May 4th, 2009
Although certain life events can lead to depressive moods, there are seven things that are commonly present regardless of the external event. I will outline them here, and explore them in detail in future blogs.
1. Thinking. When you’re feeling depressed, you’re thinking depressing thoughts. But where do these come from?
2. Language. Your thoughts are made up of language and there is some key language that is connected with depressing thoughts. These are habits developed in childhood that can be changed and will make a major difference in every area of your life. (semantics)
3. Philosophy. Your beliefs and generalizations about the world around you creates rules for how you respond to things in your environment. Your rules about what should be and how you, and the people around you are expected to behave influence the way you feel. This is somewhat related to language, but it goes deeper than that.
4. Physiology and Behavior. As we just saw, your body has a lot to do with the way you feel. The way you hold yourself and the way you move affect the way you feel. How much sleep and exercise you get will also affect your body and therefore you mood. The things you do and the way you engage with others are also a critical components.
5. Triggers. Adverse events that one has learned to associate with the feeling of being depressed. The association can be triggered by a symbol, a sound or even a physical sensation. Once again, these can be changed.
6. Environment. You’ve probably heard at some point that you’re responsible for your thoughts. Well you’re also responsible for your environment and that includes the TV you watch, the things your read, and the people you hang out with. It also includes your job and your daily routine and activities. Some of the things in your environment either condition you and reinforce your mood, or are the source the triggers as I mentioned before.
7. Bio/Chemicals. This includes food, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs and nicotine. I will also include here the chemicals that naturally swim around in your brain.
Tags: behavior, Depression, environment, mood, NLP, philosophy, physiology, thinking, triggers
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May 3rd, 2009
One of the principles of Neuro Linguistic Programming is that emotions are stored in our bodies, as well as our brains. One of the places this shows up is when people fall on hard times economically and have trouble meeting their basic needs, or even need to shut down their greater desires. Scare-city is an appropriate word for what the brain goes through during this times, and it is common for people to feel constricted in their bodies as well as their wallets. People describe a tightness in their stomachs, or a restriction in the movement of their limbs. They may even experience high blood pressure as their arteries constrict in response to the brains perception of “danger” from not having enough. It’s important to recognize these physical feelings because they can make you ill. Take time to relax and be present, as difficult as that may seem. If you focus on NOW, you are likely to realize that in this moment, at this very time, you have everything you need. From this place, you can be more resourceful in solving problems and deciding on alternatives.
Tags: Depression, economy, Money, physical
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May 1st, 2009
Please post your comments here about the May newsletter and your thoughts on learning and personality.
Tags: behavior, learning, personality
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April 30th, 2009
Yep, even me, the professor of positive attitude, has some pangs of a down mood today. The slower economy is causing me to contract, and I feel it in my body when I give it my attention. Then, I was reading about some successful CEOs this morning and found myself COMPARING - a slippery slope that can only lead to feelings of diminish self-worth. I caught myself, and shook it off, but wanted to take this opportunity to caution readers against the temptation to compare. The thoughts that spill out of that kind of thinking sometimes begin with “If only I’d…” The only way from there is down.
Tags: Depression, self-worth
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April 29th, 2009
The economy may have you down, and for some that means the possibility of gaining weight. Some people react to stress by eating more and they describe being “out of control” as they do. It’s almost like they are unconscious, and to some degree they are.
If you find yourself mindlessly going to the fridge and grazing when you’re not hungry, the first thing to do is gain awareness. What kinds of things are happening immediately before you decide to eat? Look for patterns; then set up ways to interrupt that pattern. If you get the mail, see the bills and then head for the potato chips, then you know what the trigger is. Now you need to consciously change your response. Decide in advance that the next time you get the bills you will immediately do something constructive after reading it. Go for a walk, do some sit ups, check Facebook, or call a friend to say hi.
This will eliminate the behavior, but changing the way you feel in response to seeing the mail is the bigger solution. We’ll talk about that in a future blog.
Tags: Depression, weight loss
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April 14th, 2009
Religious views are often a part of a person’s psychological repertoire and can strongly influence his or her behavior. Extreme, unexamined views can be damaging to the individual; milder views can be a source of comfort and guidance. There is great danger in mixing politics and religion though, and more precisely, government and religion. Here is why.
The blending of religion and government in the United States came long after the founding of the country. The motto, In God We Trust did not appear on currency until after the civil war and did not become the national motto until 1956. It began during a time of particularly religious citizenship and a religiously sympathetic treasury department. It also coincides with a time when the county was predominately Christian.
