Depression

Depression use to be the top mental health problem reported however, it has been surpassed by anxiety in recent years. Depression is different from having a bad day or a time a short time of feeling sad. There are sometimes where sadness is the appropriate emotion. However, depression is something that does not pass it is a deep and debilitating illness. People report the feeling of a black cloud always hovering above them. Winston Churchill referred to depression as a black dog. Depression and mental illness generally has suffered from social stigma and lack of understanding. This has improved over time with awareness raising campaigns being spreed across media. A number of well known celebrities talking about their own experience of depression and how they manage their depression.

Management of depression is very important having the approach that it is permanent for some people and will require ongoing, persistent and consistent treatment. These will often require the input of professionals who specialize in depression. It may include connection to support groups of peers who also experience depression. It may also require medication and monitoring of this medication and a combination of all these things. What we do know about depression is that regular physical exercise is helpful to improving depression. If you can take your black dog out for a walk every day for 20-30 minutes you may find a significant improvement.

Do not self diagnose depression. There are a number of illness that are like depression however, they are not depression. An couple of examples of these are vitamin D deficiency, Low Iron levels can also course symptoms similar to depression and also some thyroid conditions can be confused with depression. The symptoms of these include low mood, feeling tired all the time, inability to concentrate. Its always a good idea to eliminate these things first they are easily treated with medication and can be detected easily by blood test. I suffered from low function thyroid for many years and doctors attributed my weight gain, feeling tired and weeping with depression and treated me for depression unfortunately this made the thyroid symptoms worse. It wasn't until my step mother came for a visit and saw that my hair was falling out and that my sleepiness was not normal in that it was very difficult to rouse me that she insisted that I get my thyroid function and perpetuity function tested too that it was discovered that I had virtually no function in either gland. Had I been left untreated I would have slipped into a coma and died.  I can not stress the importance of ruling out any physiological causes for depression.

There are two kinds of depression one is situational that is a sad event happens and the other is chemical depression that is that something in your brain chemicals is a little different and requires adjustment. Neuroscience is discovering more and more about the brain and how it operates for instance recent discoveries into images of the brain show that a depressed person's brain is different from a person without depression. What we now know is that the brain has a degree of placidity which means we are able to change the make of our brains. Who knows in time we maybe able to discover which part of the brain is causing us to be depressed and then exercise our brains to change the structure of it so that depression isn't a problem for us anymore. There is certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that the brain is an adaptive organ.

Stress and Anxiety

When we are stressed what happens to us on a biological level; our hearts beat faster we get a rush of chemicals to our brain, this sends us into the fight, flight or freeze instinctive response. What happens when this feeling continues for longer than a few moments to get ourselves out of danger. This is anxiety. Anxiety is long lasting and often impairs functioning in day to day life. Serious Anxiety might have devastating effects on your decision making. This might include making life changing choices. Your anxiety for instance may prevent you from leaving your house, applying for a job that might change your circumstances greatly, talking to a person whom you are attracted to. When your stress stops you from doing life it is a problem for you. The biological effects of being in a heightened state of awareness can damage you on a biological level, increasing the risk of heart attack and other heart conditions. As you can imagine the strain of having your body in a stressed state for a long period of time may effect every area of your life.

As I discussed in my previous blog about motivation we need a certain amount of stress to motivate us however, if this is too high it demotivates us and we are then unable to function at our best. A lot has been said about breathing techniques to reduce stress. This may work for some people however, just try to breath in this way when you are in a  heightened state, you might find yourself hyperventilating and falling unconscious on the floor.  If your anxiety is paralyzing you in this way what other methods might you use to bring your biological stress levels down.  If you have a great imagination you might use it to imagine yourself being the person you would like to be and play acting that role until it feels comfortable.  You might perform some practice scenarios with your therapist in the safe space of the therapy room, slowly taking those actions a little bit further until you are able to go for the job interview or talk to the person you would like to ask out or leave your house.

In narrative therapy you may externalize the problem of anxiety and begin seeing it as outside of yourself which may help you to control the anxiety. You might start questioning your actions and be able to say is it this external factor of anxiety controlling my actions or is it me. You may be able to imagine a life without anxiety calling the shots for you, if you see it as a separate entity. However, then you will later accept that you need anxiety in moderation and that it does make up an important part of who you are and how you function in the world however, it is not a part of you that you want taking over completely. 

