Capturing Thoughts
I’m still reading Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon. It’s a LONG and fairly clinical book, so I have to read other stuff at the same time so I don’t get too bored with it.
I’m reading about the treatments of depression, and it was talking about talk therapy. I’ve never had much luck with therapists. I’ve seen at least a dozen in my lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all for nothing; some therapists have helped in different ways. A few have given me “homework” that has helped me see thought patterns I have that lead to self destruction. However, I seem to always get stuck in a rut with therapists, they all start sounding alike, giving me the same answers as all the rest, and it seems when I get to that point that there’s no point in seeing them anymore...but that doesnt mean that it didnt help.
To be honest with you and myself, I have always been a “glass half empty” kind of person. Since I was a kid one of my mom’s favorite phrases has been “don’t be such a pessimist.” I think my pessimism has been a security mechanism. If you expect things to be bad, then you’re pleasantly surprised when you’re wrong. In the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that no one should live like that.
Once, in a church service, the pastor was talking about “capturing your thoughts”. If you recognize that a thought you are having is negative, he said, you should try to capture it and get rid of it. I know this sounds too simple to actually work, but I’ve had some success with it.
In Noonday Demon, the guy was talking about the results of medication alone, psychotherapy alone, and the results of the two combined. He talked about how working to change your thought patterns can have the same result as medication, but that people who did both, therapy & medication, had the most success.
Can you train your brain to not be depressed? Not totally, of course, but I think it helps a lot to try. When I am thinking things that are doing me no good, I try to remember what my pastor said about capturing your thoughts. I try to visualize putting that thought in a glass jar and putting it away in some strange glass jar storehouse. I may not always be able to think something “good” after I do that, but it honestly helps. To be honest, just having that mental picture makes me feel some sort of weird accomplishment…just the fact that I could recognize the thoughts or feelings were bad, makes me feel like at least I’m doing something about it.
Of course, the capture thing might not work for everyone, and it may sound stupid, but I thought I’d share it because it might help. I don’t do the talk therapy thing anymore. I just take medication, but I do advocate talk therapy. You have nothing to lose by doing it. Therapists can’t tell anyone what you say if you’re over 18. I think it is VERY important to find a therapist you like though, and one who is at least on the same level you are intelligence wise. If you have to go to 20 different ones before you find someone, then go to 20. Doing the therapist circuit helped me as much as it was ever going to help me - that’s the only reason I don’t do it anymore. It seemed to lead me to the discovery of how my mind works and I guess that’s the whole point of it.
posted by Jil at 6:41 AM
2 Comments:
Somewhere there is written "By whatever a man is overcome, it is by this that he is enslaved." When I realize things are heading south for me mentally, it helps to sort out whether or not I am letting myself be overcome by something that I would really rather not be chained to for even a brief moment of my life. My mom said, "Start things out like you want them to end up." This applies to a thought process...pursuing negative thoughts or following an unpleasant line of thought can only come to a dead end. Why not jump off that track and put yourself on another? It helps to remember that the choices we will make today are the consequences we will be forced to deal with tomorrow. You can be as happy (or as negative) as you have the mind to be...even when things are their bleakest, grab hold of the smallest positive thing you can find and don't let go til you feel yourself inching out of the dark times and moving toward the light. This is how I manage to keep treading water when things aren't progressing the way I think they should.
9:18 PM
Jill,
You said something very important I thought and that was that you are able to “capture” or see your negative thoughts. That for me has been the starting place for many changes in my life. It is when I become conscious of what it is that I am doing/thinking that I am then able to make the choice to change it. Without that knowledge I do not have the power to change it. If I realize that I am always being negative about a particular thing I can pay more attention each time that same thing comes up and attempt to capture/change that thought to a positive one. I read somewhere that if you want to make a change you must do it for at least 30 days in order for it to be a natural response. So with that one thing each time it comes up make it a positive thought and then see if it does not make a difference for you. I do not claim to be a positive person all the time, but I do know that in anything I want to change that the awareness of the fact that I am doing it is the first step towards changing it. Thanks for this entry; it serves as a reminder to me.
2:33 PM
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