The RSA videos are very engaging, especially a group under the banner of RSA Animate. Instead of watching a person for 10 minutes, you are drawn into the content through a cartoon developed in parallel with the talk.

The one below is a presentation by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed”. It’s about unrealistic positivity (“keeping up appearances” in my parlance).

Much of the video is about the corporate workplace, where expressing pessimism can be a death knell. I know this from personal experience. My corporate career swung up and down in line with my moods. A long spell of unbridled, hypomanic optimism saw me climb the ladder with frightening speed. When the crash came I was immediately out of step with corporate culture and my shelf life was curtailed. Then new job, rinse and repeat.

To my way of thinking, reciting affirmations is a close cousin to unrealistic, unquestioning optimism. Barbara Ehrenreich touches on this in the video. I’ve tried affirmations many times, and given up just as many. Do affirmations change your world?

Depressed folk like me gravitate to the self-help section of Amazon. There is no shortage of advice on the power of positivity. As much as I wish I was a magnet for happiness, my life is more complicated and just thinking it so won’t make it so. That is why this video resonates with me.

If you can’t see the player then watch the video on YouTube. To watch more of the RSA Animate videos visit the RSA blog.

I’ve been MIA for a while, but back now and straight onto my hobby-horses. Minimizing and prioritizing.

There is a book from way back called “Tyranny of the Urgent”. I haven’t read it myself, but about 20 years ago I read a series of companion studies. The lessons have stuck with me. I am constantly sizing up the urgent and comparing with the important.

This year I’ve enjoyed throwing out, culling and recycling, in the first major purge of my life. I’m amazed at how much I appreciate the things that I’ve kept, now that I can see them.

An interesting post on Becoming Minimalist draws a parallel to our priorities. Being minimalist is more than removing physical belongings. It includes deciding what is important and takes priority every day, and decluttering the urgent distractions.

Read the full post here.

I’ve used affirmations in the past, as a form of self-help, but I don’t think they worked. I’ve read self-help books – some classics, others more questionable – and I’ve repeated a thousand times that everyday in every way I am getting better and better. But I admit I lacked belief, and belief is core to an affirmation being effective.

Many people view affirmations favorably, including some readers of this blog. There are others who take the opposite view. I’ve read one or two articles recently that say they are detrimental, to the extent that falling short of an ideal, over and over, will impact a person’s self-esteem.

Scott Adams takes up the subject on his blog today, and it gave me reason to smile.

I have a long-time friend who is always full of energy, enthusiasm and goodwill. It sounds sickening but it’s not; without fail he’s a pleasure to be around. Whenever I ask him how he is, he always replies “fantastic”, “brilliant” or “top of the world”. Does he use affirmations? I don’t know. But after reading Scott Adams I think he has a chicken-and-egg thing going!

Let’s look at the worst. Readers of this blog have shared some of the very cruel things that have been said to them:

• All you need is a gun and some time alone.
• You must not be living right.
• Yeah, I know how you feel, but that’s nothing…
• You just need to wake up in the morning and decide, ‘I’m going to be happy today!’
• And you don’t even work – you have NO excuse not to have a clean house!
• My boss said to me, ‘Sounds like a personal problem. Deal with it.’
• She thinks she’s going to live forever and has time to be depressed.
• It’s a matter of MIND OVER MATTER: If you DON’T MIND, it DON’T MATTER!
• If you’d just stop thinking like a victim, you’d get over this. You control your life! Act like it!
• At least you have your health!
• Put your big girl panties on and deal with it.

These are real things said to real people.

Those speaking the words don’t recognize depression at work or they lack understanding of its nature. Or that it is a real illness. And if it’s not real, then there is no treatment. If it’s not there, then the “sufferer” is someone who just can’t deal with the stresses of life that we all face. If it’s not real, it will go away when the person learns to smile and pick themselves up.

In the words of one reader:

“The problem with depression is no one can see the wheelchair or the crutches. If they could, they’d be more careful about what they say.”

There are other myths floating around:

Only women get depression. It’s a normal part of aging. Kids can’t get it. It only happens after something bad. Antidepressants change your personality. Talking about it makes it worse. It’s a normal part of life. It will go away on its own. You can snap out of it. It’s all in your head. You choose to be depressed. It means you’re weak. It’s a character flaw. You can psych yourself out of it.

How do we respond? We must start with education.

FACT: Depression is a serious medical condition. Most people get better with help.

If you want to read some more positive, helpful things to say then take a look at “Helpful Things to Say to Someone with Depression”. And please leave your comments below!

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.” Swedish proverb.

