Depression
Struggling With a Problem? Start By Changing Your Story
It’s not events that get us into trouble, but often the story we tell ourselves.
Posted April 25, 2020 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Find you have a flat tire? A bad start to your busy day or a good excuse to bow out of the boring staff meeting. An unexpected spike in your medical lab results? A good reason to tell yourself that you can never catch a break, or to be grateful for the state of medicine and its ability to catch a problem early. The old glass half empty or half full. The matter of perspective.
It’s said that if we step back, we can look at most events as being relatively neutral—neither good nor bad, things that happen—and we can see that most emotions change in their own time. But events turn into a disaster, emotions linger and become destructive by what happens next—the story we tell ourselves about what those events and emotions mean, and these stories often solidify into core beliefs about the world, others, ourselves. This is powerful stuff; this is where we begin to get into trouble.
Here are some of the most common ones to watch out for:
People can’t be trusted
It’s a dog-eat-dog world, people are always trying to screw you over, they just want to use and abuse you. This perspective develops for a lot of good reasons—people in the past did use and abuse you and screw you over. You now are always expecting the worst, can’t lean into relationships, are hypervigilant, and braced for disaster. It’s you against the world.
It’s just a matter of time/inevitability
All good things will come to an end—the new, exciting relationship, the job I enjoy. It’s only a matter a time before I slip back into my addiction, my relationship falls apart, that my depression comes back or my weight comes back on, that the emotional pressure cooker inside me will eventually blow. A combination of resignation and helplessness.
This is the beginning of the end
A variation on the same theme: I have been feeling good the last week, but today I feel depressed. I’ve been really productive at work, but the last day or so I’ve gotten nothing done. My boyfriend and I have been texting several times a day, but I haven’t heard from him at all today.
All of these are the beginnings of some inevitable downward slide, small blips that are not blips but signs of an impending disaster, all driven by hypervigilance, a constant looking around corners.
I can’t win
It’s not only people but life that is out to get me: the flat tire, the lab results, need I say more? I try but it’s only a matter of time before. Life always working against you; you as the victim.
I don't deserve
... happiness, love, success. This is about self-criticism, leftovers of childhood where you were never loved or appreciated but instead resented. Feeling that you don't deserve any goodness reconciles you to a life of disappointment and difficulty. Having good things happen arouses guilt or the expectation that it is only a matter of time before it evaporates.
I am my problem
I’m an addict, a loser, an obsessive-compulsive, a depressive. My problem becomes the lens through which I view myself and the world. The label cements over other aspects of my personality and life.
I can’t change it
The “it” can be other people, uncomfortable situations in my life, myself. The “can’t change it” because I’m a loser, because people are out to screw me and can’t be trusted, because it’s only a matter of time. A powerlessness, the ultimate resignation.
As you read through these, you may think of others that pertain particularly to you. What's easy to see is how these all link together forming a constant undertow of anxiety, undoubtedly learned through terrible life experiences and/or family culture. It’s also easy to see how these create their own self-fulfilling prophesy: If it’s only a matter of time before your relationship falls apart or because people can’t be trusted, you are held back from leaning into the relationship, and the other doesn’t fully know you; or you instead become possessive and demanding, driving the other person away; or you are always looking for the negative and so always find it. Similarly, if you identify too closely with your problem, you never see or develop other positive aspects of yourself, your world becomes too small, causing your problem to take up more and more of your life and outlook.
What are your stories, your core beliefs? Are you ready to challenge them?
You don’t need to adopt some Pollyannaish approach to life where everything is great, but instead experiment—with slowing down and not telling the same negative story all the time, with trying out some opposite, more positive, and realistic perspectives: That not all people can’t be trusted; that it isn’t inevitable that things will turn negative; that a blip is not the beginning of the end; that you are not your problem; that you do deserve happiness; that you maybe can’t change, but you can affect the people and events around you; that you can win, not all the time, but sometimes in life.
Pick one. Try it out for a day or week. See what it does to your outlook, your expectations, your overall perspective, and your mood.
It has been said that we become what we think: try changing what you think. That your life becomes a sum of the stories that you tell yourself: Try changing the stories.
