The hidden rewards of self-criticism

Self-criticism hurts just as much as criticism from other people, if not more. In my case I learned to criticise myself by hearing criticism from some of the key people in my life as I grew up. ‘You eat too much’, ‘fatty’, ‘you always try to do everything for yourself’, ‘you make everything in the family go wrong’ – even thinking about these comments decades later can still bring me down. Because I heard so many of these comments, at home and at school and even out in the neighbourhood, I internalised them and started saying them to myself. It was a huge relief in my twenties to realise that I didn’t have to be so hard on myself – that I had a lot of good qualities, did a lot of positive things, and life worked better when I was nice to myself.

Talking to myself in a positive, supportive way made me feel good and I have made it a habit over the intervening years. I can tell I’m criticising myself now because it makes me feel bad. That’s why it was a surprise to learn that one of the things that keeps self-criticism going is the hidden rewards. One of the big payoffs is when someone who is self-critical turns the criticism on someone else. I’ve had this experience many a time. I might notice that someone is not doing as well at me – whether with managing their emotions, or getting grades or earning money – and I feel my self-esteem lift. It’s insidious but powerful. Because it only happens every so often, it’s hugely reinforcing, like winning a jackpot after hours of playing the pokies. The answer? For me it’s been learning to look for the positive in myself and others and accept the rest of who I am on the basis that none of us are perfect and everyone deserves a break. Which sounds a lot easier than it actually is in practice! But is well worth doing just for the emotional relief it provides.

Good things for the last week

Regular readers (all four of you) may have noticed that I’ve been strangely absent for the past 12 days. This is because my computer died on Wednesday 23 October. I got it straight into the shop and by some miracle it was fixed for a very reasonable price and now works again. So now I’m back, although possibly not as often as in the past, as the blog is taking me away from my other writing a bit much. But I will endeavour to post regularly. Here, as usual on Monday, are the good things that happened to me in the past week.

• My computer works again – yay! Now I can email, write documents, blog, pay bills, order medicine and all that other good stuff
• The new dog is getting on incredibly well with my first dog despite being years older, and they are playing and running together like they are both puppies
• The rain stopped for a whole day on Saturday and I finally was able to take some local kids out to a small farm to see the sheep and cattle, as they’d been begging me to for weeks
• I had a great lunch with a local friend I haven’t seen for ages and a good goss
• Spaghetti Bolognese on a cold day – absolute comfort food
• Asparagus is in season and it’s as delicious as usual
• A day to myself on Sunday when I could sleep and read my trashy escapist novel (in between taking the dogs out in the pouring rain to run – them, not me!)
• New library books and DVDs to enjoy
• Watching Clerks 11 – profane, disgusting, tasteless, foul mouthed and incredibly funny. The surreal dance number to ‘1 2 3, it’s easy as A B C’ was one of the highlights. Clerks the Musical anyone? Gotta beat Mamma Mia any day!

What to say to someone who is depressed

I fully intended to post yesterday, but I kept thinking 'I'll do it after this', then 'after this', then suddenly it was bedtime and I realised I hadn't posted. Oh well, there's always today! Here is the post I intended to put up yesterday.

Knowing what to say to someone who is depressed is a toughie. You know your friend (or partner, or brother, or workmate) is feeling down. You may even suspect they are suicidal. But what do you say to make them feel better, or check out they are not going to hurt themselves (and others)? Strangely enough dealing with the possibility of suicide is the easiest part of it. The common fear is that asking something as blunt as ‘are you thinking of killing yourself?’ may bring on a suicide attempt. But in fact it is pretty well established that this is not the case. Often it can be a relief for the person who is feeling so desperate to have a chance to talk about it, and actually make them feel less hopeless and miserable.

Speaking from personal experience I’ve found that the human contact involved in talking to someone who cares enough to ask the question can be enough to lift me out of that dark place. Counselling can help but it’s a gamble whether the counsellor (or psychologist or whatever brand of helper is available) will be someone the person feels able to confide in or finds supportive. As someone who is already close and trusted a friend, or partner, or relative may have more impact. (Although an established, trusted counsellor is also very useful.)

If someone is suicidal, the key thing to do is talk about things that give hope for the future. Suicidal feelings are about thinking there is nothing to live for, that everything has gone wrong or will go wrong. If the person is not suicidal but just feeling low, then human contact again is the most important thing. The average person is not going to be able to provide professional help but what they can give is the feeling of being genuinely cared about and accepted. I know that having someone make it clear that they still care about me whatever my mood makes a big difference. They don't need to talk about what's troubling me - just asking 'are you not feeling so good?' or even commenting 'you seem pretty down' and then showing they care is enough. The other thing that really works is encouraging me to go out and do something that will take my mind off my troubles and lift my spirits, like going to a movie or a walk. In dark times, people who really care can make a huge difference.

