What causes depression and anxiety? If we knew that, we could probably deal with it
better, that's today.
So what causes depression and anxiety? Is it my thinking?
Is it my brain chemistry? Okay. Favorite answer, yes absolutely. It's both,
it's an interplay between brain chemistry and thought patterns and each
of those affect the other so it's kind of like a chicken and egg question. Which
one came first? I don't know. One of my clients not too long ago, teenage kid, he
said, 'Hey, Dr. Paul. Guess what." "What?" "I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon.
I'll keep you posted on which one comes first." So I'll let you know once he tells
me but it's kind of the same thing with our brain chemistry and our thinking,
they both affect each other, they're both absolutely causes and precursors to
depression and anxiety and they both support our positive mental health and
our happiness so we're not going to exclude either of them for the purposes
of this video, we're going to get into primarily the psychological causes so
thought patterns, that's my area of specialty anyway, so we're going to talk
about that piece but keep in the back of your mind somewhere that it has a whole
lot to do with brain chemistry too and we'll start on the psychology end with
something that's called the cognitive triad. If you've ever been in an
introductory psychology class, you've probably encountered the cognitive triad
or you've been introduced to it and it's basically three aspects of our
experience, what you think, what you feel, and what you do. So those three elements.
Now each of these interacts with and affects the others, so these three
aspects of our experience, what we think, what we feel and what we do, you'll
notice we have bi-directional arrows between each of those three, meaning that
they each control or affect the other so what you think affects how you feel and
what you feel affects what you do and what you do affects how you think so it
gets into this loop and it can go both directions. Well this is good news
actually because it means if we want to work on one of these, we can actually
work on the other two to affect that one because some of them are more easily
controlled than others so can you control what you do for example? Yeah, I
mean you can get yourself, force yourself really to do something even if you don't
feel like it, right? You probably did that this morning. So with the exception of
strong habits, we experience a lot of control over what we do. What about what
you think? That's a tricky one. Do we control what we think? What if I invite
you to think about bananas? Can you do that? Yeah, not too hard, right? You can
picture bananas, their shape, their texture, their taste, their color. Alright,
so you can control that. Now here's the next task, do not, do not think about
grapefruit. You know the round ones that are sour
and you stick a spoon in and they squirt you in the eye? Do not think about
grapefruit. How are you doing with that? Yeah, that's what I thought. You're
thinking about grapefruit, I told you not to. Can you control what you think? Well
yes and no because some of our thoughts just come, right? You're driving down the
freeway and suddenly you're thinking of how mortgages because you saw the
billboard, right? It's not even on your radar until it kind of introduces itself
so some of our thoughts we control, some we don't.
It's a tricky area. What about how you feel? You ever been in that place where
you're just not feeling good and somebody comes up to you and they're
like, "Hey, cheer up." Yeah, how's that working? Probably get you a black eye,
right? It's not that easy to just flip a switch and suddenly we're feeling
different so feeling tends to be the number one answer. When I ask people
which one of these is the hardest for most people to control? It's feeling.
That's so automatic but it's affected by the other two where we have a little
more control. Let's create a mnemonic that will help you to remember this.
We'll use the alphabet because everybody pretty much has the alphabet memorized
and if you're still working on it, we're just going to go to F
today, okay. Because that's far enough for today. A through F. You've already got
that memorized so we'll use it as a mnemonic or a memory tool to remember
this process. Now the process I'll make more sense if I tell you a little story.
