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One day, between classes, I ran into Dr. Hendricks in the men’s restroom. We were standing at the sink, washing our hands, combing our hair. He looked at my reflection in the mirror, and, with just a hint of playfulness in his eyes asked, “How are you doing today, Mr. Hardwick…and why?” Then he quickly walked away, leaving me with a question that obviously I have never forgotten.
All these efforts to overcome depression are about controlling or managing your thoughts and feelings. You try to control by avoiding or pushing them away. You try to control by identifying and replacing with different ones. You try to control by understanding them which will lead to more positive thoughts and feelings. But here’s the thing. Let’s say I run into you in ten years and ask you how are doing with your depression. My guess is that you don’t want your answer to be: Well, for the most part I am managing and controlling it and getting through life. You want to be able to speak about how your life has a sense of meaning and vitality.
When people come to me for depression treatment, many of them are taking an antidepressant medication prescribed by a psychiatrist or a primary care physician. Often I will have people ask me whether they should take one of these medications. Will it help with my depression? Will it make it go away?
Earlier I wrote a blog that talked about the difference between fear and anxiety (Fear and Anxiety: What are They?). I described how fear is focused on the present, a real threat that is right in front of you. It is fair to say that COVID-19 is more than right in front of us; it is all around us. Not just the spread of the virus but the media coverage about it.
One the significant barriers to getting beyond your anxiety is to frame it as something wrong with you that you have to fix, or a problem that you have to solve. When you view anxiety this way, the only options you have are to avoid or fight off the thoughts and feelings that contribute to your anxiety. And yet, the truth is everybody, everybody, experiences anxiety.
If you go to my specialty page on Depression Treatment, you will read about an approach to dealing with depression that does not focus on gaining control of and eliminating the thoughts and feelings of depression. You will learn how depression does not mean that there is something wrong with you; it is not a problem that you have to fix. Instead, depression means that there are some ways of thinking and acting that are not working for you; they are working against how you want to live your life.
The word for today: Appreciation. The most common definition of appreciation is recognizing and enjoying the good qualities of someone or something. It comes from the Latin word, appretiare, which means to set as a price, to appraise. To appreciate someone or something is more than noticing, saying “Isn’t that nice,” and moving on. To appreciate is to know, to feel, and to enjoy the deep value that this object, this place, or this person has in your life. To appreciate is to “set a price” for all of these things, not in some economic sense, but in what they add to your life.
There are two components that play a role in your anxiety: thoughts and feelings. In a previous post I considered the way our thinking can contribute to anxiety (Loosening the Grip of Your Mind’s Stories). In this post I want to consider our feelings. First of all, what are we really talking about when we consider feelings or emotions. Let’s take anxiety for example. When you say you are feeling anxious, what is happening? Emotions happen mostly in our bodies.
There may be nothing more beautiful than a sunrise, except perhaps a sunset. Sunsets begin with a first hint of light. Gradually, the light increases and gives you a display of color that grows until the sun climbs over the horizon. Sunrises tend to evoke awe and wonder. It is not just the colors; it is the promise of the end of darkness and the beginning of a new day. It is not unusual for an individual or a group to watch a sunrise in silence. Everyone is caught up in the experience. And yet, there is a way that the mind can take us out of the wonder of the sunrise.
