![]() Here’s how the pessimism-rumination chain leads to depression: First, there is some threat against which you believe you are helpless. By debasing the value of common sense, this subtle indoctrination inhibits him from using his own judgment in analyzing and solving his problems.” He can’t hope to understand himself through his own efforts, because his own notions are dismissed as shallow and insubstantial. His confidence in using the ‘obvious’ techniques he has customarily used in solving his problems is eroded because he accepts the view that emotional disturbances arise from forces beyond his grasp. ![]() “The troubled person,” he wrote, “is led to believe that he can’t help himself and must seek out a professional healer when confronted with distress related to everyday problems of living. You are living under a tyranny of should’s. Depression could be caused by defeat, failure, and loss and the consequent belief that any actions taken will be futile. This belief was engendered by defeat and failure as well as by uncontrollable situations. We knew the cause of learned helplessness, and now we could see it as the cause of depression: the belief that your actions will be futile. When we now looked at the upsurge of depression, we could view it as an epidemic of learned helplessness. The earlier in life such mastery was learned, the more effective the immunization against helplessness. It could be prevented if, before the experience with helplessness occurred, the subject learned that his actions made a difference. It could also be cured by teaching the subject to think differently about what caused him to fail. Learned helplessness could be cured by showing the subject his own actions would now work. When he finally does manage to get going, he quits writing when the screen on his word processor flickers, and he doesn’t go back for a month. A novelist can’t get the first word written. A negative concept of the future, the self, and the world stems from seeing the causes of bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal, and seeing the causes of good events in the opposite way.ĭepressed people often cannot get started on any but the most routine tasks, and they give up easily when impeded. People who make specific explanations may become helpless in that one part of their lives yet march stalwartly on in the others.Ī pessimistic explanatory style is at the core of depressed thinking. People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area. People who see temporary reasons for good events may give up even when they succeed, believing success was a fluke. People who believe good events have permanent causes try even harder after they succeed. If you think in sometimes’s and lately’s, if you use qualifiers and blame bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style. If you think about bad things in always’s and never’s and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style. It is the hallmark of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist Your explanatory style stems directly from your view of your place in the world-whether you think you are valuable and deserving, or worthless and hopeless. It is a habit of thought, learned in childhood and adolescence. ![]() Your habitual way of explaining bad events, your explanatory style, is more than just the words you mouth when you fail. HOW DO you think about the causes of the misfortunes, small and large, that befall you? Some people, the ones who give up easily, habitually say of their misfortunes: “It’s me, it’s going to last forever, it’s going to undermine everything I do.” Others, those who resist giving in to misfortune, say: “It was just circumstances, it’s going away quickly anyway, and, besides, there’s much more in life.” Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: Circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault.
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