If you have a depressed loved one, you may notice that they seem as though they just don’t want to be helped. It is harder for people with depression to pursue help and I understand why. Living with depression is like eternally living with this morbid self fulfilling prophesy. Many people with depression have this underlying belief that they are doomed to suffer for the rest of their life; so they do just that. They live to suffer. This is why so many of them are suicidal. Who wants to live in pain forever? The thing is, if someone lives in a painful situation for long enough they are more likely to accept that as their reality even when there is help available.
Take Seligman and Maier’s theory of learned helplessness. They trapped dogs in a painful situation but when they gave them the opportunity to escape it, the dogs just cried, yelped and stayed put. The dogs were convinced that they were doomed to be in pain indefinitely; in other words they felt helpless. One of the signs of depression is helplessness. They believe life is painful and there isn’t a thing that they can do about it which leads to hopelessness; another sign of depression.
As I declared on an earlier post, depression is CURABLE. I guess you could say it helped me unlearn helplessness in a way. I haven't had an episode in six years thanks to neurofeedback. The following video explains how nerofeedback works and how it can help a variety of people with neurological disorders such as depression, ADD/ADHD, autism, alcoholism, migraines and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment