deLurch wrote:OK. Two votes for "CBT" Clinical Behavioral Therapy as a good solution for depression.
Can either of you (Facisit Tit or Old_ones) give me a rough run down of what that involves?
Is there any knowledge as to if diet, exercise, socialization, dog (Hell Watson claims having a dog forced her to get dressed, not get high or drunk and leave the fucking house), help alleviate depression?
As a side note to our Fascist: providing a platform for people to discuss the issues at hand where many felt like no platform was available has helped immeasurable. Many people from here have dived into gamer gate. Continued to dish out our accumulated knowledge in other forums and battles. And I largely suspect our mere existence has given other infrequent parties the strength to kick out their fully formed "unpopular" opinions on other platforms. Of course you could always pass the buck at any given time. But you have done good at a much needed time.
There are a few different levels to it. The first one involves using writing exercises to contradict cognitive distortions. A cognitive distortion is a fallacious thought that is disturbing to you. For example, if someone is self conscious about their social skills, they might think "I'm so awkward, EVERYONE hates me". That would be a cognitive distortion called an "overgeneralization" - literally everyone doesn't hate this person so it's a false statement. The patient doing one of the exercises might write down that thought, note that it is an overgeneralization and respond by saying "no everyone doesn't hate me, I've made one woman uncomfortable by asking her for coffee in an elevator and the horde thinks I'm a jerk, but my friends still like me". There are other distortions as well such as "mind reading", "fortune telling" (being overly certain about future events), and "catastrophizing" (making mountains out of mole hills). Noting these distortions in one's thinking produces a sense of relief, because it can help a person stop being excessively critical and judgemental toward themselves.
As you might have picked up from my example, there was a legitimate behavioral problem at the root of the cognitive distortion. Elevator guy was feeling bad about getting rejected and ridiculed for asking someone out. This happened because he was lonely and wanted female company, but was looking for it in a way that was considered inappropriate. The first step was for Elevator guy to talk himself out of being self deprecating for making a mistake. Step two is to make some positive behavioral changes with respect to dating and socializing. Elevator guy might be encouraged by a therapist to go on match.com, because it's a pretty sure thing that women on that site want to be hit on. He might also be encouraged to think of places and situations where hitting on a woman might be acceptable, and places where it would almost certainly be frowned upon. He would likely be asked to push himself through a few cycles of asking women out and being rejected, noting each time that being rejected is not the end of the world, and that there are other women out there who might like him. Persevering with this behavioral pattern will help him do better with women and also feel less bad when he is rejected, and learning about dating etiquette will help him avoid being the target of future hit pieces by PZ Myers.
The final level of CBT has to do with reforming your beliefs so that they serve your interests. Elevator guy might get a girlfriend using the behavioral techniques talked about in the last paragraph, but he might still have psychological vulnerabilities resulting from the fact that he believes he
needs a girlfriend in order to be happy. He might also believe that he is fundamentally unlikable. These are both beliefs that are untrue, which can be analyzed and overcome. The techniques associated with this level involve introspecting about what you believe about your needs, values and personal attributes and arguing against beliefs that are counterproductive. You do this by writing these beliefs out and then analyzing and arguing against them on paper. So when elevator guy does this he begins to realize that he can be happy as a single man, and he realizes that plenty of people do like him, but that he doesn't need the validation of others in order to like himself. He becomes more confident, and dating stops being an insecurity for him altogether. In fact, he becomes so confident and smooth that he is able to land a date with Lauren Southern, who he meets at a bar one night after a protest in his home town.
This is a simplified telling of the process, of course, and elevator guy might have roots to his depression that have nothing to do with dating. He might also be depressed because he is working a dead end job as a shit shoveller, and because he has ulcerative colitis, which is physically painful and lowers his quality of life. Those are also issues that can be resolved, but the specifics of what would need to happen on each level would change. In the work example, he might begin retraining for a different career, and he might work to change beliefs that conflate his worth as a person with the prestige level of his job. With the colitis, he might look for behaviors that minimize the amount of physical suffering he endures, and he might challenge beliefs that tell him that he can't be happy and suffering a chronic illness at the same time.
