Changing Your Thinking 6 - Depression

Change your thinking - beating the blues
Worrying is a cognitive process
Anxiety is more primitive - sometimes not conciously thinking about it. Muscle tense up and arousal.
Anxiety - perception of threat.
Depression -perception of hopelessness.

Stopping behaviour - helps us change ourselves.
Cognitive bias - mood affects thinking - sometimes we get caught up in our thinking
Cannot trust content of our thoughts.

Feeling down-
Lack of energy, heaviness
Majority of depressEd people may also have anxiety, but not the other way round.

(clinical/major ) depression: long term, hard to function.
Symptoms: lose appetite, depressed mood, lost interest
Melancholic depression - biological

What causes depression.
- Not always due to a reason.
- Biological
- historical
- psychological - personality style
- environmental

Black dog institute day high risk for these groups
- Anxious worrier
- irritable
- socially avoidant
- reserved - don't feel they are ok so pretend things ok, don't let people know what you are really feeling
- sensitive to rejection
- self critical.

Biological based depression :
-Melancholic
-Psychotic - delusional, paranoid, really agitated - use electric shock
-seasonal affective disorder -

Bipolar disorder
-Bipolar 1- very rare but psychotic, mania
-bipolar 2 - severe black intense depression.
-Bipolar - strongly correlated with intelligence.

Stress triggers depression
-Acute stress
-chronic stress

Rumination
- Self doubt, over analysing, others have better things.
- unproductive and not really solving problems
- feeling defective failure guilty

Strategies for managing depression
- Perceptions feel 100% true
- feels like no solution and permanent
- in reality, things change or our perception change

Mindful observation
-Observe and label the thoughts - worry, over thinking, Rumination

Behavioural strategies :
Activity scheduling
Achievement activity
Pleasurable activities
Goals are important
Social support
Long term plans
Exercise

Apps;
Mycompass
Head space
Mood gym
Worry time

Controlling your Thinking 5 - Anxiety

Anxiety
Worry time app
Breathe 2 relax
Google-centre for clinical interventions - workbooks

Fatigue, out of control, phobia
,-response to perception of threat
Fear- very extreme danger short term.
Anxiety-general world feels unsafe, partly aroused, long term threat- motor tension.
Leads to lots of physical effects.
Effects cognitive functions, memory
Effects behaviours
Effects performance - can improve performance, but to much lead to hyperstress
Anxiety disorder - in very serious case.  This impairs our functions
Generalised anxiety disorder - general tendency to worry. Muscle tension, fatigue, concentration, irritability.

State anxiety,- due to circumstances
Trait anxiety -due to our own personality. Can be physical, even if we know about it.

Common threats
-Negative appraisal
- conflict,  failure, loss
Anxiety begets anxiety
-Mindfulness may help

Behaviours
-Use behaviour to dispute anxiety. When logical doesn't work, use behaviour.
-Trying to say right thing or self focused lead to anxiety. Over thinking.
- Don't think to much
- somatic - drugs, alcohol
Safety behaviour: over planning, bottled water, worrying, perfectionism,
End up spending to much time worrying will not be productive .

--- good mental hygiene
Daily physical exercise helps
Good nutrition
Good sleep
Not smoking or excess drinking
Practise cognitive flexibility - let go of the "I should " thinking. Identify the faulty reasoning
Anxiety creates cognitive bias - just need to recognise the anxiety.
Notice the over thinking.
Exposure - learn to face the worries by confronting it.
Make one phone call a day if we are socially anxious
Deep relaxation - When relax our bodies, it will break anxiety cycle.
- Progressive muscle relaxation
- medication like valium relaxes muscle
- anti depressants also relieve anxiety.