This episode explores the link between unhealthy compulsivity and depression in three parts: understanding what depression may be trying to tell us, how the negativity bias protects us and makes us miserable at the same time, and why compulsives get stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Click here for the written version.
Transcript
Why Compulsive People Get Depressed Part 1: The Missed Potential of Low Mood
Constance was meticulous in everything she did. She was famous, and at times infamous, for accuracy at her job, for her fastidiousness in her home, and for her painstaking protocol when running the PTA. Her friends and colleagues said that while she was really well-intentioned, her standards were just too high and she was way too controlling. “You need to let go” everyone told her. But she was determined to get everything just right. And when a big project didn’t go her way, she found herself falling into into a funk. She couldn’t care anymore. It felt like the drive that had throttled her through life so far was missing in action.
But since we’re all very enlightened and tend to think that depression is nothing more than a pathological state these days, it didn’t occur to her that perhaps the depression was telling her something, and that it was telling her that walking away from unrealistic expectations just might be a healthy reaction. Not only did she miss the message, she interpreted it in a way that made her more depressed. She thought there was something wrong with her.
This is the first in a short series about the reasons that compulsive people get depressed. People who meet the full criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and those who have just a few compulsive personality traits, are both especially susceptible to depression, and it’s important to untangle the depression from the personality. Otherwise they can each make the other worse. Being compulsive can make us depressed, and sometimes we try to cure or cover the depression by being more compulsive. Not a good idea.
Bringing awareness to the possible function of depression is particularly important for people who are compulsive because they often endure their suffering in the territory of “high-functioning depression”–hidden from all, but painful nevertheless.
These posts will offer a very different way to understand depression, and offer suggestions to help you break the cycle that can occur between compulsive personality and depression. However, I also want to make clear that if you’re suffering from a serious depression you should consult a mental health professional for help through psychotherapy, medication or both.
Depression sometimes has a purpose. Especially if you’re compulsive or driven, it can be nature’s way of slowing you down when you’re racing too far and too fast in one direction. Correctly understood, it has potential value.
While there is much to support this idea of depression having purpose, in this post I’ll be drawing on two particular and very different sources to support it: psychologist and mood researcher Jonathan Rottenberg at the University of South Florida, and early twentieth century groundbreaking psychiatrist, Carl Jung.
Rottenberg has experienced major depression himself, and he’s published a book about the science of low mood: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. He shares reams of data to back up the idea that there have been evolutionary benefits for low mood. Rottenberg questions the way depression is usually understood. He asks: Why is it that we’ve invested such huge resources in treating depression, but so many people are still so depressed?
Jung didn’t have the data at his disposal that Rottenberg did, but he still somehow understood, 100 years before, that if we look for the potential purpose in “mental illness” we can contend with it in a more holistic and effective way.
Both urge us to stop pathologizing depression and start listening to what it’s trying to tell us. It’s not a defect, it’s a message.
The Evolutionary Benefits of Depression
Rottenberg’s basic argument is that low mood has had evolutionary benefits that have helped us to survive and develop, so it’s been pretty deeply engrained in us. Here are a few of the benefits:
It discourages destructive conflict and sensitizes us to social risk. This was really important in the conditions in which we evolved: bands of 75 people struggling for survival. The better you get along, the more likely you are to survive because you can cooperate in collecting food, and in warding off intruders, those nasty, rule-breaking goons who hadn’t bothered filling out the paperwork to join the United Nations.
It discourages wasteful effort. When you hit a wall, when persistence becomes a liability, depression forces you to stop digging. It reduces the energy that would otherwise be wasted on futile goal pursuits such as trying to get everyone else to be as scrupulous and fastidious as you are.
It slows us down so that we can actually concentrate more, and make better decisions about what’s realistic. This can prevent calamities such as racing headlong into projects by yourself with the absolute certainty that you have to take it on alone because no-one else will do it the right way.
People who are driven can become possessed by an idea and become rigid and inflexible in their drive to do what they feel is the right thing. It shows up in road rage, unwieldy kitchen commands, and passive-aggressive punishment aimed at those who don’t comply. It can cause unproductive interpersonal conflict, waste energy, and lead to bad decisions. Depression can lessen that tendency and can help us to slow down and question the strategies we’ve been so cocksure about.
To anthropomorphize in a very unscientific way, depression says, if you don’t let go willingly, I will force you to let go grudgingly.
Jung: Depression is the Unconscious Trying To Balance Us
Carl Jung believed that the human psyche is a self-balancing, homeostatic system. Or at least it can be if we aren’t so headstrong that we ignore the wisdom of the unconscious. So, if we get too rigid, a low mood brought on by the unconscious can force us to re-evaluate how we’re living. He believed that depression is nature’s way of taking energy away from the conscious ego, and putting it in the unconscious so that we have to pay attention to what’s happening inside.
If our attitude toward mood–and its source, the unconscious–is one of curiosity and respect, we are better situated to learn from it.
This is actually quite close to Rottenberg’s idea: depression forces us to reflect and keeps us from crashing headlong into folly.
And Now–The Reality
But is this what depression is like for you? It makes many of us irritable, waste more time, and isolate. And better concentration? Yeah, right.
Both Rottenberg and Jung would acknowledge this. The purpose of low mood can go awry, for many reasons, including stress, anxiety and lack of sleep. If any of these are present, the natural course of a meaningful low mood can go wrong. This kind of blockage could account for what Rottenberg calls deep depression, the disabling kind, as opposed to shallow depression, which can be more productive.
Rottenberg also points out that our overly ambitious culture has lead us to an epidemic of depression. Advertising, status, materialism and the idea that we can do or have anything we want, have led us to crave things we can’t do or have. It sets up entirely unrealistic expectations which compulsives are all-too-willing to buy into–and which inevitably make us depressed because those expectations are impossible to satisfy.
Here’s a fun fact that demonstrates the point: A 2005 study found that 31% of teenagers plan to be famous when they grow up. And that was before Instagram! I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s room for 31% of the population to be famous. No wonder so many young adults get depressed in their twenties–an attempt at balance goes awry because there is no understanding of the possible function of depression.
Depression visits to try to convince us to slow down and mediate expectations. But we don’t listen anymore.
Whether this sort of suggestion on the part of the depression is effective or not isn’t the point.
Depression is not like some sweet guardian angel taking care of us. Every evolutionary adaptation has its downsides. It’s an archaic, unconscious, clumsy and sometimes brutal tendency with little differentiation or subtlety. But just because it’s outdated doesn’t make it go away.
Further, depression might have been more effective in a tribe of 75 than it is in a country of 300 million. We no longer have the community support that it might have originally engendered.
We can’t be naïve about this. But an awareness of its original purpose can still help us to deal with it more effectively.
What happened to chemical imbalances?
What happened to all that brain science about serotonin, chemical imbalances and good stuff like that? Yes, some depression (for instance the kind that comes with bi-polar disorder and major depressive disorder) does seem to have a significant biological component, and medications are most effective in those cases.
But in less intense depression, the cause is more often how we think, behave, and invest our energy. Consider that in one study placebos were found to be 82% as effective as an anti-depressant, and that antidepressants are less effective in shallow depression.
Even in cases where there is a significant biological component, a less pathologizing approach to depression can help to ease it.
The Takeaway
With awareness of the original purpose of low mood, we’re better equipped to understand its potential function and work our way back into a better mood. We can see where we need to slow down or moderate our drive. Our attitude toward the depression itself can determine how bad it becomes. If we are listening to what it has to tell us, its course will be far better than if we get more depressed about being depressed.
Leonard had an eye for what was wrong. His negativity bias was stronger than even he would have liked. He’d spot anything that was “off” in the present and anticipate anything that could possibly go wrong in the future. This wasn’t just occasional catastrophic thinking, but a habit of perception that colored everything he saw.
When he walked into the apartment he’d notice immediately that his girlfriend hadn’t washed her coffee cup, and miss completely the flowers she’d bought for him. He ruminated on the many possible disasters that could ruin their upcoming trip, and not a bit about what could go right. His conversation was dominated by what other people were doing wrong, and what he might get wrong if he wasn’t overly-conscientious.
Worse, he couldn’t be happy until it was all fixed. And since that was impossible, he eventually got depressed.
This is the 2nd in a short series of posts about compulsive personality and depression, more specifically why people who are compulsive are particularly susceptible to depression. (You can find Part 1 here.) The perfectionism and conscientiousness so characteristic of the compulsive personality can lead to a satisfying life if managed well. But far too often they lead us to focus on what’s wrong. And that makes us very unhappy–if not completely depressed.
Before I jump in, I need to say that if you are depressed, please seek help from a licensed mental health professional. This blog cannot substitute for the specific care that a therapist can offer.
If we get lost in depression and want to find our way out, it helps to understand how we got here, our past. By our past I don’t just mean abandonments, neglect, trauma, loss, or whether my sister tortured me when I was a kid. (She didn’t, by the way).
I mean that we also need to take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution before that that brought us to where we are today. This past has shaped the genes that determine our personality at least as much as what we encounter after birth.
You come with a long history, like it or not. As Carl Jung said, you have a two million year old human being inside of you. And, I would add, he’s a really grumpy old guy.
It’s easy to be mislead by a simplistic emphasis on what’s happened to us in the 20 to 60 years we’ve been alive. While our environment, that is, our family and our culture, certainly shapes the genes we’re born with, focusing exclusively on environment may leave us feeling as though we are victims of our circumstances, rather than empowering us to discover and develop who we are naturally, and what we can do to make ourselves happier. More on that in a moment.
Part I: Low Mood Can Compensate for Unrealistic Expectations
In my last post I wrote about how low mood has been adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. By reducing our energy when we run into a wall, low mood has helped us to let go of rigid positions and walk away from unrealistic expectations. Understood this way, we may be able to see a purpose in low mood rather than go full hog into depression.
Since compulsive people tend to set expectations too high, they often experience compensatory low mood when they themselves, or the world, don’t meet those expectations. But because we think of ourselves as enlightened, reasonable and “modern,” it never occurs to us that our psyche might be trying to tell us something.
Scanning for Trouble
In this post I’ll focus on another way that evolution has shaped us: the compulsive tendency to focus on what’s wrong, and to focus on that so much that it prevents better moods.
Nature has programmed us to scan for things such as:
physical dangers
social status (our own, those close to us, and those we feel competitive with)
reliability
depleted resources
We were more likely to survive and pass on our genes if we focused on these potentially dangerous situations. But for some of us, this focus has remained dominant, even though it doesn’t make us happy–and may not even increase our chances of surviving. You might think of these as leftovers, best thrown out before they stink up the fridge. But that’s not quite accurate, and I think a better metaphor is that of a wise, but rather old, mentor, whose advice needs to be filtered for contemporary relevance. They’re not always wrong.
How Evolution Shows Up In Your Home
Here’s what concentrating on what’s wrong can look like. You focus on:
• The kitchen not being spotless because it could mean that there are dangerous germs lurking in there somewhere.
• Your husband has questionable social skills so your status is low.
• Your wife seems to care more about her friends than you so she’s not reliable.
• Your checking account has less than you’d like so you’re in danger of depleting your resources.
Beneath all this is an “instinct” to make things “safer” so that we’re more likely to survive. Taken too far, we lose the original point for ever having a kitchen, a partner or a bank account. They don’t have to be perfect to be in our best interest.
The Compulsive Negativity Bias
There is no single gene that causes this attention to what’s wrong. It more like a module in the brain, a network of neurons caused by an assortment of genes, which predisposes us to focus on what seem like imminent “dangers.”
To simplify greatly, this module causes the negativity bias, which is “the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.” We’ve developed so that avoiding bad situations motivates us more than taking advantage of good ones.
You won’t survive a fire if you don’t run away from it, but you will survive if you don’t notice that single blueberry in the bush. Notice how you feel in reaction to each of these photos:
Does one grab your attention more than the other?
It doesn’t matter if this negativity bias module makes us happy or not. It makes our genes more likely to get passed on if we’re always focused on what needs fixing.
But, you might say, lots of people could care less when things aren’t right. For sure. They were absent the day those genes were handed out. Not everyone is like this.
And other people seem to have gotten more than their fair share of these genes.
One study found that people with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder had more accurate visual acuity than those that didn’t. They see details that others never notice. But this blessing can become a curse if you can’t close your eyes or focus on something other than problems.
Of course if your early environment was unstable, it would have exaggerated these tendencies to look for what could go wrong. Pre-empting problems was a reasonable strategy if your family offered no security and you had to fend for yourself.
Nature’s Deceptions: Scan, Fix, Repeat, Get Depressed
You’d think that nature would give us a payoff for noting what’s wrong and fixing it, but it’s stingy. You get a brief pay-off, but it won’t last long.
These modules often fool us. They cause a delusion that leads us to do things that will improve our chances for survival, imagining we’ll feel good. But we often end up feeling very dissatisfied soon afterward.
We start out thinking, “This is gonna be great!” But the pay-offs for the seeing problems and remedying them don’t last long, and you’re scanning for the next thing to fix to get another little hit of endorphins.
Scan, fix, repeat. If you’re lucky. More likely you’ll scan, feel frustrated, repeat.
It’s part of the life strategy of compulsives to try to take control and fix things in an effort to avoid uncomfortable emotional states.
But this gets depressing after a while.
We’re lured into trying to fix, but soon after, we experience dissatisfaction. If we were completely satisfied by fixing problems we’d just sit on our tush and live happily ever after once we indulge this tendency. But then we wouldn’t pass on our genes.
This is especially depressing for compulsives because we’re under a second delusion: we imagine we can and should control it all, as if it’s our responsibility to. And of course we can’t and it isn’t.
All of this applies to how we see ourselves as well. We focus on our less attractive aspects, which might seem like it would help our performance, but in the long run does not. And it magnifies the depression.
Additional Short-term Payoffs for Negative Thinking
Evolutionary and environmental causes are bad enough. But their are still additional possible sources for a stubborn case of negativity bias, including our own insecurity about ourselves.
If I get some gratification out of proving to myself that the world is morally decrepit, hopelessly stupid, and remarkably ugly, I might feel motivated to pile it on. If my negative insight proves to me that I at least know better, and so I’m no worse than everyone else, I will revel in cynicism. We reach for reassurance of superiority. We reap depression.
Can I do anything about it?
Here are the three factors that determine how happy or depressed we are:
Genes–nature
Environment, family circumstances, social setting–nurture
Intention
Our conscious intentions, our choices about how we think and what we do, also determine which end of the happiness spectrum we live on.
Research psychologist Sonia Lyubomirsky has concluded from her research that while we have a set-point of happiness determined by our genes, this accounts for only about 50% of our mood. Circumstances determine only 10%.
Intentional activity, what we do and how we think, accounts for the remaining 40% of our happiness.
How to Achieve Change
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses a metaphor to help us understand how we change. He suggests we think of ourselves as composed of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is this older, genetically determined and socially programmed part of us. The rider is the part that with intention, persistence and determination can slowly train the elephant to go in a different direction.
While therapy is the first line of defense, there’s no reason you can’t, in addition, design your own program, complete with lists and goals, focusing the determination that comes with the compulsive personality, to retrain your perspective so that your elephant isn’t always lumbering off to the land of depression with you helplessly on top.
“The Practice of And”
Since we’re up against hundreds of thousands of years of programming, we need to make conscious efforts to counteract the negativity bias.
I’ve taken up a tool that I call “The Practice of And.” I try, every time a negative thought or feeling comes up, to acknowledge it, and note that there are also good things. I visualize two canisters, one held in each hand–one containing the bad, the second containing the specific good that I choose to focus on.
Yes, the car needs an expensive repair, and the weather is beautiful.
Yes, a client is going through some disturbing issues, and I can breathe deeply.
Yes, someone put up a negative review of one of my books on Amazon, and all the other reviews are good.
I have found this helpful. But don’t take my word for it. Consider these words of wisdom from someone who has experienced profound suffering and still refuses to be dominated by it. Vietnamese Zen meditation teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn witnessed the killing of hundreds of his countrymen in the Vietnamese war, yet he encourages us to see the beauty in the simple acts of life:
“Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, such as the blue sky, the sunshine, and the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, anytime.”
Leonard Trains His Elephant
Here’s how Leonard became less focused on what’s wrong:
• He identified as often as he could when he was scanning for what was wrong.
· Name and tame. He called it his hyper-vision.
• He tried not to judge himself for his negativity bias.
· It was a part of him that just needed to be reigned in.
· He let himself feel the emotions–fear and anger–which he tried to avoid by judging and fixing.
• He tried to remember the original purpose of his hyper-vision and use it only where appropriate.
· It was very helpful for work itself, but terrible when applied to his co-workers.
• He also explored it’s secondary purpose, the fringe benefits of thinking he knew better than everyone else.
⋅ It was a bittersweet victory that he decided he no longer needed and could no longer afford.
· It felt extremely strange, but he had to let go of his sense of ethical duty to make sure that everything was done properly.
• He put two more meaningful goals in its place:
· An intention to value peace of mind over fixing everything, and
· An intention to value everything he already had.
Compulsive Personality & Depression Part 3: The Compulsive Hedonic Treadmill
March 18, 2019
Forty-eight hours ago, after a weekend of frantic formatting, I sent my editor the first draft of a book I’ve been working on for almost four years (more on that later). Has finishing it made me happier? Or has this been just one more of those carrots tantalizingly dangled in front of us as we pursue them on a compulsive hedonic treadmill of achievement followed quickly by depression?
Compulsives may live on their own particular version of the Hedonic Treadmill. We imagine we’ll be happier by completing, perfecting, producing and fixing, and we’ll run like the devil to get to that make-believe paradise of bliss. But even when we do succeed in reaching any of these goals, the warm light of happiness does not shine on us eternally. In fact, we tend to plunge into darkness soon after.
Many people become depressed when they feel that despite achievements they have not been able to find sustainable happiness.
And, at least as importantly, crossing tasks off a list to ward off depression can prevent us from dealing with deeper issues that need our attention, issues such as coming to terms with loss and limitation. Like running from a ghost, just because depression doesn’t hold you fully in its grips doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you.
The phrase Hedonic Treadmill refers to the tendency we all have to revert to a set level of happiness or unhappiness after experiencing events that we expected to make us happier. The term “hedonic” refers to sensations that are pleasurable. You’re already painfully aware of what the treadmill refers to–boring repetition. Thus certain forms of pleasure become boring and unpleasant when you’re on the Hedonic Treadmill.
Our overall mood doesn’t change much over time because we tend to return to pretty much the same level of happiness a few months after even major positive or negative events or life changes–unless we bring conscious intention to our own personal treadmill, which we’ll get to later.
In a classic study researcher Philip Brickman and his colleagues found that people who won the lottery were not any happier three months after winning than they were before, and people who became paraplegic were about as happy after losing their abilities as they had been before.
Been There Done That
Brickman believed that we adapt to our circumstances. When we experience something really great or horrifically bad, things that feel merely pretty good or merely sort of bad hardly register after that. So, after you’ve won a million dollars, finding a $20 on the street doesn’t do much for you, whereas before it might have made your day.
The human psyche responds more to change than to static circumstances. What seems great at first feels about as exciting as flossing after a while. So, according to this line of thinking, trying to become happier is doomed to failure. You’re right back on that boring treadmill again.
It turns out that while there is some truth to this, it’s not as simple, dire or unalterable as things looked at first. According to research published in The American Psychologist, set points determining mood can change under some conditions.
Two Types of Happiness
Richard Davidson, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has conducted research which indicates that there are two sorts of happiness: a short-lived form of happiness that we experience upon completing a goal (like the deep satisfaction that compulsives experience when crossing things off a list), and a longer-lasting happiness that we can experience as we move toward a goal. These two sorts of happiness involve different parts of the brain, different hormones, and different rates of customer satisfaction.
The Compulsive Version of the Hedonic Treadmill
Compulsives imagine that the first sort of happiness, the kind we experience in completing tasks, getting things organized, fixing problems and perfecting things, will make us feel happier. We may focus so intently on completion that we miss the possibility of the second sort of happiness, the more lasting kind that we get from being engaged in a project and savoring the challenge.
Unhealthy compulsives tend to rush from one goal to the other and never experience lasting happiness. Healthy compulsive enjoy the drive.
Ironically, the process of engaging in any of these activities can make us happier; but the completion of them only makes us happy for a short time.
Compulsives are in the gifted and talented class when it comes to delaying gratification. We tend to think that once we get something done, we’ll feel better, so we tolerate stress and endure pain to get there. (You can find more about this in a post I did about Gratification, on April 30, 2023 in which I describe four different types of gratification and our need for each of them. So far it’s just in the blog but I’ll eventually record it and put it up on the podcast.)
Certainly there are times when we do need to grit our teeth and power through with determination, knowing that it needs to be done and that we’ll grow through it.
But to constantly prioritize the completion of goals keeps us on the compulsive Hedonic Treadmill. And that can bring on depression, or keep us from dealing with an underlying depression.
So, at the risk of repeating what you’ve probably heard already, but have completely ignored because you thought it was soft, trite and sentimental: if you can enjoy your projects as you work on them, you’re more likely to be happy than if you keep trying to get them over with.
Evolution’s Short-lived Reward for Getting Stuff Done
As I wrote in my previous post on depression, we’re programmed to feel pleasure for things that made us more likely to pass on our genes in the environment that we evolved in. Sex is usually good for that. And sugar used to be good for that too because it gave us energy and wasn’t so ubiquitously available. So we still find them pleasurable, whether they’re still really helpful or not.
There are some variations among us, depending on what genes we’ve gotten, but people who are driven usually find pleasure in organizing, planning, correcting, perfecting, and fixing. These have helped us to survive and adapt. We get a subtle hit of pleasurable hormones in the left side of the brain as we’re doing it. This is a sustainable pleasure.
But then, once we check off the box or cross tasks off our list, we experience a brief period of pleasure originating on the right side of the brain caused by a release of different hormones. It can’t last for long, otherwise we wouldn’t get anything else done.
But since it doesn’t last for long, you scan your world for what else needs to be organized, planned, corrected, perfected or fixed. Otherwise you might feel that depression you’ve been trying to avoid.
Achieving to Avoid Depression
Writers, for instance, typically experience some relief at completing an article or book, but depression often comes quickly after. So we start another piece to stave off depression.
Any of you who have read William Styron’s Darkness Visible may remember how depressed he became after finishing a book.
Despite this inevitable let down, if we need to have evidence of our worth, we may come to rely on completion rather than process, and we slide from the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum to the unhealthy end of the spectrum. In doing so we exchange intrinsic motivation for extrinsic motivation; we work because we think it looks good on us, rather than feeling good inside. Depression ensues.
Even so, this can still be addictive.
Addiction to achievement
Some people deal with insecurity by consuming luxury items to prove to others that they have status, thinking that will make them happy. But it doesn’t.
Compulsives try to deal with insecurity and prove their status by achieving perfection or achievement rather than collecting material goods. But it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of insecurity.
Rather than developing a sense of basic self-acceptance, we seek more achievement and an addictive cycle of short-lived relief ensues. As with addiction, we need more and more achievement to simply avoid the painful feelings of withdrawal and depression.
Stepping Off the Treadmill By Savoring Process
To step off the Hedonic Treadmill we need to become aware of what we usually think will make us happy and question it.
If you’re driven, compulsive or type A you probably won’t be able to stop fixing and planning and producing completely, but you can choose whether you invest consciously in savoring them or just getting them over with.
Try to notice if you lean forward in your body toward some more completed future.
Try to notice what the motivation underneath that urge is.
Substitute appreciation of the present moment and its challenge for future completion. What can you savor about the projects that you’re engaged in now?
Turning in that book draft to my editor did make me happy–for a little while. But the more sustainable happiness comes with the writing itself. So here I am putting words together again, trying to be with it rather than trying to get it finished. And that makes me happy.
What is The Healthy Compulsive Project?
For five years The Healthy Compulsive Project has been offering information, insight and inspiration for OCPD, obsessive-compulsive personality, perfectionism, micro-managers and Type A personality. Anyone who’s ever been known to overwork, overplan, overcontrol or overanalyze is welcome here, where the obsessive-compulsive personality is explored and harnessed to deliver what it was originally meant to deliver. Join psychotherapist, Jungian psychoanalyst and author Gary Trosclair as he delves into the pitfalls and potential of the driven personality with an informative, positive, and often playful approach to this sometimes-vexing character style.
Transcript
Why Compulsive People Get Depressed Part 1: The Missed Potential of Low Mood
Constance was meticulous in everything she did. She was famous, and at times infamous, for accuracy at her job, for her fastidiousness in her home, and for her painstaking protocol when running the PTA. Her friends and colleagues said that while she was really well-intentioned, her standards were just too high and she was way too controlling. “You need to let go” everyone told her. But she was determined to get everything just right. And when a big project didn’t go her way, she found herself falling into into a funk. She couldn’t care anymore. It felt like the drive that had throttled her through life so far was missing in action.
