Understanding "Earned Depression"

[historyteach]

I found this article online and knew I had to share it. It has much that holds true for me. I hope you find it interesting too.

Understanding "Earned Depression"
By Stuart Sorenson, RMN

Mental Health Professional
Get Mental Help, Inc.



Life really is beginning to get you down. Everywhere you turn you find the same old drudgery, the same old problems and the same old heartache. You can't sleep, you don't eat properly any more. Everything you do seems to take twice the effort it used to and as if that wasn't enough you ache from head to foot. If there's a virus going around you're sure to catch it and you just know it'll take forever to shake it off. Congratulations - you're depressed.

Of course that comes as no surprise - you know damn well that you're depressed. And what's more you know why. Nothing seems to have gone right for such a long time. Your family don't care about you. Friends are never there when you need them, there's always far too much month left at the end of the money and to cap it all the weather's lousy as well.

Nobody seems to understand. Of course you're depressed. Anyone would be if they'd been through what you have. How could you not be depressed? You've been through the mill, you're still going through it now and you've a perfect right to be miserable. People tell you to snap out of it because they find it tough dealing with your misery but so what? They don't care about how bad you feel so why should you care if they find your depression difficult? Let them put up with it for a while longer - maybe then they'll understand. This is your depression - you've earned it and they're just going to damn well have to put up with it!

If you can relate to the passages above then you owe it to yourself to read on. You're falling into one of the most common emotional traps there are. Yes, it is a trap and once you get caught up in it things can only get worse.

In the beginning the trap seems perfectly reasonable. It doesn't feel like a trap at all. If we've had a hard time it's normal to feel bad about it, after all everybody gets fed up at one time or another. The trap opens the moment we start justifying our misery to ourselves. We begin to tell ourselves how reasonable and indeed unavoidable our depressive feelings are. Once we do this it's as though we've opened the door to our own little prison - a very dark, gloomy prison with nothing inside but misery and depression.

At first friends and family rally around and try to cajole us out of our misery. They sit and they listen, perhaps trying to think of ways to cheer us up. Sometimes they try to argue us out of our depression and come up with all the reasons they can think of why we shouldn't feel so bad. Typically the depressed person answers with the "Yes but…." approach and it quickly becomes clear that no matter what anyone else says the depression is here to stay. If you hear yourself using the "Yes but…" strategy bear in mind that you may simply be justifying your depression rather than genuinely seeking a solution to it. One thing's certain, other people will quickly realize this even if you don't.

After a while people stop sympathizing with us and start telling us to 'snap out of it' or make other 'helpful' comments like "Pull yourself together". It's as though they're telling us we shouldn't be feeling this way and that we might even be weak people because we do. Then we argue the case for depression even more and quickly begin to think of it in terms of something we've 'earned' because of the problems we faced. We start to think of depression as our 'right'. The prison door slams shut.

Most people think of prison cells as essentially lonely places to be and this one is no exception. Once we form the habit of justifying and deepening our depression we become more and more difficult for other people to deal with. Anyone who's spent time with the profoundly depressed will know just how draining it can be, both physically and emotionally. People quickly become frustrated and exasperated and ultimately stop visiting at all. The key turns in the lock and the prison door is well and truly secured.

At this point when I explain this process to patients they often stop me and insist that they really do have a right to feel the way they do. After all they've faced some pretty tough challenges and are understandably depressed. And of course that's often true. All people have a perfect right to feel however they want to feel. If you want to justify feeling depressed and miserable that's entirely up to you. However - why should you want to?

Many people become so used to thinking of themselves as depressed they stop defining themselves in any other way. Their depression becomes more than an illness - it becomes their whole way of life. The way to overcome this is to re-define your attitude, not only to depression but also to yourself. Stop thinking of yourself as depressed and start thinking of yourself as an ordinary person with ordinary problems instead.

If this sounds very simple it's because it is. Bear in mind however that simple doesn't mean easy. Reading this article is simple but learning how to read in the first place was far from easy. You had to acquire a whole new set of skills before you mastered the mysteries of reading and although much less difficult, the skills of mood control are much the same. The technique required to move on from depression is simple but not easy. This handout is intended to provide a starting point. It can't replace individual therapy or medical treatment but for many people with reactive depression it will introduce a new way of thinking about their mental health which can have profound results in a remarkably short time.

The important thing is to be prepared to break out of old thinking habits. For example many depressed people believe that if life is difficult then they will have no option but to become depressed. Interestingly those people who always seem to be cheerful - you know, the ones depressed people find the most irritating have a totally different way of thinking. They believe that no matter how hard life gets they can still keep smiling - they can still be happy. Not surprisingly both beliefs are true for the people who hold them. Whatever you believe about yourself will be true for you. So the first thing to do is to change your way of thinking.

Most people don't realize the amount of control they can have over their moods. It is possible to decide to be happy just as you can decide to be sad. It's interesting that depressed people can be temporarily happy but they need a reason - for example a visit from a friend or a special occasion of some sort. They don't tend to need any excuse to be miserable however.

On the other hand people who are generally cheerful tend to work in the exact opposite way. They only get upset for a reason - and it has to be a good reason at that. They need no excuse whatsoever to be happy. That's just the way they are - the way they've trained themselves to be. It's their 'default setting' if you will. Anyone can change their 'default setting' - it's simply a matter of changing their thinking habits.

One simply strategy is to become a 'reverse paranoid'. This means you repeatedly tell yourself that the world is out to do you a favor - not that it owes you a favor mind, that's a totally different thing. Whenever you catch yourself thinking pessimistic thoughts just remind yourself that everything is going well and the world is working out exactly as it should. Keep on telling yourself that something good is about to happen to you. This sort of repetition is called affirmation and it's an excellent way to change a thinking habit. Remember that it takes about 21 days of consistent effort to completely break a habit so persevere. I guarantee you'll be happy you did.

Get realistic about your expectations. It's strange but once a person becomes depressed it's quite common for their expectations for the future to become quite unrealistic. People who aren't suffering from depression tend to experience a wide range of moods including both happy and sad feelings. This fluctuation is both normal and healthy.

People who've been depressed often worry unnecessarily about even minor fluctuations in their mood and soon start to believe they're depressed again when actually they're only a little sad. It's as though they expect to be ecstatically happy every minute of their lives or else deeply depressed. This is what psychologists call 'black and white thinking'. The problem is that they quickly think themselves into depression by worrying too much about their healthy mood variations.

Understand the difference between a problem and a fact. Facts are things that happen and really can't be altered. The thing to do is to accept them for what they are and just get on with life. Problems are things which can be altered for the better - depression for example. Normal fluctuation of mood is a fact.

Anyone who has been seriously depressed has experienced physiological changes. Breathing patterns alter, sleep changes, movement slows down or speeds up, posture alters, dietary intake is affected and a whole host of other things change as well. Another excellent way to combat depression, particularly the reactive or 'earned' kind is to change as much of your physiology as you can back to normal patterns. For example if you used to be more active force yourself to become active again. Do the things you used to do. If you used to walk tall - do so now. If you used to eat three meals a day get cooking. Oh yes, and don't oversleep.

If you've slowed down because of depression force yourself to move more quickly, walk briskly and take an interest in all the things you used to. In short act as you did before you became depressed. Once again the trick is to break the habit of depression.

Another very useful trick is to get involved in some project or activity which you see as more important than yourself. This can be almost anything from community projects to local politics or simply being a good neighbor to the elderly widow across the street. It really doesn't matter what so long as it involves taking responsibility for something and regularly taking positive action in pursuit of a worthy goal. After all, just like anything else in life, you won't beat depression by doing nothing.

Don't let yourself become disheartened by minor 'relapses'. As you begin to change your thinking and acting habits you will undoubtedly backslide. After all you're about to change radically your way of life. It's inevitable that there will be some setbacks. Actually these are vital to your success. If we never make mistakes we never learn and learning plays a large part in this whole process. Your mistakes, your setbacks and your occasional returns to depression are an important part in this process of change. Simply recognize them for what they are - minor obstacles to be overcome - and move on.

Finally remember that actions speak louder than words. It's one thing to talk about recovery and quite another to work toward it. All the medication and psychotherapy in the world won't help without a genuine effort on your part. You may well have earned your depression but that doesn't mean you have to put up with it for the rest of your life. The choice, as always, is yours.

Compliments of Stuart Sorensen – RMN

Shalom!

[shutterbug]

the over-all message...i totally agree with, but there are several sentences here i don't agree with.

[liveweyerd]

I can understand some of the reasoning...but I am glad I wasn't looking at this when I was sick as I am certain beyond all reason of a doubt that mine is genetic and excarbated by traumas and does require medication.
It was very hurtful to me for others to tell me to pull myself up....I wanted to, it wasn't possible.
I went off the meds plenty of times when I thought I was better and improved my life well enough...I have found out that in me it is a progressive illness.

I have really been chewed out by 2 of my Drs for some of this, I can do it thinking.

For those of you whom this can work for kudos...and Teach I am glad you are one.

I would love for it to be like that for me....but for me it is like an alcoholic accepting that they are an alcoholic. And it didn't come easy.

Nothing personal in this....but I just had to say, while this may be helpful to some, to others it might prolong the problem.

