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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