Battling Depression: The Criticism Disease

How many times have you looked in the mirror and told yourself: Ugh ?

OK, let's slow down: how many times have you done it today?

We rip on ourselves all day long. Some people, like me, do it out loud as a form of defense. I use self-deprecating humor to basically ward off people saying impolite things (I said it first, so it doesn't hurt).  But we all do it. If not outside, then in.

Partly, we in the US inherited our need to be busy from the Pilgrims. Puritans truly believed that idle hands were the Devil's workshop, and they stressed the importance of cleanliness and busy-ness, ideas that we now revere today. I can't tell you how many times I've heard visitors to the US remark about how obsessed we are about being clean and smelling pretty. This is not something every culture worries about. Many cultures prepare food with bare hands (yes, even in restaurants) and even eat with their hands. Americans, though, are repelled by this behavior. Hands are so dirty.

So in our culture, if we aren't busy, or cleaning, or busy cleaning, we tend to start yelling at ourselves. We "should" all over ourselves: "I should walk the dog, I really should iron those dinner napkins. I should clean out the gutters."

And it takes its toll. We're a very depressed people. Now, there are a lot of factors for depression, but this is definitely one of them and it gets the short shrift, so I'm going to focus on it. It also includes within it my #1 tip to abolishing depression: giving yourself credit.

I have and do struggle with depression my whole life. Yes, sometimes it is so bad I can't get out of bed. Yes, I've contemplated suicide on many occasions. Yes, it is a debilitating, serious disease. But there are two things that clear it up really quickly. 1: helping others. And 2: Giving yourself credit.

Since #1 involves being able to get out of bed, we focus on #2, which you can do in bed.

I've talked in my nonfiction book Talking Back (You can get it on Amazon/Kindle, too) about sometimes just needing a standing ovation for doing things like getting up in the morning. For someone who is depressed, that can be very difficult, indeed, and is worthy of some praise.

Now, since most of us are not rich enough to hire someone to give us standing ovations whenever we brush our teeth, I propose this: Be your own better-than-best friend.

Go ahead and give yourself a standing ovation. Or, in a much quieter version keep a journal, and leave the top half of every page to listing all the great things you did that day.

It sounds silly, I know. Maybe it is. But it works.

I do this every day. It's part of my Eudaimonia Project, yes, but I started it before then. I started it as a suggestion from The 4-Day Win by Martha Beck.

Give Yourself Credit.

It revolutionizes your life, if you do it. You can battle any terrible day by writing such mundane things as: Took a shower. Made myself a coffee. Made my husband a coffee. Packed a lunch. Walked up stairs. Smiled at my reflection in the mirror. Resisted biting nails for entire HR presentation.

Try it for four days, then comment below and tell me how it went. It feels silly at first, but it is such a mental health breakthrough, I am sure you'll love it.  This is absolutely, hands-down, the easiest and quickest way to turn back the depression tide for me. Of course, helping people is the only way I know to beat depression, but giving yourself credit will turn your day around every time.

Why do we Eat?

I recently read an article about a yoga instructor who gained 40 lbs as an experiment in self-judgment, social judgment, etc.

Of course, it was enlightening and wonderful and eye-opening. But what resonated with me?

This statement right here, that came out during and interview : "I wasn't trying to gain a certain amount of weight - I just let go of any control or dietary restrictions. My style of eating has always been eating for health. And I changed that to eating anything and everything and all amounts of food that I desired or wanted or thought, 'Oh, that would be great.' "

And then I thought: "Why do I eat?"

Usually the thought that goes through my mind right before my hand reaches for a snack is, "Oh, that looks good." Or the shorter, simpler, "yummy!" What if I didn't eat this way?

What if I put less emphasis on how food felt or tasted or smelled, and I focused on eating what nourished my body? What if I put less guilt around food in general and just said, "No, eating is about supporting my physical body, not my emotional moment." What if I judged two food options based on which was healthier, instead of which would make my toes tingle?

For a fat person, this is radical.

What if food became a source of disease or health to me, instead of an opportunity for pleasure? After all, I have plenty of pleasure in my life, and plenty of sources of pleasure. These are not the days of darkness and depression when I thought about quitting smoking and told myself, "This is the only thing I enjoy; I can't give it up."

I enjoy lots of things, now. I rarely need to dig out of a funk for more than a day in a row, I get to bask in the sunlight and work on pet projects. My sadnesses are real, but I am actively working to eliminate them. I have deep, meaningful conversations with my husband and no one gets hurt. We laugh together every day and we don't need to be mean to do it. Toes tingle regularly and often, and it has nothing to do with cheesecake.

So, what would happen if I ate for health (or for illness) instead?

It's not that I've been unaware of the health or unhealthiness of food. Of course I've known, intellectually, that excess sugar (or, it seems more and more, ANY sugar), trans fats, processed ingredients, etc. are unhealthy. I knew it, but the food tasted so good, I would eat it anyway and be like, "yummy."

I would get excited about a food. I would anticipate how good it would taste (it never does taste as good as you think it will, nor does it ever get better than the first bite).

I would pat my belly, even if I was uncomfortably full (stuffed), and feel proud of myself for conquering some kind of gustatory challenge: "I owned that pizza."

