Ways to cheer up

[Teacher]

Imagine that you are driving a car in the fog on an unfamiliar, steeply upward winding road. Suddenly, a car pulls off the road just a few feet ahead of you, and you don't have time to stop in time. You push the brake pedal hard to the floor, your car skids, and it slides into the side of another car.

You notice - just before the glass shatters and the metal is pressed into the metal - that it is full of children being taken to kindergarten. Then, in the sudden silence after the collision, a friendly cry is heard. You run up to this car and see that one of the children is lying motionless. You are overwhelmed with remorse and grief at the sight of this tragedy ...

Such chilling plots were used to upset the volunteers who participated in Wenzlaff's experiments. Then they had to, trying to throw this scene out of their heads, make short notes on the direction of their own thoughts for nine minutes, and whenever the thought of this tragic episode penetrated their minds, they, while continuing to write, made a check mark on the sheet of paper. And although most of the participants in the experiment over time recalled that unpleasant picture less and less, those who were in a more depressed mood began to think such thoughts much more often, they even indirectly turned to her in thoughts that seemed to be serve as a distraction for them.

Moreover, depressed volunteers resorted to other depressing thoughts to distract themselves. As Wenzlaff later told me, “The association of thoughts is not just in content, but also in mood. People have a set of dull thoughts running through their minds, which are most likely to come when they are in a bad mood. People who easily fall into depression tend to create very strong associative connections between these thoughts, so that it is much more difficult to suppress them after the person is already in a bad mood. Ironically, people in a depressed state, in order to get rid of some upsetting episode, remember another, but similar in content, which only arouses even more negative emotions. "

One theory is that crying may be a natural way to lower levels of chemicals in the brain that “ignite” grief. But while sobbing can sometimes destroy the witchcraft of sadness, it cannot eliminate the causes of despair. The idea of “wholesome crying” is wrong: crying that reinforces the mental experience only lengthens the suffering. Entertainment breaks the chain of thoughts that feed discouragement. One of the leading theories, when asked why electroconvulsive therapy (that is, electroshock) is effective in treating the most severe forms of depression, answers that it causes short-term memory loss: patients feel better because they cannot remember what they were so sad ... Anyway, to shake off ordinary sadness, as Diana Tice advises, many resort to entertainment such as reading, television and movies, video games and puzzles, sleep and daydreaming, such as fantasies about how they can spend their next vacation. Wenzlaff adds to this that the most effective entertainments are those that can dramatically change your mood, for example, an exciting sports competition, a funny comedy, a humorous book. (Some caution should be exercised here. Some anxiety-ridden people themselves have the ability to perpetuate depression. Studies have shown that the most avid TV addicts tend to become even more depressed after watching a few programs than they were before turning on the TV! ) that the most effective entertainment is those that can dramatically change your mood, for example, an exciting sports competition, a funny comedy, a humorous book. (Some caution should be exercised here. Some anxiety-ridden people themselves have the ability to perpetuate depression. Studies have shown that the most avid TV addicts tend to become even more depressed after watching a few programs than they were before turning on the TV!)

Aerobics, according to Theis, is one of the most effective means of helping to get a person out of mild depression, as well as dispelling just a bad mood. Here, however, it is pertinent to note that uplifting physical exercise works best for the lazy, that is, for those who are usually not overly zealous with exercise. For those who do gymnastics every day, the benefits it brings in terms of mood changes were greatest when they first began to develop this habit in themselves. By the way, regular exercise often has the opposite effect on mood: people begin to feel discomfort if they skip a workout. Such an effective effect of physical exercises, apparently, is explained by the fact that they change the physiological state of a person, caused by his mood: depression is a state of low activity, and aerobics "pushes" the body into a state of high activity. In addition, various relaxation methods that lower the tone of the body work well for anxiety when activity is high enough, but do little to help with depression. The principle of operation of these methods, in all likelihood, is to interrupt the cyclical development of depression or anxiety, since they all transfer the brain to a level of activation that is incompatible with the emotional state that has brought the brain under its control.

Another fairly popular remedy for blues was to cheer yourself up with treats and sensual pleasures. When depressed, people usually indulge themselves by taking a hot bath or eating their favorite food, listening to music, or having sex. Buying yourself a gift or something tasty to relieve a bad mood - like shopping in general, even if it was just window-dressing - was especially popular with women. While observing college professors and students, Theis observed that women were three times more likely than men to choose food as their strategy to relieve grief; on the other hand, men who were depressed were five times more likely to resort to drinking or drugs.

A more constructive method of improving mood, according to Theis, is organizing a modest victory or an easy success: you can, for example, vigorously take on a long-delayed general cleaning of the entire house or finally do some other things that you need to get in order for a long time. In addition, the elevation to the idea of oneself or oneself, which is achieved even by simply dressing up or putting on makeup, acted encouragingly.

One of the most potent - and almost exclusively used in therapy - remedies for depression is outlook change, or cognitive remodeling. It's natural to mourn the end of a relationship and indulge in self-pity thoughts, for example, because of the belief that “this means I will always be alone,” but this is a sure way to exacerbate feelings of despair. However, if you step back and think about why your relationship was not so strong and long and why you and your partner did not fit together, in other words, look at this loss in a different, more positive light, it will become a cure for sorrow. Therefore, cancer patients, no matter how serious their condition was, were in a better mood if they could remember another patient who was even worse (“I, perhaps, not so bad - at least I can walk”); those who compared themselves to healthy people experienced the greatest depression. Comparisons like these to worst-case scenarios are surprisingly reassuring: what seemed so depressing suddenly starts to look not so bad.

There is another effective way to get out of depression - it is to help those who are in difficult circumstances. Because depression is fueled by self-reflection and self-interest, helping others pulls us away from these concerns as we become deeply immersed in the feelings of people in distress. When someone went headlong into volunteer work - coaching the Little League, being an older brother, keeping a homeless person - those activities, Tice's research showed, were one of the most powerful ways to change mood. But also one of the rarest.

Well, at least some people are able to get rid of their melancholy by turning to some kind of supernatural power. As Tice told me, "if you are very religious prayer, has a beneficial effect in all moods, and especially in depression."

Source: Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence.