Self-Management of Depression

When faced with trauma, mental health influencers often "therapy speak" people into becoming more resilient and growing from such a challenge. This narrative, however, encourages people to internalize the message that adversity should always lead to growth or that trauma is a prerequisite for growth. In  the psychological lexicon, this positive outcome, or "bouncing forward" following adversity, is called  posttraumatic growth  or an overlapping concept,  benefit-finding and growth  (Lechner et al., 2009) . While benefit-finding and growth captures more of the lifestyle, behavior, and perceptual changes, posttraumatic growth tends to refer to the transformative changes occurring at a cognitive level, i.e., how one becomes wiser (Lechner et al., 2009). People who experience posttraumatic growth describe it in one or more of the following ways (Hefferon et al., 2009): Reappraisal of one’s life and restructuring of previous priorities Revaluation and changing of li...

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...