Fable

▼ More Knowledge, Less Depression

2010-03-19T19:40:47Z

▲ It's OK to Aim High, Risk Failure ▼

e! Science News:

Those with lower levels of education did have more depression, but the depression was associated with the lower attainment, not any gap between plans and attainment, Reynolds said. Previous research has established that more educated individuals report better mental and physical health.

More education likely improves a person's capacity to make sense of calamity when faced with an unexpected, unmanageable loss.

[Much of my writing is focused on our three primary domains of drive and motivation - Achievement, Social Relationships, Knowledge - ASK. This link discusses Knowledge.]

On Social Relationships (ASK)

2010-03-18T20:31:11Z

▲ Action #1 of 5 ▼

Timothy So:

Connect: Connect with the people around you – family, friends, colleagues and neighbors. Regard these people as the foundation of your life and spend time in developing these relationships. These connections will support and enrich you in your daily life.

Connecting with others creates the opportunity to regulate feelings of distress. In my last essay, Death, Depression, Firefighters, Great Friends, I discuss when we practice helping others with stress and taking advantage of the help of others. We all suffer loss. Connect is a means of coping.

[Much of my writing is focused on our three primary domains of drive and motivation - Achievement, Social Relationships, Knowledge - ASK. This link discusses Social Relationships.]

Death, Depression, Firefighters, Great Friends

2010-03-17T17:36:04Z

Learn to achieve, risk death
Learn to relate, risk depression

At puberty, females become twice as likely to experience depression as males. Males become three times as likely to die as females. These two conditions persist past the age of forty.

Why Death? Why Depression?

When we experience a significant, unexpected loss, we respond with two principal behaviors: We take risk to regain what was lost, and we cope with the distress caused by the loss. Both of these behaviors are specialized and require the development of significant skill to be effective. We must either be firefighters or great friends.

We use these skills under duress, so we build them in at-risk environments. Depression and death can be thought of as the costs of trying to build skills necessary for future life threats.

(To simplify my writing, I will make categorical statements and attributions related to gender. Depression can be pathological and debilitating. Death is death. Please excuse any suggestion of insensitivity.)

Testosterone Addled with a Death Wish

When my mother tried to explain the difference between raising teen-age boys and girls, she said, “Boys are easy. They are just testosterone addled with a death wish. Girls are much more complicated...”

Who’s going to argue with mom?

Imagine tribal living. Your foraging band returns home and discovers a rival-tribe raiding party killed a few of your people, took most of the food and many women. What do you do?

An appropriate response might be to get back what you can, to raid the raiders perhaps. Only those most able to perform this risky behavior, those who have practiced raiding and warfare, have a chance of surviving the attempt to recover the loss. Similarly, only a firefighter can charge into a burning building with the rational expectation that a) he has a reasonable chance to survive and that b) the recovery of life and the unburnt materials justifies the increased chance of death. Anyone else is too likely to perish, in either warfare or flames.

Teenagers who are “testosterone-addled with a death wish,” who I will call “boys,” practice at-risk behavior. They fight, raid, and otherwise expose themselves to high-risk environments. They wander down dark empty streets at night, play football, drive like maniacs, tell dad he’s an asshole, and so on. Each time, they expose themselves to the risk of accidental or violent death. With each exposure, “boys” must discover, develop and practice behaviors designed to minimize peril and maximize gain.

As we know, some are more testosterone-addled and less skilled than others. The death rate of boys is higher: Accidents do happen, and violent responses do kill. The ones who survive have better ‘firefighting’ skills. To put a point on it, warfare and murder are the largest cause of death of young men in tribal societies, the ancestral background most determinant of human evolution.

“Everything A Crisis”

Mom never did explain why girls were more complicated. I think my sister did, though. One night she had a fit because a friend hadn’t called for some reason.

“Sweetie, I understand,” Dad said. “And you know, sometimes people just can’t call you right back.”

“You just don’t understand!” The chair banged on the kitchen tile floor as my sister stormed off. I watched her spilled milk dribble on the floor. The dogs hurried over, collar tags jingling, and licked up.

Mom shook her head, and followed.

Dad retrieved a beer from the refrigerator, took a long sip, then asked to no one in particular, “Why is everything a crisis?!”

I sniggered, but then again, I was severely testosterone-addled.

