part0045

From the perspective of ACT, depression is understood as avoidance behavior and psychological inflexibility. Depression is a set of behaviors, ideas, and emotions connected to a way of functioning. Behaviors associated with depression are part of a strategy to avoid personal experiences.

Managing depression is an extremely important skill and, unfortunately, it’s one that many people with Borderline Personality Disorder and related mood/emotional disorders seem to lack. This doesn’t mean that all is lost, however. Much of your reactions to things come from a combination of learned behaviors and the environment around you. By re-learning your methodology for processing and handling emotions, you can actually start to rebuild your ability to tolerate distress.

ACT places a rather large emphasis on the ability of the person to handle distress, such as trauma, circumstance, and generally worrying events. In some cases, they may utterly lack the ability to rationalize in a healthy way why certain things are happening to them, as well as why they are the way that they are. Other therapy methods tend to place an emphasis on things such as asserting the problems or how one can have a proactive effect on them.

The reason that ACT places an emphasis on accepting things rather than making a proactive change is because people who would be helped by ACT are often the type to overcompensate when they try to assert problems in their life. They might have an emotional overreaction or any number of other issues in response to a given stimulus. This is in contrast to the normal response to overwhelming stimuli, which is to become confused and potentially stay stagnant until a clear course is given to them.

Because of this, a lot of focus is placed in ACT on not allowing stressful stimuli to place an emotional burden on you. In other words, allowing it to not unsettle your waters too much.

The ability to deal with stressful conditions is paramount in the development of a happy and healthy way of life. You can’t expect to be happy if you don’t have a regular, efficient, and healthy way of dealing with emotional trauma and general distress. There’s a relatively decent chance that the reason you’re pursuing this course in the first place is because you have a hard time dealing with your emotions as they come.

The thing you need to realize is that no matter how much you want it to, blocking out or trying to change a situation which is out of your hands often won’t do anything to really change it. Sometimes, things happen. Accepting this isn’t a quitter mentality; trying to reject it is a quitter mentality, because it means that you aren’t up to the challenge that’s in front of you.

Often, people develop this mentality of self-rejection as a response to other stimuli. To have that response of trying to change or reject a situation means that you don’t think that you are cut out to stand up to the situation. Part of Dialectical Behavior Therapy consists of thinking about what causes you to feel this way and how you can avoid those triggers.

ACT has a number of methods by which you can start to practice different methods which are useful in the development of skills for depression. You need to practice these as much as you can in your day-to-day life so that you can start to intuitively use them when the need arises.

Review these daily when you’re in the depression block so that you can firmly cement them into your mind. Also try to carry them with you in one way or another so you can remember what steps to take when you need any of the given sets of actions.

The first set of actions that have been developed are methods of distraction. These are used so that when a distasteful emotion or situation comes up, you can start to distract yourself and divert your attention away from it in a productive manner. This will aid you in dealing with emotional response. This also goes hand in hand with your mindfulness practice because the focusing ability that you develop when working with mindfulness will allow you to quickly draw your attention elsewhere and handle the things that are happening inside your head.

Those ideas outline the basis of the accepts distraction strategy. A bright idea would be to put them all on note cards and summarize them, then refresh yourself every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed when you’re doing your depression block. These will help you in developing tolerance skills for distasteful or stressful situations.

Another thing you need to focus on is finding a way to soothe yourself. This is a concept known as self-soothing, and it’s especially important in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Essentially, this is all about finding ways that you can be kind and comforting to yourself.

We aren’t supposed to run all the time without having an opportunity to get rid of the stress. You are supposed to have periods of leisure time and simplicity. These are intended to help you with decompressing and unloading. Allowing yourself time to do this is important because it lets your mind reset to a bit of a blank slate.

Many people who have extant emotional problems are often exacerbated by being in high stress environments and not allowing themselves the opportunity to really decompress and relax. While this won’t solve all of your emotional problems at once, it can definitely help you in processing them when you’re out and about. Remembering that you have the opportunity to destress at a later point in the day can also make it easier to take on the various stresses of any given day. Don’t be afraid to set time aside for yourself.

What exactly should you be doing in this time? This is one of those things where the choice truly is yours. There is no right or wrong thing to be doing. Much like the final rule of meditation, the real goal here is just to be effective: do what works for you!

There are many different things that you may find soothes you. For example, give yourself time to take a bath at night, to read literature of your favorite genre, or to work on some sort of hobby or project. In effect, just be kind to yourself. Allow yourself the opportunity to relax. Know that there’s nothing wrong with taking time to yourself. This is an important part of the depression block, so be sure to incorporate it into your day.

I’m going to digress for a moment, to be real and truthful with you. The fact is that most people who practice ACT do so because they have Borderline Personality Disorder. When people have Borderline Personality Disorder, their prognosis isn’t exactly great. While it’s largely treatable with adequate therapy and possibly supplemental medication to aid with depression, ten percent of people with Borderline Personality Disorder will end up killing themselves. This is a tragic and terrifying number.

If you are reading this because you have Borderline Personality Disorder, or you have read about it and think that you may fit the bill, I’d like to refer you to seeking the help of a medical professional who can be there in person with you and talk you through the various different options. Depression is real, it is heavy, and Borderline Personality Disorder is constantly comorbid with it. While everybody can benefit from the skills that are developed through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, if you’re here because you fear that you might have Borderline Personality Disorder, seek genuine help and get into a program with a personal therapist so that you can be sure you’re getting the best and most personalized experience possible.

The reason that this is relevant and not a total digression is that sometimes, the ability to encourage yourself is going to be very, very difficult to maintain. In fact, if you do have depression comorbid with your mood or personality disorder, the chances are good that when I say you need to cheer yourself on, you have no idea what I’m even talking about. While it’s easy to say from a certain perspective that you ideally should tell yourself that you can do anything, it’s not the reality of the situation that just because you do it, you’re going to believe it.

At first, when you tell yourself that you can do it, you’re likely not even going to have an emotional kickback reaction; you’re going to ask yourself, “What if I can’t? Why would I be able to do it?” and this is a tragic starting point. But even if you don’t believe it, you need to fake it until you make it.

There are a lot of reasons that this is helpful. Your brain ultimately accepts what it’s given, and if you say that you can do something, it’s going to over time believe that it can. What you say and do is a very powerful emotional input, and recent psychological studies have shown that faking it until you make it is a very real phenomenon in terms of your brain structure.

More than that, the very act of telling yourself that you can do it, and accept whatever is happening, and cope with it properly, is extremely powerful. It’s a psychological sword, if you will. If you do this, you can build the skill to accept what is coming your way and really work your way through it all, no matter what it may be. Telling yourself that you can do it is impactful.

Beyond all of that, over time you’re going to develop the ability to believe in yourself, because of the simple fact that you are going to make it through everything that you’re trying to do. While you may not believe it, you will always be able to ultimately cope with whatever you’re trying to do. Think of it this way: all of life follows the same pattern. They are either moving forward, or they are at rock bottom, and rock bottom implicates dying. If you aren’t dying, then you’re progressing still. Find security in that fact. Your mind is designed to deal with various things, though it may not be designed to deal with them immediately. Your mind has an especially difficult time with this, because for one reason or another it has become wired to deal with things in an unhealthy manner.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t undo this, and more importantly, the point of all of this is that hard things are, well, hard. You’re going to have to work to get through them, and unfortunately that’s just the nature of the beast. However, if you bear that in mind and ultimately work on accepting that fact, then you’ll start to realize with time that when you tell yourself you can deal with something, you ultimately do. This will reinforce the statement.

The statement also serves to make you more resilient to whatever may happen to you. For example, if you tell yourself you can deal with things constantly, if things do get worse or if another bad thing does happen, you’ll remember that you’re able to deal with them whenever they do come up. Ultimately, you’ll remember that the power absolutely lies within you to make what needs to happen, happen. This is your most powerful tool – your ability to encourage yourself and remember that whatever it takes, you can do it.

That brings an end to the specific improve set. As I said earlier, try to find a way to work these into your daily routine while you’re doing the depression block so that you can remember them better when the time comes. Also consider setting them up in such a way that you can see them whenever you most find yourself needing them. This can be something as simple as writing them down in a notes app on your phone and summarizing them so that they’re within easy reach, or even taking a screenshot of the pages that they’re written on if you’re reading this on something like a Kindle or Books app.

The next big part of depression is the ability to evaluate the pros and cons of something. Think about your given situation and think about what positives and negatives can come from it if you decide not to tolerate the situation. Is there any real and proactive change that you can initiate?

A lot of the time, when you’re trying actively not to do something, there will be a kickback response in your mind that will manifest until you respond to it. (Unless you have OCD, in which case this is most likely a compulsion and you should avoid meditating on it.) Until you satisfy the answer of what would happen if you did respond to a situation – and analyze such in a realistic manner – you aren’t going to feel comfortable with not responding to the situation. This shouldn’t happen all the time, as it’s a bad habit to ingrain, but when you do have the kickback response it’s not a bad thing to think objectively about what would and wouldn’t happen if you did decide to respond to the given stimulus.

Another thing you need to practice is the concept of total acceptance. The truth is that a lot of the time, you’re trying to actively fight against the reality of a situation. Sometimes, this is because you feel like you can’t handle it. Other times, it’s because you don’t want to lose control of the situation. In these sorts of situations, what you ultimately need to do is allow yourself to completely and total accept whatever is happening to you.

The fact is that you aren’t going to change a reality that you can’t change, no matter how much you try. Focusing on your inability to change it will only prove frustrating. There are some things that you only have so much of a hand in. In these cases, you can only do as much as you are able to do, and no amount of action will change it.

Consider, for example, an illness in the family. What could you really do to change this stressful situation? Can you take away their illness? Can you fight against this tide? No, unfortunately. The sad truth is that you cannot. And while it’s painful, the only thing you can do which is healthy is to accept whatever might happen as something that you aren’t able to change.

This should be practiced in tandem with your mindfulness strategies and your willpower so that you’re able to practice the next skill: turning your mind around. The objective of this skill is working on your ability to make yourself accept what is happening instead of rejecting it. One of the major problems in issues like Borderline Personality Disorder is that you develop a personality which has a very difficult time accepting whatever is happening. Your knee-jerk reaction is to reject whatever is happening because it means losing control of the situation or becoming powerless.

You need to work on honing that skill so that you can start to accept whatever may happen. You need to practice your ability to make yourself accept things. Acceptance is a habit, and while you shouldn’t accept everything which passes, you must learn to accept those things which you have no hand in. Any other reaction is irrational, as there was little that you could have done to change it. While you can fight with yourself over what this phrase really means and whether or not you can do anything to change something, the simplest answer is the correct one: often, you can’t.

Building the habit of acceptance will shift you toward a generally healthier state of mind that will let you start to work with things and concepts in a far better way than you are right now. You’ll be able to process your emotions in a better way.

All of these skills culminate in the last skill of depression which is to learn the difference between being willing to do something and being excessively willful. Willingness is the will to do that which can actually have an effect. For example, if you don’t like how much you make and you can financially afford to go and get another degree, you should be willing to do so. Don’t accept a bad lot in life just because you develop an acceptance stance. Willfulness is the will to do something which won’t have an effect; in essence, willfulness is being excessively willful to the point that you want to change things that you cannot. In these cases, your willfulness is breaking from your ability to be accepting of the things you cannot change, which causes unnecessary inner tension. You have to release that tension and allow yourself to accept that which you cannot change. In that, you will find your place in life becoming happier and your way of looking at life becoming healthier. You will no longer obsess over changing things you cannot, but you will find yourself being more willing to do those things which are effective.

That brings the chapter on depression to the end. All of these skills should be practiced during your depression block.

The important thing to note about your blocks, if you haven’t already, is that you need to be carrying these skills into your day-to-day life even outside of their designated block; the designated block is merely intended to give you a time for extended focus on a given subject so that you can train those methods and start working on retaining them.

If you’re reading through this book and thinking that you should try to implement all of these things at once, I’d like to warn you not to; your therapy will be more ineffective. Your brain isn’t set up to deal with that much change at once. Remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint, just like I said earlier; your success with these methods is highly dependent upon your ability to retain these things and use them actionably. Carry them with you, but don’t load them all on yourself at once.

Some studies indicate that ACT can be more successful in one-on-one therapy sessions as opposed to group sessions (ibid.). Studies also reveal that ACT may be superior in treating some conditions including depression, especially with respect to reducing self-harm behaviors of depressed subjects.