thoughts in your mind often.

“I only like to ‘revisit’, as you put it, sad and bad times!”

“You don’t like this session do you Depresso?”

In your progress notebook, I want you to write down five things that you have felt were funny at the time. This may take a little while to get going as, remember, depression produces a selective negative past, present and future focus; which means that we only tend to recall the bad/sad times and to focus less on uplifting and funny times. However, really focus on this exercise right now. There have been five times in your life that you laughed. These don’t have to be incredibly funny times just times that were quite amusing at the time. As you write each of the five memories down, I want you to recall the colours, atmosphere and even sounds of each time down. Close your eyes if necessary and really ‘get into’ each memory! Do this now.


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Over the next couple of weeks I want you to, at the end of each day, write down just one thing that happened that day that you found amusing. It could be something you saw on TV, or it could be just a thought you had about something, or actually something that happened, or something you heard about. So, a typical list might include: • • • •

A joke I overheard at the mall When I imagined what would happen if… The way Jimmy’s teacher looked when he/she thought they were so professional playing the piano When I was showing the kids how to make a proper cup of tea and the milk carton burst in my face

“But. I don’t think that’s funny!”

“No, these are just made up examples, Depresso. You write down whatever is funny to you!” In this session, you learned about the importance of humor as far as flexible thinking is concerned, as well as the way humor can improve your social life, health and sleep. Now, I want you to listen to this download. It is designed to encourage you to laugh more on a day-to-day basis. Artificially smiling for two minutes reliably improves mood. So relaxing and being encouraged to feel lighter about life should prove hugely beneficial for you!

Session Fifteen Summary In this session, we covered: • The benefits of laughter • How laughter is the enemy of depression • How to tickle your funny bone

To download Relaxed Review Session Fifteen, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Session Sixteen Goal Setting

Session Sixteen Goal Setting The importance of meaning, goals and purpose We looked at this a little in the section on Basic Needs, but it is so important we are going to look into it more now. We all get our sense of meaning from different things in life. Certainly, having a status, a recognized role, is important. The fact that we humans suffer from things like embarrassment, shame and guilt and talk in terms of ‘being put down’ or ‘one-up-manship’ shows that status is important to us. Most people experience a rise in blood pressure when they are in the presence of someone whom they feel is of higher status than they are. When we talk to people we deem to be of equal or lower status than us, our blood pressure goes down.

“Oh no, I don’t feel I have any status or recognised role in life!”

“At the moment, Depresso, at the moment. Remember to ‘make temporary’ the bad things in life. (Explanatory styles session…?)” A sense of status can be fulfilled through: being a parent, mechanic, doctor, pet owner, brother, athlete, therapist, artist or seen by others as being very good at something even if that’s making people laugh. That’s still status. And you don’t have to get all your sense of status in the same place! Being good at making a particular dish gives you high status in that area. Keeping a tidy garden gives you high status there. And so on for: • • • • • • • • • •

swimming well having the self discipline to walk every day remembering to call your mother every week looking after the birds in your garden presenting neat reports at work caring about people in trouble being firm but fair with your kids being good at negotiating having an eye for color being good at DIY If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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• •

doing jobs ‘right first time’ and on, and on, and on.

In fact, inhabiting any role that you feel is worthwhile and is recognized by others helps to fulfill your sense of status and therefore meaning in life. But there is one hugely important point to make about all of this. Hugely Important Point: If you think in the way Depresso wants you to, you can dismiss any and all of these. People who feel more worthwhile do so because of the way they think about their abilities, not because of what their abilities actually are. Depresso can suck the meaning out of anything – but just because his logic ‘feels right’ at the time, doesn’t make it so. Refuse to listen to Depresso with his unintelligent, one-dimensional interpretations. Put time and effort into changing your thinking styles as illustrated earlier in the program and status and meaning will flow back into your life.

“But all these things are just empty, devoid of meaning, part of the human charade!”

“You see what I mean? As if a statement like that is an intelligent interpretation of everything we have talked about above. It’s not, it’s simply lazy Depresso.”

Helping others is great for depression Research shows that helping others vastly improves our own contentment. Helping others also gives you a status in life. The benefits of regularly helping others also include: • • • • •

Improved mood and well-being Reduced excessive self-centeredness, social isolation and preoccupation with one’s own health problems and concerns Improved immune function, meaning you get ill less often A better social life An increased sense of purpose


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Of course, you can get ‘burned out’ by spending too much time caring for others. However, think about the possibility of doing regular charity work or just help an elderly neighbor or a friend. They get the benefit of your company and assistance and you get the kind of health benefits already described. It’s a fair transaction. Don’t underestimate the importance of status in your life. You don’t have to be a millionaire or a brain surgeon to be recognized and valued by others – and by yourself. This is what people are really talking about when they talk about ‘self esteem’. (You can read the truth about self esteem here.)

Purpose and goals Goals provide meaning in life. “The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.” Ben Stein Ben Stein is emphasising the importance of goals here. But I would go a little further: To decide what you want, keep trying things until you discover something that really ‘rings your bell’!

“What’s the point in anything? My life has no meaning. No one would miss me if I weren’t here...”

“And other such clichés, Depresso!” People with a strong sense of purpose tend to show great resilience. If you feel you are really working towards things in life that are important to you and others, then when you keep going whatever the odds, you show strength of character and problems become challenges. People who are actively religious live longer and have healthier immune systems. However, this health advantage can come from any strong sense of meaning in life.

True Story Dr. Milton Erickson is now recognized as one of the most inspiring and inspiration psychiatrists of the 20th century. He helped countless people extend their limits, overcome difficulties and achieve things they hadn’t thought possible. Yet, his start in life was fraught with struggles.


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Erickson was dyslexic, tone deaf and colour blind and suffered polio twice during his life. Despite these drawbacks, he eventually attained his medical degree at the Colorado General Hospital. He described the unique way he did therapy as helping patients ‘extend their limits’. He spent his own life doing just the same.

Paralysed by polio When he was first stricken with polio at the age of seventeen he laid paralysed for an entire year. He was informed that he would never walk again. After spending many hours concentrating on achieving a flicker of movement in the muscles of his legs, he was up on crutches within a year. He even managed to obtain and hold a sit-down job in a cannery to help finance his way into the University of Wisconsin.

Destined to help others He always believed in his life and that he was destined to help others one day. After his polio attack, he decided that a summer-long canoe trip would provide the appropriate exercise, so Erickson set out in June in a 17-foot canoe. He did not have the strength in his legs to pull his canoe out of the water and he could swim only a few feet. His supplies for his summer's voyage consisted of a small sack of beans, another of rice, and a few cooking utensils. He had just $2.32. With these provisions, he spent from June until September that year travelling down the Yahara River. He foraged for his food along the way by eating what fish he could catch, finding edible plants on the riverbanks when he camped at night, and harvesting crops from the Mississippi river.

Sheer brute determination By the end of the summer, he had travelled a distance of 1,200 miles with almost no supplies or money, without sufficient strength in his legs to carry his canoe over the dams that blocked his way, and so physically weak when he began that he could hardly paddle a few miles downstream without getting overtired.

Transformation At the end of his summer journey, Erickson had certainly extended his own limits. When he returned, this polio ‘victim’ who ‘would never walk again’ had increased his chest measurement by six inches. He could now swim a mile, and he could paddle upstream against a four-mile current from dawn to dark. He could also carry his own canoe over a dam!


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The 17-year-old Dr. Erickson was so resilient because he had such purpose. Nothing was going to stop him achieving what he had set out to do. He was determined!

Inspiration “We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” Frank Tibolt We humans love rewards. We like to feel good for doing something. However, the ‘reward’ of feeling satisfied usually comes after the action of making yourself do something you didn’t want to do.

How do you make your decisions? Making decisions based on whether they are comfortable and ‘safe’, rather than whether they take you towards your goal, is not part of a winning strategy. Depresso likes to play it safe and to keep well with in his comfort zone. Don’t you, Depresso?

“Mmm... I suppose...”

Dreaming Out Loud Exercise Think about any things you’d like to do (absolutely anything at all) but were previously too afraid or too lethargic to start. Just write them down in your progress notebook here.


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These could be things like starting a new career or course, getting fit, or learning a musical instrument. Maybe you want to travel or go into property development. Whatever your plans, take the one you feel is the most readily achievable and write it as a header clearly in your notebook.

Ok... Stepping stones to success Fantasies are great. Someone once said that life is what happens while we are making other plans. We can spend lifetimes imagining how we’d like things to be and this level of fantasy can motivate us. But (and it’s a big but), we also need a strategy to help us actually achieve goals. We don’t want fantasy to replace action. We need to know what steps to take to get us to where we want to be. This means breaking down your aspirations into achievable steps or ‘mini goals.’

Example Goal: To run a marathon Achievable steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Write in my diary on what date I need to apply to enter Apply to enter Book time off from work for the marathon and the day after Buy pair of running shoes Start to watch my diet Join a running club Put time aside in my diary for running sessions Keep running and also attend the gym twice a week Run marathon

Expected end result: Fun of running a marathon, satisfaction, self respect, future expectation of future marathons, vastly improved level of physical fitness, health benefits, better sleep, possible unseen spin-off opportunities.


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Writing down the actual steps that carry you towards your dream does two things:

First: It gives you an indication as to how achievable your goal really is. (I did this exercise with a client once who wrote down ‘winning the lottery’ as one of the steps).

Second: It gives you a road map to follow. So write down the steps, in order, which you can take to get closer to your goal. Remember, the steps should be practical ones, not ones based on chance or luck! And, don’t listen to Depresso, as he’ll try and convince you why you can’t do things.

Steps to Success Exercise Purpose: One of Depresso’s most effective tricks is to stop you planning things, even small things such as washing the car. Without at least a small plan (such as “I’m going to make this car really shine”), you can’t feel satisfied that you have achieved your goal once it’s done. On a larger scale, almost anything can feel overwhelming until you break it down into smaller ‘chunks’. This exercise will give you practice. Success Indicators: You will get more satisfaction from small tasks because you will automatically imagine your desired result beforehand. You will being to achieve more because you refuse to let Depresso make you feel overwhelmed by stopping you breaking tasks down into chunks. You will improve your confidence and self esteem because you are getting on with things. Write down the steps now in your notebook!

Now, we are aiming to make your goals more compelling for you so that you get moving on them. One way of doing this is to really get your imagination involved. Before you relax to the next download, memorize, as far as possible, your list of steps. I want you to really ‘get them in your


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head’. You don’t have to recall them exactly, as long as you have a strong general sense of the sequence of steps you need to take. Take a look again in your notebook, if you need to, so that you can be sure of the general sequence.