But since we’re all very enlightened and tend to think that depression is nothing more than a pathological state these days, it didn’t occur to her that perhaps the depression was telling her something, and that it was telling her that walking away from unrealistic expectations just might be a healthy reaction. Not only did she miss the message, she interpreted it in a way that made her more depressed. She thought there was something wrong with her.
This is the first in a short series about the reasons that compulsive people get depressed. People who meet the full criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and those who have just a few compulsive personality traits, are both especially susceptible to depression, and it’s important to untangle the depression from the personality. Otherwise they can each make the other worse. Being compulsive can make us depressed, and sometimes we try to cure or cover the depression by being more compulsive. Not a good idea.
Bringing awareness to the possible function of depression is particularly important for people who are compulsive because they often endure their suffering in the territory of “high-functioning depression”–hidden from all, but painful nevertheless.
These posts will offer a very different way to understand depression, and offer suggestions to help you break the cycle that can occur between compulsive personality and depression. However, I also want to make clear that if you’re suffering from a serious depression you should consult a mental health professional for help through psychotherapy, medication or both.
Contents
The Potential Purpose and Value of Depression
The Evolutionary Benefits of Depression
Jung: Depression is the Unconscious Trying To Balance Us
And Now–The Reality
What happened to chemical imbalances?
The Takeaway
The Potential Purpose and Value of Depression
Depression sometimes has a purpose. Especially if you’re compulsive or driven, it can be nature’s way of slowing you down when you’re racing too far and too fast in one direction. Correctly understood, it has potential value.
While there is much to support this idea of depression having purpose, in this post I’ll be drawing on two particular and very different sources to support it: psychologist and mood researcher Jonathan Rottenberg at the University of South Florida, and early twentieth century groundbreaking psychiatrist, Carl Jung.
Rottenberg has experienced major depression himself, and he’s published a book about the science of low mood: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. He shares reams of data to back up the idea that there have been evolutionary benefits for low mood. Rottenberg questions the way depression is usually understood. He asks: Why is it that we’ve invested such huge resources in treating depression, but so many people are still so depressed?
Jung didn’t have the data at his disposal that Rottenberg did, but he still somehow understood, 100 years before, that if we look for the potential purpose in “mental illness” we can contend with it in a more holistic and effective way.
Both urge us to stop pathologizing depression and start listening to what it’s trying to tell us. It’s not a defect, it’s a message.
The Evolutionary Benefits of Depression
Rottenberg’s basic argument is that low mood has had evolutionary benefits that have helped us to survive and develop, so it’s been pretty deeply engrained in us. Here are a few of the benefits:
It discourages destructive conflict and sensitizes us to social risk. This was really important in the conditions in which we evolved: bands of 75 people struggling for survival. The better you get along, the more likely you are to survive because you can cooperate in collecting food, and in warding off intruders, those nasty, rule-breaking goons who hadn’t bothered filling out the paperwork to join the United Nations.
It discourages wasteful effort. When you hit a wall, when persistence becomes a liability, depression forces you to stop digging. It reduces the energy that would otherwise be wasted on futile goal pursuits such as trying to get everyone else to be as scrupulous and fastidious as you are.
It slows us down so that we can actually concentrate more, and make better decisions about what’s realistic. This can prevent calamities such as racing headlong into projects by yourself with the absolute certainty that you have to take it on alone because no-one else will do it the right way.
People who are driven can become possessed by an idea and become rigid and inflexible in their drive to do what they feel is the right thing. It shows up in road rage, unwieldy kitchen commands, and passive-aggressive punishment aimed at those who don’t comply. It can cause unproductive interpersonal conflict, waste energy, and lead to bad decisions. Depression can lessen that tendency and can help us to slow down and question the strategies we’ve been so cocksure about.
To anthropomorphize in a very unscientific way, depression says, if you don’t let go willingly, I will force you to let go grudgingly.
Jung: Depression is the Unconscious Trying To Balance Us
Carl Jung believed that the human psyche is a self-balancing, homeostatic system. Or at least it can be if we aren’t so headstrong that we ignore the wisdom of the unconscious. So, if we get too rigid, a low mood brought on by the unconscious can force us to re-evaluate how we’re living. He believed that depression is nature’s way of taking energy away from the conscious ego, and putting it in the unconscious so that we have to pay attention to what’s happening inside.
If our attitude toward mood–and its source, the unconscious–is one of curiosity and respect, we are better situated to learn from it.
This is actually quite close to Rottenberg’s idea: depression forces us to reflect and keeps us from crashing headlong into folly.
And Now–The Reality
But is this what depression is like for you? It makes many of us irritable, waste more time, and isolate. And better concentration? Yeah, right.
Both Rottenberg and Jung would acknowledge this. The purpose of low mood can go awry, for many reasons, including stress, anxiety and lack of sleep. If any of these are present, the natural course of a meaningful low mood can go wrong. This kind of blockage could account for what Rottenberg calls deep depression, the disabling kind, as opposed to shallow depression, which can be more productive.
