Martin Seligman Archives - Lawyers With Depression

The Blues Is Depression. Should You Treat It With Pills?

What people refer to as the blues is usually depression. Depression, or the blues, is an unpleasant emotional state characterized by what therapists refer to as “the negative cognitive triad.” That’s 1) negative thoughts about oneself, which are the voices of your inner critic harping on you for what you supposedly have done wrong, should have done differently, and on and on 2) negative thoughts about others that lead you to see what you don’t like in them instead of heeding their virtues and enjoying them, creating relationship problems and 3) negative thoughts about the future.

Some people describe the blues, and also depression, as feeling like there’s a dark cloud over you. Others refer to depression as seeing the world through dark glasses. Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness are another indicator.

How can you get rid of your blues and your inner critic by treating the underlying depression?

There are four main strategies:

Change your feelings.Take pills or use one of the newer treatment methods that change your bluesy mood by changing your inner body chemistry and brain functioning.
Change your thoughts. Eliminating the inner critic may get rid of the depressed, bluesy feelings.
Change your actions. Get exercise. Go out and be with people. Express more gratitude. Do acts of kindness.
Identify and address the problem that initially triggered your depressed feelings and thoughts. Find a new solution and both the negative feelings and the negative thoughts will evaporate.

Why do people take antidepressant medications?

There are four main reasons why people who may be distressed by something in their lives end up defining their depression as an illness and taking medication.

First and foremost, depression is a terrible feeling that sufferers sorely want to get rid of.

Second, most folks have not been fully informed of the medications’ downsides. I’ll elaborate on drug dependency below. In addition, these medications can cause serious weight gain, a significant drop in libido (ability to enjoy sex), hazy thinking, and a general emotional numbness that blocks feelings of joy in addition to feelings of depression.

Third, people who take the medications may not have been informed of their relatively low rate of effectiveness. They can be effective if they work, but they only work for something like about 60% of people who use them.

Fourth, most people who take anti-depressant medications have not been informed by their doctor about alternative treatment options. To a man with a hammer, the world is a nail. Physicians know about illness and prescribe medications. As psychologist Martin Seligman has explained, depression is a relatively normal, if quite unpleasant and often self-defeating, response of giving up in response to a challenging life circumstance.

What are the downsides of assuming that depression is an illness and therefore needs pills?

As mentioned above, two particularly negative side effects of medication that doctors do not sufficiently explain include potential weight gain and decreases inability to experience sexual arousal. Doctors may mention them but often do not clarify that both extra pounds and decreased interest in sex can have strongly negative impacts on personal self-esteem, on attracting a mate and on sustaining a marriage.

The other significant risk that doctors may or not fully explain is that users may have a hard time getting off these medications. When a drug company says that their anti-depressant medication is not addictive, strictly speaking, they are telling the truth. A strict clinical definition of an addictive substance or activity is one that induces both dependency and craving. Antidepressants do not induce craving. Over time they do, however, make users drug dependent.

Craving is a familiar feeling to anyone who has fallen in love. The intense sexual desire that drives someone in love to find every way possible to be near the object of their desire is a craving. Someone who craves alcohol similarly may wake up in the morning already urgently wanting a drink.

What does “drug dependent” mean? Drug dependency is the state a body goes into when it has adapted to the presence of a chemical to the point that the body requires steady doses of the substance to maintain normal functioning. We are all, for instance, chemically dependent on water.

Our society is highway-dependent. Many of us have become accustomed to having highways that enable us to drive to work from the suburbs. Having bought a house in the suburbs on the assumption that we can take the highway to work, we have become highway dependent. It’s unlikely that anyone has a craving for highways. Many of us though have become highway dependent.

If you for some time have been taking an antidepressant medication, the odds are that your body has become drug dependent. That means that if you should decide today that as of tomorrow you will no longer take the medication, starting tomorrow, you are likely to discover that without the pills that you normally take your body will plunge into a serious depressive state.

Does this depression mean that you need after all to stay on your meds because the pills are all that have stood between you and the depths of despair? Not at all. To the contrary, this depression means that your body has become dependent on the antidepressant pills. Is this addiction? No, but it is drug dependency.

I am not saying that no one should ever take antidepressant medication. They do help some people. Some people experience relatively few to zero negative side effects. My point is just that if you are considering taking these medications, or have for some time been using them, you deserve accurate information about the factors to take into account in your decision, including information about other treatment options.

Here are six vital points to consider.

1) There now are multiple excellent alternatives to medication for working your way out of depression, including various kinds of talk therapies such as CBT, energy therapies such as Bradley Nelson’s Emotion Code and Body Code, acupuncture, exercise, electrical stimulation of the brain, the visualization you can download for free from my website, or read about how to do on one of my other blogposts, couples therapy, and more.

2) Depression is induced by a situation in which you have experienced insufficient power. If you close your eyes and picture whom or what you may feel angry at, you will see an image of the trigger person or situation. Fix that situation, and your depression will be likely to go away.

3) If your doctor is recommending medication as a short-term fix, use the pills until you feel better. Use your renewed energy to address the power-loss situation. Then begin the medication-weaning process asap.

4) Wean slowly. Consult your prescribing doctor for an appropriate weaning schedule for the particular medication that you are taking.

5) Be aware that research has shown that the most powerful way to overcome depression and keep it far from you, in the long run, is the combination of therapy and medication. Medication alone and psychotherapy alone have very similar effectiveness rates, but medication has an impact more quickly, and psychotherapy tends to have more longer-lasting impacts.

