Recognize the Language of the Beast

An effective means of coping with depression is a therapeutic method known as Cognitive Restructuring based on David Burns popular book Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy. This is a way of recognizing irrational thoughts exacerbating depression, what is referred to in this series as the Beast, and replacing them with more accurate thoughts. It´s not a cure-all, but it can soften the blows of the Beast and in times of remission, keep the Beast away. It doesn´t work for everyone, especially those who are in a severe state of depression.

The basic premise of cognitive therapy is that our emotions are physical responses to the interpretations of the abstract world we carry in our minds. Just as our five senses give us sensations to interpret our tangible world, our emotions are physical sensations giving us information about our mind´s abstract world and how we interpret it. In other words, once we perceive something there is an autonomic, physical response we call an emotion. It´s the interpretation that causes the emotion, not the situation itself. When depressed, the Beast has a great deal of influence over how we interpret things around us. This is the battle begins.

We seldom make a conscious effort analysing our percetions. Percieving becomes automatic, and all that is left is the resulting emotion. We then make the mistake of emotional reasoning, which is: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” The problem is not the emotion, but the interpretation leading to the emotion. We don´t have direct control of an emotion because it is autonomic, but we do have control over our thoughts and interpretation of things. Cognitive restructuring is backing up and ask ourselves what thoughts and interpretations lead to our feelings. The is the first step in surviving the Beast; analyzing our thinking patterns. Listed below are thinking styles the Beast highly endorses.

• Filtering: The Beast takes negative details and magnifies them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. If something good happens, it´s because of someone else. If something bad happens, it´s because of you, etc.
  
• Polarized Thinking: The Beast tells you that things are black and white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you´re a failure. There is no middle ground.
  
• Over-generalization: The Beast insists on a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you can expect it to happen over and over again.
  
• Mind Reading: The Beast tells you what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, the Beast is able to divine what people are thinking about you (which is really none of our business). This thinking style is very hard on relationships.
  
• Catastrophic Thinking: The Beast convinces you a disaster is imminent. As soon as you hear about a problem, the Beast starts to list a series of “what ifs.”
  
• Personalization: The Beast has convinced you that everything others do or say is some kind of reaction to you. It constantly compares you to those around you, trying to convince you that they are smarter, better looking, and so on.
  
• Control Fallacies: Since the Beast appears to control your life, you see yourself as helpless; a victim of fate. On the other hand, it has you convinced you are responsible for the pain and/or happiness of everyone around you.
  
• Fallacy of Fairness: The Beast causes resentfulness, relying on the thought that jutice is equally distributed.
  
• Blaming: The Beast either gets you to hold other people responsible for your pain or to blame yourself for every conceivable problem in your life.
  
• Should's: The Beast has given you a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people “should” act. People who break the rules produces anger within you. When you break such rules, the emotional consequence is guilt.
  
• Emotional Reasoning: The Beast has convinced you that you emitions reflect reality. If you feel worthless, then you must be worthless.
  
• Fallacy of Change: The Beast lies by telling you that other people will change to suit you if you pressure or cajole them enough. Of course, the reason you need to change other people is because your happiness depends entirely on their behavior. This is what leads to abusive relationships.
  
• Global Labeling: The Beast generalizes one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. Since you don´t do well in math, that proves you´re stupid.
  
• Heaven´s Reward Fallacy: Once again, the Beast has you believing that all your sacrifice and martydom will pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. The Beast is setting you up to feel bitter and resentful.

Some of these may pertain to you and some may not. Later, I will be writing about ways of combating the language of the Beast, helping us cope better with all his clever lies.