Challenging Depression & Despair: A Medication-Free, Self-Help Programme That Will Change Your Life (22 page)

Exercise 9

A:
You are a patient at the London Dental Institute. You have had an accident and broken your front teeth. You want implants.

B:
You are the dental supervisor and you want to save the NHS money by giving this patient a denture.

As you practise these exercises you will gradually realise the ‘balance’ required and get a feel for this new method of achieving your objectives without aggression or submission. In fact there
is
no other way to learn this skill other than by practising it.

TAKING THE SOCIAL CHALLENGE

Once you have decided to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, and once you have practised your ‘accepting dialogue’ skills and your assertiveness skills,
take the social challenge.
Walk into that room, go up and talk to that stranger, approach that person you would like to know, pick up that phone, talk to that influential authority about your idea. Good luck – but you won’t need it. It’s not luck – it’s skill!

USE THIS SPACE TO MAKE A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED

WHAT PANEL MEMBERS THOUGHT

Adrian

‘I found this particularly useful – I’ve always had difficulty in social situations and tend to back off if I meet any resistance. I had assumed that people just didn’t want to talk to me. The accepting dialogue was an absolute revelation. I used it at a meeting I was sent to. I tried it with a couple of people and I did notice the difference. I made myself keep the ball in play. It’s a boost to your confidence to see the conversation open up before you – “hell, it’s me, I’m doing this.” I came away thinking, hey, they quite liked me!’

Barbara

‘The assertiveness exercises made me laugh because my friends used to say I was a doormat. I see what you mean – it’s just putting it into practice. I have lost my temper sometimes because the worm eventually turns, and then there are terrible arguments. I’ve made up my mind to be more assertive in future because then I won’t get to that stage. I think when people say they are shy, they really mean they don’t want to get hurt any more. But if you don’t try, you don’t get. The conversation thing didn’t seem to work for me. I couldn’t get the hang of it. But then when I was talking to my son I noticed I was doing it automatically. Funnily enough, so was he. It’s a kind of rhythm you get into.’

George

‘I normally hate doing this kind of thing, but I talked to three people in the village about doing their gardens for them. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. It doesn’t sound much but it was much to me. So with that bit of confidence I went to see the guy who runs the big nursery near here and said I was starting up as a self-employed gardener. I could see he was busy but I kind of wouldn’t take no for an answer. He gave me some really practical advice, and some paperwork, and a set of figures to aim for in my first year. He was really friendly at the finish. I can’t believe I’ve done this.’

Charlotte

‘You have no idea how difficult this was for me, but I rang up somebody from work, right, pretending I needed some information, but I really just wanted to talk to him again as I quite liked him. To say we just got talking is inaccurate. I was in charge of the whole conversation as I was doing the offering and accepting. I felt it was a bit of a cheat but if it works, go with it. When I put the phone down my hands were sweating as if I’d been in a sauna, but yes. Yes, I would do another challenge – give me another challenge!’

Maggie

‘All I ever wanted was to be able to talk to people. These exercises give you hope, and something to fall back on when you’re in company. It helps to realise other people may not be confident either. When you aren’t dealing with people on a day-to-day basis you think they are all well-rounded individuals and you’re the odd one out. You forget they’re maybe not, and they get nervous too.’

17

Five: the mood change challenge

When we are depressed and down, we feel as though our moods are events that happen to us.
We simply have to endure them. We might ask the doctor for drugs to make them leave us alone, as though they were bogeymen trying to ruin our lives. If we have a tendency to helplessness, we sit and wait for the prevailing bleak mood to go away. Usually it does
not
go away. It just stays and stays, and we feel worse and worse. If anything bad happens to us while we are in this state, it obliterates what little chinks of light we could see, so that we are left in utter darkness. This is what it is like to be at the bottom of a bottomless pit, sitting there, waiting for things to get better.

You don’t have to endure moods at all. To ‘suffer’ means to allow, as in ‘suffer little children to come unto me’. You don’t have to ‘suffer’ from bleak moods. You don’t have to ‘allow’ them to make your life a misery. If you choose to, you can change them. They are not independent events that are happening to your head. When people say, ‘cheer up!’ they are not trying to annoy or patronise you. They are simply reminding you that you have a choice.