How do you understand someone else’s crisis? How do you have the tolerance and ability to track and modulate your internal experience when someone is describing a horrifying loss? How do you learn to comfort? How do you become someone else’s attachment figure? How do you access and make use of other people’s assistance with your own distress? How do you become an effective interpersonal, sociobiological regulator - in other words, a great friend?

To develop these skills, “girls” practice in a crisis-rich environment. The social life of teenage girls can be just such an environment. Crisis, loss, distress, dissonance, trauma, and neuroticism are all qualities of a high-crisis social environment. As they practice, girls develop resilience, experience posttraumatic growth, and endure lingering trauma, in combination.

The increased rate of accidental death is the cost of practicing risk-taking behaviors. The increased incidence and severity of depression is the cost of practicing intra- and inter-personal distress-managing behaviors. Dying is easy to explain. Depression...

Crises are triggered by loss. Loss of what?

The analytical answer is: loss of the abilities and resources necessary to live an optimal life - the loss of life fitness. The more we have lost, the greater our peril: we are more likely to die and less likely to have children. Large classes of loss are of social status (for example, exclusion from groups, humiliation) and access to attachment figures (for example, loss of friendships, individuation from parents).

My best friend wanted to impress a boy. She told him I had pubic hair. Now everyone makes fun of me.

Or,

Mom is such a bitch. She told dad I was going on a date with a senior and now dad won’t let me out of the house.

In these crises, circumstances cannot be controlled and are overwhelming. A defining quality of a crisis is helplessness. We are a victim and no amount of ‘correct thinking’ will overturn the emotionality. This experience is likely to provoke three archetypical thoughts:

I am not able.
I am not worthy.
I should have known.

Great friends must believe in their own ability, worthiness and sense-making creativity in order to help others process the archetypical thoughts of victimhood, feel relief from distress, and find a renewed sense of their internal capacities. Otherwise, the victim emotionality of one reinforces the same sensations in the other.

As “boys” might seek frequent exposure to at-risk circumstances, “girls” might be forced to manage exposure to internal distress and the distress of others. It is likely that my verb choices ‘seek’ and ‘be forced’ are accurate. Firefighters must choose to run into a burning build, yet great friends are forced to offer compassion whenever circumstances demand.

We develop great-friendship skills in a high crisis environment. This environment significantly increases the potential for depression. We are chronically exposed to three things - low mood, high emotionality and lack of context.

Low mood is caused by the loss of life fitness. We feel fatigue, lose motivation, think pessimistically and even cry frequently. These behaviors limit our willingness to take additional risks to our life fitness, appropriately so: we are already in peril. Instead, we seek to withdraw and find safety.

These losses are emotionally charged. They create overwhelming, affect-laden, sensory-based memories. They don’t make obvious sense, and often invalidate previously held beliefs and assumptions. The context for the emotional experience is weak. Consequently, if everything is a crisis, the life is filled with too much emotionality and too little context.

What is context? Context is our somatic markers, biases, scripts, schemas, personalized mind-blindness, unchallengeable doubts and certainties, internal working models, values and personality. Context is nothing less than the model of the world and how we most effectively and efficiently respond to it. Context allows us to make sense.

Each event, particularly high-arousal events, creates both sensory-based memories and contextual memories; but if we don’t have context or lose context, we are left with emotional experience. We lack explanation and cannot anchor our sense of helplessness to some external circumstance. Instead, we suffer the victim’s archetypical thinking. Our self-regard suffers, our capacity for self-regulation diminishes, and we distrust our sense-making creativity. All three changes are markers for increased risk of depression.

Low moods, emotionality and lack of context create both distress and dissonance. We become neurotic - appropriately so.

Neuroticism is a personality trait just like height is a physical trait. Neuroticism is neither good nor bad. There are circumstances where being taller than average is advantageous, and there are circumstances where being more neurotic than average is advantageous.

Neuroticism is a style of responding to dissonance, negative emotions and low mood states. It keys the search for better beliefs, assumptions and insight, for the means to improve the chance for survival and opportunities to recover the loss of fitness. Our neuroticism directs the development of context.

People who have lower levels of neuroticism are likely to accept rudimentary explanations for distress, make naive plans address it, and be comforted by the reassurances of others. They might seem to get over distress more easily, but have less drive to actually create more resources.