Extract More Satisfaction We have noticed in our practice that Depresso often stops people doing even the smallest amount of planning – here’s what I mean: If I am going to wash my car, I think “That car’s dirty. It will look so much better when it’s done and I will stop feeling bad that I haven’t washed it. I’ll need a bucket of hot water, soap and the hose.” This simple step sets up a ‘pattern’ in my brain that now requires to be completed. So off I go and wash the car. And when it is done, because I have completed that pattern I created earlier, I get a feeling of satisfaction – and this is most likely caused by a release of dopamine in my brain – my body’s way of rewarding me. If I had simply jumped in an done the task willy-nilly without any planning and so had failed to set up a pattern (and most likely not completed the task so effectively), I would have been less likely to get that feeling of satisfaction. This is why you must plan; even the tiniest tasks.

Maximizing Satisfaction Exercise Purpose: To remind you to use your brain in a way that maximizes the pleasure and satisfaction you get from completing small tasks. To stop Depresso removing the enjoyment from everything. Success Indicators: You will begin to feel more motivated to undertake small jobs that have been needing done for ages. You will begin to notice that completing practical tasks can be remarkably enjoyable.


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Try it yourself:

The next time you have something to do, take a moment to plan it first. Here are some example: •

•

• •

If you have to go food shopping, make a complete list first. Take a moment to think through everything you might need. Even look up a new recipe or two and get ingredients to buy. Think about how interesting it will be to make a new meal. When you have got everything on the list and put it all in the cupboards, throw the list in the trash. Job done! If you have to mow the lawn, think through the steps first – get out the mower, check the fuel if it’s a petrol mower, start at the right place, finish by trimming the edges. It will look great. Think through it first, then do it. If you have to vaccum the house, do the same as the lawn mowing task (except use the vacuum cleaner – it’s easier on the carpets ;-) If you have to walk the dog, think through it beforehand – “I’ll walk the dog that route, and after I’ll have had some exercise, the dog will enjoy it and be more tired afterwards and will leave me alone”.

You’re getting the message I guess. The main point is, you can extract enjoyment and satisfaction from all sorts of mundane activities if you apply a little (and I do mean a little) thought. “All people need to be happy in life is something to be enthusiastic about.” Albert Einstein

Session Sixteen Summary In this session we covered: • The importance of meaning and goals • How Depresso’s ‘all or nothing’ thinking makes things meaningless • How to create more meaning in your life


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OK, so now it’s onto this session’s Relaxed Review…

To download Relaxed Review Session Sixteen, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Session Seventeen Motivation

Session Seventeen Motivation Your life ahead - keeping motivated Risk points This is not the end of this program. The Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program is here for you to make part of your life – a habit in fact. To achieve this, you need to: • • •

refer to it regularly re-use the Relaxed Reviews review sections when you start to forget them (as you surely will at some point)

For long-lasting, optimal results, I strongly encourage you to keep using the program and the Relaxed Reviews. This may seem like effort at first but will soon start to feel like second nature, if it hasn’t already. In this final session I go over some of the main things from the Program that you need to do to feel better more of the time. You can use it as a ‘quick reference’ guide to remind you of the Program’s key points.

Ways to feel better 1. Relax. Seek out calmness whenever possible: Relax to your Relaxed Reviews, meditate, do yoga, spend time with calming people, listen to relaxing music. Make time for relaxation, as it’s a powerful antidepressant. 2. Think about your basic needs. Get familiar with them. Just knowing what they are gives you a tremendous tool. If you feel less than great, you can link it to a basic need not being met and make moves to fix it. 3. Understand ‘pattern matching’. Once you truly understand the principle of pattern matching, then all kinds of ‘weird’ behavior in yourself and others will start to make sense. Pattern matching explains why we become anxious around certain things, how we become addicted to certain things and why certain people make us feel a certain way.