Good things for the last week

• Falling asleep in the sun in the Hamilton Gardens, such a luxurious feeling just drifting away in the warmth

• Getting back to my own home after a weekend away
• Brunch at Metropolis with friends from Hamilton Pride and beyond to celebrate a successful Pride week 09
• Great conversations with friends, in person and on the phone – enjoyable, funny and intimate
• Watching Susan Potter’s documentary ‘An ordinary person’ about the use of the partial provocation defence (the one used by Clayton Weatherston) in cases where the victim is gay
• Watching my silly dog go nutty trying to eat the water from the hose
• Rocky Horror Show at the movies with audience participation and prizes – so much fun!
• I have a lovely new dog who is affectionate and easy and takes care of my lunkhead dog by playing with him and exercising him – life is easy since Sophie the staffy came to live here!
• Stimulating workshops at Hamilton Pride week, including a very funny one on queer humour, which I’m still telling jokes from (Don’t Let your Son go down on Me, that well known hit by Elton John as sung by Miss Tess Tickle)
• Half a glass of delicious Stone Hill Sauvignon Blanc, a real treat for me as I don’t usually drink and I don’t usually like dry white wine
• Feeling better physically after a restful week last week
• Staying the weekend with my friend’s parents and catching up with them
• Finally cancelling broadband (which I’ve never used in the whole time I’ve been paying for it)

Things I’m looking forward to

• My cough being completely gone
  
• Brunch with friends
• Seeing the dogs again
• Taking them for a walk on Monday morning
• Doing more writing this week
• Going to stay with my friend in Tauranga and hanging out with her and another writing buddy and going to the hot pools
  
• My last overdue DVD going back to the video shop
• Going to a couple of writing workshops with them
• Sleep in on Wednesday
• Seeing my Mum
• Reading another novel
• Watching the end of the DVD ‘American Cousins’ which I’m enjoying so far
• Having a little more time to myself
• Getting the dishes all finished – one day!
• Hamilton Pride meeting next Wednesday – going over Pride Week and basking in how well it went
• Losing the last two kilos that will put me under 90kg – soon!
• Introducing two of my Tauranga friends to each other

Can meditation change your mind?

Meditation is a form of mindfulness, which means focusing more on what you are experiencing (for example, the feeling of breathing or sounds around you) and less on what you are thinking. People who are more mindful tend to feel more positive emotions, be more optimistic and suffer less from depression. Brief training in mindfulness techniques is followed by less depression and fewer cognitive distortions.

Mindfulness is pretty easy to practice. If you are walking somewhere, you can switch your attention away from the thoughts running through your head and listen to the sound of your footsteps, or look at the scenery you are passing. If you are chopping vegetables you can focus on the feelings in your body as you do this, or on your breath. Some people find it helpful to look at a candle or say a mantra, like ‘om’ or ‘love’ to take the focus away from their conscious thoughts.

It’s a very simple concept, but what’s amazing about it is that it appears to actually change the brain if you do it enough. Brain imaging shows that people who meditate show more activity in the parts of the brains associated with positive feelings. Monks who spend many hours meditating apparently show extreme activity in these parts of the brain, specifically the front left of the brain, the site that is most active during positive emotions. There is also more activity across the whole brain when the person is stimulated during meditation than when someone is not meditating. Brain waves also change – monks who have done 10 to 15 thousand hours of meditation show extreme levels of gamma brain waves compared to people meditating for the first time. Scientists say this shows the brain is more plastic –able to be changed down to its inner workings and circuitry – than anyone had previously realized. Not only this but people who do even a brief mindfulness course show more antibodies in their blood, which means they are more resistant to disease. So mindfulness is good for body as well as brain.

1. Davidson R et al (2003) Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation Psychosomatic Medicine 65:564-570.
2. Brown K W and Ryan R M (2003) The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and its Role in Psychological Well-Being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4): 822-848
3. Shapiro S L, Schwartz G E and Bonner G (1998) Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Medical and Premedical Students, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 21(6): 581-599.

The delicate art of musturbation

This morning I found myself musing about when was best to take the dogs for a morning run. I’d just read a book that said dogs should have two walks a day so had decided to try to fit a morning run into my schedule. ‘Maybe I should have taken them when I first got up instead of walking round the yard with them,’ I thought. ‘Maybe I should have taken them before I made my breakfast.’ When I heard the ‘should’ word popping up more than once my mental ears pricked up. This is often a sign that I’m ‘musturbating’ – putting pressure on myself to meet a high standard or finding fault with what I’ve done, something I experienced all too often when I was growing up.

I’m not automatically opposed to using the word ‘should’. Most of the time it’s fine, just a recognition of something that happened, like ‘I should have brought the washing in when the sky clouded over and it wouldn’t have got wet’. I think it’s easy to get too religiously strict about using ‘should’, like the friend of mine who once told me ‘that woman says ‘should’ all the time – she should know that she shouldn’t say ‘should’ ‘! When it gets that prescriptive the point is lost. Which is that ‘shoulding’ can be a way of beating myself up that makes me feel bad.

So this morning I asked myself ‘have I crossed the line into self-criticism here?’ The answer seemed to be ‘no, not quite’. I could tell this because I didn’t feel bad or harassed. I was still at the stage of thinking about things in a neutral way, trying to work out what time would work best for the dogs’ run. In the end I decided that it did make more sense to take them after breakfast. But it reminded me how easily ‘should’ can slip into ‘musturbation’ and become a stick we beat ourselves up with.