[shutterbug]

yes, exactly.....what she said.

[historyteach]

I hear you both, and think now that I should have put a disclaimer on the top of this message.

I do not, for one second, think this message fits all.

Here, I think, is the essential difference between "earned depression" and clinical depression:

...This is your depression - you've earned it and they're just going to damn well have to put up with it!

If you can relate to the passages above then you owe it to yourself to read on. You're falling into one of the most common emotional traps there are. Yes, it is a trap and once you get caught up in it things can only get worse.

In the beginning the trap seems perfectly reasonable. It doesn't feel like a trap at all. If we've had a hard time it's normal to feel bad about it, after all everybody gets fed up at one time or another. The trap opens the moment we start justifying our misery to ourselves. We begin to tell ourselves how reasonable and indeed unavoidable our depressive feelings are. Once we do this it's as though we've opened the door to our own little prison - a very dark, gloomy prison with nothing inside but misery and depression.

Bold added to emphasise meaning.
In short, this "earned depression," (a new phrase in my experience), clearly is seperate and different from clinical depression. It's situational, and exaserbated by our own thought processes that justify our affectiveless behavior. And even seems to dare others to doubt our depression.

I'm sorry I didn't make this clear in the beginning. I've recognized the difference between acute situational depression and chronic clinical depression for a long time. I should have been more specific upfront.

My deepest apologise if I offended. It was not my intent.
This article speaks *a* truth; not necessarily the whole truth.

Shalom!

[liveweyerd]

I am not offended, never by you! (How'd ya like that qualifier? LOL)

It is true that there is situational (exogenous) depression and clinical (indogenous) depression.

After a loss, such as job, divorce, death..depression follows as part of the loss processing. If the losses pile up or hit all at once or too close together it is more of a whammy. But usually it is short term. It is said that if it does not abate within 6 months we need to seek counseling. Sometimes it is said two weeks, but in dealing with a death, divorce or some really permanent life changing event....I can't imagine processing our loss that quickly.

I would define clinical depression as being a living death. I have never heard of anyone else here but me speaking of it as being progressive...but I know it is true for me. I wanted my meds to be a CURE dammit! Such that when I would feel better, get my life together and normal, I would quit the meds, each relapse was worse than the episode before. I am hard headed, so I did this a number of times. The last time was so bad that I am scared to death of another relapse. I don't know if I have another recovery in me...it took my daughter dragging me into the drs in my pajamas to get help the last time. That same Dr whom I saw while I was in Indiana told me that if I had not gotten on the meds and stayed on them I probably wouldn't be here by now. I am sure I wouldn't have actively commited suicide...but I believe he is right.

And all that said, I know as the article says I cannot dwell on the depression or over-identify with it.

hugs,
Tena

[shutterbug]

I second that too! Never offended by you Teach.

Tena, I've never heard or read it described as a "living death" but you are absolutely right - in that when people like you and I don't take our meds and keep vigil on our moods then our illness is very much a progressive one.

I've told many on SR that bipolar disorder is a progressive illness if not constantly monitored and medicated. That is why i'm still mad at all the docs who's offices i flooded with uncontrollable tears for weeks on end during my first major depressive episode. Anyone of them could have (SHOULD have) seen there was something more going on than just depression....and therefore they should have sent me to see a psychiatrist. If I had been diagnosed as bipolar at that time....then 7 years later i wouldn't have ended up in the mental hospital, loosing my job and struggling twice as bad (and long) as the first episode. I truely believe that those neglegent doctors could have kept me from loosing the nearly 2 years of my life that I recently spent in bed sleeping and wishing i were dead and thinking sometimes hourly about if i could ever actually bring myself to end it all.

Anyway, i know now that i will struggle with depression for the rest of my life, but perhaps i do dwell on it or over-identify with it and therefore make it worse. I don't know. I just know that i am depressed a lot more than i wish i were.

hugs,
Jenna

[GlassPrisoner]

A lot of that article, and some of the solutions, sound exactly like alcoholism.

Not that it is, or that you're not suffering from depression. But being a recovering alkie, I can relate to an awful lot there.

[liveweyerd]

Glass, I will leave it to historyteach or someone else to address your comment as I probably would need to really re-read the article and also because I am in a different category, if you will.

Shutterbug.....as far as over identifying....I will try to explain my thinking at this stage I am in....I say it that way because I haven't yet given it enough thought and study and time....but it has become sort of an issue with me.

Warning: Please do not anyone be offended by what I am about to say as I do not intend it as an attack or a point of disagreement. k?

All right then....Jenna,

In AA....people introduce themselves as such i.e., Hi, I am Arty and I am an alcoholic.
Now I want to compare and contrast.
I have never met anyone who introduced themself...Hi, I am Dave and I am a diabetic.
Or:
Hi, I am Sarah and I have high cholestrol.
Or:
Hi, I am Margie and I have urinary incontinence.


