http://www.rmcat.com/fffbook/
Freedom From Fear: Taking Back Control of Your life and Dissolving Depression
By Dr. Bryce Carter
Depression can descend into a person’s life at any time and for many different reasons. It often follows a loss, severe disappointment, or serious life set back. Death, divorce, trauma, illness, and job loss are all implicated in the onset of depression. Almost all human beings will experience some or all the symptoms of depression at some point in their lives. If the depression is of brief duration or the symptoms are not severe, the individual will likely recover with no treatment at all, just as most of us recover from a cold, the flu, and many minor infections without medical care. For a significant number of people, however, the symptoms of depression will last long enough or be severe enough that care will be required. Good psychiatric care can make the difference between suffering from a mild depression and a severe depression, or suffering from a severe depression and suffering from a debilitating, life-threatening depression. Antidepressant medication, talk therapy, and life style changes can all play a major role in alleviating depressive symptoms, returning a person to a state of well being, and protecting against the recurrence of depression.
For individuals attempting to rebuild their lives following depression One of the most pernicious problems with depression is that the disease and its attendants (lack of confidence, difficulty getting started, a sense of failure, generalized pessimism, feeling
inadequate, a sense of being overwhelmed, a sense of lacking control) can insinuate itself into our very identity or sense of self. Past accomplishments no longer supply us with a sense of confidence.
Diplomas, awards, and years of service or hard work become pale and insubstantial. Relationships that were once nourishing and vital become burdensome, or we “fake” our way through our interactions and work—unable to live up to our past selves, unable to locate the confidence and ease we once had in our relations and conversations. Activities that we once anticipated with enthusiasm and that we participated in with pleasure lose their allure and become just one more burden in a long string of burdens that ends only with the end of our lives.
If that is all that life is—just a string of moments bereft of meaning, passion, or enjoyment, moments that we must endure or “fake” our way through—then what is the point? Why not end it now? This, for better or worse, is the thinking (often unspoken and sometimes un-thought) underlying depression. Because depression corrodes our self-confidence, our ability to enjoy relationships, our pleasures in living, and even the very meaning of our lives, the depressed person will often not seek help. What is the point, after all? Depression can also feel more like reality than normal reality does. A depressed reality can feel more real than anything else. At last we know the truth, the depressed person thinks: There is no point to life, it is all meaningless. All that passed before was just an illusion; all our accomplishments were not real, just exercises in vanity and ultimately without meaning. If depression affects the way we think and feel in this manner, it is entirely logical that the individual would not make an effort to seek help. What would be the point when everything is pointless?
Another reason that depressed people do not seek help is to avoid appearing weak. Our society respects self-sufficiency and independence. No one wants to need anyone else’s help. Being in need is seen as a kind of failure. So depressed people try to tough it out, try to pull them selves out of it. But this is to underestimate the nature of the enemy. Depression robs us of our strength, motivation. Even our physical energy level drops. Our hope is corroded, our sources of nourishment are stolen, and we are left without resources we need to fight the enemy.
And this is why it is not simply a matter of strength or “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” There is no strength to be had; there are no “bootstraps” to pull oneself up by. Unfortunately this is always why the depressed person will often not seek help: out of a desire to avoid appearing weak, or as a manifestation of their loss of hope. That it feels like reality is the nasty aspect of depression. In fact, it can seem even more real than the way life normally seems. “At last I know reality, life is pointless.” And, according to some psychologists and philosophers, this realization contains a kernel of truth, that is, that human beings invest life with meaning through love, belief, faith, relationships, creativity, a sense of duty—whatever combination of virtues that allow us to carry on—sometimes joyfully, some times sadly, most times somewhere in-between the two with our life of toil, pain, pleasure, and boredom. So, how do we turn this ship around, steer it away from the rocky shoals of depression, pointlessness, meaninglessness and toward hope, toward love, toward possibility? Well, if at all possible, the person in the grip of a depression should certainly spend time with a mental health professional to assess the severity and duration of their depressive state and to rule out other possible causes for the symptoms (organic illness, substance abuse, etc.). Once this is addressed, a combination of medication and talk therapy is the recommended treatment for depression.