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4. Watch your thinking styles. Watch for ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking. Are you over-generalising the negative and minimising the positive? Do you attribute permanency to bad things, but see good things as short-lived and fragile? Do you tend to exclusively blame yourself when things go wrong, but fail to take credit for when they go right? How do you interpret the events in your life? Look for patterns and write them down. Then look for alternative nondepressing explanations. This will help you be more creative and make you feel better! 5. Observe yourself without getting emotional. Watch yourself more objectively (regular relaxation will help with this). Get to know your moods and start to see what helps you change a mood you don’t like. Self-knowledge comes from watching your moods over time. Watch for perfectionism, defeatism and unwarranted self-blame. Once you see these ‘biases’ operating, you can distance yourself from them. 6. Do things you enjoy: If you’ve been depressed, it may take a while to start enjoying activities again. This is because serotonin would have been reduced through over-dreaming. Serotonin partly has to do with how much satisfaction you feel. However, making your self do enjoyable activities will eventually make you feel better as it will raise your serotonin level. So put happiness and pleasure at the top of your ‘to do list.’ 7. Plan for pleasure: Your daily mood has more to do with the number of small satisfactions you experience (rather than life’s ‘biggies’ such as divorce, job loss, etc.). Notice small opportunities to have a good time and actively engage in them. Take a walk, admire a sunset, watch a funny movie, get a massage, go to a concert, or cook a lovely meal. Socialise with people who make you feel good. The more you can enjoy life, the more good you can potentially do others. 8. A busy brain is a healthy brain. Research shows that depressed people have less activity in the left hemisphere of their brain than the right, which is very active during depression. This is why it can be hard to ‘be logical’, focus and complete sequences when we are depressed. Doing activities which engage the left hemisphere will improve your mood. The left side has more to do with logic and reasoning. Learn a new language, do cross word puzzles, watch an uplifting documentary, read interesting books. The rule with your brain (like your body) is: ‘Use it or lose it!’ If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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9. Do Exercise. Not feeling like doing something is often a sign that you really need to do it. Consider these benefits again: Over one thousand pieces of research have shown regular exercise to be an effective antidepressant. Don’t you think that’s worth acting on? Exercise is wonderful for stress. Why? Because physical activity is the final phase of the stress response. If we get stressed but don’t exercise, the hormones, glucose, and fats released into the bloodstream (in response to stress) are never dissipated. Regular exercise provides a replacement to fighting or fleeing and so restores your body’s natural balance. People who exercise regularly have fewer physical changes when they encounter life’s stresses. Exercise is a diversion for your mind and can divert your focus away from daily concerns. Exercise boosts your immune system, lessening your chances of getting ill! Exercise is a great mood-enhancer. When you’re active, your brain releases natural opiates (endorphins), which produce calmness and a happier state. Blood levels of noradrenaline are also increased which may help cure depression. Exercise can improve memory and some research even suggests it can raise our IQ! Regular activity minimises mental and physical deterioration as we age, which means you stay younger for longer! Exercise can raise self-esteem and give you a better body image. It can give you an increasing sense of self-mastery as you overcome physical limitations. Regular exercise with others can meet your need for attention, connection to others and even intimacy. I think I have made my point ;-) 10.Get outside! While exercising regularly and eating healthily will certainly improve your mental health, another important nutriment is high intensity light. Some people seem to need more light than others, but natural sunlight is a mood-improver for us all. Even being outside for an hour on a very cloudy day gives your eyes enough sunlight to significantly improve mood centres in your brain. Being outside during the day can also encourage slow wave sleep at night. Exercise outside and you get the mood enhancement from sunlight and exercise! 11.Be kind to others. Research tells us that helping others helps you. Help people out. Listen to their concerns. Focussing on other people can put your own concerns in perspective and also help you make friends. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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12.Socialise with people you like. Sounds obvious, but I have met many people who stay with ‘friends’ they don’t particularly like just because they are used to them! Think about the effect that the people you see have on you. Choose people who are up-beat and positive, as we often become like the people we are with. 13.Give sincere compliments. If you find something to admire or like about someone, tell them. People love to be appreciated! Remember to be specific. So, rather than just saying: ‘You are a wonderful person!” which is a little overwhelming and rather meaningless, say exactly what it is you like: “You know the way you handled those people on the seminar last week was so friendly but clear. I love that you are so good with people!” 14.Take control. Behaving helplessly in the face of depression is exactly what Depresso wants. Use the knowledge you have gained through this program to change the way you feel, act and live. A sense of control is so important. By doing this program, you are taking control. Organise your diary, finances, social life. Get things to work for you. If you can afford it, think about hiring the services of a personal coach or just get help from a friend who is particularly good at organising. 15.Purpose and meaning. What does, or potentially can, add meaning to your life? What did you used to do that made you feel good? What values do you have? Remember the saying: “Treat others in a way worthy of you not just what is worthy of them!” What’s important to you (or can be in the future)? 16.Plan for setbacks. In any worthwhile endeavour, things don’t go right 100% of the time. We all have off days and set backs. Don’t catastrophize. You now have skills that will enable you to pull yourself back from feeling bad. List ways you’ll help yourself, should you start feeling a little down again.


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Overview Exercise Purpose: Learning how to keep Depresso away cannot be learned overnight, and you will most likely want to go back and review different elements of the Program. Completing this exercise first will help you remember the things that really made a difference so that you can remind yourself of them later. In time, this exercise will help you memorize the parts of the Program that helped you the most, and so make them into habits. Success Indicators: You will be able to remember clearly and quickly the main points from the Program and use them against Depresso whenever you need to, without having to refer back to the Program. Your confidence in your ability to stay out of depression will grow and grow. Without thinking about it too much, quickly write in your notebook how this program has helped you and the main things you have learned. Do this now. The second time you do the program you will learn more, and this part of your notebook will grow and grow.

Good, and now it’s time to relax once more, put your thoughts on hold and enjoying feeling good.

To download Relaxed Review Session Seventeen, click here If you have lost your username and/or password, click here


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Quick Step Guide to Practical Exercises

Quick Step Guide to Practical Exercises This Quick Step Guide is an index to all the practical exercises in the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program. Once you have been through the program once, you can refer to it to remind yourself of the tasks we have asked you to do. For each exercise you will see Purpose: - this lets you know the reason I have asked you to do it and Success Indicators: - these are what let you know you have successfully completed the exercise and so can stop doing it!

Understanding Depression Test Purpose: To ensure you understand how depression works. This enables you to understand what is happening to you and why you feel the way you do. Once you have this knowledge, it becomes much, much easier to know what you have to do to beat depression. Success Indicators: You will score well when you look at the answers! You will also know what I mean when I refer to how depression works during the Program itself.

