"One of the major symptoms of depression is self-absorption. The depressed person thinks about how she feels a great deal, excessively so. Her low mood is not a fact of life, but is very salient to her. When she detects sadness, she ruminates about it, projecting it into the future and across all her activities, and this in turn increases her sadness. 'Get in touch with your feelings,' shout the self-esteem peddlers in our society. Our youth have absorbed this message, and believing it has produced a generation of narcissists whose major concern, not surprisingly, is with how they feel.
"In contrast to getting in touch with feelings, the defining criterion of gratification is the absence of feeling, loss of self-consciousness, and total engagement. Gratification dispels self-absorption, and the more one has the flow that gratification produces, the less depressed on is. Here, then, is a powerful antidote to the epidemic of depression in youth: strive for more gratifications, while toning down the pursuit of pleasure. The pleasures come easily, and the gratifications (which result from the exercise of personal strengths) are hard-won. A determination to identify and develop these strengths is therefore the great buffer against depression."
--Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness
Pleasure and Gratification
Why is it that our efforts to "self-soothe" with pleasurable activities often fall flat? Why, when we are suffering from depression and anxiety, from such a profound lack of pleasure, does reaching after pleasurable experiences often not work? Why, when one candy bar tastes great, do ten make us yearn for broccoli?
Martin Seligman, the originator of what's called "Positive Psychology," tries to explain this experience by distinguishing pleasure from gratification. Pleasure is defined as a "delights [that] are immediate, come through the senses, and are momentary...needing little or no interpretation." And gratification is the "enacting [of] personal strengths and virtues." Or another way he distinguishes the two is that pleasure (in economic terms) is an act of consumption, and gratification is the work that builds capital.
That said, however, there is certainly nothing wrong with pleasure, anymore than there is something wrong with a tulip. It exists, we're wired for it, and it has lots of wonderful and necessary qualities and results. A life with no pleasure is hardly a life at all. But the question is why, especially for someone suffering from wild moods, pleasure isn't the cure all to the pain of these states.
You're probably had the experience of coming home after a long day of work, and debating reading a book versus flicking on the television. You may have thought, "Well, I put in a lot of hours today, so I deserve to vege out with the tube." Yet when you turned it off to go to sleep, a vague dissatisfaction stuck with you despite having gotten what you wanted. Why?
While it may be indeed a pleasure to consume something mindless it is not deeply satisfying (clicking off the brain, "distracting," is actually an important option when you are overwhelmed by your mood). When engaging in pleasure as Seligman defines it, only parts of the brain and mind are being activated, limited, rather "linear" wiring which does not challenge your abilities or self. Imagine going to the gym and having a machine electrically stimulate the muscles so that it both feels good and builds muscle fiber: you don't have to do anything. It will be pleasurable (for a while), but how satisfying?
Contrast that image with you making the effort (maybe battling past your desire to keep the covers over your head) to get to the gym, thinking through your routine, doing the exercises with focus (even though, say, anxiety is making it hard to concentrate), and hitting the showers after. How does that feel different? How satisfying is that likely to be? What's different from the first image?
You see, there's no short cut to gratification, though there are plenty to pleasure. The gratifying part of gratification is the process. Seligman's argument is that we get into deep trouble because we learn from our culture to confuse the two, and to try (sometimes over and over and over) to get satisfaction from pleasure. We want the gratification of absorption in our work or relationships, but try to get it through direct, easy stimulation. We want to feel the joy of walking through the old redwoods, but in our confusion, think we can get that by staying in the parking lot and having an ice cream.
So what does this mean for those suffering from depression and anxiety? It means that at times, when you can't walk, you gotta run.
Now, I've found in my work with patients that this is often a hard one to swallow. "Don't you get how tired I am?" "I simply can't!" "There's nothing more I can do except watch TV!" "I haven't got the energy to make dinner! Opening a can's about it!"
And I get it. Depression and anxiety sap both physical and psychic energy. At times you can hardly get out of bed, or attend to the basics, and really, there's no shame to that. Wild moods have understandable causes and results.
Yet, in terms of the desire to overcome these moods, there are certain unavoidable, inevitable truths that don't have to do with you, or me, or him, or her, but are simply the nature of the beast. If you want X, you gotta do Y.
Seligman is pointing to one of these truths: If you want to overcome depression and anxiety, you have to make effort. Pleasure is not enough.
An example
My patient Ariel (name and details changed to protect confidentiality) would roll in and out of depressions a couple of times a year. When in one, her energy and motivation would be sapped and she found herself choosing, in a very understandable attempt to get what the moods were stripping, to watch a lot of TV and eat ice cream and fast food. She was hoping her mood would be leavened by these quick-n-easy means. She told herself that anything more was too much, too overwhelming, and avoided anything but seeking these pleasures.
And over and over she was baffled by both why she didn't feel better and why the depressions kept returning. The pleasures did help some, but only temporarily and only at the surface. So what we worked on was how to parse out the experiences of seeking pleasure from seeking gratification, and find those activities that would genuinely fit the bill, be truly gratifying, but not overwhelming.
So, we figured out that when she returned from work (and other times when she felt tired and was telling herself that she'd already "paid at the office"), instead of immediately clicking on the TV, she would slowly and mindfully make a simple meal from scratch, and then sketch something from her day in her notebook. After that, we agreed that she could do anything in the realm of pleasure, for as long as she liked.
However, what she came to experience was that, having a gratifying experience of her own competence and creativity led to a felt recognition of the relative shallowness of the pleasures part of her was craving, and an at first startling desire to actually do more rather than less. And she saw that the strengths and self-confidence that was exercised in cooking and drawing, instead of depleting her, actually strengthened her over time. As she practiced the gratifications, and minimized the excessive seeking of pleasure, her depressions subsided and thinned.
To sum up...
...I'll just quote Seligman again (and encourage you to pick up his very accessible and very wise book
Authentic Happiness):
"The pleasures come easily, and the gratifications (which result from the exercise of personal strengths) are hard-won. A determination to identify and develop these strengths is therefore the great buffer against depression."