If we look at how to control our emotions to benefit our lives and not rule our existence then we become the master of our destiny. Our emotions are an important part of who we are they assist us in many ways. Stress being one of the things that helps motivate us. Being aware of what is the driving force behind our actions and behaviors is the beginning of changing ourselves from a person who is being driven by irrational emotions and thoughts and one who is being rational and logical. It is human to have irrational thoughts and emotions the trick is in identifying them and having a way of acknowledging that these thoughts and feelings are normal but are not helpful to you in the long run. You might create a pause or reflect on a past action and say to yourself "what was driving me to take that action was it rational and logical or was it heightened emotional responses which are not rational".

While it is important to create a moment of pause and reflection it is also important not to stay there beating up on yourself for making an irrational decision or acting while in a heightened emotional state. You are human and in being human you will be imperfect and sometimes say and do things that aren't that smart. You will arrive at conclusions that are made on rubbish observations. When you know better you do better. If you are honest with yourself be honest with others. There is absolutely no harm in going back to your partner for example and saying "Sorry, that was unfair of me" or going to your colleagues and saying "Sorry."  Often people believe if they apologize they are taking a weak position however, I believe it is a position of strength. If someone takes advantage of your apology then you know this person's actions are a reflection of their character not your own. You can then say, when I apologized to you about this it wasn't me giving you permission to run rough shot over every statement I make. You might say, I think you may have misinterpreted my apology, let me correct you. 

If you are having problems controlling your anxiety then I seriously suggested seeking therapy to overcome this problem. Speak to your doctor and get moving on taking control of your life.

Emotions

I was working with a young nonverbal man who was proudly demonstrating his iPad version of a communication device. He was smiling and happily showing me all the different categories available. I noticed a section called "Emotions" and said what's this and touched the screen which opened up a whole variety of emotional options. The guy looked at the array before us an immediately shut that window down with a frown on his face. I laughed and called him a typical man. I wanted to explore the emotion section and he shut them down. His smile returned with a big laugh. Never was the emotion section opened again.

All jokes aside emotions are overwhelming and we don't really explore them until we find ourselves needing to.  Just trying to describe an emotion can be confusing. However, we all have emotions from a very early age. Anyone who has spent a night awake with a crying baby could tell you just how early we experience emotion. The contagious nature of laughter of really little babies are all over YouTube.

Our emotions are developed as babies our relationship with ourselves is very much determined by your relationships with your parents. The attachment that we form with them can affect our world view.  If we have a secure attachment to our parents we then enjoy secure attachment across life time. However, if we have an insecure attachment style we may always be wondering if people really love us. If we have an anxious ambivalent attachment we may avoid intimacy altogether and avoid any kind of close relationship throughout our lives. We can work on relearning these emotional responses to the world and make ourselves learn to be secure. It will take a lot of work and often people choose to avoid the difficulty involved in developing secure attachments. The emotional work is often just too hard.

Psychologist categorize emotions in three groups Positive Negative and Neutral.  Positive Emotions are those things that we want to hold on to gratitude, love, happiness. Things we know is if we have a physical response such as smiling we feel better. A while back there were laughing groups, people would get together and start laughing just the act of laughing improved people's feelings. Neutral feelings such as pensive and passive. The negative emotions such as grief, sadness, anger and frustration. Emotions are what make us human some would argue that emotions are awful things that hold us back from really getting on with life.

The feeling of love is a good example of the three components of emotions. The physical feeling of your heart beat increasing, your thoughts of our object of affection are racing through our heads and our behavior is off the charts in terms of what we do when we are in love. Fear is another emotion that has all three elements we appraise perhaps a dangerous situation, like seeing a snake, our hearts beat faster the flight or fight or freeze response hits in and then our behavior will be to either run away, kill the snake or freeze until the snake moves away. Those who have an insecure or an anxious ambivalent attachment style may have the feeling of love mixed with the feeling of fear and anxiety. As you can imagine if a child is regularly abused by a parent they love their parent yet at the same time feel fear. A person with an insecure attachment style in a relationship with a loved one as adult may be waiting for a fearful event to occur. They may leave relationships when intimacy is beginning to develop to avoid the potential of being hurt. The world view of the person is distorted by their early life experience of love. They have developed an instinctive response to love and attachment that limits their ability to experience intimacy without fear.

Is that all we are just a set of instinctive emotions. No we are not, we are complicated creatures. Take for example Anger it can be all encompassing once described in a book from my childhood as a vine that wraps itself around a tree and straggles the life out of it. What lies beneath anger is pain, perhaps sadness and grief. What lies beneath Anxiety might be anger, insecurity, deep sadness. Depression beneath depression may lie unresolved grief or anger about past wrongs done to us. That is the job of psychologists and counselors to go beneath the surface emotions and face the core of emotions and help us resolve the unresolved feel the feelings that we are not acknowledging and move forward with our lives chop down those strangling vines that a preventing us from growing to our full potential. 

