The Secret to Bouncing Back

In a 41-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings football team near the end of the 2007-8 season, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw four interceptions, three of them returned for touchdowns. But he would go on to lead the Giants through the playoffs and on to victory in Super Bowl XLII.

What accounted for Manning’s incredible turnaround? Psychologists would say it’s a trait called resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back after any kind of defeat and become a winner again. The ability to overcome adversity is considered a crucial element to success in life because troubles are something no one can avoid. When we know that circumstances can bend, but never break us, we gain the confidence to pursue difficult tasks with unreserved enthusiasm. We believe in ourselves. A lack of resilience is one of the chief causes of depression because it permits life to overwhelm us.

Clearly, having resilience is desirable. But is it something we can control? While some psychologists believe that at least a part of our ability to cope with life’s stresses is an inborn trait, most feel we can also cultivate resilience. Here are some ways how:
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How to Reclaim the Joy of Childhood

Every day, loud children play outside our condo. Strangely this used to irk me. Their shrieks of delight and raucous laughter pierced through the quiet of my home and interrupted me while I was reading, writing or engaging in other activities that thrived on silence.

Then, one day I realized why it bothered me: I was jealous of their joyfulness and zest for life. Of course, I was once a child too, and played with my friends the same way these kids did. And I, too, approached life with spontaneity and amazement, as though it were a wonder to behold.

But something happened on the way to adulthood. Somehow I started to become burdened with obligations and responsibilities. I became regretful over decisions made and full of doubts about those that would have to be tackled in the future.  I became saddened by the bad things that happened to the good people I knew, and from reading about the misfortunes of strangers. Life simply was no longer fun.

I would hazard to guess that many adults feel this way. In between childhood and adulthood, things like work, marriage and family intervene and suddenly we become incapable of experiencing the pure, unadulterated happiness we felt when, as kids, we were free of all these things.

But is that the way it has to be? I say, no! There are several simple things you can do as an adult to reclaim the joy of youth:
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How to Stop Your Thoughts From Making You Depressed

At any given moment, we are held hostage by something we seldom acknowledge—our thoughts. The things we think about the breakup of a romantic relationship, a fight with a friend, or even about something as miniscule as getting a parking ticket dominates our lives without us ever really recognizing it.

As humans, we have the unique ability to reflect on events and circumstances, and while that is a good thing, it carries with it, a risk– the way we think about things has a profound affect on how we feel. Negative thinking can adversely impact not only our mood, but our physical health, too. Therefore, it is imperative to examine what we are thinking and treat our thoughts as mere constructs that we have the power to harness with a little effort.

Analyzing our thoughts is particularly crucial for those of us who have the tendency to be depressed. This is because those of us who suffer from depression regularly form inaccurate thoughts that we convince ourselves are true. These irrational thoughts, which are repeated over and over again, are known to therapists who practice cognitive behavioral therapy as cognitive distortions. Mental health professionals disagree on whether cognitive distortions cause depression or whether depression causes cognitive distortions, but it is universally recognized that such patterns of thought make us feel terrible about ourselves.

Common Cognitive Distortions

There several different cognitive distortions or mind traps that we can fall into. Here are some of them:

Over-generalization: one negative thing occurs and you convince yourself that it is going to happen in all other similar situations.

Emotional reasoning: you feel a certain way, so you think it must be the truth.

All-or-nothing thinking: you see things in black and white. Either things are totally great or a disaster.

Mental filter: you only remember the negative things that have happened to you during the course of life and shut out all the positive things.

Should statements: you try to motivate yourself by dwelling on the things you think you should be able to do.

Mind-reading: you conclude that someone is thinking something negative about you.

Mental health professionals believe that there are about ten cognitive distortions to which depressed people repetitively subject themselves. But it’s important to note that you are not stuck and that these patterns of thought can be changed.

Changing Your Thoughts

One of the most helpful things you can do is to give all of your negative thoughts a reality check. For instance, if your partner has just ended a romantic relationship and you think that you will never be loved again, you can ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that I will never be loved again?” Since you’ve been in romantic relationships before this one, there should be no reason why you won’t find another partner who will love you when you are ready. In addition, you can think of all the friends and family members who still love you. In this way you can realize that you are committing the cognitive distortion of over-generalization because you are taking one event and magnifying it to apply to all situations.

Another way to battle cognitive distortions is to engage in reframing an event. Perhaps something negative happened to you, but you must ask yourself if anything positive came out of it. In the case of the end of a romantic relationship, you can tell yourself that you learned many new things from your ex-partner that have made you a much more interesting and well-rounded person and that you can bring this to your next relationship. If you can think along these lines, you might not feel as though you are at a dead end, but at the precipice of a new beginning.

Training your mind to challenge irrational thoughts and replace them with more accurate thinking is extremely difficult, particularly for people who suffer from depression. But the reward justifies the effort you will have to put into it. Instead of walking around feeling unhappy and that the world is out to get you, you’ll have a different outlook on life—one that will fill you with enthusiasm for the day at hand and not affect your mood when things don’t go exactly your way.

About the writer: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness.

Overcoming Negative Self-Talk

I was sitting in my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic and I was not happy about it. I was due into my office for a 9 a.m. meeting and I knew I would never make it on time. All sorts of thoughts started to run through my head. Wasn’t I a fool for not leaving enough time for my drive? What if my boss reprimanded me for being late, or worse yet, fired me? Why shouldn’t I be on time when my co-workers were going to be? As my mind raced from one thought to the next, I started to get a headache. My heart was thumping and the back of my neck was beginning to sweat. All in all, I felt terrible.

We’ve all been in situations where things don’t go according to plan. But that’s not what is important. What is essential is the way we talk to ourselves about these situations. Talking to ourselves negatively, like I was doing, can make us feel awful about ourselves and make a difficult situation worse. What if I had accepted the fact that I was going to be late and instead of worrying about the consequences and beating myself up over it, turned the experience into something positive? I could have switched on a news radio station and had something interesting to discuss with my co-workers when I arrived. I could have used the time to think about the things I was going to contribute to the meeting, so that I would have had something to tell my boss if I did arrive late.  Or, I simply could have put on some music that I enjoyed and did some deep breathing while listening to it.
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