So: I am not going to introduce myself as Hi, I am Tena and I am depressed.
Or: Hi, I am Tena and I have depression (and anxiety and PTSD)

I have caught myself introducing myself to myself this way....LOL....identifying myself with my illness(es)
Tena=depression

I want to reframe that so that such thinking is as silly sounding to me as the urinary incontinence or really....imagine a man saying Hi, I am Shorty and have erectile dysfunction. And I chose that one because it is so unlikely as to be silly and because also men so identify their egos with their sexual prowess.

If I identify myself Tena=depression......I am attacking my own ego and self-esteem and possibly humiliating myself. For two reasons....I am much more than my illness and 2) the STIGMA is very real. So I humiliate myself both to myself and to others.
And yes, as the article states I feed the depression by doing such. (maybe i should re-read it because I might be putting my own spin on it and if so disregard, I am trying to just make a statement)

Well, depression sucks the big one.
I don't like it that I have it.
I don't like how it feels and how it affects my thinking and how it ruins my functioning.

So, yeah for sure I would like to distance myself from it. I do that by taking meds for one and most important. But I am thinking that the Tena=depression thinking IS the depression. It is part and parcel of the disorder and feeding upon itself.

We joke about normies and it is an us and them thinking.

I don't think people who give themselves an injection of insulin think themselves as not a part of the normal human race.

Therefore....I am normal. Wow! I am a normie!
hmmmm.....that is quite a stretch for some reason....but why should it be?

It is normal for what? about 10% of the population to suffer from depression.

Let's say my IQ is in the 10% of population. That's also a mental function. Am I normal?
Yes, very! Especially with the new studies of all the different types of "IQ".
My emotional IQ is probably about the mean percentile.
I know my mechanical and spatial is definitely in the challenged percentile.



Hmmmm. so there you have one of my current hypotheses. Teach can grade it. And Shutterbug can analyze it. That's your specialties amongst others.
I am a conceptual thinker and poor at the details.
Often my logic is flawed. I always hated geometry proofs! LOL Give me alegebra! Can't do math at all.

So, I am tossing this out there.....I believe it is a mixture of gems and flaws.

Footnote and disclaimer: I understand that Hi, I am Arty and I am an alcoholic is aimed at combating denial a condition of that illness.

[liveweyerd]

WOW, I was proofreading that and for a minute I thought I had not yet submitted it and lost the whole thing.

Now that would be sad. Maybe even situationally depressing. Short term depressing.

Because clinical depression would probably say oh screw it, it was probably stupid anyway and better that no one saw it.

I had both thoughts as well as the normie thought that I could if I chose reproduce it.

[51anna]

I find this article infuriating, as it reminds me of all the years I struggled to have my depression recognized and treated. I don't think it is accurate at all, for people with clinical depression. It may be true for people with a kind of situational depression.

I spent many, many years listening to drs telling me those kinds of things. I listened to people making me feel that I wasn't trying hard enough. I looked around me and saw other people getting through life and they were fine. I must be such a loser. I read every self-help book available. I exercised, worked, volunteered, ate well anon and on and I was depressed. Artcles like this serve to make people like me feel like we aren't trying hard enough. When I found the right medication 7 years ago, my life changed. I am now on level with other people. I still get down sometimes and I can talk myself into getting moving again and getting better. When I was depressed I could not do that.

[laurie6781]

I don't believe I have ever had 'earned depression. I have "chronic" clinical depression, a gift from my fathers side of the family. I now know why my father would get so distant and it was like the family didn't even exist.


For years I 'self medicated' and thus became alsoholic In sobriety, likeTena, I have thought I was better several times and went off my meds, thinking I didn't need them anymore. Eachtime the "living hell" (yep I call it 'living hell' not 'living death') was worse. I got so deep into the abyss I thought I would never get out. The last time it was so deep there was no light at all. My friends and family got so concerned, they called my Dr. I had not showered in weeks, stayed in bed 90% of thetime, lost weight, etc. was almost catatonic.

My Dr actually came to the house to do an evaluation. Gave me a shot, someone stayed with me (there was fear I just might 'off' myself) and the next day was taken to the Dr's oiffice and put back on meds.

Slowly I came out of that one. Lesson learned. I will not stop my meds again.

Teach, thank you so much for posting this. There certainly are different types of depression. I personally would not wish it on my worst enemy (if I have any. lol).

Love and hugs,

[indigo]

Oh I have so many mental problems from my genetic condition and how my life has been I need time to try and focus.....I'll be back to this one though.

indie