If we cannot tolerate continued distress while we seek improved context, then neuroticism undermines our ability to recover from loss. If we can tolerate distress, then neuroticism fuels competitiveness, motivation and willingness to avoid unnecessary hazards. Neurotic college kids, who can manage college’s associated distress, are more successful than less neurotic kids, for example.

In a high-crisis environment - high-school for example - we are challenged with the need to repeatedly rebuild our crisis-diminished sense of ability, worthiness and understanding. Imagine this cycle: a crisis, then the combination of low mood, high emotionality, diminished context, then neurotic thinking and searching, then limited recovery and loss of resources, and finally, repeat. That way lies depression.

A history of depression is the single best prediction of risk for future depression. As resources are lost (from past crises and depression), the risk of future depression grows. Additionally, in response to increased depression risk and a history of failure of past behaviors to handle the crises, we are likely to adopt maladaptive defenses. With declining resources and increasingly maladaptive defenses, depression becomes longer, more severe and more pathological. This outcome is the equivalent to death when practicing risk-taking behaviors.

Death is a “boy’s” curse. Depression is a “girl’s.” Growth requires risk, loss and recovery. We grow up, but sometimes, instead of growing, we wither or die. Everyone is a strange mixture of strength and damage. We all can be great friends and share our strengths. We all need great friends for help with our damage. It’s our nature.

Context For Transcendence

A simple organism swims along and enters a patch of acidic water. It reacts and swims away. For a patch of food-rich water, it swims in and enjoys the bounty. Water, to this organism, is its context.

Our context, our pool of water, is a mental creation. Our context is nothing less than a creative representation of the sum of our knowledge. And like a fish not noticing water, we hardly notice our context, until it is invalidated and must be updated to accommodate new experience.

Those who suffer crisis are the ones who seek new understanding, new insight, who swim away from the acidic water and will revel in discovered bounty. Those who suffer are the ones most likely to find spirituality and a sense of transcendence. Spirituality is context and the sensations of transcendence are its bounty. Grace itself is found here.

The Mouse Trap: Am Happy, Am Sad

2010-03-15T15:01:52Z

Sandeep Guatam, at his blog The Mouse Trap has written a compelling series of posts under the general theme - If I'm happy, then A; If I'm sad, then B. These contrasting behaviors demonstrate regulatory significants of these two modes.

Guatam starts with Am happy, will seek novelty; am sad, will stick with the familiar. He summarizes this post and the whole series:

Promotion focus is expansive, is happy, is creative and long-term, and is novelty preferring versus prevention focus is restrictive, is sad, is focused on the task at hand, and is familiarity preferring. In other words people in safe environments having promotion focus are manic while those in unsafe environments and having prevention focus are depressive.

Next, Sad versus Fair:

I agree broadly with their thesis [Tan & Forgas (2010)] that sadness also has adaptive value and happiness should not be seen as all rosy and sadness all bad.

And from the cited study Tan & Forgas (2010):

Our findings confirm that negative affect often produces adaptive and more socially sensitive outcomes. For example, negative moods can improve the detection of deception, reduce judgmental errors, improve eyewitness accuracy, and improve interpersonal communication strategies. The present experiments confirm this pattern by demonstrating that mild negative moods also increase fairness and sensitivity to the needs of others.

Next, Deep Talk v. Small Talk:

Happy people spent more time talking to others in social settings versus spending time alone. Further, happy people spent much more time in substantive conversations than in making [small] talk. This was [reverse] in the case of sad people.

Next Paranoid/Gullible v. Realistic:

From Lount (2010):

The results in this article are consistent with work demonstrating that a positive mood increases reliance upon stereotypes and scripts in interdependent situations. More pointedly, the findings from all five experiments supported the predictions of the accommodation–assimilation model over mood-congruency models. This leads to a fairly strong conclusion that the relationship between positive mood and trust depends, in large part, on available schemas, cues, and stereotypes.

Gautam concludes:

Happiness leads to use of stereotypes/schema, leads to becoming more gullible/ paranoid... leading to psychoses. Although the present study did not had anything to say about sad mood (the contrast was with neutral mood) it is not unreasonable to extrapolate and claim that sad people are more realistic and depend on behavior of the other party rather than stereotypes...

The most recent entry, Despair/Ennui v. Anger/Irritability:

Happiness is opposed to ennui/despair while sadness is opposed to anger/irritability and while happiness is a measure of flourishing; sadness is a measure of illness.

How Loss Creates Depression And Growth

2010-03-15T14:16:02Z

The Creative Destruction of Loss:

Can We Grow More Than We Wither?

11. The capacity to tolerate distress and efficiently develop greater internal resources creates the greatest possibility for posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic diminishment can co-exist.

Height is a trait: the taller the man, the greater the (evolutionary) fitness, at least to a certain point. The average height of a population closely approximates the optimal height. There is a distribution around this optimal norm: some are taller and some are shorter. Neuroticism,¹ like height, is also a trait.

Language is an adaptation - an innate capacity baked into our DNA. Language skill is a trait, influenced by genetics but not uniform across the gene pool. Depressive behavior, like language, is an adaptation, and neuroticism is the equivalent to language skill or height.

The setting for depressive behavior is a low mood state.

Daniel Nettle:²

Low mood describes a temporary emotional and physiological state in humans, typically characterised by fatigue, loss of motivation and interest, anhedonia (loss of pleasure in previously pleasurable activities), pessimism about future actions, locomotor retardation, and other symptoms such as crying...³

Since the generic trigger of low mood is loss of or lack of access to some important resource, low mood may usefully be seen as an evolved suite of responses to unfavourable or adverse situations... Note that this does not mean that clinical depression itself represents adaptive behaviour... Low mood probably has multiple adaptive functions in unpropitious circumstances, subserved by its various different symptoms. [Italics mine]

Loss is one of the principal triggers of depressive behavior. In this analytical framework, what is loss? It is the loss of the abilities and resources necessary to live an optimal life. It is the loss of life fitness. The more we have lost, the greater our peril (we are more likely to die and less likely to have children). The loss of social status, for example, is a significant loss because it can imperil access to resources (e.g. food) and the ability to attract a suitable mate.

When we experience expected or readily manageable loss (of fitness), it is appropriate for our mood state to reflect the increased peril. With fewer resources, we have a more limited ability to risk fitness for possible reward. We must be cautious and the low mood state appropriately evokes congruent behaviors.

Daniel Nettle, again:

When the individual’s state is poor, a risky venture going wrong could push state down further into the danger area, and so behaviours with a small variance in payoff are preferred. When state is better, the individual can absorb potential failures and so is in a position to try out risky options that might just lead to a big payoff. Thus, to a very considerable extent, the model [for behavior responses to peril] supports existing views for the adaptive functions of low mood symptoms, and of positive emotions in general: when things are going quite badly, it is not the time to take risks, but as things improve, greater experimentation is warranted. [Economics would indicate such behavior is highly rational.]

One category of loss/limitation is the readily manageable, usually expected loss. During winter, for example, we lose access to new food. Because winter is expected, our contextual understanding accommodates our sensory-based experience. These sets of memories (contextual and sensory-based) are aligned and integrated. The event of loss - winter - matches our anticipation of loss. The level of distress is appropriate to the loss, and the salience of both is minimized because of the strength of the context. Put simply, the actual experience was as it was supposed to be.

Chris Brewin:⁴

According to dual representation theory, perception of a moderately stressful or emotionally salient event results in the creation of more enduring contextual memories [C-reps] and sensory-based memories [S-reps]...

In healthy individuals, the S-rep [sensory-based memory] for an extreme event is associated to a corresponding C-rep [contextual memory]. The association to the corresponding C-rep has two consequences: (a) allowing the event to be correctly integrated with its semantic and autobiographical context... and (b) allowing for increased top-down control.

What is context? Context is a set of beliefs, unchallenged assumptions, values, scripts, schemas, internal working models, biases, etc. Context is nothing less than the model of the world and how we most effectively and efficiently respond to it. We architect memories from a limited, biased sampling of new information and from the narrative and structural elements of already accepted ‘context.’

When the contextual and sensory-based memories of a loss have a strong correspondence (i.e. they are congruent), the consequent depressive behavior occurs without associated dissonance and the related neuroticism. However, if the winter were more severe than usual, we would not build contextual memories as efficiently. The surplus of sensory-base memories would cause dissonance - the sensation that something was not as it was supposed to be. Literally, we would have experience we could not account for: too much experience, too little understanding, an unnerving combination.

