Self-Management of Depression

With resilience promoted as a must-have skill set, individuals are bombarded with various pop-psychology iterations of what is needed to bounce back from daily setbacks, acute adversities, or chronic stressors. However, there is no proven pathway to resilience, and we don't know why some individuals are more resilient than others. The best one can gather from research are the predictors of resilience. The salient predictors of resilience include the following: 1. Demographic predictors: Contrary to the popular notion that older adults are at greater risk following a potentially traumatic event, research suggests that older adults suffer relatively lower psychological costs than younger adults. In addition, the male gender is a consistent predictor of resilience in numerous studies, with the possible explanation being that women tend to experience more significant initial threats during a traumatic event subjectively (Bonanno & Diminich, 2013). 2. Personality predicto...

What are Self-affirmations? When going through a rough patch, we have all been reminded by our well-wishers to use positive self-statements such as, “I am okay" or “I can do this.” Known as self-affirmations, these statements demonstrate one’s adequacy usually through writing positive statements about one’s core personal values (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). When things don’t happen as planned or when you have setbacks, self-affirmation statements provide you with a tool to defend your positive self-image by bolstering your self-image (Critcher & Dunning, 2015). Self-affirmations work by enhancing your self-integrity – an image of oneself being able to control important adaptive and moral outcomes in one’s life. Self-affirmations broaden your perspective beyond a particular stressful situation by reminding you of your other strengths and resources that are not limited by the situation at hand (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). This in turn helps you put things in perspective, disengag...

Although empathy has increasingly become a buzzword in the modern wellness and leadership lexicon, it is more than just a fad. Empathy is the ability or capacity to identify or vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of others. Phrases such as “walking in another person’s shoes” or “seeing the world through the eyes of another person” epitomize the concept of empathy. Being able to pick up on emotional nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice and facial expressions, is at the heart of empathy. In addition to reading another’s emotions, at higher levels, empathy also entails sensing and responding to a person’s unspoken concerns or feelings and also understanding the issues or concerns that lie behind those feelings (Goleman, 1998). Empathic people – are attentive to emotional cues and listen well. show sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives. help others by understanding their needs and feelings. Empathy is not a single, discrete emotion, but a constellation of...

Psychologists define savoring as the ability to tune in to, appreciate, and enhance the enjoyment associated with a positive experience (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Though you can savor the past (positive reminiscing) or the future (anticipatory savoring), in its most widely used clinical application, savoring refers to intensifying and prolonging the enjoyment of positive events as and when they happen. A savoring experience consists of your sensations, perceptions, thoughts, behaviors, and feelings when you mindfully attend to and appreciate something positive (Bryant et al., 2011). Common examples of savoring include eating a gourmet meal, listening to a musical performance, soaking in a warm bath, receiving a compliment, spending time with a good friend, enjoying the outdoors, or winning an honor or reward. Besides positive things happening around you, you can also savor internal thoughts or feelings (e.g., that you are blessed with good health). However, just because you experien...

Popular social media posts and self-help books extol the benefits of correctly naming our emotions, reproducing a lengthy menu of emotional labels to choose from. This is a good exercise in cultivating emotional intelligence through self-awareness. In this context, expressive writing is a simple and proven tool that expands on this facet of self-awareness to use writing as a tool to regulate emotions. Expressive writing involves engaging in deep and meaningful writing about a stressful life event or trauma (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). It is hypothesized that the act of converting emotions and images into words changes the way a person thinks and organizes about a stressful situation. By integrating thoughts and feelings related to the stress or trauma, an individual then can develop a more coherent narrative of the experience.  The instructions for expressive writing are as under (Gortner et al., 2006):      “For the next 3 days, write about your very deepest tho...

The oversaturated, hypermarketed, and superadvertised space of mindfulness and meditation apps makes choosing techniques that are actually helpful a daunting task. In this context, the three-minute breathing space offers a proven and simple mini-meditation comprising of three steps, each step lasting about a minute. It is one of the core practices of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), an evidence-based psychotherapy (Williams et al., 2007). The purpose of this exercise is to allow you to step back from a stressful situation, which helps you discern newer perspectives and alternatives that may not have been that apparent. It is hypothesized that mindfulness rewires our brain toward resilience and is considered a cornerstone of resilience (Graham, 2013). Although this exercise is called the three-minute breathing space, you can use it for shorter or longer duration depending on your comfort level and the situation. The steps of the technique are as below (Neff, 2011; Williams et...

Anger is a normal emotion that we all experience in our daily lives. Not all anger is bad; it can help you focus on self-defense, mastery, and control, especially when you perceive that your goals are being blocked (Linehan, 2015). But anger can also become problematic if it is disproportionate to the triggering situation, leads to aggression or destruction, or occurs too frequently. People differ in how they express anger. What may make one individual angry may not be perceived as anger-provoking by another individual. In Aristotle's words, which ring true even today, "Anybody can become angry-that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way-that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."  While it may not always be possible to predict when one may get angry, trying to understand the reasons behind this variation in the expression of anger would help one become mor...

When was the last time you savored an experience in its true sense, or stopped to smell the roses if you prefer the more poetic expression for savoring? With our lives wrapped around multitasking at work, caring for our loved ones, and keeping up with social media chatter, savoring has undoubtedly taken a back seat. While savoring can be construed as an art, a lot of evidence-based science extols this phenomenon's benefits. Psychologists define savoring as the ability to tune into, appreciate, and enhance enjoyment associated with a positive experience (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). There is a strong consensus amongst researchers that those inclined to savor report more optimism, life satisfaction, value fulfillment, self-esteem, and intensity and frequency of happiness. At the same time, these individuals also report fewer feelings of guilt, loss of pleasure, hopelessness, depression, and unhappy or neutral emotions (Bryant, 2003). If you plan to rediscover how to savor, below...