THE ‘BEFORE AND AFTER’ FACE EXPERIMENT

Try the following experiment. Take your mobile phone camera (or any camera) and by holding it at arm’s length take a photo of your face. Don’t worry about makeup or smartening up: we’re not interested in recording its aesthetic qualities, just
the expression you have written on it.
Now go away and do
one
of the following:

1
Listen to an upbeat piece of music.

2
Find something in a book or on the Internet that amuses you.

3
Phone a friend and pay him or her a compliment.

4
Go outside and find a tree. Examine it. Put your hands on the bark. If anyone’s looking, so much the better. Both hands, please.

Now, without trying to cheat or distort the findings, take a second picture of your face. Compare the two. If you can’t see any difference, show them both to someone you know. The
before
face will be the one you have permitted, and the
after
face will be the one you have chosen to change.

EMOTIONAL VICTIMS AND EMOTIONAL VICTORS

Human emotions are important. Our feelings matter, and your Heartless Bitch is as fierce an opponent of ‘stress management’ and artificial calm-downs as you are likely to find. But there is a world of difference between sedating emotional arousal on the one hand and enduring long periods of morbid gloom through sheer passivity on the other. This is being an emotional
victim
. Nor is the answer to shove powerful chemicals in your face that interfere with your brain. This is simply more of the same passive style of behaviour. Instead of submitting to the reigning mood, you are submitting to the reigning drug company. If you are currently taking antidepressants, ask your doctor to supervise a recovery programme that will let you stand on your own two feet.

Deliberately altering your prevailing low mood by natural means may strike you as odd, pointless or even vaguely immoral. It may seem in some way ‘false’. But it is really none of these. You have a right to change your moods if you don’t like them – not as a favour to other people, but as a favour to yourself. Once you have learned to ‘kick’ morbid moods without using drugs, real empowerment and self-determination become a distinct possibility.

We all admire emotional victors – the ones who, come what may, always seem buoyant and bright. Yet these people are not really any different from you. They have simply chosen not to be the victim of their moods. They may have serious problems and they may have to ramp up their courage every day to appear as positive as they do. But they’ve discovered a few simple psychological laws:

•
That if you put a brave face on things, you begin to feel brave.  
 

•
That if you smile, you communicate warmth and kindness and others respond accordingly.  
 

•
That if you do things that make you feel positive, grateful and cheerful, your expressions will convey the message to other people that you are a force to be reckoned with and a pleasure to know.  

The world reflects back the face you show it every day. It holds up a mirror to your moods, and if you choose to enliven these from inside instead of just submitting to whatever bleak gloom comes along, you will find the world looks different, because you will:

stop being an emotional victim and
start being an emotional victor.

So how are you feeling? The following challenge is designed to get you off the despair spot.

ENGAGING WITH THE ARTS

The arts specialise in changing our moods. They are designed to do this, and they have done it for generations. You may think ‘I am so depressed that I can’t face an intellectual stretch.’ But that is precisely what you need to do in order to get better. ‘Stuck in the doldrums’ means
not moving.
‘Petrified’ means
turned to stone.
In order
not
to be stuck in the doldrums or petrified, you need to start moving your mind, and
now
.

Choose for your mood challenge at least one of the three art forms below (all three would of course be better). Once you have chosen, you need to: 

•
engage with the work of art  
 

•
give it the full focus of your attention  
 

•
get emotionally involved  
 

•
finish it.

A great work of art is a whole, and everything in it is there for a reason. It has a beginning, middle and end, and if you quit before the end, you will not understand how it works or experience the transformation it can give you. Set time aside for the exercise, or it will not work and it will not reward you with its optimum effects.

These are the alternatives:

1
a piece of classical music

2
a great work of fiction

3
a cinematic masterpiece.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

There is growing scientific evidence on the benefits of this kind of music to your brain and well-being.
¹
If you are unfamiliar with classical music, please expose your senses to one of the following:

•
Beethoven’s
Egmont
Overture

•
Dukas
’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
 
 

•
Wagner’s
Tannhäuser
Overture
 

•
Ravel’s
Bolero
 

•
Grieg’s
Hall of the Mountain King
 

•
Rossini’s
Thieving Magpie
Overture  
 

•
Mozart’s
Mass in C Minor, K427
Kyrie.

Classical music is for anyone, regardless of race, creed, class, education or intelligence. It is composed of sequences of sounds that affect the brain. This is music to
lead
your mood, not
follow
it, and apart from being challenging and complex it has rising tension and a climax that you will be able to hear and feel. To make it easier for you to concentrate, especially if you are unused to the classics, you can ‘air’ conduct, move to it or dance to it. Or you can have a pen and a piece of paper handy and doodle while you listen, or use several colours and paint what you hear. You may be surprised what you come up with.