Motivation

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could wake up every morning and instead of putting sugar or milk in our coffee or tea we could add a little bit of motivation that would last all day long.  Unfortunately no such thing exists.

If we could design a motivation we could take what would be the ingredients.  What would be the conditions for this magic item to work. How might we replicate the ingredients and conditions with no magic involved.

What we do know is that certain conditions need to be meet. There are three major components to motivation. Activation, persistence and intensity. We are activated by a need or desire. We persistent through a variety of hurdles or challenges. The intensity of that need or desire determines the effort we put into achieving these goals.

 Maslow believed that first we need our basic needs of food shelter and health before we can start shooting for the star of self actualization.  Maslow was not alone in this thinking biological psychology suggest similarly that the biological needs and basic social needs are important motivators if these needs are not meet motivation for other goals are not high. 

What about those other things what might they be. These might include things like mastery of somewhat difficult tasks that give us a sense of increased competence these might be driven by competition with others or yourself. That is striving to be the best version of yourself. 

These higher level things can be intrinsic or extrinsic that is to obtain a trophy for example or to have the world record is external to achieve your personal best just for the sense of achievement.

Another thing to be aware of is your arousal level if you have too higher arousal level you may fail if your arousal level is too low you will lose motivation. If you feel your arousal level is to high you can lower it by employing calming techniques if your arousal level is too low you can employ techniques to heighten it. This might include going for a run or reading a motivational quote or have a saying to push yourself into action. 

If the task is achievable this will increase motivation however if the task is too difficult your motivation level will drop. This is why when we are aiming to change our behaviours we set a series of achievable goals or steps that end with that final achievement.

An example of this is my own view of studying. In the back of my mind I have the long term goal of getting a PhD however I try not to focus too heavily on this. This is a huge challenge and if I think too much about it I become paralyzed with all of the work involved in obtaining this goal. Instead I focus on the immediate steps I need to complete this might be as small as doing one paragraph a day to finish a lab report or perhaps even less of step for example just writing a list of points I want to make in the essay and then write one good leading sentence.

If I do one step at a time perhaps I will finish the marathon if I  do not finish then I have tried my best at every stage of the race.

In conclusion how do we create our own magic motivation. Take good care of our biological needs, set small achievable goals and reward ourselves by recognising how well we are doing. Stay connected with our social support systems and view failures as opportunities for learning and persistent with the marathon 

Personality

Our personality is what makes us unique its the point of difference between us an others. It is our constancy and determines how we behave in a variety of situations.

Freud believed our personalities are formed in the first years of our lives. Skinner believed our personalities are developed through observational learning. Adler believed that our personality developed over our life span while biological psychologist believe our personality is genetically inherited and is formed through evolutionary brain development.

Who is right. It's my belief that a little of each of these theories are correct. I do believe that our childhood forms a lasting impression, our observational learning is strongly entrenched in our behaviour as an adult. We continue to learn and develop throughout our lives and it is my belief that we are a bag of chemicals formed through biology. I think all of these theories hold merit and some truth to them. Scientific evidence can't be wrong.

Personality test are a form of scientific research into what forms our personalities take. What areas are being tested. These are the areas:

Openness
Consciousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuratism

The big five personality traits. The Myers Briggs personality test is widely known. Its available freely and is seen as accurate. Versions of this test have been used for employment, dating websites and personal curiosity.

How accurate are these. Only honest answers will tell us. However, peoples perceptions of themselves are often highly inaccurate. Most people can work out what employers are looking for and will falsify their answers to get the job. However, the questions asked in these tests are very difficult to fudge. They are available online and are free to try.

It's possible to experience a shift in personality however, these shifts are usually short lived. I experienced a shift in my own personality. I have always tested high in extraversion and low in neuroticism. However, after a lengthy legal battle and years of working in an industry that didn't value me, my extraversion shot down to 35% and my neuroticism shot up to 70%.  Then when I was successful in my legal claim and got a job where I was valued my original personality scores in these areas returned to the original results over time. However, there has been a lasting change in regards to the Myer Briggs test. I tested high in logic and judgement perhaps a result of my life experiences.

So in conclusion personality while complex is based around our up bringing our biological make up and our social experiences over time. What we are, how we interpret and evaluate our experience and our social interactions such as cultural influences.