I like to think of worry as a weed. Unless it is dealt with, it can infiltrate every aspect of thinking and be all consuming. Chronic worry can paralyze the ability to make decisions, produce fear about the future, about health, relationships and other peoples’ perceptions of you, and cause prolonged periods of stress. It is a common feature of depression, and also the basis of anxiety disorders that are separate from, and also coexist with, depression. Worry, anxiety and depression are close friends.

“Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.”
Mignon McLaughlin

Worry predicts the bleakest results, the least desirable outcomes. And sometimes worry is a mind-set without a target; we’re not really sure what there is to be so uneasy about.

“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”
Author Unknown

The positive news is that you can challenge worry. A good technique is mindfulness.

During the day our minds constantly make decisions and weigh up options – everything from the mundane to the most important. A good healthy thought in response to an option empowers us; worrying about the option is unsettling. Worries aren’t normally realistic but powered by imagination and fear. We imagine ourselves in all sorts of unpleasant situations, like being rejected by someone we respect, not measuring up, fearing that someone we love will be in an accident, or that our work is not up to scratch. This is worry, and needs to be identified as such.

Being mindful of worry simply means that we realize it is there, it is affecting our thoughts, and influencing our actions.

Challenging worry is what we do once we are mindful of it. This is when we take our thoughts back – you can’t cut out worry from your thoughts without first challenging it. As with anything in life, from riding a bike, to cooking, to any kind of hobby – challenging worry takes practice. When you feel your thoughts being led by worry, begin to imagine all the millions of times that things worked out okay, when you succeeded at what you tried.

“Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?”
Dale Carnegie

If “what-ifs” are all you can think of, challenge those thoughts too. You can begin to actively “what-if” into the positive realm, where things are okay. What would it look like if things went the most ideal way? How would you look and behave?

Identifying your worries and challenging them will help you reclaim your mind, cutting out the weeds one worrying thought at a time.

“It ain’t no use putting up your umbrella till it rains.”
Alice Caldwell Rice

I spent 16 hours in a row to get an animated graphic to work properly on a website. That’s very sad. I’m a perfectionist, and on that occasion I was out of control.

Perfectionism is tricky. A little bit can make you strive hard; too much and you’re susceptible to stress, anxiety and even depression. Where is the line between the two?

Here is a comparison from the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center.

A perfectionist:
- sets standards beyond reach and reason
- is never satisfied by less than perfection
- becomes dysfunctionally depressed when experiences failure
- is preoccupied with fear of failure and disapproval
- sees mistakes as evidence of unworthiness
- becomes overly defensive when criticized

A healthy striver:
- sets high standards, just beyond reach
- enjoys the process as well as the outcome
- bounces back from failure and disappointment quickly and with energy
- keeps normal anxiety and fear of failure and disapproval within normal bounds
- sees mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning
- reacts positively to helpful criticism.

Perfectionism is destructive and people seek and receive treatment for it. CBT is the norm. To me the hardest thing is seeing when aiming high is getting out of hand and becoming destructive.

Writing this post is a good case in point. I should have a stopwatch on.

There are questionnaires at the BBC and Discovery Health that can give you an indication of where you lie on the scale. If you do just one then I think the shorter Discovery Health is better.

My computer screen is so busy. I often have multiple programmes open, the screen bright and distracting. I find it really irritating, so I make a change. I find this software programme that keeps my screen black and I can only see the programme I’m working on. Sorry, it’s Mac only. My toolbar is blacked out as well. Nothing but the program I’m using now. My thoughts slow to a reasonable speed. My little system is great.

Sometimes it’s just little things that we do routinely that we need to change. It doesn’t have to be major upheaval to make a big impact on your well-being. Think about the routine things that make you groan. Can you do these in a different way? I don’t read Lifehack, but plenty of people gather ideas there.

Anna hates unpacking the shopping. She has no problem spending 2 hours getting the things but hates the 15 minutes of transfer. She now brings bags in one at a time, and unpacks each one before she gets another from the car. It never becomes overwhelming. (We all have our peculiarities).

Our latest, greatest little system change has been forcing the kids to tidy their rooms before they can watch the computer or TV. Every day. Wow. We live in a different house.

Feel free to share your little systems below.

Genuine Hope or Cruel Hoax?

I’ve read plenty of motivational, self help, get rich books. So many, in fact, that not long ago I wanted to write my own book about these books.

Only recently it dawned on me why I’ve been so captivated by them. I was reading them before I knew that I was mentally ill and I was very unhappy with life. They provided an escape. I dreamed of a better life; they gave me hope that things would change. They promised me that everything I wanted would be mine if I purposefully set out to realize my goals. A powerful promise for someone who is depressed. Something that is impossible to put into action for someone who is depressed.