Neuroticism is our sensitivity to dissonance and the associated low mood state. If the winter was unexplainably severe, we would become neurotic - more focused on identifying behaviors to limit the loss of fitness, on developing improved understanding of the reasons for the severe winter.

Fresh insights allow us to create more viable contextual memories - better explanations - of the distressing loss. We come to associate the contextual memories with the sensory-based memories alleviating the distress and dissonance. In other words, as long as we are ill-at-ease, we seek better understanding. Similarly, understanding is relief.

We might conclude, ”The winter was severe because we did not pay tribute to the harvest god.” The accuracy of the belief is not relevant, rather the strength of the explanation is.

The losses which are associated with the greatest mental anguish are unexpected losses. The losses are inexplicable. They also destroy prior context, causing trauma.

Brewin et al.:⁵

Trauma generally involves a violation of basic assumptions connected with survival as a member of a social group. These include assumptions (not necessarily conscious ones) about personal invulnerability from death or disease, status in a social hierarchy, the ability to meet internal moral standards and achieve major life goals, the continued availability and reliability of attachment figures, and the existence of an orderly relation between actions and outcomes.

Trauma’s epistemic wounds are the means of destroying context. In the aftermath of these events, we have a limited array of contextual memories to match the many powerful, affect-laden, overwhelming sensory-based memories. In other words, without context, the sensory-based memories become intrusive imagery. We relive the trauma experiences rather than contextually re-experience them.

Chris Brewin (2010) again:

Normal encoding involves the creation of contextual memories [C-reps] and sensory-based memories [S-reps] with connections between the two. Pathological encoding involves relatively stronger S-reps [sensory-based memories], relatively weaker C-reps [contextual memories], and impaired connections between them.

Trauma causes Brewin’s “pathological encoding.” We failed, we were overwhelmed, we didn’t know what to do. We lost significant life fitness and don’t understand why. As a result, we continue to experience significant, persistent dissonance. We relive the associated images repeatedly and intrusively.

Given the heightened peril cause by the loss of life fitness, our mood drops and our behaviors change. We become neurotic. In other words, we are distressed by the loss, and we experience our depressive behaviors as the mental experience of depression.

Neuroticism is a major trait of our affect systems.

Daniel Nettle:⁶

Though the design features of affect systems are adaptations that are common to all human beings, individuals vary in the reactivity of their affect control mechanisms. That is, the same interpersonal events cause a larger and longer perturbation of affect in some individuals than others. This variation in lability of negative affect systems is captured by personality dimensions such as neuroticism or negative emotionality.

What does neuroticism do?

Edward Watkins:⁷

The self-absorption paradox could be explained if there was a neurotically motivated, threat-avoidant form of chronic self-focus, labeled rumination, which contributes to psychopathology, as well as a contrasting form of chronic self-focus, motivated by epistemic curiosity, labeled reflection, which would be associated with increased self-knowledge. The Rumination–Reflection Questionnaire distinguishes between reflection (e.g., “I love analyzing why I do things”) and rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about the self prompted by threats, losses, or injustices to the self. [all italics mine]

If a loss signals a significant deterioration in the environment, then greater neuroticism will provide the greater chance for survival and recovery of fitness. If a loss does not signal significant deterioration in the environment, then less neuroticism will provide a faster recovery of fitness.

An unexpected loss is unexpected. From the point of view of our schemas, beliefs and internal working models, it is inexplicable.

When I date, I know I might break up sometimes, but when I love someone so much, how is it possible she ended the relationship? How is it possible for attachment figures to leave my life so abruptly?

Without specific explanation or a strong contextual setting, our experience of the trauma is more global and general.

We worry than anything might be to blame for the loss:

I am unable.
I am unworthy.
I am ignorant.

The evaluation of our self-regard diminishes even if we didn’t actually lose ability. Our self-regulation diminishes even if we didn’t lose inter- and intra-personal resources. Finally, our regard for our sense making diminishes, and we might resign the search for meaning (“people you love just leave”) rather than try to make sense of the unexpected loss (“she was scared of marriage”).

These three domains - self-regard, self-regulation and sense-making, collectively ‘our resources’ - are highly correlated with depression and personal development. The more a loss impairs our decision or capability to act in these three domains, the more we are at risk of depression and posttraumatic diminishment. The greater our post-lost resources, the more we are resilient to the loss.

Exposure to depression is the greatest predictor of the future incidence and severity of depression. Although the magnitude of damage to our resources might relate to the level of loss and emotional distress, the process of regaining (or even improving) resources is different from relieving distress.

If distress is alleviated before resources are regained, each exposure to significant loss could continue to impair resilience and increase probability and severity of depression.

One source of relief is creative sense making: For example, “I deserve to be beaten by my father.” Another way might be to regain access to an attachment figure: “She changed her mind, and we’re back together.” In either case, the relief would reduce the drive to rebuild the resources needed for the next loss.

We might grow in one area and suffer diminishment in others. Posttraumatic diminishment and posttraumatic growth can, and frequently do, co-exist. Did we lose self-regard? Is our capacity for self-regulation diminished? Do we distrust our creative sense-making?

Additionally, were we able to rationalize the loss and alleviate distress, while losing other resources, we might be more likely to adopt the same process after the next loss. At first, we might have a net gain in resources from such a one-sided process. But if over time the marginal value of improvement in one specific dimension declines and the cost of neglect in the two other dimensions increases, the initially adaptive process becomes defensive which in turn can become maladaptive, and then pathological.

Distress is the consequence of too many sensory-based memories without corresponding contextual memories. It limits our capacity to inhibit rudimentary behavior and take action based on higher-order cognitive reasoning. The greater the pain, the more we just react and the more our behavior responds to the demands of fight/flight (sympathetic) or freeze (parasympathetic) systems. As we lose access to higher-order cognitive functioning, our internal sense of self diminishes.

Distress tolerance is also a trait. Often it is best to promptly flee a looming threat. However, the ability to regard and evaluate the looming challenge particularly after the fact, is valuable to engage the drive to develop internal resources.

The tolerance of distress enables the cognitive resources necessary to identify, test, optimize, plan and practice, and finally implement actions designed to gain needed external resources (e.g. food) and to enhance self-regard, self-regulation and efficiency-creating insight.

Here again, neuroticism, especially in the context of repetitive thinking can be highly adaptive.

Daniel Nettle:⁸

There may also be other kinds of benefits to neuroticism. Neuroticism is positively correlated with competitiveness. McKenzie has shown that, among university students, academic success is strongly positively correlated with neuroticism among those who are resilient enough to cope with its effects (McKenzie, 1989; McKenzie, Taghavi-Knosary, & Tindell, 2000). Thus negative affect can be channeled into striving to better one’s position.

It is quite possible that very low neuroticism has fitness disadvantages in terms of lack of striving or hazard avoidance. Although very high neuroticism has evident drawbacks, it may also serve as a motivator to achievement in competitive fields among those equipped to succeed.

The combination of neuroticism and distress tolerance generates new, updated or improved beliefs, assumptions, values, scripts, internal working models, biases, etc. It strengthens context. These epistemic developments, the opposite of trauma’s destruction, would show as gains to self-regard, self-regulation and insight, as gains to fitness. Strengthened context, when associated with the sensory-based memories of loss, would dispel dissonance, reduce the event’s inappropriate saliency and allow the event to be processes as part of a coherent autobiography.

Loss, Depression and Growth

I have sketched examples of several broad concepts in order to assemble the following loose framework to describe a sense of logic to the some of the consequences of loss, including depression and rumination - two issues which have provided some controversy recently.

The need for maintain optimal life fitness is a dominant drive and motivation. We consume resources to live. The success of replenishing resources is unpredictable. We pursue goals and take actions to replenish resources needed for optimal life fitness.
We sense peril when our current level of fitness is below our optimal level. The greater our peril, the fewer resource we can risk without creating significant probability of death. The less we can afford to lose, the less risk we will take. The greater to reward for risk taking, the more risk we will take.
Our mood states intermediate this process. A sense of peril evokes depressive behaviors. A sense of opportunity evokes active, approach behaviors.
When we seek fitness, we seek actual resources (e.g. food), and also seek internal resources - the capacity to redress fitness deficiencies, the capacity to regulate the attendant distress, and accurate working models to direct our goal seeking efforts efficiently.
Seeking of new resources requires diagnosing, searching, optimizing, planning and practice, and action - sophisticate cognitive processes each. This development is an embodied cognitive process.
Unexpected, significant loss causes significantly greater sensory-based memories than contextual memories. This dissonance is a major drive to develop stronger context, align this understanding with the surplus sensory-based memories, and integrate the related memories so the dissonance and salience diminishes.
Repetitive thinking is a significant means to create new contexts and translate the cognitive outcomes into new capabilities, expanded capacities for self-regulation and more efficient beliefs and models about the self and the world around.

Edward Watkins:⁹

Repetitive thinking [RT] produces constructive consequences if it helps to resolve the discrepancy between the intended goal and actual current state, whether by aiding progress toward the goal or by helping to modify or abandon the goal. In contrast, RT becomes unconstructive if a person experiences an inability to progress toward reducing the discrepancy and at the same time is unable to give up on the reference value or goal. In such a case, RT would serve only to focus attention on the discrepancy between the desired goal and the actual situation, making the unresolved discrepancy more salient, perpetuating the unresolved issue, and exacerbating negative affect. It is important to distinguish between disengaging from efforts at goal pursuit, whether mentally or physically, and disengaging from the underlying goal: The former combines a lack of goal progress with the ongoing maintenance of the desired but unattained goal, further highlighting the unresolved discrepancy, whereas the latter constructively reduces the goal discrepancy.

Repetitive thinking is mood congruent. Low mood states orient the cognitive process to the abandonment of goals. Active mood states orient the cognitive process to the renewal of old goals or the creation of new goals.

Jonah Lehrer’s post Mood and Cognition expands on his controversial New York Time’s article - Depression’s Upside:

While negative moods might promote focused attention and rigorous analysis, there's good evidence that happiness promotes a more freewheeling kind of information processing, which leads to more creative insights.

And that's why relaxation and happiness are so helpful: these moods make us more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inwards, so that we become better able to eavesdrop on the quiet yet innovative thoughts we often overlook... In contrast, when people are diligently focused (and perhaps a little melancholy), their attention tends to be directed outwards, towards the details of the problem they're trying to solve. While this pattern of attention is necessary when solving problems analytically, it actually prevents us from detecting those unlikely connections that lead to insights and epiphanies. (William James referred to insights as emanating from the peripheral "fringe" of consciousness, which is why they're so easy to ignore when we're staring straight ahead.)

The failure to rebuild self-regard, self-regulation or productive insight before the alleviation of distress diminishes future resources necessary to resolve future loss in fitness. In other words, the experience of depression can increase the likelihood and severity of future depression.
Depression is only one possible, maladaptive or pathological outcome, as we try to maintain fitness in the context of a life given to random, unexpected loss. Many things do go wrong.
The capacity to tolerate distress and efficiently develop greater internal resources creates the greatest possibility for posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic diminishment can co-exist.

Personality is the composition of five traits: Openness to new experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion/introversion, Agreeablness, and Neuroticism. The trait of neuroticism is most associated with depression. ↩
NETTLE, D. (2004). Evolutionary origins of depression: a review and reformulation Journal of Affective Disorders, 81 (2), 91-102 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2003.08.009 ↩
The description of a low mood state corresponds with significant elements from Damasio’s catalog of emotions:

Damasio A. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2003. ↩
Brewin, C., Gregory, J., Lipton, M., & Burgess, N. (2010). Intrusive images in psychological disorders: Characteristics, neural mechanisms, and treatment implications. Psychological Review, 117 (1), 210-232 DOI: 10.1037/a0018113 ↩
Brewin, C., Dalgleish, T., & Joseph, S. (1996). A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Review, 103 (4), 670-686 DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.103.4.670 ↩
Nettle, D. (2009). An evolutionary model of low mood states Journal of Theoretical Biology, 257 (1), 100-103 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.10.033 ↩
Watkins, E. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134 (2), 163-206 DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163 ↩
Nettle, D. (2006). The evolution of personality variation in humans and other animals. American Psychologist, 61 (6), 622-631 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.6.622 ↩
Watkins (2008). ↩

Phenomenal Guest Post

2010-03-10T14:43:30Z

▲ My Guest Post:
Phenomenal Ghost ▼

Cole:

How does your body feel when you are at peace with the unpredictability and unknowability of life? Try to evoke body sensations for this idea. It’s a lot harder, and the sensations are fleeting. These are the sensations of homeostasis, of wellness, of – from the body’s perspective – finding home.