Learning Path Improvements Exercise Purpose: In order to break down the all-or-nothing thinking of Depresso (“It’s all terrible” or “It’s all perfect”), you need to start noticing changes in the way you feel. Since you have completed the Learning Path and progressed to the Depression Program, you found something helpful. Noting this will help you continue your progression. Success Indicators: You will actually have something concrete written in your Progress Notebook that you can refer back to.

Future Improvement Indicators

Purpose: To get you thinking about how things will be when depression starts to lift. This is a key stage in having your brain focus on things other than Depresso’s ideas. Success Indicators: You will have definite improvement indicators written in your Progress Notebook and, perhaps more importantly, you will have them at the ‘front of your mind’ from day to day.


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Honest Achievements Exercise Purpose: To help you be more realistic and less ‘all or nothing’ about the things you achieve as you beat depression. Success Indicators: You will begin to be able to give yourself credit and feel satisfaction at the small tasks you complete, such as those within the Program. This is in contrast to listening to Depresso making ‘all or nothing’ comments such as, “Yeah but it’s hardly climbing Mount Everest is it?” or “Normal people can do this, why can’t you?”

Basic Needs Plan Purpose: To help you see the importance of basic needs and get you to begin planning to meet more of them in your day-to-day life. Success Indicators: If you start to feel worse, you may be able to tie it back to meeting fewer basic needs. You will also know what to do should you begin to feel depressed again in the future.

7:11 Breathing Practice Purpose: To give you the skills and confidence to bring down anxiety levels whenever you need to Success Indicators: You will feel less at the mercy of anxiety and will automatically begin using the 7:11 breathing technique whenever you need to feel more relaxed.

Control Exercise Purpose: To help you identify if you have problems determining realistic levels of control or influence, and if you do, to be more flexible in your interpretations. Success Indicators: You may start exerting personal influence in situations where you previously felt helpless, or conversely you may ‘let things be’ at times when before you felt you should be able to affect the outcome. Generally, you should be more subtle in your assessment of how much you can control in any situation, and Depresso will get less of a chance to do his ‘all or nothing’ thinking. This will have the effect of greatly reducing your emotional arousal, such as anxiety or anger.


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Control Examples Purpose: To make the learnings from this section real. For this Program to be effective, the exercises must ‘come off the page’ and integrate with the way you do things in ‘real life’. This exercise will help that happen. Success Indicators: You will start noticing more how control issues pop up all over the place, and how much easier life is when you can quickly and accurately decide whether to exert influence or not.

Problem List Purpose: Problems can only feel overwhelming when you fail to break them down into solvable steps. This exercise is the first step to gaining control over problems so Depresso can’t use them to add fuel to his fire. Success Indicators: Whenever you start thinking about a problem, instead of feeling anxious or overwhelmed, you will simply add it to your problem list. You will start to feel more in control of your life, and feel more optimistic about the possibility of solving the problems that have been plaguing you.

Flexible Thinking Purpose: To enable you to spot ‘all or nothing’ thoughts quickly, before they get a ‘foothold’ and to give you practice in forming more flexible interpretations. Success Indicators: You will begin to automatically reject ‘all or nothing’ thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones. You will notice how this enables you to think about potentially stressful topics much more calmly.

Alternative Explanations Purpose: A huge part of getting out of depression is lowering your general emotional arousal levels. This exercise will help you practice generating multiple explanations for events, which when applied will stop ‘all or nothing’ interpretations making you anxious or angry. Success Indicators: You will notice that you no longer accept Depresso’s extremist views without question. You will be able to say “Wait a minute, that’s not necessarily true” and go on to generate multiple possible explanations for events. The result of this will be that you are calmer more of the time.


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Anti-Catastrophizing Exercise Purpose: One of the ways Depresso keeps you hostage is by scaring you with imagined outcomes of imagined scenarios. You can take the wind out of his sails by looking seriously at these outcomes and planning for them, rather than trying to ignore them and so feeling more anxious. Success Indicators: You will begin to feel more in control of your own thoughts and imagination. You will be able to refuse to use your imagination to scare yourself and will be more realistic about the likely outcome of events and their true impact.

At Least Practice Purpose: This will add to your ability to be flexible in your thought patterns and so gain control over Depresso’s ‘there’s only one answer to anything’ approach. Success Indicators: Unpleasant events will get you down less. You will bounce back quicker and even be able to help others minimize the impact on themselves. You will begin to see that true catastrophies rarely happen.

Limit Setting Exercise Purpose: In case this is a problem for you, a ‘safe’ introduction to the idea of setting limits. Success Indicators: You will know why it is important to set limits, the sort of situations that require it, and how to go about it.

Discovering Good Qualities Purpose: Part of building satisfying relationships is knowing what you bring to the table and being confident about your own unique qualities. This will also help you challenge such nonsense from Depresso as “You’re completely useless”. Success Indicators: You will stop accepting ‘all or nothing’ statements from Depresso like the one above, and you will be able to think about yourself in terms of your qualities. This doesn’t mean thinking you are fantastic (that would be ‘all or nothing’ ;-), it just means accepting there are things you can do, and certain qualities you possess.


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Insomnia Monitor Purpose: To dispel one of the biggest myths of insomnia – that you get no sleep at all. This will lead to you becoming less stressed about sleep and so improve the chances of sleeping better. Success Indicators: You will have a more realistic (and less extreme) idea of how much you sleep.