But what if depression has infiltrated the person’s sense of self and chronically impairs their ability to assert themselves, to take on appropriate life and relationship challenges and risks? This is where real life experiences can play a very helpful role. If the person can tackle appropriate life risks—looking for and taking a new job or starting a new business, looking for, beginning, and sustaining relationships, or whatever action would be meaningful and provide the experience of success (however small)—then the path away from failure, lack of confidence, withdrawal has begun.
But what if life in all its randomness and unfairness deals us a set back at this important moment? We all hope that life will be fair and that it will eventually reward our reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) risks and projects. And those of us who are not depressed recognize this fact, and although we might be disappointed or even partially crushed we are not undone. It is the price one pays for ambition. But for the depressed person, or one not entirely recovered, a set back can be devastating.
Many therapists, myself included, have wished and even tried to provide an opportunity for a person to try out new behaviors to take on safe challenges. If only there was a laboratory for patients where they could challenge themselves to be more assertive, to think more positively, to tackle a situation with confidence with the knowledge that they had nothing to lose. But the dilemma is that if there is nothing to lose, how can it translate into confidence?
The building of self-esteem is integral to the creation of a self that can resist depression. But how is real self-esteem built? It cannot be simply the belief in one’s special-ness thatsome pop psychologists and educators would have us believe.
The truth is that we might be special to our loved ones, but in light of the fact that there are simply so many of us, we are not terribly special—we are one of many. And, truth be told, the world would (and will) get along just fine without us. This does not mean that self-esteem is an illusion; just that self-esteem built on a sense of speicalness or uniqueness is fragile. It is fragile because eventually life will deal us a blow to show us that we are not all that special. Even those among us that have been blessed with unique abilities and great good fortune run into age, disease, death in ourselves and those we hold most dear.
What then can real self-esteem be built upon? The real experiences in life that we are faced with and that we have handled and that we have a real-felt connection with. Now these challenges do not mean that we have to face a tiger in hand-to-claw combat and come out the victor. It simply means we have to face some kind of risk or challenge, try our best, learn from experience, integrate that experience into our sense of self, and take on the next challenge. In this way, bit by bit, challenge by challenge, we begin to see our self as a being capable of handling what life confronts us with, capable of learning from experience, able to experience rejection, setback, and failure without seeing ourselves as failures.
If these experiences and challenges that we face are vital enough, real enough, they do not allow us to fall back into negative thought patterns. They bypass our cognitive thought process and tap into our survival instinct. The famous psychologist Viktor Frankel, who himself survived the Nazi death camps, was reported to have dealt with a suicidal patient by reaching into a desk drawer, pulling out a revolver, and inviting the man to act upon his inclination. A risky move, to be sure, but Frankel was gambling (based on his own intimate experiences with the will to live) that the man’s survival instinct would kick in. Sure enough, the story goes, the suicidal man reacted in outrage and accused Frankel of trying to kill him. Deep down below the desire to self-destruct, the man’s survival instinct was intact and strong. If it is possible for a depressed individual to tap into this survival instinct, it is far stronger than any depression and it will simply force to the sidelines.
But therapy, conducted as it is within the safe confines of the therapy office or hospital, rarely if ever can tap deeply enough into the human psyche to touch upon the survival instinct. Therapy also relies upon language, and the survival instinct is embedded so deeply within our psyches that it predates our acquisition of language. Medication also is only meant to alleviate the symptoms of depression. It cannot reach that deep well of life force that exists within us all.
Now, this is not a call for all depressed people to start parachuting out of airplanes or trying other extreme sports, although under the right conditions that might be an interesting experiment. But under the proper conditions and with experienced coaches and guides, the challenge of facing an adrenaline provoking scenario—custom tailored to the individual’s life experience and level of capacity—can be just the thing to tap into that survival instinct that lives deep within all of us.
Now, as a good psychologist I have to say that there has been enough research done on this project to recommend it out of hand. But I am sure that this will strike an intuitive cord with many people, and I encourage you to contact RMCAT www.rmcat.com) or any authorized and reputable organization offering adrenal stress conditioning.
It is my opinion that regularly exercising one’s survival instinct innoculates one against depression. the healthy exercise of assertiveness and non-destructive aggession helps to activate our psychological immune system.
Peyton Quinn has truly made a unique contribution to the self-help field with his last book Freedom From Fear:
Bryce Carter, Ph.D
http://www.rmcat.com/fffbook/
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Dr. Bryce Carter
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