I spent many years keeping lists of things to do and goals to achieve. I revised them, laminated them onto cards, tried different applications to sort and present them in different ways. If I could get it all done and reach all my goals then surely my life would better. But it never materialized. There was a lot of hoping and dreaming, but hardly any action. This kind of compulsive goal-setting was always a recipe for disappointment.

If you are like this, constantly dwelling on the future but paralyzed with inaction, then like me you will probably experience disappointment.

An article on PsychCentral, Giving Up on Goals can be Helpful?, quotes recent research that found that letting a life goal go can be physically and mentally beneficial in some circumstances.

That has been my experience over the last few years. As I’ve stopped setting life goals (and sub-goals) I’ve focused more on my core values, and on living in the here and now. I think I’ve coped better with life.

1. Be On Their Side

• The depressed person will often be defensive, so an accusatory tone is not helpful. Try to convey a sense of understanding. It isn’t helpful to say “Why can’t you just get out of bed?” Instead try “You seem to have trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. What can I do to help you in this area?”

• The person may have lost perspective on how big a problem actually is. They will find it hard to hear that what is insurmountable for them is actually not such a big deal. It is unhelpful to say “What’s your problem? You’re upset about nothing.” Instead try “You seem to be finding this issue a big deal at the moment. Can we solve it together?”

• When I was very sick, I often thought that my wife was trying to ruin my life. To counter that kind of thinking she would often say “We are a team. I am on your side.”

• Depression is an awful illness, a whole world away from pure sympathy-seeking. So you should treat it as such. “I trust you. If you had a choice in the matter you wouldn’t choose to have depression. How about we search for some solutions together?”

2. Give Plenty of Reassurance

• Many people suffering with depression feel unworthy of being loved. You need to reassure them frequently. For example “I love you for who you are. I am not going to leave you.”

• In a similar vein, they may have lost the ability to recognize their positive attributes. You might reaffirm them with “You are a sensitive person who cares for others” or “People really love you a lot. They think you’re a great person.”

• If said repeatedly and with absolute sincerity then it is helpful to say “If you ever need a friend, I am here.”

3. Give Understanding and Sympathy

• People with depression can spend a lot of time ruminating on their situation and feeling sorry for themselves. Pointing it out to them is not helpful. Instead, try to sympathize.

• “I can’t imagine how hard it is for you, but you have all my sympathy.”

• “All I want to do is give you a hug and a shoulder to cry on.”

• “I can’t honestly say that I know how you feel, but I want to help in any way I can.”

4. Offer to Help

• “Let me do anything you need me to do to help.”

• If you ask “What is the best thing I can do to help you right now?” don’t be offended if the reply is “Leave me alone”. Sometimes, that is the most helpful thing you can do at present.

• Well meaning people often attempt to immediately fix the problem. “Have you tried aromatherapy? There was an article about it in the paper…” . This kind of comment can come across as trivializing the illness. If you want to introduce a treatment idea, make sure you are respectful about the seriousness of depression. “It’s important that you stay on your medication and keep seeing your doctor. I’ve found some information on aromatherapy. Would you like to look into it with me?”

• While it is important to accept the person in the state they are in, don’t let it totally consume your life. Otherwise, you’ll fall in a heap and won’t be much help to anyone. You need to take care of yourself. “I am committed to you and to helping you. But I also need to eat / shop / go out for coffee / ring a friend / see a movie to recharge my batteries. Then I can look after you better.”

Please add anything else that you find helpful in the comments.

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Are you looking for ways to help someone with depression?

Our electronic mood charts are very effective in helping people work out the triggers of their depression, the early warning signs of new episodes, and the most effective strategies, specific to them, that they can adopt to stay well.

In a nutshell, they give people the tools to be proactive with their mental health.

Please take a look at our mood chart apps, and consider purchasing a license for the person you care for.

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Until now research on this issue has been thin on the ground. However a new paper, published in the August 2007 issue of Psychological Medicine, is a helpful addition.

In the study 10 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women who were finding work stressful during the period of research experienced their first episode of depression or an anxiety disorder. Women with the highest psychological demands from work were 75% more likely to suffer a first episode than women with the lowest demands. For men it was 80%. Psychological demands included long hours, pressure and lack of clear direction.

The study was conducted over a one-year monitoring period, with about 900 males and females aged 32.

By the way, which occupation do you think is most stressful?
Firefighter
Police officer
Train operator
Teacher
Librarian

Apparently librarian.