Richard O'Connor > Quotes

“I realize now that no simple, single-factor theory of depression will ever work. Depression is partly in our genes, partly in our childhood experience, partly in our way of thinking, partly in our brains, partly in our ways of handling emotions. It affects our whole being.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“If you are treated like dirt long enough, you begin to fell like dirt”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“This is a little dirty secret of mental health economics: if you're depressed, you don't think you're worth the cost of treatment. You feel guilty enough about being unproductive and unreliable.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“Get up with the alarm, shower, get dressed, and have breakfast. Without much effort, you’ve already put yourself in a good position for the rest of the day. If you have to struggle to get out of bed and decide every single day about showering and breakfast and what to wear, you’ve put yourself in a depleted state before the day has really started. The person who’s taking care of herself without thinking about it, getting to work on time without procrastinating, has much more will power left in reserve when important decisions come up. This is why people with high self-control consistently report less stress in their lives; they use their will power to take care of business semiautomatically, so they have fewer crises and calamities. When there is a real crisis, they have plenty of discipline left in reserve.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Keep a journal of disappointments, failures, and self-destructive actions. It’s important to write this down because these are the kinds of things your self-serving bias will want to forget or minimize.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“we have a plastic brain that changes in response to our experience. It bears repeating: The brain doesn’t tell us what to do; it is part of a system in which our life experience teaches our brain what to do. So you can practice mindfulness, will power, overcoming procrastination, and other healthy new skills with the confidence that you are changing your brain. Each day’s practice does some good, and if you slip and fall off your diet or exercise program or mindfulness practice, all that you have learned before is not undone; it’s still there in your brain waiting for you to get back in the saddle.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“There is a lot of research to suggest that we feel better overall as we are progressing toward our goals; we have a sense of purposeful involvement, we give ourselves mental pats on the back for being so good and industrious, our self-esteem is enhanced, and our general life satisfaction is raised.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Avoid enablers. These are people who make it easy for you to perform your self-destructive behavior. People you go on a smoking break with. People who encourage you to take risks. Your partner, if he or she encourages you to be lazy or feeds you too much food. Try to enlist these people in your reform efforts, and if you can’t, put some distance between you.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we'd have done a better job if only we had more time...If you're good at rationalizing, you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it's a cheap happy. You're whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower.”
― Richard O'Connor, Happy at Last: The Thinking Person's Guide to Finding Joy

“Avoid triggers. If you’re an alcoholic, stay out of bars. If you’re a depressed or impulsive shopper, don’t go shopping. When you have to, go in with a list, rush in, and rush out. If you watch too much television, don’t sit in your favorite chair. In fact, move it (or the TV) to another room.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“People often attempt to compensate for this loss of hope by comforting themselves with “consolation prizes”: easy but self-destructive habits like too much TV, too much junk food, too much shopping, not enough exercise, endless video games. And sometimes they distract themselves with riskier behavior: alcohol and drugs, debt,”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“It seems like the value you attribute to something, more than its inherent value, influences your expectations, and your expectations, to a great extent, influence the life you live.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Neuroscientists know now that bad habits have a physical existence in the structure of the brain; they become the default circuits when we are faced with temptation.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“People believe they lack will power, but will power is not something you either have or don’t, like blue eyes. Instead, it’s a skill, like tennis or typing. You have to train your nervous system as you would train your muscles and reflexes. You have to take yourself to the psychic gym—but with the certainty that each time you practice an alternative behavior, you’ve made it easier to do next time.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Perhaps the best antidote and preventive for burnout is the feeling of solid connection with the people in our lives. When we can share our frustrations with family and friends, our burden is eased and we can get new perspectives.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“We confuse depression, sadness, and grief. However, the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality — the ability to experience a full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief.2 Depression is not an emotion itself; it’s the loss of feelings, a big heavy blanket that insulates you from the world yet hurts at the same time. It’s not sadness or grief, it’s an illness.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors.

"I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very smart."

Then we have the opposite. Our good behavior is attributable to fundamental traits while other people's is temporary and situational.