Getting access to therapy – not always easy

Sorry for the late posting – Telstra kindly cut my internet service off and I’ve only just managed to get it reinstated. Carrying on from yesterday’s post on how difficult it is to get help when you don’t want people to know you are depressed, it’s been my experience that it can be difficult to get therapy even when you do tell your doctor how you feel. In my case, way back in 1982, I was diagnosed with major depression after I became so unwell I couldn’t continue working. My family doctor put me on antidepressants, which took a while to kick in. After talking to a friend about how someone she knew had found therapy helpful for depression I went back to my doctor and asked to be referred to a psychologist.

His response was quite amazing. He told me that in his experience therapy didn’t help anyone and he wouldn’t refer me to it. So I had to find someone who would take me on without a doctor’s referral and pay for it myself. I found this therapy immensely helpful, but after doing research decided to change to a psychologist doing cognitive behavioural therapy as that was proven effective. I made sure to tell my doctor what I was doing. I later heard that this same doctor had refused to refer another young patient to therapy, much to the distress of his family, so I wasn’t the only one.

This story has a surprising ending. A few years after I started doing therapy I started seeing a new psychologist. Somehow we got on to the topic of my doctor. Then my psychologist dropped a bombshell. ‘He’s the highest referring doctor to our psychological service in the region,’ she told me. I was so shocked I asked her to say it again. Surely it couldn’t be the same doctor? But when I next visited him he told me it was true.
‘What changed your mind?’ I asked him.
‘I’ve seen such a change in you with therapy that now I refer a lot of my patients to the psychologists,’ he told me. He was a convert! I even lent him my copy of Feeling Good by Dr David Burns, and when I got it back it was clear from pages he’d marked that he’d actually read it. The upshot of this is that doctors may be more comfortable prescribing meds than referring a patient to therapy, but it’s worth getting therapy anyway and telling the doctor just how helpful it is. They may end up a convert too!

Putting a good face on it

In front of me is a picture of a smiling woman hugging a gorgeous blond headed little boy. Both of them are dead now – the woman by her own hand, the little boy – her son – killed by her. She left behind her two older sons and a husband. This can’t have been the future she imagined when she had her children or married, or the future she wanted for any of them. It shows that depression is a potentially deadly illness. But what I find saddest is that this woman could have so easily been helped. As I’ve discussed in previous posts there are so many effective therapies out there. Any one of them could have made the critical difference. But the difficulty is getting to them.

In this woman’s case she read self-help books but didn’t seek other help. In fact she pretended to her doctor and others that everything was fine. Meanwhile the illness was eating away at her. In some ways it would have been better for the family had she stopped coping and had a complete breakdown so she had to have treatment. But because she went on with the basics day to day it was possible for her to deny the seriousness of her condition, and difficult for anyone to make her get help. I’ve been through this with someone myself – knowing that they are very ill and need professional help, but having them refuse to seek treatment even though their life was at risk. Thankfully in that case a group of people who cared got together and wrote a letter to the person’s GP that led to him getting treatment. As a result he’s still around to care for his children today. But it could have been different.

The reason he didn’t want to seek treatment? The stigma of admitting he had a mental illness. So many of us with depression learn early on that people don’t like to hear about it. Pretending things are fine becomes our way of being accepted, and after a while it becomes second nature. But pretending things is fine makes it hard to seek help. What saved me was becoming so depressed that I couldn’t function normally, so I couldn’t pretend any more. The shame was huge, but not as big as the relief of getting professional help. That was the start of a change in my life that led to my current happiness. I’m just sad that this poor mother didn’t get that chance.

Good things for the last week

• Turning over on my day off and going back to sleep
• The boy from across the road made a banana chocolate chip cake and it was fabulous – especially considering it was the first cake he’d ever made
• Bubble bath with the Radox mix with calendula and rose – yummy
• I got the rubbish out two weeks in a row – now for the recycling that is threatening to bury me!
• Having three people who regularly comment on my blog and encourage me to keep writing it
• The warmth of a fire on a cold winter morning
• A writing buddy who helps me work out where to go when I’m stuck and gives me encouragement
• A short haircut - nice and cool for the warm weather and much easier to manage
• I had a great chat with my hairdresser about the boy across the road who is doing kickboxing with him – I’m so grateful he is so supportive
• Dry firewood!
• A day off from the dog, so restful and relaxing
• Being adored by the dog next door who wags her tail so hard when she sees me her backside is in danger of coming off. Yes – I am the centre of the universe. I knew it!
• I got the sheets changed on the bed
• I got some of the dishes done
• Two quiet, relaxing days with no dog and no local kids coming round
• The annual Pride picnic, which I organised, went really well with lots of people coming along with their dogs and having a great time

The importance of goals

Working on a goal has saved me from despair many a day. I suspect it’s part of why paid work is such a great antidepressant - because it involves setting and reaching goals every day. When I was first depressed in the early 1980’s my goal was often researching therapy for depression. That gave me a reason to get up in the morning and something I could get absorbed in. Nowadays it’s often a writing project. Some days it’s something little, like getting some dishes done or getting the recycling out.