Rottenberg also points out that our overly ambitious culture has lead us to an epidemic of depression. Advertising, status, materialism and the idea that we can do or have anything we want, have led us to crave things we can’t do or have. It sets up entirely unrealistic expectations which compulsives are all-too-willing to buy into–and which inevitably make us depressed because those expectations are impossible to satisfy.
Here’s a fun fact that demonstrates the point: A 2005 study found that 31% of teenagers plan to be famous when they grow up. And that was before Instagram! I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s room for 31% of the population to be famous. No wonder so many young adults get depressed in their twenties–an attempt at balance goes awry because there is no understanding of the possible function of depression.
Depression visits to try to convince us to slow down and mediate expectations. But we don’t listen anymore.
Whether this sort of suggestion on the part of the depression is effective or not isn’t the point.
Depression is not like some sweet guardian angel taking care of us. Every evolutionary adaptation has its downsides. It’s an archaic, unconscious, clumsy and sometimes brutal tendency with little differentiation or subtlety. But just because it’s outdated doesn’t make it go away.
Further, depression might have been more effective in a tribe of 75 than it is in a country of 300 million. We no longer have the community support that it might have originally engendered.
We can’t be naïve about this. But an awareness of its original purpose can still help us to deal with it more effectively.
What happened to chemical imbalances?
What happened to all that brain science about serotonin, chemical imbalances and good stuff like that? Yes, some depression (for instance the kind that comes with bi-polar disorder and major depressive disorder) does seem to have a significant biological component, and medications are most effective in those cases.
But in less intense depression, the cause is more often how we think, behave, and invest our energy. Consider that in one study placebos were found to be 82% as effective as an anti-depressant, and that antidepressants are less effective in shallow depression.
Even in cases where there is a significant biological component, a less pathologizing approach to depression can help to ease it.
The Takeaway
With awareness of the original purpose of low mood, we’re better equipped to understand its potential function and work our way back into a better mood. We can see where we need to slow down or moderate our drive. Our attitude toward the depression itself can determine how bad it becomes. If we are listening to what it has to tell us, its course will be far better than if we get more depressed about being depressed.
But this is easier said than done. In my next post I’ll explore more reasons that people who are compulsive get depressed, and what to do about it.
Compulsive Personality & Depression Part 2: Negativity Bias–Constantly Scanning for What’s Wrong
February 23, 2019 Posted by Gary Trosclair
Leonard had an eye for what was wrong. His negativity bias was stronger than even he would have liked. He’d spot anything that was “off” in the present and anticipate anything that could possibly go wrong in the future. This wasn’t just occasional catastrophic thinking, but a habit of perception that colored everything he saw.
When he walked into the apartment he’d notice immediately that his girlfriend hadn’t washed her coffee cup, and miss completely the flowers she’d bought for him. He ruminated on the many possible disasters that could ruin their upcoming trip, and not a bit about what could go right. His conversation was dominated by what other people were doing wrong, and what he might get wrong if he wasn’t overly-conscientious.
Worse, he couldn’t be happy until it was all fixed. And since that was impossible, he eventually got depressed.
This is the 2nd in a short series of posts about compulsive personality and depression, more specifically why people who are compulsive are particularly susceptible to depression. (You can find Part 1 here.) The perfectionism and conscientiousness so characteristic of the compulsive personality can lead to a satisfying life if managed well. But far too often they lead us to focus on what’s wrong. And that makes us very unhappy–if not completely depressed.
Before I jump in, I need to say that if you are depressed, please seek help from a licensed mental health professional. This blog cannot substitute for the specific care that a therapist can offer.
Contents
The Roots of Negative Perception
Part I: Low Mood Can Compensate for Unrealistic Expectations
Scanning for Trouble
How Evolution Shows Up In Your Home
The Compulsive Negativity Bias
Nature’s Deceptions: Scan, Fix, Repeat, Get Depressed
Additional Short-term Payoffs for Negative Thinking
Can I do anything about it?
How to Achieve Change
“The Practice of And”
Leonard Trains His Elephant
The Roots of Negative Perception
If we get lost in depression and want to find our way out, it helps to understand how we got here, our past. By our past I don’t just mean abandonments, neglect, trauma, loss, or whether my sister tortured me when I was a kid. (She didn’t, by the way).
I mean that we also need to take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution before that that brought us to where we are today. This past has shaped the genes that determine our personality at least as much as what we encounter after birth.
You come with a long history, like it or not. As Carl Jung said, you have a two million year old human being inside of you. And, I would add, he’s a really grumpy old guy.
It’s easy to be mislead by a simplistic emphasis on what’s happened to us in the 20 to 60 years we’ve been alive. While our environment, that is, our family and our culture, certainly shapes the genes we’re born with, focusing exclusively on environment may leave us feeling as though we are victims of our circumstances, rather than empowering us to discover and develop who we are naturally, and what we can do to make ourselves happier. More on that in a moment.