"I'm returning this wallet to lost and found because I'm a moral and ethical person. Others do so only if they're seen picking it up."

Thus we own our strengths and disavow our weaknesses. This is a big obstetrical to overcoming self-destruction behavior, it justifies all our attempts to deny or put off our need to change and rationalizes the consequences of our actions.”
― Richard O'Connor, PhD

“People feel ashamed of being depressed, they feel they should snap out of it, they feel weak and inadequate. Of course, these feelings are symptoms of the disease. Depression is a grave and life-threatening illness, much more common than we recognize. As far as the depressive being weak or inadequate, let me drop some names of famous depressives: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sigmund Freud. Terry Bradshaw, Drew Carey, Billy Joel, T. Boone Pickens, J. K. Rowling, Brooke Shields, Mike Wallace. Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Mark Twain.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“One of the major reasons why it’s hard for us to get over dysfunctional paradigms is our habit of selective attention. We’re more likely to register experiences that support our beliefs, and forget about—or just not see—those that run counter to what we want to believe. The basic principle of interpersonal psychotherapy, a highly respected method, is this: The reason it’s so difficult to change problem behavior is that the behavior is based on beliefs and attitudes that are continually validated by other people and by selective inattention to results that contradict those beliefs.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“We tend to assume that our hearts are pure, that we usually do the right thing, that we’re better than average in almost every way you can imagine. Of course this is statistically impossible; it’s just a comforting delusion. And”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Basics of Good Self-Care Exercise moderately but regularly Eat healthy but delicious meals Regularize your sleep cycle Practice good personal hygiene Don’t drink to excess or abuse drugs Spend some time every day in play Develop recreational outlets that encourage creativity Avoid unstructured time Limit exposure to mass media Distance yourself from destructive situations or people Practice mindfulness meditation, or a walk, or an intimate talk, every day Cultivate your sense of humor Allow yourself to feel pride in your accomplishments Listen to compliments and expressions of affection Avoid depressed self-absorption Build and use a support system Pay more attention to small pleasures and sensations Challenge yourself”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“Here’s a simple intervention to show what a little change in your negative narrative can do. First-year college students who receive worse grades than they anticipate are highly likely to drop out. Some conclude they’re just not college material, while others, who have a positive narrative, will absorb the news and decide to work harder.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“Depression becomes for us a set of habits, behaviors, thought processes, assumptions, and feelings that seems very much like our core self; you can’t give those up without something to replace them and without expecting some anxiety along the way. Recovery from depression is like recovery from heart disease or alcoholism.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“Most experts agree that treatment with medication and psychotherapy combined is best, but very little research is being conducted on combined treatment because in the U.S. drug companies fund research, and they’re not interested in supporting that conclusion. So psychotherapy for depression became the exception, and a scrip from your GP became the norm.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“There's probably a basic fear there, that you're simply incompetent and inadequate, that you have to work so hard at life that you have no hope of happiness. One big secret I know from my patients is that everyone, no matter how successful or accomplished, has that kind of fear at times. Drag that fear out into the light of day and look at it with compassionate curiosity. No one who is able to read this book is completely incompetent or inadequate. You probably got that idea from some old, bad experiences, but they're not happening now. If you can face your fears about yourself, they lose all power over you.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“Like alcoholism, depression is a lifelong condition that can be cured only by a deliberate effort to change our selves.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“3 Chris Peterson’s book, A Primer in Positive Psychology, is full of practical”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“We experience a powerful reluctance to narrow our options—so powerful that we often miss out on good opportunities in order to avoid losing the remote possibility of something better.”
― Richard O'Connor, Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior

“In our relationships with others, we have unrealistic expectations, are unable to communicate our own needs, misinterpret disagreement as rejection, and are anxious and unassertive in our presentation.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

“The real battle of depression is between parts of the self. Depressed people are pulled under by shadows, ghosts, pieces of themselves that they can’t integrate and can’t let go. The harder they work, the more they do what they know how to do, the worse things get. When their loved ones try to help in the usual ways, the commonsense ways that only seem natural expressions of caring and concern, they get rejected.”
― Richard O'Connor, Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You