We were talking with a couple of wonderful psychologists about what it is that helps people come to terms with moods and learn to live with them creatively. One of the barriers to successful mood surfing is a fear of moods. I suppose the analogy is of someone who is afraid of the waves trying to learn how to surf. …
Mom is Tired: Transactional Analysis
The Winter Blues continue to be on the minds of people I talk to. One thing that sometimes happens when we get the blues is that we feel a bit abandoned, and one type of abandonment that is particularly significant emotionally is the abandonment by one’s mother. We have have had a number of conversations with themes related to Mom …
Depression is Depressing
Sometimes helping someone deal with their moods can seem a bit like being a gynecologist in Victorian England. How can you help someone with something (sex, or depression) when the topic itself is off limits. We are exaggerating, but there are so many ways that the idea that “depression is depressing” interferes with actually dealing with the mood. Not to …
Bay Area Blues
If you live in the bay area you probably noticed that this past week you felt a little less energetic. It was the first cold and rainy week of the season, and the days have been getting noticeably shorter (maybe you used to wake up after dawn and now it is dark). We are naturally seasonal animals trying to live in …
Loneliness
This seems to have been the week for discussions about loneliness. We have been talking about the experience of loneliness with a number of people in different situations: A married woman whose husband is away on business, A widowed professional man, A woman who recently ended a two year relationship. What has been interesting in these conversations is that they start …
Appreciating Depression?
We are indebted to Tom Wootton for his observation that the key to living creatively with bipolar is accepting and making use of depression. Tom wrote a book about depression (The Depression Advantage) that was one of the first things he wrote about bipolar (for more, see his website, Bipolar Advantage). He noted that it was a difficult book to …
Healthy Pleasures
Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed, or so depressed, that we forget what it is that gives, or used to give, us pleasure. This list is adapted from Peter Lewinsohn’s Pleasant Events Schedule. You won’t enjoy many of these things, but you should find a number that are somewhat pleasurable (or would have been if you were not depressed) and …
Chronic Anger Kills
Anger is a necessary emotion. It can motivate to change things for the better, to protect ourselves from evil, to re-shape our lives in better and more satisfying ways. But chronic anger, especially chronic anger about things that can’t be changed because they are in the distant past, is a life-destroying emotion. Occasionally we meet with people who are out …
When the Pressure Builds
We all have stress. It is a natural part of life. The level of stress in your life may vary from moment to moment. Some folks are more sensitive to stress and others may shrug it off, choosing to find contentment with whatever hand they are dealt in a happy-go-lucky fashion. Whatever your stress management style, it’s important to just …
Self Confirming Beliefs
There are dangerous ideas that can shape an entire life. Ideas that suggest that “no one will ever really love me” or “if I tell someone what I want they will leave me” or even “I can’t trust anyone.” These ideas may not have much basis in fact, they may have been handed to us as children from our parents, …
Fallow Fields
Farmers will sometimes leave a field “fallow” – they won’t plant anything in it but rather let native plants grow in it – as a way of rejuvenating the land. Then when they do plant the field it is often very productive. We were talking with one of our clients this morning about the topic of seasonal variability in mood …
Negative Emotions
We’ve all been there. Maybe we’ve noticed feeling impatient while driving in traffic, or expressing anger towards the barista who didn’t leave you room for milk in your coffee. Whenever we express our dissatisfaction towards the mundane events that don’t go our way, we are more than likely misplacing anxiety, fear, anger, or hurt that stems from one of the …
Money: Having Enough
These are hard times for many people. And the future doesn’t look all that bright. Naturally this leads to anxiety. Will we have enough? Perhaps because we live in a world that constantly sends us confusing messages about what “enough” is, and confusing messages about how to achieve happiness (the entire advertising industry is more or less based on telling …
Starbucks Therapy
We aren’t sure how we feel about the spread of Starbucks into every corner of America. But it does allow us to suggest a kind of intervention that may help you if you are depressed. It is based on Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy – which is one of the best validated psychotherapies for people with bipolar moods. Every morning, at …
Shamelessness
We think it’s about time for a little shamelessness. We have spent our entire lives trying to help people with moods find happy, satisfying lives. Honestly, one of the biggest challenges that we face is the shame and stigma that accompanies, for so many of us, any thought about depression or bipolar, or any of the other labels that we …
Online Resources
There is so much information on the internet. And so much misinformation. How to find good answers to your questions? This is a very selective list of resources that we have found helpful – Medications UpToDate – This is an online medical textbook that is updated continuously. It is the resource we use when we have questions. It also includes …
Creatine for Depression in Women
In a small study of depressed women the dietary supplement creatine significantly boosted the response to an SSRI (serotonin antidepressant). Creatine is an amino acid that is made from other amino acids in the body, so it is not considered an essential amino acid – meaning one that you have to get from diet. Creatine is widely used by body …
Mood and Reality: Mood’s Ability to Shape Perception and Interactions
We have been thinking for a while about how mood powerfully creates our reality. And how hard it is to hold on to a consistent sense of the world as moods change. Mood affects what we notice and remember and how we see it. It also affects where our thoughts naturally tend to go. We ran across an intriguing article …
The End of Summer
Every year we notice two weeks that seem to affect a number of folks who have had seasonal depressions. The first period is the “End of Summer” – a foreshadowing of the coming fall that happens in late August or early September (depending on the weather, we guess). The second period is the “Beginning of Winter” – which usually takes …
Stress, Distress and Eustress
We met this afternoon with a delightful young man who said he was having more anxiety and depression because of all of the stressful things that he had to deal with. He gave us a list, and, perhaps because we are natural skeptics, we started to wonder whether that list really explained what was going on. For one thing, as …