Part of the reason I am so dogged about setting and working on goals is that it feels so good. And it’s not only me. Researcher Richard Davison has found that people who score high on mastery and purpose are more likely to feel positive emotions than those who don’t. People also report feeling very positive emotions when they are in a state of ‘flow’, concentrating deeply on working towards a goal. Flow involves setting goals that are challenging but ‘do-able’ in areas of interest, so you become absorbed in what you are doing until you lose track of time.

On days when I am struck fresh by my losses (house, health, career, to name a few) and start to panic about how I’m going to manage when my dwindling savings are all gone and I’m forced to live solely on disability, working on a goal provides the uplift that helps me stay happy most of the time despite my woes. My fears and sorrows just drift out the window – it’s as if I’m too busy and focused to feed them with my attention. Feelings like hope, enjoyment, satisfaction and competence spring up in their stead like lovely flowers.

Can pets make you happy?

Can spending time with a pet make you happy? I know I feel happy when I just look at my very special brain damaged white cat (except when he wakes me up at 4.30am meowing to have his jellymeat refreshed). But I hadn’t thought about pets as an antidote to depression until a friend (none other than the anonymous Mr F) handed me a chapter from Healing without Freud or Prozac the other day. In it author Dr David Servan-Schreiber quotes studies showing that people are happier when they have contact with animals. One study found that older people had much better psychological resistance to life’s difficulties when they had a pet. Another discovered that Aids patients were much better protected from depression if they had a cat or dog. Lastly, people who were housebound due to a disability and virtually unable to move round unaided were much happier if they had a dog as a companion. Not only that, but they had more friends and more contact with relations than people in similar circumstances who did not have a dog. Apparently just having an animal by your side makes you more attractive to others. (Daters take note!)

Dr Servan-Schreiber also went into the benefits of animal companionship for physical health, which were considerable – lower death rates after heart attacks, going to the doctor less often, and lower blood pressure. Intellectually, people with pets and health problems were sharper too, doing better on stressful activities like mental arithmetic and public speaking, and making fewer mistakes in their work. Overall, it appears you just can’t lose owning a pet. I know that every day one of my three pets does something that makes me laugh. Barney barndog has just discovered that if he plonks his paw down in the water of a stream it splashes up and he can drink it. Watching him work this out had me laughing out loud. India, the dog next door, a Staffy-Ridgeback cross built like a tank and made of muscle (very like the dog in the picture to the left), likes to climb into my lap and be pampered and groomed like a little poodle. The look of bliss on her ugly mutt makes me smile all over. The cats do that classic cat thing of going to jump on something and missing, then getting a look on their faces that says ‘oh that was completely deliberate – I meant to do that’. And it’s delightful on a cold morning to have my special cat snuggle down under the blankets and purr by my side. So do pets make you happy? Apparently the answer is yes.

Light and happiness

Feeling blue during winter is a common experience. (Even looking at the photo to the left brought my mood down!) It’s easy to put it down to cold or rain or lack of holidays. But research over the last few decades has shown that it’s a lot to do with not getting enough sunlight. Light actually affects our moods so that if we get too little we feel miserable. Someone with a knack for acronyms has called it SAD, short for Seasonal Affective Disorder. But it doesn’t have to be winter for SAD to kick in – being stuck inside in summer can have the same impact.

The trick to feeling less SAD is to get exposed to direct daylight for 30 to 60 minutes each day. One study showed that this worked even in grey weather. On cooler days when it’s not so nice to be outside I sometimes open the window while I’m writing or reading and sit inside wrapped in warm clothes and blanket with the heater on! If I’m driving I have a window open so that the light can hit my eyes. You don’t have to look directly at the light – it’s a matter of looking at surfaces that are reflecting light. But it doesn’t seem to work through windows, which is a shame. Having a walk in the open air gives you a double whammy, combining bright light with exercise, also proven to improve mood. If you don’t find bright light enough to lift your mood on its own I suggest combining it with one or two or three other approaches, until you hit the magic ‘feel good’ zone.

For people who experience very dark, long winters or find it difficult to get outside for health reasons there’s an easier way – using a light box. This emits light at 10,000 lux, proven to reduce seasonal depression. Some firms are selling boxes with light at the blue end of the spectrum but the research still seems a bit mixed so personally I would stick with boxes that use full spectrum light. Light boxes are even helpful for people who suffer non-seasonal depression according to recent research. A commercial light box from a reputable firm is most likely to be effective with minimal side effects because it’s made to strict specifications. You can set it up on your kitchen table and turn it on for 15 to 60 minutes a day while you eat or read. For useful and reliable information on light boxes visit www.cet.org , a nonprofit website on all kinds of environmental therapies. Unfortunately they don’t ship to New Zealand but if you want to know who does I can give you details. I thought I might need one to get through the long Waikato winter as I wasn’t well enough to exercise, but I found that sitting with the window open or sitting outside when it was sunny was enough combined with everything else I do.

Good things for the last week

A bit later than usual this week - I had a vague day yesterday and forgot to do the blog!

• lovely afternoon at a local reserve paddling in the river with a neighbour's kids, paddling in the river under the hot sun, playing ball with the dog
• that wonderful moment of putting my head down on the pillow and drifting off to sleep
• making a new cookie recipe that's really yummy
• grooming the neighbour's dog with my zoom groom (unlike my dog, she actually likes it!)
• nice talk with my friend from the UK
• yummy egg salad roll for lunch
• watched Burn after Reading with George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand again and liked it just as much as the first time
• talking with mates from Hamilton Pride about games we can play at the picnic this weekend, including 3 legged races and egg and spoon races
• I got another section of fence up to stop the dog escaping
• another week of feeling happy every day.
  

More feel good movies

Here are some more movies that can lift your spirits when you feel down. They may not work for everyone but they work for me! Remember - research shows that watching these kinds of movies can not only make people feel better but help them see things in a more positive and realistic perspective.

Lars and the Real Girl – a sweet fairy tale like story about a man who finds it hard to relate to others until he starts a meaningful relationship with a life size plastic doll. Very funny with a wonderful ending – makes you see the nice side of the human race

Burn after Reading – another great film from the Coen brothers, with Brad Pitt managing to look and sound stupid – quite a feat! Very funny and slightly crazy

Art School Confidential – one of the few movies I’ve seen recently where I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen from one minute to the next. Crazy, hilarious, and very original

Stepbrothers – another delightfully silly film starring Will Ferrell, with a moral buried under all the slapstick, bad jokes, and unlikely scenarios. Will does his normal great job as a huge, hairy child but the real treat are his bizarrely ambitious brother and severely repressed sister in law.

Starter for 10 – I picked this DVD up and put it down again several times before getting it out, but was glad I saw it. It’s an engaging and frothy with a serious side. Great performances from James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall. The plutey girlfriend is great fun, and watching the working class boy react to the vagaries of the upper class is painful but hugely funny.

Unexpected Positive Occurences (UPOs)

The reason that Unexpected Positive Occurences are so important to me is that they remind me that life often turns out to be far more positive than I assume it will. Noticing the positive things that actually happen despite my sometimes dire expectations helps me to remember that lots of things in my life do go well. So even when things are a bit stressful or life throws a curly one at me, I can be comforted by the thought that at any time, out of the blue, something really nice could happen.

Like the other day when I stopped to walk the dog at a reserve we both like. When we got there we had the large grassy area to ourselves. As the dog romped and I walked sedately beside the stream under the budding trees another car drew up. Out of it climbed a woman and a huge brown and black dog. They walked the opposite way to us but then we both turned so we were on a collision course. I put my dog back on the chain. As we neared she called out ‘she’s quite friendly’ and I replied ‘my dog is well socialised’. We let them do the doggy small talk of sniffing each other, then when they behaved well let them off their leads to romp around. The two dogs had a wonderful time splashing through the stream and bounding over the grass. The two humans also got on well and had a great chat. In the end we exchanged cards and agreed we’d meet again at the reserve to walk our dogs some other day.

As I drove away I reflected on how totally unpredicted that pleasant meeting had been. No one had ever so much as spoken to me at the reserve before. It gave me a warm glow thinking of all the unexpected positive things that might be just about to happen to me.

The impact of protein on my mood

A few years ago I had a horrific relapse of depression. It was brought on by a difficult relationship that ended badly. My mood swings were huge and some days I feared for my life. Even worse, all the things that normally worked to stabilise my mood had no impact. It took me quite a few months to work out that maybe the hormonal instability that comes with menopause was part of the problem. Even when I did, the treatment options seemed limited. I didn’t want to do Hormone Replacement Therapy even if I could have found a doctor to prescribe it.

Luckily I stumbled on something that helped quite by accident, looking for a book on how to lose weight (again!) The book I picked up recommended a diet very low in sugar and pointed out that the body processes any refined carbohydrate (such as flour) as if it’s white sugar. The author put forward evidence that this not only affects blood sugar levels but also serotonin levels in the brain, making it a double whammy for sending mood sky high and then dropping it through the basement again. This is particularly a problem for people who are very sensitive to sugar.

I did the sugar sensitivity test and found I scored very highly. Figuring I had nothing to lose I started the diet. Some aspects of it were not so helpful, but gradually my moods started to stabilise. I was also doing a lot of other things (see my post yesterday for details of the whole list) but the change in diet made a real difference. Finally I worked out that I didn’t need to do the whole, complicated diet – all I really needed was to eat protein as part of every snack and meal. The acid test was when I forgot and just had carbs on their own. I usually realised I’d done this when my mood plummeted for no apparent reason and I could trace it back to the moment I last ate something. Now I’m religiously careful about eating protein with everything. I can’t provide any stunning scientific evidence to support it but for me it really seems to work. As an added bonus not only did I get more emotionally stable and less depressed, but on this diet I feel calmer and get angry far less often than I used to.

One type of therapy may not be enough to get happy

Call me greedy but I’ve found that I need more than one type of therapy to make a difference and keep me happy. This is because I’ve found that just doing one thing – like taking antidepressants, exercising or using cognitive techniques – is not enough to push me over the edge into happiness. So I’ve kept adding more and more things until my mood has hit happy and stabilised.

This is a list of the techniques I use:
• behavioural techniques (activity schedules, rewarding myself for doing difficult things, doing pleasurable activities)
• cognitive techniques (recognising errors of fact or logic in my thinking and correcting them, focusing on good things that could happen)
• noting good things that happen each day or few days, as well as what I’ve achieved, no matter how small
• savoring the enjoyable and pleasurable things that happen
• trying to get half an hour at least of outside light each day
• doing some exercise (limited due to my health although having a dog helps)
• taking 6000mg of omega 3 fatty acids (in the form of fish oil) each day
• taking St John’s Wort daily as well as a mix of vitamins and minerals proven to affect mood
• social contact with positive, supportive people
• eating protein with every meal and drinking caffeine free beverages after noon
• resting when I’m tired and getting enough sleep each night, with a hot bath and good book at night to help me off to sleep
• using problem solving techniques
• talking regularly to a trusted counsellor.

I’ve found this mix really works to keep me happy.

Good things for the last week

• I had a great time at my friend’s farewell on Friday night, met some interesting new people and enjoyed the singing and dancing and speeches
• Standing on the beach in the dark last night with the wind whistling past my ears and the dog racing round ecstatically
• I got the kid across the road into a kick boxing class
• An enjoyable consultation with my very nice doctor, talking about how much better I’m feeling and how great it is to live in the country
• My article about bisexuality was published on gaynz.com to a positive response
• Lovely relaxed Saturday morning visiting the local farmer’s market, library, supermarket and video shop
• I made a big pot of pumpkin soup and froze it
• Doing an interview about bisexuality on the G&T breakfast show with Ross and Lexi
• Watching Season 2 of Flight of the Conchords and the film ‘Starter for 10’
• Visiting friends in Tauranga and having a lovely time chatting about psychology and books
• Making custard squares with the kids across the road - messy, chaotic, but fun and with a delicious end result! (although not quite as flash looking as the picture)
  
• Lying in bed after a bubble bath reading the Sunday papers and enjoying the feeling of not having to do anything else that day

Uplifted by the natural world – pour mon ami F

One of the benefits of having a dog is that it encourages me to go for walks. On our way to a local city to attend a writing group and see my mother a few weeks ago I stopped at a lay by near a stream to let him stretch his legs. A warm sun shone down on us despite it being winter, and there was hardly any breeze. We parked beside a shallow stream running over golden stones, sending up glints where the rocks broke the water. When I was a child I saw stones like these as jewels – amber, tiger’s eyes – because they seemed to glow. Along the edge of the stream were trees – poplars, willows and others – many of them bare. A a few evergreens provided colour.

As we walked along the short grass beside the stream a fantail flitted out of one of the bare trees, spread the fan of feathers at its tail, and twisted and turned in mid-air. I gazed as it changing direction instantaneously, spiralling, spinning, falling then recovering. Barney was more interested in finding a good smelly bit of mud to roll in but I was entranced. Another fantail joined it for an acrobatic duet in mid-air, poised over the stream. I feel such pleasure and joy in natural surroundings – they lift me up when I’m down. That day I was happy to start with but the trees, the stream, the sun and the birds enhanced my pleasure in life.

Knowing and using personal strengths increases happiness

When we know what our top strengths are and use them in different ways to normal happiness increases and depression decreases. So Dr Martin Seligman and colleagues found recently (to see the study go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and look for the article by Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson).

What does this mean in practice? According to the VIA Survey of Character Strengths I did on 2nd March this year my top five strengths are:

1. Appreciation of beauty and excellence
2. Bravery and valour
3. Creativity, ingenuity and originality
4. Fairness, equity and justice, and
5. Curiosity and interest in the world.

(To find out your own top strengths go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu, fill out a simple registration and click on the test. There is a long and a brief version. The website keeps your results so you can look back over the years and see how they’ve changed.)

Now that I know what my top strengths are the next step is to work out a way to use them differently than normal. Given that my number three strength is creativity it should be a cinch to work this out, but I must admit I’m scratching my head a bit! OK, let’s take number one. I normally indulge my appreciation of beauty and excellence by ooh-ing and ah-ing over the natural world – trees, flowers, sunsets etc. I very rarely go to a museum or art gallery, although I usually enjoy it when I do. I could aim to go to Waikato Museum or find an art gallery in Hamilton and look at some exhibits there. That would be a different use of that strength from usual. OK so my mission should I choose to accept it (which I do) is to go to a museum or art gallery – I’ll report back on what I feel as a result.

Cognitive therapy made easy

If you look at a self-help book on cognitive therapy it can look a bit overwhelming and difficult. But it’s actually a lot easier than it looks. Also, some people find that writing down their upsetting thoughts makes them feel worse, so they avoid doing it. That’s probably because they believe these thoughts, and so focusing on them makes them feel bad. It’s a real shame because for me changing negative, destructive thoughts for ones that are more supportive and fair to myself can make a huge difference to my mood. I’ve found a couple of strategies that really help me do it quickly and easily without feeling worse.

