Tame Your Mood Newsletter
In This Issue:
Feature Article: What is Depression?
My new book
Archive of Past Newsletters
Audio Recordings
About Marty

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 Marty L. Cooper, MFT

 

4831 Geary Blvd.

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August 2011                   Vol. 3, Issue 10
Openings for Sept. 24th One-Day Workshop:  

"Coping with Depression: Mindfulness-Based, Cognitive Strategies for Relating to Depression"

 

Especially apropos to the essay below, this 1 day workshop (Sept. 24th, 10-4pm in SF), will look at an acceptance-based approach to depression and anxiety.  For more information or to request registration forms, please click here.

Greetings! 

Happy (Late-ish) Summer! 

 

Well, if you're almost anywhere but San Francisco, you're probably wishing for less heat, while in SF we're hoping for the Indian Summer to burn away the incessant summer fog. Regardless, I hope you're enjoying whatever situation you're finding yourself in, or at least enjoying the challenges that life is bringing.

 

In this month's essay, I'm talking about five ways we create chronic stress in our lives (from Keedwell's How Sadness Survived), and relating those forms of chronic struggle to the reason why acceptance, as a practice, is so important.

 

Enjoy,

Marty

Depression:  From Futility to Acceptance

 

Following on the article in August's newsletter (here), describing depression in its basic components as a mechanism (the depressive symptoms), and a switch (how we have learned or are vulnerable to having that mechanism turned on), in this month's article I'm looking at the "switch" of futility, or rather the "switches" of different types of futlity.

 

Futility is defined as that experience of the uselessness or ineffectualness of further action towards a particular goal.  Political candidates, for instance, drop out of the race when their assessment is that further campaigning is futile.

 

But we don't always act so rationally in assessing futility. 

 

So here we'll take from Paul Keedwell's book on the evolutionary origins of depression, How Sadness Survived, his list of the five ways in which we "struggle on in spite of failure," and thus create chronic stress...and thus court depression.  After these, we'll talk a little bit about why acceptance is, then, so important in "unspringing" depression.

 

Five Forms of Futility

 

1) Ignorance:  You simply don't know that your work is futile, not having on hand the information your mind needs to make that assessment.  You keep at the task, work harder and harder, thinking that there is a chance to succeed when there actually is not.  You keep submitting patent applications (say) without know that there is a company working unethically to squash that emerging technology.  From your perspective, not having that information, you keep thinking that the problem is on your side, and therefore you believe there is a possibility of success if you only do it right.

 

2) High moral scruples:  We refuse to yield our scruples in a situation which punishes us for holding those scruples, without also choosing to leave the situation.  This is not to say that we should have low moral scruples, but rather to know when to stop fighting for what cannot be won.  If you are teaching English in a college devoted to training army officers, and you are a pacifist wanting to spread your message, if you are not able to accept that the institution is not amenable to your message, or leave and find more fertile ground, you are likely to experience the chronic stress arising from your unyielding dedication to your beliefs.

 

3) Trying to please others rather than ourselves:  We find ourselves trying to satisfy another's goal, and avoiding addressing and acting on our own.  Eventually, we will find ourselves in the stress created by inauthenticity, of trying to shape our lives in someone else's image of what our life should be.  We join the military to become an officer, when at heart we're a pacifist, because the lineage of men in our family have always been in the military.

 

4) Unrealistic expectations arising from childhood:  We bring beliefs from our childhood into our adult lives, and keep trying to live them out.  For instance, "I'm only lovable when I am the best at everything I try," being (say) the message you got from your father, who would only show approval when you got good grades or succeeded at football.  It becomes your programming for adulthood, and without being challenged, creates a constant underlying stress about what happens when you, inevitably, fail. I.e., you're constantly, at some level, stressed out about losing love, and that drives you to a perfection that no one can attain.

 

5) The Manic Defense:  "Someone with this manic defense is terrified of having his core feelings of worthlessness exposed by others," (Keedwell).  In order to avoid actually feeling inadequate, one is constantly doing, being, becoming, conquering, dominating, creating-essentially, always going.  Not from a joie de vivre, but from a fear of collapse.

 

Acceptance (as the Solution)

 

So, those are five ways of creating chronic stress, and therefore courting depression, which functions to de-motivate (or de-attach) us from a futile goal.  Look at the five and see which one describes your modus operandi most closely.

 

Then notice that the resolution of all these chronically stressful situations is not further struggle, but accepting the futility of further struggle.  In other words, accepting that you've lost the battle and surrendering.  Because each of these five is deeply embedded and invested in a struggle:  to figure out the problem and fix it (#1);  to sustain or spread one's values in the face of obstruction (#2);  to make someone else's desire our own (#3);  to live according to a belief system that is fundamentally false, but which we think we can't live without (#4);  and to constantly struggle not to fall into a despair that we always feel tugging at us (#5).  Struggle, continuously.

 

Acceptance is the letting go, or cutting away, that which we are attached to and identified with, but which we can't actually succeed at.  Because if we don't do this consciously and willingly, depression will do it to us.  If we are not willing to fall back from the futile and surrender to both the relief and the grief of losing these cherished, if futile, desires, then the crushing hand of depression will fill in by simply squashing us in our tracks, simply making us too heavy to move towards anything.

 

So--and this is where mindfulness practice is so vital--we must practice acceptance, or as a Buddhist writer put it, "The skill of letting go."  The five situations above are like the raccoon grabbing the shiny treat within a trap that catches him because his balled fist (holding the treat), cannot fit back through the hole, but he's neither willing to let go of what he wants.  The solution is not an overcoming, but rather, a falling away. 

 

 


My New Book is Now Available

Anxiety and Depression:  42 Essays on Overcoming the Wild Moods

My new book,

Anxiety and Depression:  42 Essays on Overcoming the Wild Moods, is now available.

 

It is a collection of short essays, focusing on the challenge of managing, and ultimately, uprooting depression and anxiety.  You can find a few sample articles here, and can purchase the book on Amazon here.

Archive of Past Newsletters
   All past issues of Tame Your Mood can be found here.
Audio Recordings
   Various audio recordings can be found here.
About Marty

I am a San Francisco psychotherapist who helps individuals struggling with anxiety and depression to not only manage theseMarty L. Cooper, MFT "wild
moods," but eventually learn how to overcome them.  I work comprehensively with mental, emotional, bodily, and spiritual dimensions and anxiety and depression, all
of which are necessary to overcome the chronic quality of anxiety and depression.


If you are interested in exploring working together in psychotherapy, please contact me at:

 

415.835.2162,
or email at:  [email protected].