Using positive psychology to lessen the pain of cognitive therapy for depression

Sometimes using cognitive techniques can make you feel worse to start with, until you find good answers to talk back to your painful thoughts.  Here’s a simple technique I happened on that takes some or all of the pain out of challenging depressing thoughts.  I know some people avoid looking at their thoughts because it hurts, so I thought this might help.

I came up with this when I was doing background research for the book I’m writing on transforming depression into happiness.  Positive psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson’s found that one of the good things that happiness brings is increased creativity.  ‘D’oh’ I thought.  ‘What if you did something that made you feel good before you wrote down your thoughts?  It could provide a buffer zone of good feelings against the potential down when you look at thoughts like ‘I’m a failure,’ or ‘I can’t get on with people’.  Feeling better could also make it easier to come up with new ways of thinking because your mind is more open to new ideas.’  I tried it out and it seemed to work.

So here are the simple steps:

• ·         Pick an activity that routinely lifts your spirits – going for a walk, meeting up with friends, watching an uplifting movie, driving round and listening to music, surfing, cooking a great meal – whatever floats your boat!  Set a time and do whatever organising you need to
• ·         Just before you do the activity, write down some of the thoughts that have been flitting round your head like annoying little grey clouds (or huge overwhelming tornadoes!)  It may be a bit painful to focus on these thoughts, but that pain is about to be eased!
• ·         Go off and have fun
• ·         When you feel better after the activity, pick up the page and look at your thoughts again.  You may find it easier to see the gaps in logic and evidence, and come up with some good answers, in a relatively painless way.

The other good thing about this technique is that there seems to be some evidence that we are more able to remember things that fit with our current mood.  So when you’re feeling sunnier, you may be more able to access sunny memories that give the lie to your gloomy prognostications.

'Why bother with using cognitive techniques when you’re already feeling better?' I hear you ask  That’s a good question.  If you no longer feel depressed, then it may well not be worth the effort.  There is research that shows that activity can be just as effective in changing depressing thoughts as cognitive techniques.  I do it either when the activity wasn’t enough on its own to make me feel good, or as a way of buffering myself against future depression by coming up with some snappy answers I can use in the future.  Totally up to you!