Activity Monitor Purpose: To keep track of how much physical exercise you are doing and so enable to you increase it and enjoy the depression-lifting effects. Success Indicators: You will have a history of your activity in your Progress Notebook and will have realised how much sustained increased exercise can improve your energy levels, sleep quality and mood stability. If you used the motivation reward scheme, you will have more CD’s or DVD’s in your collection!

Funny Memories Exercise Purpose: To get your brain working in a different way to how Depresso runs it. To remind you of how to recall good memories instead of just bad ones. To remind you of your sense of humor, a powerful weapon against Depresso – in case you hadn’t noticed, he wants you to take everything seriously! Success Indicators: You will enjoy thinking about times that made you laugh. You will notice that you can ‘glide over’ things in the present that used to annoy you. You will notice yourself making more jokes, or thinking amusing thoughts about things.

Steps to Success Purpose: One of Depresso’s most effective tricks is to stop you planning things, even small things such as washing the car. Without at least a small plan (such as “I’m going to make this car really shine”), you can’t feel satisfied that you have achieved your goal once it’s done. On a larger scale, almost anything can feel overwhelming until you break it down into smaller ‘chunks’. This exercise will give you practice. Success Indicators: You will get more satisfaction from small tasks because you will automatically imagine your desired result beforehand. You will being to achieve more because you refuse to let Depresso make you feel overwhelmed by stopping you breaking tasks down into chunks. You will improve your confidence and self esteem because you are getting on with things.


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Maximizing Satisfaction Exercise Purpose: To remind you to use your brain in a way that maximizes the pleasure and satisfaction you get from completing small tasks. To stop Depresso removing the enjoyment from everything. Success Indicators: You will begin to feel more motivated to undertake small jobs that have been needing done for ages. You will begin to notice that completing practical tasks can be remarkably enjoyable.

Overview Exercise Purpose: Learning how to keep Depresso away cannot be learned overnight, and you will most likely want to go back and review different elements of the Program. Completing this exercise first will help you remember the things that really made a difference so that you can remind yourself of them later. In time, this exercise will help you memorize the parts of the Program that helped you the most, and so make them into habits. Success Indicators: You will be able to remember clearly and quickly the main points from the Program and use them against Depresso whenever you need to, without having to refer back to the Program. Your confidence in your ability to stay out of depression will grow and grow.


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Answers Section

Answers Section Depression Test Question One: Signs of Depression include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Exhaustion on waking Disrupted sleep, sometimes through upsetting dreams Early morning waking and difficulty getting back to sleep Doing less of what they used to enjoy Difficulty concentrating during the day Improved energy as the day goes on Anxious worrying and intrusive upsetting thoughts Becoming emotional or upset for no particular reason Shortness of temper, or irritability

Question Two: Most depressions are not caused by a chemical imbalance. True. Low serotonin levels are a consequence, not a cause of most depression. There is 10 times more major depression in people born after 1945 than in those born before. This clearly shows that the root cause of most depression is not a chemical imbalance. Human genes do not change that fast. Question three: Changes in society since the end of WWII that may account for the huge increase in depression include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A breakdown in the extended family A dispersal of communities leading to less support An increased focus on material wealth An overwhelming prevalence of news media An increased focus on 'the self' over the wider community

Question Four. You are likely to wake in the morning feeling exhausted because when you ruminate, or introspect in a negative way, you create emotional arousal that causes the release of stress hormones. That night, in REM (dream sleep), you become emotionally aroused again as dreaming 'flushes out' the emotional arousal from your brain. That is why depressed people have higher levels of stress hormones, and also why you can wake up feeling exhausted. Over-worrying or negative ‘rumination’ makes you dream more (depressed people dream up to three times more than normal). During dreaming, also called ‘REM sleep’


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Answers Section

something called your ‘orientation response’ becomes exhausted and serotonin production stops entirely in REM sleep. (Your orientation response is what allows you to switch your focus of attention from one thing to another. If it is exhausted you are less able to motivate yourself.) So, after a night of over-dreaming (even if you don’t remember your dreams) you’ll wake up with much lower levels of serotonin than normal. Daytime activity raises serotonin levels, making you feel better as the day progresses. Question Five: When you are stressed, your brain works differently. You are more likely to resort to 'All-or-nothing' thinking, which causes catastrophizing, perfectionism and difficulties in solving complex problems. In turn, this creates more arousal, or stress, and so continues the 'loop', increasing the amount you dream, and so exhausting you. Click here to return to the Depression Test

Learning Path Improvements Exercise Here are some example answers to help get your creative juices flowing… •

‘I have noticed that since absorbing the information from the learning path I have felt less threatened by depression because now I understand it so much better.’

•

‘I have been able to help others who had been depressed by explaining to them simple facts about depression.’

•

‘I can now see a pattern for how depression can actually lift. This has given me a tremendous amount of hope for the future.’

•

‘Things I was tempted to stop doing, because of feeling so low, I have decided continue. Since learning how important exercise is in keeping up serotonin levels I’ve kept on going to the gym. I’ve even stopped doing some of the stuff that was making me feel bad such as assuming, without evidence, that I’ve done something wrong.

•

‘The path has helped me to see that my behavior was a pattern. And my perception has been an interpretation of reality and not a reflection of it. This has given me more detachment as far as the depression is concerned and also calmed me down around it.’


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Answers Section

•

‘I feel strengthened by the fact that depression isn’t some genetic ‘disorder’ or ‘biological disease.’

