oh hilary

you wrote, in part:
>...long saga - I was served with a court order yesterday to
>have custody of another of my children taken from me  - and
>the worst of it is - I know they are right, because I cannot do
>the job of parenting as it needs to be done.
>And what about health insurance?
>And Home health care?
>And social security?
>Not to mention the lectures I get from so-called friends and
>family, on how I don't know how to run my life or bring up my
>kids - but never an offer of help, or a show of understanding....

my heart goes out to you
your brief description of this part of your 'saga'
rings some bells with me

clinical depression sometimes is described as a mood disorder
i think of it as a disordered and distorted way of thinking
that is chemically caused and chemically curable

[i.e. our emotions can produce chemicals and vice versa]

i was officially diagnosed with a major episode of cd in 1990,
[two years after my pd diagnosis]
but i am convinced now
that i have had low level chronic cd all my life

in my ongoing musings about cd
i have referred to the catch-22 of recognising it in myself
if my thinking is distorted, how can i evaluate my thinking?

but there is another, possibly more insidious, aspect
which your message has caused me to remember

i have to refer again to dr. david burns' book
'feeling good - the new mood therapy' published 1980
this is from chapter four 'start by building self-esteem'':

-----
If you are now depressed or have ever been depressed, you may find it much
harder to recognise the illogical thinking patterns which cause you to look
down on yourself.

Unfortunately, when you are depressed you may not be alone in your conviction
about your personal adequacy.

In many cases you will be so persuasive and persistent in your maladaptive
belief that you are defective and no good, you may lead your friends, family,
and even your therapist into accepting this idea of yourself.

For many years psychiatrists have tended to 'buy into' the negative self-
evaluation system of depressed individuals without probing the validity of
what the patients are saying about themselves.

This is illustrated in the writings of such a keen observer as Sigmund Freud
in his treatise 'Mourning and Melancholia' which forms the basis for the
orthodox psychoanalytic approach to treating depression.

In this classic study Freud said that when the patient says he is worthless,
unable to achieve, and morally despicable, he must be right. Consequently, it
was fruitless for the therapist to disagree with the patient.

Freud believed that the therapist should agree that the patient is, in fact,
uninteresting, unlovable, petty, self-centred, and dishonest. These qualities
describe a human being's true self, according to Freud, and the disease
process simply makes the truth more obvious...

The way a therapist handles your feelings of inadequacy is crucial to the
cure, as your sense of worthlessness is a key to depression. The question also
has considerable philosophical relevance - is human nature inherently
defective?

And what, in the final analysis, is the source of genuine self-esteem? This,
in my opinion, is the most important question you will ever confront.

First, you cannot earn worth through what you do. Achievements can bring you
satisfaction but not happiness. Self-worth based on accomplishments is a
'pseudo-esteem',  not the real thing!...

One of the cardinal features of cognitive therapy is that it stubbornly
refuses to buy into your sense of worthlessness...

This opinion is based on a recent study... which indicated that there is
actually a formal thinking disturbance in depressed patients. Depressed
individuals were compared with schizophrenic patients and with undepressed
persons in their ability to interpret the meaning of a number of proverbs,
such as 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine'.

Both the schizophrenic and depressed patients made many logical errors and had
difficulty in extracting the meaning of the proverbs. They were overly
concrete and couldn't make accurate generalizations.

Although the severity of the defect was obviously less profound and bizarre in
the depressed patients than in the schizophrenic group the depressed
individuals were clearly abnormal as compared with the normal subjects.

In practical terms the study indicated that during periods of depression you
lose some of your capacity for clear thinking: you have trouble putting things
into proper perspective.

Negative events grow in importance until they dominate your entire reality -
and you can't tell that what is happening is distorted. It all seems very real
to you. The illusion of hell you create is very convincing. The more depressed
and miserable you feel, the more twisted your thinking becomes.

And, conversely, in the absence of mental distortion, you cannot experience
low self-worth or depression! ...
-----

i have been there, done that.

i have convinced others around me
of my inadequacies, thus exacerbating the downward spiral of cd

my friends and associates 'bought into' my distorted evaluation
and thus provided more and more negative feedback

but it is not true
and i could not see that as reality until i climbed out of the murk

my dear hilary, if i may make a small suggestion,
when one of your non-supporters starts a 'lecture' again,
adapt jeremy brown's technique for whiners:

>I went to a sales conference one time, where the guest
>speaker likened people to either radiators or drains!
>His technique for dealing with the drains (the whiners)
>was to listen sagely to the FIRST SENTENCE ONLY
>of the complaint. He would then hold up a peremptory
>hand, look the whiner straight in the eye, and say firmly
>and clearly "OUTSTANDING! OutSTANDing!" and turn
>and be on his way!

as i began climbing out of cd, assisted by cognitive therapy and medication
i was finally able to speak up
whenever i heard someone spouting negatives at me or around me
i refused to listen to it
for my own health

i'm convinced that we'd be a much healthier society
if there were as many 'no negatives' signs
as there are 'no smoking' signs

with much love from your cyber-sis

janet

a new voice: http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm
51/10 - almonte/ontario/canada - [log in to unmask]
janet paterson