I have been a person prone to depression, anxiety, existential despair and general cynicism for a decent portion of my life. I did not start life on easy mode. I also work in the nonprofit field where I regularly encounter haunting stories about domestic and sexual violence, sobering statistics, and real issues and tragedies in my community that make things difficult to process. I am the kind of person who at about 11pm every night starts thinking about things like the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking and vividly imagining what it would be like to experience that. I am a good test case, is what I’m saying.
I recently discovered something that has made a significant difference in my life. It all started when I listened to the Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenburg podcast episode: Using metacognitive therapy to break the cycle of rumination. I’m a psychology nerd, I like to be in the loop on these things.
Metacognitive therapy is representative of the direction CBT is currently going - to a place where people who are psychologically suffering learn not to engage with the distressing content of their thoughts. This woman did a nine year follow-up study showing metacognitive therapy resulted in total remission of depressive symptoms in 60% of patients - that is a bonkers level of efficacy for a therapeutic intervention.
At one point in the podcast, Spencer challenges her, saying, “What about people whose main source of suffering is a serious issue in their life? What if someone is an abusive relationship? What do you then?”
She said, “I actually did have a case involving domestic violence. The victim was completely overwhelmed by her life circumstances. By teaching her not to think about her abusive relationship so much, she became significantly less overwhelmed and was able to make plans to get out of it.”
That’s a pretty bold statement. But there is an obvious logic to it. When we are paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and despair driven by our thoughts, we cannot act effectively.
So this is the first time I ever was told that I don’t actually have to think about things that upset me. Holy shit, was that good news for me!
I moved on to a book called Worrying is Optional by Eckstein & Coyne, another resource solidly built on psychological research. That provides more concrete techniques for choosing not to engage with thoughts, but yes, engaging with thoughts, it turns out, is a choice. We can’t control the content of our thoughts - we might think horrible things from time to time, but if we can get in the habit of recognizing when we are ruminating pointlessly, and choosing not to engage further in rumination, there is so much peace that comes from that, I can’t even tell you.
I’ve gotten to the point where I only choose to engage with distressing thoughts when I am actively doing something about them. I find that a lot of things I get upset about I really can’t do anything about – since we are talking about the state of the world, I don’t think about politics unless I’m having fun learning, or making a voting decision. I don’t think about sexual assault and domestic violence and homelessness unless I am actively doing that work, and when I am actively doing that work I am in a much more empowered state of mind. I cut the cord on Facebook two years ago, reddit a few months ago. Social media is one of those things that once you’re out of it, and you see it for what it is, you can’t ever unsee it.
I want to emphasize here, though, that I think a big part of my ability to cope is that I can draw specific examples of things I’ve been a part of that made the world a better place. The more you network and work with other people, the more other people’s accomplishments feel like your own. To use a specific, extreme example, I recently was going through a massive, out-of-the-blue PTSD flashback and I got out of it by thinking about how my state coalition, which I am a part of, successfully pressured legislators to put in a line item in the state general budget for victims of crime, for the first time in history, in order to offset the cuts to VOCA funding that have directly impacted my work. Now honestly I did none of that activism myself, I did the equivalent of attending a conference for the coalition for which my agency is a member and hearing about it in about a billion email chains… but I still feel like a part of that! It’s actually sufficient to just be adjacent to big things happening. I think I’m lucky that I have that sort of stuff to draw on when I’m feeling overwhelmed, but it was also a choice I made about what to do with my life. I wanted a greater sense of purpose with my career, even though it comes at the expense of less money/less recognition.
In sum, when you’re upset about something, the first best thing is to do something about it. And if you can’t/won’t do that, stop thinking about it.
and refuge in life.
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