In recent years, due to changing views and immigration, the percentage of Christians in the United States has decreased, while at the same time a small percentage of Christians have clamored for government to increasingly embrace God and religion, and weave them into our national dialogue. As long as the majority of the nation is Christian, this is tolerated and perhaps even agreed to by many. But once the government is blended with religion, then we are vulnerable to be governed by any religion that evolves into the majority. We now have a Muslim congressman (Keith Ellison (D-Minneapolis)) for the first time in our history. How comfortable would Christians in the United States be if over time, legislation was passed acknowledging Allah and including quotes from the Quran on U.S. currency? By strictly maintaining a separation of church and state this will not happen, and that is exactly what the first amendment is supposed to protect against.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a national religion by the Congress or the preference of one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion. By looking at countries where religious dogma constitutes legal doctrine, you can see just how important this is. Laws established by religious dogma often have no basis in reason or social experience and are subversive to individual freedoms. For the protection of all, let’s keep religion and government separate.
Tags: belief, beliefs, believe, politics, religion
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April 6th, 2009
Diet and exercise. The clear and simple solution to getting and remaining fit. So why if it’s so simple is it so difficult? It’s because so many of the things that compete for our time and taste buds seem more appealing in the present than the idea of sweating and skipping the fries. Making those important decisions requires that they are indeed important to us.
How does you make them important? Begin by raising your standards. Become intolerant of any condition you want to change. For just about everything in your life, you have a set level of tolerance. You will accept a neighbor’s dog barking at three in the afternoon, but not likely at three in the morning. At a restaurant, you expect a certain level of service and quality, or you won’t return. If your car broke down every 100 miles, you’d probably get rid of it.
It’s the same thing with your body. Do you want to lose weight? The DECIDE you will not tolerate anything more than a given number when you step on the scale. Start with an increment that you believe is achievable and watch what happens. Refuse to do anything to your body that does not direct you toward that goal, and once you reach it, reset your tolerance. There is no reason to concern yourself with how you will do this. Once you have set your tolerance level, your brain will assist you in figuring out the how.
Tags: diet, fitness, weight loss
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April 3rd, 2009
One of the criticisms I’ve had recently concerns my view on optimism. The writer’s opinion was that I dismiss the value of negative emotions and their role in our personal growth. So let me clarify my mission.
I agree that there is value in every emotion! Life is a tapestry made up of all kinds of emotions that add to the richness of our lives. Without the duality of happiness and sadness, neither would have any value. Our culture in the United States however, focuses so heavily on the negative that many people walk around in a perpetual state of numbness, fear and sadness.
Recently I was in a setting where CNN was being broadcast in public a story about the economic crisis was being presented. A woman, who was employed and upon questioning, not directly impacted by anything in the story, began to describe just how “scary ” the whole situation was. It was easy to see her body become tense, her eyes widen and her voice quiver as we spoke. She was genuinely frightened. When I inquired as to what was causing her to feel this way, she couldn’t explain. She said, “I don’t know, it’s just scary.”
I asked her what was happening right now. I asked her to take an inventory of everything going on around her; to notice each detail, to be aware of her breathing, the temperature of the air and my presence in the room. Almost immediately she began to calm down and she thank me for bringing her back to the moment.
If she were facing unemployment or the loss of her home, those feelings might be more explainable, at least initially. In some ways we DO feel our life is threatened when our financial stability is threatened. Too often though, the news and our imagination about events past, present and future put people in this state and keep them there. It becomes a habit that creates stress in the mind and body, and results in illness that is physical.
I don’t deny that there is a full range of emotional responses that one should experience in life. I just advocate that moving through the those emotions that don’t help us move forward to a more powerful, positive state is a more resourceful place to be. It’s perfectly normal and appropriate to be shocked and saddened by a loss of job, but staying in that shocked and saddened state is not the place to be if you want to find a new one. I also firmly believe from experience that life is more joyful in a state of optimism, and isn’t joy what we’d all like anyway?
Tags: attitude, emotion, negative, optimism, positive
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March 31st, 2009
Post your comments about the April Newsletter here. If this is your first time posting, there will be a delay before you see your post.
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March 29th, 2009
The cause of depression in most people is not medical, yet the most frequent treatment for depression is drug therapy. Why? There are really two key reasons. When is the last time you saw a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist advertise on TV? Because of the money behind the pharmaceutical industry patients and doctors are exposed to this choice more than others. This is one reason. The other reason is that the drugs do help in most cases. But there are, of course, negatives.
Studies have demonsrated that one of the side effects of anti-depressive drugs is suicidal thinking. More important, in studies where drug therapy is compared with or coupled with Cognitive Behavior Therapies (CBT), CBT is show to at least as effective and more effective in preventing a relapse of depression!
One of the difficulties facing physicians is that the symptoms of depression may be the same for a person suffering from depression for medical reasons as for one suffering for cognitive reasons. This makes it risky not to prescribe drugs. The best course of action is to couple CBT with drug therapy and then test the results by withdrawing the drug after a period of time. I would love to say use therapy alone first, but then I too would be a risk in this of litigation. And while I realize that therapy can be expensive, a motivated person can do a lot of work on their own by learning some tools of CBT. Some of the best resources are books by Albert Ellis who pioneered the development of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). You can find his books directly at his site (http://www.rebt.org/) or at most book stores. See my reading list for suggestions.
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