•

‘I also feel better because it’s clear that what I have been suffering from is very common and there are many others out there in the same boat.’

Return to Program

Improvement Indicators Sample answers… •

‘I’ll know when I’m feeling better because I’ll start having more energy again. Not only will I wake up with more energy but I’ll feeling like playing sports again.

•

'I’ll start to see the funny side to things once again. I know my sense of humor is in there somewhere!’

•

‘I will also start thinking about going back to work again. I’ll be able to do this because I’ll have more energy and will be calmer. This will also improve my financial situation and therefore I’ll feel more relaxed about my situation generally.’

•

‘I will be able to spend more time with and give more attention to my partner. This will make us both happier.’

•

‘Come to think of it I’ll be able to direct more attention to my friends. I’ll be more relaxed (and more fun to be around).’

•

‘I’ll be able to actually get enjoyment from stuff I used to enjoy such as watching old movies.’

•

‘I will get my appetite back and start enjoying my food again!’

Return to Program


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Answers Section

Honest Achievements Exercise Sample answers… •

‘I am now being less ‘all or nothing’ about my achievements (thanks to the learning path). I no longer refuse to see so called small achievements as totally insignificant.’

•

‘I have started getting out of bed before 9.00 am. This cuts down on any extra energy draining over-dreaming I may be doing if I fall back asleep again.’

•

‘I am now leaning to relax to lower the levels of cortisol in my blood stream to make me more relaxed generally.’

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‘I reassured a friend today about something that had been bothering them.’ ‘I have actually come a long way when I think back to how I was x years ago!’

• •

‘I cooked a meal last night.’

•

‘I have at last written that letter I had been putting off!’

•

‘I am now walking a mile everyday, I’ve met new people because of it, and my dog loves it!’

•

‘I managed to just relax last night without putting too many demands on myself.’

Return to Program

Control Exercise The important thing here is to ‘get flexible’ with your thinking. There will be areas of your life where you are genuinely underestimating the amount of influence and control you have. You can possibly influence the mood of your partner or friend (possibly) but you cannot control it-nor should you! I have heard people say things like: ‘Oh I hope he/she is in a good mood today!’ And I’ve heard other people say: ‘Relax he/she will be I’ll cheer them up.’ Wow! What two different attitudes! One assumes they themselves have no influence and the other feels they have control of the situation. The truth is often somewhere in the middle. However in any situation there is always something you can do. Even if that is just seeing things a different way (re-framing) or calming down. If you are tired, or having problems taking in information, take a break and listen to a Relaxed Review. Don’t let Depresso make you give up! © Uncommon Knowledge Ltd 2004 www.unk.com

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Some people assume that there moods are in charge completely and all of the time. They really think there is nothing they can do to alter their own mood! We know that having a positive intention to act, coming to a decision, engaging in exercise, doing relaxed breathing, eating nutritious food when you need to eat all reliably change mood. Many people passively hope their mood will improve. There is always something you can do! Return to Program

Listing Problems Depression thrives on worries as you know. However you can do the following: • •

What exactly am I worrying about? What can I do about what I am worrying about? A) Nothing: Ok then I will learn to relax around what it was I had been worrying about. B) Something: Ok I will write down steps I can take to solve the problem.

Now you can see that A, is not really nothing because when you calm down around a worry that is doing something! One way of defining a problem is as something that you can solve. If you really can’t solve it-perhaps because it is about something in the distant past or future, then there’s not a real problem to solve anyway. The only problem is the way you are using your imagination. So if I’m worrying about why the boss has asked to see me on Monday morning. What can I do? Well I might be able to: Ask him or her what it’s concerning. But what if I can’t do this and I’m worried, what can I do then? Well I can still do something. I can write down all the possible reasons why the boss might want to see me that I can possibly imagine. For example maybe they want to fire me, maybe they want to give me a pay rise, maybe they want to talk about a specific incident or project, maybe they want to declare their undying love for me or maybe they want to talk about someone else. Who knows! Then I can score each one out of ten. Ten being the most likely and 0 being the least likely. Then I can see which of my predictions most closely resembles reality. This may seem pointless but what it means it that you are doing something. You are taking some sense of control back. Sometimes people ‘do something’ by deciding that they can’t do anything and forgetting about it. This is a skill in itself. Return to Program


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Flexible Thinking I’ve put together some of my thoughts in answer to these flexible thinking questions. I wonder how similar it is to your answers. 1. Can an intelligent person still do stupid things sometimes? Of course, we all visit planet stupid many times a day no matter who we are. Do you think Einstein never did or said anything stupid? 2. Can I fail at things, but still gain something from trying? Yes – and this is so important to really digest. If I spend a year learning Spanish and fail to get a high grade in my final exam I can still converse better with a Spaniard than if I’d never studied it! The same is true even if I fail the exam. 3. Can I occasionally scream at my kids, but still generally be a good parent? Yes definitely. I’m human. Basically I want the best for my kids. But anyone’s stress level can spill over sometimes. My kids are great but they can be very demanding sometimes. 4. Can partners have intense rows sometimes but still love one another very much? Yes, having rows and getting upset is actually a sign that you care very much. And there can be lots of good times between rows. Relationship research has shown that fiery relationships can last just as well as calm ones, as long as both partners are basically respectful and both are getting their needs met. 5. Is there more than one kind of intelligence? Yes - many. Although our culture has evolved to value one narrow form of intelligence, there are many more that are arguably more valuable. (See Wise Up for more). I’ve known people who couldn’t do a math equation to save their life but who can cook like an angel. Some people couldn’t fix a car but know how to make others laugh and vice-versa.


