Status Updates From Overcoming Depression

Two Forms of Competitive Perfectionist Styles
1. ‘Keep up’ competitiveness
2. ‘Get ahead’ competitiveness

You may have a strong desire to do well or look good and put much effort into these things, but your inner self is able to accept you as you are. This is the source of confidence — self-acceptance. You learn to be accepting of yourself for good or ill.

“The secret of success is the ability to fail.”

“Learning how to fail without self-attacking can be a useful means of exerting more control over moods.”

Three Forms of Perfectionism
1. Self-oriented perfectionism
2. Other-oriented perfectionism
3. Socially-prescribed perfectionism

The desire to feel special, at least some of the time, is normal.

“By giving myself the power to forgive, I am giving myself the power to live.”

An important aspect of acting assertively is ‘slowing your thoughts down,’ to give you space to think.

“The secret of success is the ability to fail.”

“Learning how to fail without self-attacking can be a useful means of exerting more control over moods.”

Alternative Coping Thoughts for Feelings of Sulking:

3. Maybe I’m saying that the other person should be as I want him or her to be. I can challenge this.
4. I can learn to recognize that the other person’s attitude is not what I want and try to act assertively.

One extremely common occurrence in some depressions, and even in life in general, is that we can become angry with ourselves for not being assertive.

Assertiveness focuses on the issue not the person. It involves learning to play the ball, not the player.

Avoid spreading guilt: When you acknowledge your hurts assertively, this doesn’t include making the other person feel guilty or ashamed.

Alternative Coping Thoughts for Sulking:
1. I sulk because I feel hurt or want to punish others.
2. This is not helping my relationships — even if it works sometimes.

3. Initiating assertiveness - the ability to express opinions and views that may differ from those of others, and to accept a difference of opinion between oneself and others
4. Positive assertion - the ability to recognize the talents and achievements of others and to praise them; ability to accept praise oneself

Four Components of Assertive Behavior
1. Display of negative feelings-the ability to ask someone to change a behavior that annoys you, show your annoyance, stand up for your rights and refuse requests
2. Expressing & coping with personal limitations-the ability to admit ignorance of something and to making mistakes, and to accept criticism; the ability to ask others for help w/o seeing this as a personal weakness

The shame/anger spiral: you are angry at being shamed and ashamed of being angry.

Blaming others is often a first response in anger.

Anger is really important because it reveals where you are hurting and what you value.

In working with our anger, we need to discover why we feel threatened and then work with our feelings of vulnerability.

1. Understand the values you place on the things that make you angry
2. Consider the way that you feel hurt and vulnerable

Many psychologists think that beneath the veneer of an angry person is a very vulnerable one — not someone who is confident or strong. Confident people rarely need to get angry as they feel less easily threatened and more assertive. It is because anger implies that we have felt something as a threat or block that it can be so ‘hot’ and difficult to control.

The steps to forgiveness often require us to fully acknowledge what we have done, face our guilt and pain, learn from it, make amends if we can, and give up attacking ourselves.

Unexpressed anger actually causes depression. - Freud

What Triggers Anger?
1. Frustration related
2. Injury related
3. Exploitation
4. Lack of attention
5. Envy and jealousy
6. Lack of social conformity
7. Compassionate anger

If you feel sorry for your poor behavior then it is useful to express this as sadness rather than as anger.

Work out how much your guilt lead you to take on a rescuing hero stance in life. Is this helpful to you? What do you risk by doing this? Will you get burnt out? If there are times when you have to say no to people, be aware that you might feel guilt to some degree; but you don’t need to always back down.

Sometimes therapy is about learning to tolerate our negative feelings.

As a rule of thumb, when you hurt people with your thoughtlessness—and you will, we are not perfect—own up to it. Allow yourself to feel the guilt and pain you have caused. This does not make you a bad person; far from it. It keeps you in touch with your caring feelings and compassion.

When you’re depressed, it feels like everything has to be earned. However, such sense of ‘deserving from earning’ can be unhelpful. Now the question for you is: if good things happen to you, can you enjoy them? Can you really appreciate and take joy from them? Or are you a person who constantly thinks, ‘I don’t deserve this?’

It is important to allow yourself to take an honest look at your life and see what needs to change to make you feel less burdened. Are you expecting too much of yourself? Have you become exhausted? Do you feel like this when you are not depressed?

Coming out of shame is often a slow opening-up process. We gradually learn to reach out to others, and become more compassionate with them and with ourselves. Once you make the decision to come out of hiding, numerous possibilities become open to you.

Guilt and Escaping

✅ Try to work out what specifically you want to escape from.

If people try to be helpful, respect their efforts rather than discounting them. Again, avoid thinking in all-or-nothing terms—i.e. they must understand completely or it’s pointless. Maybe a little understanding is helpful. Maybe it’s part kf a step-by-step approach. Try to avoid attacking others if they do not understand in the way you would wish, as this will put them on the defensive.

Since shame is usually about hurt, sometimes it is possible to tell others what has hurt us and explain our feelings.

If we stick with negative labels, we stay in hiding and withdraw. Then our chances of recovery are reduced.

We have to come out of hiding… At times we can block ourselves from connecting with others because we cannot face revealing what we feel ashamed about. However, just because you think something is bad does not mean others will.

There is wisdom in recognizing what we can do for ourselves and where we need help from others.

Healing Shame:
1. Self-consciousness
2. Challenging your internal bully
3. Direct engagement
4. Relating with others

Shame operates on the “better safe than sorry” rule.

1. Thwarted efforts to be recognized as good and able;
2. Pressure to conform;
3. Direct attacks and putdowns

“To risk exposure to shame is to risk not being accepted and not belonging.”

Confronting Shame

1. Shame about our bodies
2. Shame about our competence and abilities
3. Shame in our relationships
4. Shame of what we feel