6) There is a visualization exercise that you can do with a therapist, a friend, or on your own that may help you conquer the depression in just a few minutes. See my posting on A New Treatment for Depression.

6) In my clinical experience, I find that most depression is a response to relationship problems. Look into marriage education, couples counseling, or a combination of both to upgrade your relationship. These treatment routes can make you a double winner. You can both end the depression and simultaneously gain a vastly more gratifying marriage or romantic partnership.

Susan Heitler, Ph.D., a Denver Clinical psychologist, is an author of multiple publications including From Conflict to Resolution for therapists, The Power of Two and poweroftwomarriage.com for couples who want to strengthen their relationship. Dr. Heitler’s most recent book is Prescriptions Without Pills, with a free companion website at prescriptionswithoutpills.com.

How People Become Resilient

Maria Konnilova writes in The New Yorker magazine, “Resilience presents a challenge for psychologists. Whether you can be said to have it or not largely depends not on any particular psychological test but on the way your life unfolds. If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are. It’s only when you’re faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount?” Read her Article

How Much Should You Push Yourself with Depression?

Depression blogger, Therese Borchard writes: “In deciding whether or not to push yourself, you must first ask yourself if you are doing this thing — a job, a new class, having lunch with someone — because you WANT to do it, or for other reasons.” Read the Blog

Is There a Health Dose of Pessimism for Lawyers?

Blogger Jayne Reardon writes, “For better or worse, negativity plays a huge role in the legal profession. With mental health and substance abuse issues skyrocketing in both the profession and law schools,” this blog examines when a healthy dose of cynacism is healthy and when it becomes a problem. Read the Blog

Out of the Darkness: Overwhelming Depression among Lawyers

A good overview of depression in the legal profession. Read the Story

Activities That Work to Our Strengths May Help Reduce Depression and Anxiety

Owen Ashton blogs that rather try to eliminate our weaknesses, we should focus in on our strengths to weaken depression and anxiety. Read the Blog

Learned Optimism: Happiness, Depression, and The Meaning of Life

What 25 years of research reveal about the cognitive skills of happiness and finding life’s greater purpose. Read the Blog

Why Do Lawyers Get Depressed?

A good discussion of the work of Martin Seligman, Ph.D. who has studied the connection between lawyer pessimism and depression. Read the Story.

Why Do Lawyers Get Depressed?

This article from The Wall Street Journal explores why lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the general population. Read The Story

The Grace of Good People

In the rough and tumble world of the law, it’s easy to become jaded; our classmates and colleagues are competitors for grades, jobs or victories. Clients can be tough and demanding; judges unyielding. Life being what it is, things can and do go wrong despite our most valiant efforts.

Not surprisingly, lawyers are pessimistic thinkers – problem solvers extraordinaire. People come to them in some sort of trouble and want solutions. Dr. Martin Seligman writes that the law is one of the few professions where pessimistic thinking is rewarded. We are trained to see potential problems and pitfalls lurking around every corner and cubicle. And this skill helps us to plan, prepare and strategize — good stuff. But we often take it too far.

In an article he wrote for Lawyerswithdepression.com, Dr. Richard O’Connor states:

Because of their experience with the law, most attorneys have lost their rose-colored glasses some time ago. (Or else they never had them and chose the law as a career because it suited their personality). Attorneys know that life is hard, and doesn’t play fair. They’re trained to look for every conceivable thing that could go wrong in any scenario, and they rarely are able to leave that attitude at the office. They see the worst in people (sometimes they see the best, but that’s rare). They tend to be strivers and individualists, not wanting to rely on others for support. They have high expectations of success, but they often find that when they’ve attained success, they have no one to play with, and have forgotten how to enjoy themselves anyway.

Pretty glum assessment, don’t you think? It’s unlikely that we can change the difficult nature of our craft, but we can mitigate its stressful effects on our bodies and brains.

We must take time to reaffirm the goodness in our lives. It’s just as important to recovering from depression as a hot bowl of chicken soup on a frigid day or lexapro in your lunch pail. There are lots of books on gratitude. To me, this is a reminder that all of us –some more than others – are ungrateful much of the time. I am not so sure that we can be taught to be grateful. But I do believe we can be reminded. I believe that we all have within us a deep need to express thankfulness – we just need to open the shutters.

It’s hard –very hard—to be grateful when one is depressed. In a deep depression, it’s not only unlikely — it’s impossible. Let me be clear, this piece is not written for those in a biochemical free fall. It’s writte for those who want to prevent relapse, remain or get healthy, or for the lawyer who is simply stressed and unhappy.

Depression can obscure our vision and prevent us from seeing the goodness in our lives – especially the kindness and decency of other people. This may be colleagues and friends, or maybe family members. We need to identify these people and cherish their goodness. Their lights are like homing beacons in the fog of our struggles. Like a good laugh, they are like salves that can heal our wounds.

The humorist Garrison Keillor, in his book We Are Still Married, wrote:

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

The goodness of others is grace. It’s the universe’s way of reminding us not to fret too much, that things will work out, that our important jobs are just a part of life and not all of it and that uplifting fortune cookie messages sometimes do come true. If I could, I would stick this quote by author Anne Lamott on one of those skinny wrappers:

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it greets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Think of the kind people you’ve had in your life from your past and today; the everyday saints who were dropped into your life for no other reason than to remind you that life can be good, that you are special and that life is worth living.

These people always leave us feeling better than when they found us.