Oh, I'd feel guilty later.  In fact, once I started eating healthier (a temporary evil to lose weight, right?) I couldn't stomach a lot of fat or sugar, and it would make me ill to the point of needing to vomit (not a binge-purge, just an upset tummy). then I would feel really bad, because I so obviously just poisoned myself.

So I'd watch TV and avoid my feelings.

It's like, I know I'm doing this. I'm aware of it, and this awareness is also a source of guilt and just feeling generally icky about myself. I'm aware of it, but I cannot stop it.

Can I?

Is  it really as simple (not easy, but simple) as changing my perception of the exciting bits of food, and becoming excited about nutrition instead of "badness"?  Can I turn guilty pleasure into just plain pleasure?

Hello, Experiment!

If Not Now, When?

There's nothing like a few rapid-fire epiphanies.

I was sitting on the couch, popping candy into my mouth and watching junk TV, when a series of epiphanies roiled through me. The first one? I have choice.

Let's do that again:

I HAVE CHOICE

I hear a lot of self-help and women's empowerment people speaking of "co-creating" and being a "co-creator". Normally, I roll my eyes a little. It sounds a little too much like "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, which I--in times of skepticism--feel is little more than confirmation of types of confirmation bias. In other words, your life comes out more positively when you think positively because you only accept the data when that happens, and you reject the data when bad things happen (you assume you were "worrying" or other things).

It's the same argument as faith healing: if you were healed, you obviously had enough faith, but if you weren't, then you didn't. It's also the same argument as when you call a person a "fighter" for surviving something. It assumes that those who didn't survive weren't fighters, and of course they aren't around to argue with you, now, are they?

So, anyway, the point of this mini-diatribe is that the whole terminology of "Co-creator" or "Co-equal" always seemed a little Far Out/New Agey for me.

But there I was, sitting on the couch, eating something that I had sworn off eating several weeks ago, and I thought. "I choose this." I choose sitting on the couch right now. I choose stuffing this food item in my mouth. (Of course, did I put the item down? No. But hang in there a minute.)

I am choosing, right now, to be fat and unhealthy. I am choosing to waste my time on junk TV. I am choosing to harm my body with this candy. I can choose right now to be healthier. I can choose to get up and do push-ups. I can choose to exercise. I can choose to learn something new, or work on my websites, or go take a shower.

Note the verb-tense change: I went from "I am choosing" to "I can choose."

Immediately I wanted to find a silicone bracelet that said "choose", or even, "I choose". If I ever get one made up, I'll offer it here. But, if you've noticed, I led myself completely off the subject of taking responsibility for my actions in the moment. I was thinking, planning, hypothesizing of the future, not the now. I was still eating the candy and sitting on the couch, still half-watching trash TV.  I caught myself doing this and decided to try doing a real push-up instead. It was funny. That was the second epiphany:

Choice is now. 

The agency of choice is in the now. Either you are choosing something, or you are not choosing (choosing its opposite, unchoosing).

But this always happens right now: You can't really choose something in the future, because you are unchoosing it for now.

It goes along with mindfulness: the moment is mine. This minute, this hour, is completely under my control. It ties with the Seven Habits, too: I can control my response. It's also the basis for having an internal locus of control, and thus having increased confidence, success, and a bajillion other good things.

The third epiphany happened a little later. I was still watching Junk TV, and came across a show on Preppers. I love preppers. I am an intellectual prepper: I don't do anything about it, but I love to think about it. I'm also an armchair prepper: I think about what all the preppers are doing wrong.

So, my most comment lament  of preppers is that so few of them are living NOW the way they plan to live after the Shit Hits The Fan (SHTF)--yes, that's a real term.

Some people can foods for future catastrophes. Some people save seeds. Most have bug-out shelters and plans to get to their safe place when SHTF.

So, are they learning to cook with canned ingredients? Are they living in those bunkers now? What good are seeds unless SHTF when you can plant them and you don't need the food right away? I mean, plants take months to grow. Even leaf lettuce takes several weeks to get to a good size, and then, if you don't plant several weeks' worth at a time, you're out of lettuce for another several weeks.

I am a proponent of living a simpler life, of recycling more, of recognizing the bounty around us, of eating wild foods, of ten million other things that are all good and green and right.

but how many of them am I doing right now?!?

Like the preppers, I am failing big time on an important thing:

Live now the way you intend to live in the future, otherwise the future life will never happen.

So, if I want to eat wild foods in the future, I need to start eating them now. If I want to snare rabbits in the future, I should be snaring them now. If I want to make my own clothes in the future, I should make them now.

Of course, there are some limitations. I live in a suburb, and people are going to go a little nuts if I start poaching rabbits, or if I put a hutch on my patio and start slaughtering the beasties.  A lot of the plants nearby are contaminated with industrial fertilizers and pesticides, so I need to get my wild plants from the open space areas, and then I need to be careful I don't deplete any species.

But notice my verb tenses again: "I need to" , not "I am [doing]".

And that brings us to the fourth epiphany:

Healthful, balanced living is simple, but it's not easy.

And that's the real secret, isn't it?