1/ building up my positive mood before I consider my thoughts by watching a funny or uplifting movie or play or spending time with someone who makes me feel good: this puts me in a good space to look at my ‘stinking thinking’ and immunise myself against it a bit more. Not only that, but research has found that positive emotions help people think more clearly and creatively, which is good for spotting thinking errors and replacing them with new thoughts. ‘Why bother with the cognitive work?’ I hear you ask. ‘Why not just do the funny movie?’ It’s because I’ve found that my thoughts are HUUGE in making me feel bad so changing my thinking really helps me feel better and protects me against future depression.

2/ asking myself some key questions that cue me into looking at things differently: Look ma, no writing! It can be done in written form but I find it works just as well doing it in my head. My favourite questions are:

Am I focusing on the negatives and ignoring the positives?
Am I catastrophising? Is there a chance things might not be as bad as I think?
Am I criticising myself? What can I say to myself that is nurturing and supportive?
Am I blaming myself for things that aren’t my fault? What are ALL the reasons this bad thing happened, including what other people did?
Am I predicting negatives that might not happen? What are the positives that could happen (including things that have actually happened before)?

It could be worth putting this list somewhere you can easily see it, like behind your bedroom door, to remind you what to ask yourself next time you’re feeling down.

Using a supportive voice to yourself

Sometimes I tune in to what I am saying to myself and am absolutely horrified. ‘What’s wrong with you – why can’t you pull yourself together?’ or ‘you’re so stupid, you made a mess of that’ or ‘you just can’t get it right can you?’ Hearing these words stops me dead. They are the words I grew up hearing, but this time they’re coming from inside me. I’ve spent decades seeing therapists and taking part in personal growth groups, reading self-help books, filling journals with my thoughts, doing self-esteem exercises and still I think like this! Not nearly as much as I used to, but even so it shows how deep these comments cut when decades after first hearing them they can still ambush me.

What I do when I realise I’m giving myself a hard time is switch to a self-nurturing voice. There are a number of options:

1/ the caring friend who says ‘you’re tired. Have a lie down. When did you last eat? It could be that you’re hungry. You’ll feel better after a meal. Just look after yourself.’

2/ the wise advisor who helps me solve my problems and says things like ‘it looks like you’re a bit overloaded with stuff at the moment. How about you try and offload some of it? It’s not going to be the end of the world if you don’t get some of it done.’

3/ the voice of my strong, courageous self who says things like ‘you can do it – you’ve done much harder things than this’, and

4/ the voice of the part of me who admires and likes me, and sees me in a positive way, who encourages and praises me with words like ‘you are really good at that’ or ‘you did a great job of handling that difficult situation’.

I actually have a poster on my wall with the name of each type of supportive voice inside a different shape in a different bright colour. So when I get tired or stressed or something goes wrong and I start to fall into the habit of trash talking to myself I can take a quick look at it and be reminded of how to speak to myself in a nurturing, supportive way. I find that as soon as I do this I feel a lot better.

Balancing acceptance of low moods with efforts to feel better

I had an experience in the weekend that gave me insight into how I balance simply accepting my low moods with actively attempts to feel better. Saturday brought with it a few disappointments and frustrations, like my dog arriving home from the dog sitter when I was still in the bath with conditioner in my hair, then jumping the fence immediately while I stood there helplessly in my dressing gown shouting at him. Next I locked myself out of the bathroom so I couldn’t rinse my hair, then once that was sorted found that despite double checking all my measurements for the new fence I’d got them the wrong way round so the fence didn’t fit the posts, then just missed a friend for coffee then …you get the picture!

As the day progressed I focused on experiencing and accepting my feelings of irritation, panic, anxiety, anger, disappointment and sadness. At first this stopped them getting any worse. But after negative event # 5 or 6, I found that sadness was starting to morph into depression. All I could remember from the day was the long list of things that hadn’t gone right. That alerted me to the fact that my thinking had become distorted. ‘What good things also happened?’ I asked myself. I remembered that we had finished nailing the fence together. I also realised my mistake was not a catastrophe because the fence could be put up the opposite way round. This new perspective lifted my spirits.

Next I looked for on one thing I could control. I decided to head off to a lovely reserve and give the dog a good run. We had a wonderful time there and I went home feeling a lot better, looking forward to having a nice dinner and watching a funny video.

When I analysed what had happened (as I so love to do!) I realised that the steps had been:

• Accepting my moods and feeling them, just letting them flow rather than trying to feel ‘up’ all the time
• Becoming aware that this was not enough and my feelings where moving beyond a fleeting sadness to become mild depression
• Examining my thinking for my most common errors and correcting them – shifting my focus from the negative to positive events and de-catastrophising,
• Looking for one thing I could control
• Doing something pleasurable, and
• Planning some small enjoyable things to look forward to.

That’s how I manage when a good mood starts to slip into a low one. In a future post I’ll talk about how I balance accepting my feelings with taking action when I’m feeling low already.

Good things for the last week

• Making a yummy dinner of pasta with pesto and roast veges for myself and a friend I was staying with and eating it while laughing our heads off at ‘The Big Fat Quiz of the Year’ on youtube featuring Noel Fielding and Russell Brand
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• Being able to have every room in the house open and all the animals wandering where they wanted without any fear that the dog will bother the cats
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• Discovering a local speciality – hot chips with mayo and grated cheese on top – and loving it (a bit too much!)
• Enjoyable phone calls with my close friend from Ireland and close friend from my home town
• A wonderful romp with the dog at a lovely reserve beside a broad still stretch of the Waikato River, under huge trees shining in the late afternoon sun, with the silence broken only by geese flying overhead and a couple of motorboats
• Seeing my naturopath face to face for the first time in ages and having a really good chat

All the different types of effective therapy for depression

In Tuesday’s post I wrote that there were more types of therapy out there than you can shake a stick at. I should have said ‘effective therapies’ i.e. things that are proven to make you feel better. It’s amazing how many approaches have been evaluated and found to work. Just to give you an ideas, here are all the ones I know about:

• Behavioural therapy (focus on activity, particularly planning activities for the day and pleasurable activities)
• Cognitive therapy (using lumped with behavioural therapy and called CBT for cog behav therapy, involves identifying and changing key thinking errors)
• Interpersonal therapy (IPT, involves improving relationships)
• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, with a focus on accepting feelings as they are)
• Mindfulness (awareness of experiences and sensations without much conscious thought)
• Aerobic exercise (e.g. walking, running)
• Anaerobic exercise (weight lifting and other resistance exercise)
• Bright light (from the sun or a light box)
• Omega 3 fatty acids (ideally in the correct proportion to omega 6 fatty acids. In our modern diet we tend to get too much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3, which is what causes the problems)
• Therapeutic life style changes (TLC, involves a return to an earlier way of life with more exercise, a diet higher in Omega3 fatty acids and more social contact and support)
• Antidepressant medication
• Positive psychology techniques such as using a key personal strength in a new way, making a note of good things that happen, responding positively to others’ good news, savouring positive experiences/ sensations and attending to positive, uplifting media such as films.

You can see from this list why I said that if you don’t find one approach that you feel comfortable with or works for you there’s always another! I haven’t even mentioned the things that I and other people have found helpful that haven’t been confirmed as effective by research yet.

My top ten feel better movies

Previously I’ve posted about how watching funny movies is a quick way to feel better. Here is a list of my top ten funny movies (as requested by Kirsten). They are not in any order of preference. These are the ones I come back and watch time and time again. They always make me laugh, not only at the time but for days afterwards.

1. Zoolander
2. Music and Lyrics
3. Death at a Funeral
4. Galaxy Quest
5. Caddyshack
6. A Fish Called Wanda
7. Flight of the Conchords (series 1)
8. Blades of Glory
9. Johnny English
10. Best in Show

Not every therapy works for every person

It’s easy to think that all anyone has to do to get over depression is pop a pill. But not everyone who takes a pill gets happy. I’ve talked to numerous people who’ve tried antidepressants and felt only slightly better, if that. Which is not to say that antidepressants don’t work – they do. But it’s a matter of getting the one that’s right for you and there’s almost no way of knowing which one that is until you try it. Finding it can take months.

But there are more types of therapy out there than you can shake a stick at so if drugs don’t work (the legal type) then something else probably will. It’s a matter of knowing what the therapies are and having the stamina to keep trying them until you find one that does the trick. It’s unlikely that every therapy will work for everyone. This is just common sense. Someone who’s too ill to exercise much (like me) or simply doesn’t like exercise is unlikely to find that useful. Someone (again, like me) who finds meditation boring and onerous isn’t going to do it, no matter how much they tell themselves it works and they ‘should’. And a therapy you don’t do is unlikely to have an impact on you!

Even if you make yourself do it it’s not necessarily going to work for you. Research on antidepressants show they work for over half of the people who try them. None of them work for 100% of people. Ditto cognitive and interpersonal therapy. It’s a case of different strokes for different folks. We’re all made slightly differently so it stands to reason that we are going to need an approach that suits our unique makeup, both so we will actually keep on with it and so it has the most chance of working.

Good things for the last week

• Watching a middle aged couple who were obviously in love say good bye to each other at the end of their lunch hour outside the office block one of them worked at. The looks, the kiss, each of them looking back at the other as they walked away. So sweet! It brought a smile to my face


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  The gorgeous refreshing coolness of late night air on my skin when I stepped outside after my bath


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  Stroking my friend’s big black cat and hearing his rumbly purr
  


• Watching an old dog on the beach limping along, enjoying sniffing at every post he came to and having a wonderful time


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  Sitting by the beach late at night listening to the sound of waves, so soothing and peaceful and something I miss so much now that I live so far inland


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  The sound of planes taking off and landing, which reminds me of so many happy times
  


• Playing charades and dictionary with friends and giggling helplessly as I completely failed to fool anyone with my clues


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  Revelling in the pleasure of writing, in my head and on paper and the computer, the joy of putting words together to create images and convey information, the satisfaction of making something I feel pleased with.