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6. Is it possible to be a total failure? No I don’t think so. People’s experience may not match up to what they had hoped for themselves but this may because their imagination had inflexibly dictated how they should be. To be a total failure you would have to fail at everything. Which means you’d never have done anything right at all. And despite Depresso’s thinking that this can be true, it can’t, it is simply an example of extremist ‘all or nothing’ thinking. 7. Can my child sometimes disobey me and still be a basically good kid? Yes. I may have a very narrow idea of what a ‘good kid’ means. My child also needs to learn independence and personal strength. Also sometimes I may be wrong - maybe my kid can even let me know that sometimes. 8. Can a person let me down and be forgiven? Within reason. I am not perfect and part of being a friend is making allowances for others imperfections. I can think of times when I’ve let others down and I appreciate they’ve made allowances for me. If, most of the time, they don’t let me down then they are a friend. 9. Can I do a bad thing, but still be a good person? If my intentions are generally good then yes. I guess a really bad person wouldn’t even worry about or consider whether they were a bad person or not. 10.Can something that is generally seen as a bad thing to do, on occasion be the right thing to do? Yes I think so because life is rarely simplistically black or white. If I knock someone to the ground that may be bad but what if I am knocking them out of the way of a fast approaching juggernaut? Being honest with someone may be seen as rude but what if it’s just what they need because what you’ve said is true. That ‘rudeness’ may lead to good things. Return to Program


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Alternative Explanations Exercise Scenario 1 Sue’s boss could be i) offering her a promotion ii) discussing a project iii) asking her opinion on something, or one of an endless number of things. Rather than reacting to the moment, she needs to think about past times when her boss has complimented her to remind herself that she is valued. Sue also needs to ensure she gets control of her imagination so she doesn’t repeatedly imagine getting fired, which would raise her anxiety levels. She could distract herself, or deliberately imagine getting a raise or a promotion. She could even imagine getting reprimanded and staying calm, talking to her boss about it until she makes it clear that whatever she has been accused of is wrong. Scenario 2 1) Judy could have assumed that Kay didn’t need an invite because she is her best friend 2) Judy could have asked someone else to give it the invite to Kay 3) Judy might have made a mistake and thought Kay was away at the time As with so many ambiguous situations such as this, there is only one way to solve the problem – speak to the other person. In this case, getting the truth can hardly be worse than the imagination. And the time to do it (as almost always with these things) is right away! The longer you leave it, the harder it gets. If Judy found this sort of thing hard, she could write out a script for herself to read when she called her friend to ensure she didn’t get angry or upset. Scenario 3 Of course, Rick and John could have been laughing at anything at all, but because James felt self-conscious, he will have felt anxious which would have made it difficult for him to forget the idea. He could have gone over to them, smiled because they were laughing and asked them what they were laughing at, in a ‘joining in’ kind of way. He could also have thought “Even if they were laughing at me, so what? They asked me to sit with them, so I will.” He then globalized the experience to ‘no-one ever likes me’ – an awful result from probably-innocent beginnings.


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Scenario 4 The most likely scenario is that Dave is embarrassed to be speaking to a girl – and this is even more likely if he is attracted to her! So in fact, it’s a good sign for Kathy. If she asked a friend about it, she would probably be told this, and that many guys really need a clear signal to understand that a girl is interested in them! Plus, the idea that he doesn’t like her because she is short doesn’t hold up as many guys go out with girls much shorter than them – in fact some guys won’t even consider going out with a taller woman! Scenario 5 Geoff needs to be thinking more long-term here; his history with the company is what is important. In fact, his boss’s sympathy for his situation may make it less likely for him to get made redundant. It is also important that Geoff realises that people get made redundant and go on to new more enjoyable work elsewhere. Scenario 6 Linda is using a stable explanation for something that will not actually last that long. She is assuming that her current state of well-being will last until the baby is born. Of course if she did some research, she would discover that pregnancy does not normally progress like that, and she is likely to experience an increase in energy levels as pregnancy continues, and even super-high energy levels just before the birth. She also needs to think about the support that she has from her husband, family and friends, and perhaps consider the idea that for the time being, she can allow herself to be looked after. Although it may be difficult to keep this in mind all the time, when she starts to worry, she can deliberately remind herself of it. Return to Program


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Index of Relaxed Reviews

Index of Relaxed Reviews Click here to go to the Relaxed Review Download Area Relaxed Review Session (click number to jump to Relaxed Review) 1

Understanding depression

2

Basic Needs

3

Overcoming Anxiety

4

Control & Influence

5

Problem Solving

6

Explanatory Styles

7

Flexible Thinking

8

Catastrophizing

9

Relationships

10

Communication

11

Socializing

12

Sleep

13

Nutrition & Diet

14

Exercise

15

Humor

16

Goal Setting

17

Motivation


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Thank you for completing the Uncommon Knowledge Depression Program. I sincerely hope it makes all the difference in your fight against depression. If you have anything you would like to say to me about it, please email me. Warmest Wishes

Mark Tyrrell Creative Director Uncommon Knowledge Ltd www.unk.com


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Attacking Anxiety & Depression Workbook (2001)_ 6.0

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