Thinking Yourself Out of a Depression

THAT'S MEN: RUMINATION IS ruination, one of my teachers used to say. He thought it a very clever remark and he was right.

Rumination, or brooding, is a feature of depression. If you ruminate for long enough on things that are sad or upsetting, you have a good chance of thinking yourself into the blues or of prolonging the blues if you already have them.

The psychologist and writer David Reynolds, whose Constructive Living theory fuses eastern and western approaches, once decided to see if he could think himself into a depression. By sitting for days doing very little and thinking and thinking about negative matters, he found himself in quite a deep depression that took him some work to get out of.

Some psychologists suggest that depression is more common in women because they are more likely than men to ruminate on their troubles. But I have come across men who ruminate on their worries and failings or on the failings of the world to an excessive extent. This behaviour keeps them in a constant state of depression, anxiety or anger. (More)

Source: Irish Times