Check out my guest post and the great comments!

Computer Disaster!

2010-03-04T17:13:59Z

If you can relate, then you should download Furies!

From the book:

First thing this morning, computer disaster! I blew my iTunes library all to hell when I reformatted the wrong hard drive. The last seven hours were a computer nightmare, without food, without a bathroom break, and finally with a migraine headache. I needed to eat. I walked into the kitchen, ready to break something.

I watched my son struggle with the peanut butter jar and wondered if he felt like I did - frustrated beyond any justifiable reason.

No. I have worked with computers for years. My frustration is a kind of attachment trauma. Computers are probably just Harlow monkey experiments on a global scale.

Imagine you are working on the computer and your hard drive starts clicking, the screen freezes and then the only moving thing is the mouse cursor. Imagine waiting for an important e-mail, but the internet is down for no reason. What if you decide to call tech support and their first question is some version of - “is your computer / printer / router / monitor turned on?” I feel rage in these moments. Why? Because I cannot fix the problem, I can't get someone to help, and it makes no damn sense!

How should we describe our experience in such moments? People feel more harm from loss than reward from an equal gain. Aren’t we better off looking for the blessing, the benefit, the reward, the silver-lining, and avoiding the recognition of loss? We try to spin our story of the experience. We hope to create some emotional gain and limit possible harm. Modern pop-psych, aspirational descriptions do so:

The computer problem is just a challenge to overcome.
The internet chat boards are very helpful with computer troubles.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

We split off the painful qualities of adverse events. What if we use realistic terms such as “victim” or “helpless?” We feel unnerved. We rebel against the label “victim” even as we feel self-pity. We grasp for affirmative terms, such as “resource” or “capacity.”

If we don’t know where we hurt, how can we care for ourselves? Our hurt is where the Furies are, and that is where we work.

"The Dark Night Of The Soul Doesn't Have The Final Say"

2010-03-04T16:56:40Z

▲ "I knew I was in the arms of God" ▼

Connie Jones, a great friend and occasional writing partner, in her own words:

When I awoke I couldn’t speak. I was mute. And although I was back on earth, I was also somewhere else. I felt like I was being given a choice, whether to stay with God and my sister, or come back to my family.

  For a year I didn’t speak until, I believe, I made the decision to come back and use my voice to tell people about the experience I had with God. I felt God had come through for me and I wanted to come through for God, to come back and tell people he was real and his love was real. How amazing for a mute to be a voice for God!  

Today, at age 56, I want people to know that the dark night of the soul doesn’t have the final say. My family was filled with despair and brokenness. There is so much pain in the world. I want people to know that God really does love you and is there for you.

Connie's full story is at Jennifer Skiff's website - "God Stories".

Connie gave me a ton of help with Furies! She's awesome.

Furies! - The Struggle For Growth

2010-03-04T13:43:06Z

▲ The Furies! eBook Homepage ▼

The science of our complex human nature is unravelling the mysteries of how we create and change experience. Furies! leverages this growing knowledge to examine how harsh events cause emotional distress and intense suffering. This book, full of examples, shows how we can change these painful experiences, create well-being and enable personal growth.

Download this free book now. Enjoy the message of hope. If you don't, you are a scaredy-cat.

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2010-03-03T20:15:22Z

▲ Different Moods, Different Styles of Thinking ▼

Jonah Lehrer, broadening the discussion:

And that's why relaxation and happiness are so helpful: these moods make us more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inwards, so that we become better able to eavesdrop on the quiet yet innovative thoughts we often overlook. (That's why so many of my best ideas often come during warm showers.) In contrast, when people are diligently focused (and perhaps a little melancholy), their attention tends to be directed outwards, towards the details of the problem they're trying to solve. While this pattern of attention is necessary when solving problems analytically, it actually prevents us from detecting those unlikely connections that lead to insights and epiphanies. (William James referred to insights as emanating from the peripheral "fringe" of consciousness, which is why they're so easy to ignore when we're staring straight ahead.)