Now this story is absolutely true. At least the guy who told me this story
said it was true in hear from his uncle whose cousin read it on the internet so
there's that but anyway, it's a good story to illustrate this point. A young
man was preparing himself to go on a study abroad trip, he was going to go to
a faraway land and study, whatever it is they study in that land, so he put in his
application, he had really good grades, his mom and dad had plenty of money so
he was pretty much guaranteed that he'd get the position, waited a few weeks, he
heard back, yes, he's been accepted so he packed his bags, threw him in the plane
and he took off for this foreign land. Now this was a place that was very
different from his hometown and when he got there, he started to go through what
we call culture shock, you've probably heard of this, maybe you've experienced
it, where you get to a new culture everything's different and so you're
constantly adjusting and adapting to this new environment and he found out
the plugs in the wall are different, the way you flush the toilet is different,
the food is different, the language is different, everything is different so he's going
through some culture shock. Well the thing that bothered him the most, he
could not find a Snickers candy bar anywhere and this was a serious problem,
he had what we call, in the clinical field, a Snickers addiction, okay. You may
snicker at this but it's a serious condition for those who suffer and he's
going through sneaky fits in everything as he's going through the withdrawals
from his favorite treat. Well this went on for a little while and then one day,
as he was walking along behind the campus of the school that he was
visiting, he noticed a candy store and it was in the garage of a local family who
found that if they import candy from America, they can make a killing off of
all these students over there. Awesome and they had a Snickers,
only three bucks a bar but remember, mom and dad they had plenty of cash so
anyone worried about that, he's going down every day now to buy his Snickers
and life is good and one day he went in there like he always did, this is after
his afternoon class, probably one two o'clock in the afternoon, he walks in and
it's dark, he can't see a thing. Remember it's in a garage, there's not
a lot of light coming in. Well as his eyes are adjusting, you know how your
eyes have to adjust a little after you came out of the bright sun into a dark
room, he notices a commotion going on right over here in the side of the room
and as he turns to look, here comes a man in a ski mask carrying a knife, the guy
gets up behind him, holds the knife up to his throat. Okay, so if you can just
picture that position, how does he feel? Right, you nailed it. He is terrified, he's
so scared he wet his pants. You ever been that scared? You don't have to admit it
if you have. He is terrified. Now why is he afraid? Yeah, makes sense, right? This
attack. Now keep those two questions in mind. Was it real fear and why is he
afraid? Just set those aside, for a moment, we'll come back to him. You want to know what
happened? A few seconds passed, seemed like longer to him but was really only a
few seconds, he noticed another guy over here in this corner of the room,
this guy is bigger than the first one, he comes rushing over, gets a hold of the
knife, pulls it away from his throat, almost in the same movement, gets a hold
of the armor, that first guy throws him down to the floor pulling the knife out
of his hand in the process and then he turns to our friend and shows him the
knife is made out of rubber, fake knife, and then these two guys bust up laughing
on the floor. A couple of guys from the dorm. Now how does he feel? A little mad
maybe? Relieved? More ways than one, right? Okay but his feeling is totally
changed. Now let's bring those two questions back, was it real fear? Oh yeah,
he's got the laundry problem to prove it now. Why was he afraid? Now remember the
answer from before and notice that our answer needs to change now. Well he had a
knife up to his throat. Come on, it was a fake knife. Yeah but what did he believe
about the knife? So let's go back to the alphabet,
I'll give you a quick mnemonic to help you understand how this process happens
in your own mind so that you'll have something to do with this from now on.
So using the letters of the alphabet, let's start with A. A stands for activating
event. Activating event, this is anything that occurs, it can be good, bad or
neutral so as you're driving down the road, somebody rear ends you, activating event.
You go home, your spouse says something to you,
activating event. You go home your spouse doesn't say anything to you,
activating event. Do you see could be anything. In our story, the activating event was the
attack. That's the event. Okay, now whenever an activating event occurs, we
go immediately to the next step.. C, the consequent emotion. The consequent
emotion is the feeling or the emotional reaction that we have when the
activating event occurs and in our story, it was fear fear. Can you see how that
emotion just immediately gripped our hero in this story? Well, what? Oh, we
skipped something? Glad you're paying attention. Yeah, we skipped B. I know.
I skipped B on purpose because our brain skips B in psychology, we even have a
phrase for this, it's called the fundamental attributional error. Isn't
that great that we come up with words for all this stuff? The fundamental
attribution error is a mistake that our mind routinely makes when we feel a
strong emotion, that's the consequent emotion, right, C? When we feel something
strong like fear, our mind asks us why do we feel afraid and we answer it the way
we first answered this one.. Well, duh, because of A, the activating event. That's
the mistake. We don't feel the fear because of the activating event that was
just the trigger for it, we feel it because of B, the belief. I said belief
because it start with B but we could say automatic
thought or assumption, whatever fits here, and in our story, that belief was the
knife is real. Do you see how our hero believed that? It's not true but that's
what he believed and it was that belief that caused the feeling. What if we want
to change our feelings? Let's move on in the alphabet.. D, dispute. We could say
debate or disprove or any other really good D words that have to do with take
that belief and shake it around a little bit, see if it holds any water, test it,
see if we can poke holes in it, okay, and the dispute in our story was when he
found out, oh, it bends, it bends. Now with that new information, can he go on
believing that it's a real knife? No, not really so we'll go to E. E stands for
effective rational belief. Effective rational belief, this is a new belief
based on new information or true information that will lead us into a new
belief in our story, the effective rational belief is the knife is fake.
Okay, that's the new belief. Now with the new belief, can he go on feeling? What
happens to his feeling as soon as the belief changed? That leads us to F. F is
feeling change. Feeling change. In our story, it was relief, okay but whatever
the new feeling is, the feeling automatically changes. So do you see how
this works cognitively? Our feelings are so tied to our beliefs and we don't
always notice what the beliefs are but we can always address them so with this
ABC model, that'll give you a way to remember how to evaluate and maybe take
a different look at some of the beliefs that are causing some of the feelings
that could be associated with depression or anxiety. So not only do we know more
about what causes depression and anxiety, you've got a few tools that you
might want to show as someone. I hope you do.