JP’s Reviews > Overcoming Depression: A self-help guide using cognitive behavioural techniques > Status Update

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.