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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Dealing with depression
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Dealing with depression

Clinical psychologist Seema Hingorrany explores the causes of depression and offers self-help advice in her new book

Various therapies can help people work on their negative emotions and thoughts.Premium
Various therapies can help people work on their negative emotions and thoughts.

OTHERS :

Extract | Beating the Blues

Depression is not something you discuss in India. Clinical depression is even more taboo and people who suffer from it are often ostracized and isolated—creating a vicious cycle that makes the condition go from bad to worse. It is this iron curtain, this lack of empathy and understanding of psychological disorders that Seema Hingorrany tries to address in her “self-help" book, Beating the Blues—A complete guide to overcoming depression. Mumbai-based Hingorrany, a clinical psychologist and trauma researcher, looks at the benefits of therapies and the common forms of dysfunctional thought patterns in a chapter called “Intervention". Edited excerpts:

Benefits of Therapies

Beating the Blues—A complete guide to overcoming depression: By Seema Hingorrany, Random House, 202 pages,  <span class='webrupee'>₹</span> 299.
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Beating the Blues—A complete guide to overcoming depression: By Seema Hingorrany, Random House, 202 pages, 299.

Therapies like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, and EMDR therapy help patients work on their negative emotions, experiences, and suppressed thought processes.

Cognitive distortions are inaccurate thoughts usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions. Aaron Beck first propounded the theory on cognitive distortions in his book Cognitive Therapies and Emotional Disorders and David Burns was responsible for popularizing it with common names and examples for the distortions in Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Below are some forms of dysfunctional thought patterns that my patients with diagnosis of depression have, based on Beck’s and Burns’ theory of cognitive distortions.

1. Filtering: People usually magnify the negative details of their life and filter out all positive thoughts from their mind. For instance, a person may think about a single, unpleasant event that happened in the past and dwell on it so much that the reality of the situation becomes distorted.

2. Polarized Thinking (or ‘Black and White’ Thinking): Here people have “black-or-white" thought patterns and there are no grey shades. Thoughts like “I have to be good in everything I do" or “I have to look good every time I step out" are all instances of polarized thinking. If one’s performance in exams is not good, the thinking will be “I am totally doomed".

3. Overgeneralizing: People’s distortion here is generally based on a single incident that has occurred in their life in the past. Once the unpleasant incident strikes, people with a tendency to over generalize usually feel it will happen again and then again. It’s like a never-ending pattern. If in a relationship someone is rejected by the partner, the distorted thought will be “I will be rejected by everyone in my life".

4. Jumping to Conclusions: Some people generally have a habit of constantly thinking about how others feel about them. By doing so, they misinterpret the other person’s signs and gestures.

For example, a person may conclude that “This person is not talking to me much because I don’t look that good", but doesn’t actually bother to find out if there’s any truth to the “assumption". A person may unknowingly anticipate future events negatively and feel convinced that their thought processes are already established facts.

5. Catastrophizing: Some people feel nothing but the worst to strike, no matter what. Such people have a tendency to exaggerate the importance of insignificant events. For instance one may feel that a turbulent flight will surely crash or a car accident is bound to occur.

6. Personalization: In this distorted thought, a person believes that everything others do or advice is some kind of direct reaction to the person. They compare themselves to others trying to determine who is more intelligent, richer, better looking, etc.

A person engaging in above thought pattern may also see themselves as the cause of some
unpleasant external event that they were not responsible for. For example, if a person is in an off-beat mood at a friend’s birthday party, the thought will be “I spoilt my best friend’s birthday party; all this happened because of me".

7. Control Fallacies: Here the person feels externally controlled by others or by destiny. People see themselves as helpless victims of fate. For example, “I can never make my parents proud because I am not destined to".

8. Blaming: Some people fail to take onus of certain events and happenings in their life. They are always on a very high defensive mode and hold other people responsible for their pain, or take the entire blame on their own selves for every problem. For example, “He always makes me aggressive and triggers this violent streak in me; otherwise I am a very calm person".

9. Shoulds: People with this thought always carry a rule book with them in their pockets. This book has set rules on how one and others should behave. People feel guilty when they violate these rules.

An instance of a “should" statement can be the thought that “I really should be liked by everyone whom I meet" or “I should always dress up well and look good". The emotional consequence of such thoughts is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

10. Emotional Reasoning: People with these thoughts feel that their feelings must automatically be true. If we feel weak and vulnerable, then we must be weak and vulnerable. These people generally assume that their unhealthy emotions mirror the way things really are—“I feel it, therefore it must be the fact".

Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com

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Published: 29 Oct 2012, 06:40 PM IST
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