Beat Depression with Self Help Techniques by Andrew Vass

Author:Andrew Vass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Apex, self help, depression, difficult, battle, tasks, role playing, therapy
ISBN: 9781908548634
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2011
Published: 2012-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

William: Yes, I think I am saying that she doesn’t have any excuse for not wanting to work on the problems.

Counsellor: Okay William, could we look at a pro and con exercise for that idea that she has no excuse. (challenge)

The pro and con exercise helped William to reconsider whether perhaps his views about Mary were once again a little extreme. The exercise helped him to reduce his feelings of being rejected. Instead he realised that he should try to support Mary. He worked out that perhaps she just feels like a failure as a mother and simply doesn’t want to expose herself to criticism by going to counselling. The pro and con exercise can help people to reduce anger. It can also help people to work on discouragement, as we saw in Chapter 2 when we considered Mandy’s problems with having an appraisal.

Anger therefore involves making an assumption that the people who are doing wrong ‘have no excuse’ for their behaviour.

Another guideline that is sometimes true about anger is to see it as a ‘scream of outrage’ that draws us into extreme thinking. A lady described her mum as a heavy drinker. One of her thoughts was: ‘She is always pretending there is nothing wrong and puts on a stupid act of being a really good person - in fact a very special lady.’

Once again the counsellor could challenge the negative thought by asking a standard question: ‘You feel there is no excuse for this very irritating behaviour but could we consider for a while if there may be any possible way of excusing her?’

When we go on assertiveness training courses we are taught to be assertive (not angry). It is important to know why this general rule is sensible. Firstly, anger is less constructive because it draws people into angry feuds. If you try to get someone over the barrel of a gun, he/she just tends to resent your power. Secondly, anger can drive another person deeper into the whirlpool of guilt and shame-perpetuating depressive ‘acting out’ - they become more inclined to have another drink, put it on the horses, etc. Your anger makes you sound unsympathetic just at a time when the other person’s morale is at rock bottom. You did more than simply criticise - you rubbed things in.

Sometimes our anger is particularly unconstructive because it incorporates a scream of unhappiness that states: “Look what you have done to me. I can’t possibly be happy now.’ This can be described as being a binocular effect. With binoculars you only see part of the horizon. The view you have of the horizon makes the whole situation look impossibly awful.

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