Part I: Low Mood Can Compensate for Unrealistic Expectations
In my last post I wrote about how low mood has been adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. By reducing our energy when we run into a wall, low mood has helped us to let go of rigid positions and walk away from unrealistic expectations. Understood this way, we may be able to see a purpose in low mood rather than go full hog into depression.
Since compulsive people tend to set expectations too high, they often experience compensatory low mood when they themselves, or the world, don’t meet those expectations. But because we think of ourselves as enlightened, reasonable and “modern,” it never occurs to us that our psyche might be trying to tell us something.
Scanning for Trouble
In this post I’ll focus on another way that evolution has shaped us: the compulsive tendency to focus on what’s wrong, and to focus on that so much that it prevents better moods.
Nature has programmed us to scan for things such as:
physical dangers
social status (our own, those close to us, and those we feel competitive with)
reliability
depleted resources
We were more likely to survive and pass on our genes if we focused on these potentially dangerous situations. But for some of us, this focus has remained dominant, even though it doesn’t make us happy–and may not even increase our chances of surviving. You might think of these as leftovers, best thrown out before they stink up the fridge. But that’s not quite accurate, and I think a better metaphor is that of a wise, but rather old, mentor, whose advice needs to be filtered for contemporary relevance. They’re not always wrong.
How Evolution Shows Up In Your Home
Here’s what concentrating on what’s wrong can look like. You focus on:
• The kitchen not being spotless because it could mean that there are dangerous germs lurking in there somewhere.
• Your husband has questionable social skills so your status is low.
• Your wife seems to care more about her friends than you so she’s not reliable.
• Your checking account has less than you’d like so you’re in danger of depleting your resources.
Beneath all this is an “instinct” to make things “safer” so that we’re more likely to survive. Taken too far, we lose the original point for ever having a kitchen, a partner or a bank account. They don’t have to be perfect to be in our best interest.
The Compulsive Negativity Bias
There is no single gene that causes this attention to what’s wrong. It more like a module in the brain, a network of neurons caused by an assortment of genes, which predisposes us to focus on what seem like imminent “dangers.”
To simplify greatly, this module causes the negativity bias, which is “the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.” We’ve developed so that avoiding bad situations motivates us more than taking advantage of good ones.
You won’t survive a fire if you don’t run away from it, but you will survive if you don’t notice that single blueberry in the bush. Notice how you feel in reaction to each of these photos:
Does one grab your attention more than the other?
It doesn’t matter if this negativity bias module makes us happy or not. It makes our genes more likely to get passed on if we’re always focused on what needs fixing.
But, you might say, lots of people could care less when things aren’t right. For sure. They were absent the day those genes were handed out. Not everyone is like this.
And other people seem to have gotten more than their fair share of these genes.
We call these people obsessive-compulsive.
One study found that people with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder had more accurate visual acuity than those that didn’t. They see details that others never notice. But this blessing can become a curse if you can’t close your eyes or focus on something other than problems.
Of course if your early environment was unstable, it would have exaggerated these tendencies to look for what could go wrong. Pre-empting problems was a reasonable strategy if your family offered no security and you had to fend for yourself.
Nature’s Deceptions: Scan, Fix, Repeat, Get Depressed
You’d think that nature would give us a payoff for noting what’s wrong and fixing it, but it’s stingy. You get a brief pay-off, but it won’t last long.
These modules often fool us. They cause a delusion that leads us to do things that will improve our chances for survival, imagining we’ll feel good. But we often end up feeling very dissatisfied soon afterward.
We start out thinking, “This is gonna be great!” But the pay-offs for the seeing problems and remedying them don’t last long, and you’re scanning for the next thing to fix to get another little hit of endorphins.
Scan, fix, repeat. If you’re lucky. More likely you’ll scan, feel frustrated, repeat.
It’s part of the life strategy of compulsives to try to take control and fix things in an effort to avoid uncomfortable emotional states.
But this gets depressing after a while.
We’re lured into trying to fix, but soon after, we experience dissatisfaction. If we were completely satisfied by fixing problems we’d just sit on our tush and live happily ever after once we indulge this tendency. But then we wouldn’t pass on our genes.
This is especially depressing for compulsives because we’re under a second delusion: we imagine we can and should control it all, as if it’s our responsibility to. And of course we can’t and it isn’t.
All of this applies to how we see ourselves as well. We focus on our less attractive aspects, which might seem like it would help our performance, but in the long run does not. And it magnifies the depression.
Additional Short-term Payoffs for Negative Thinking
Evolutionary and environmental causes are bad enough. But their are still additional possible sources for a stubborn case of negativity bias, including our own insecurity about ourselves.
If I get some gratification out of proving to myself that the world is morally decrepit, hopelessly stupid, and remarkably ugly, I might feel motivated to pile it on. If my negative insight proves to me that I at least know better, and so I’m no worse than everyone else, I will revel in cynicism. We reach for reassurance of superiority. We reap depression.
Can I do anything about it?
Here are the three factors that determine how happy or depressed we are:
Genes–nature
Environment, family circumstances, social setting–nurture
Intention
Our conscious intentions, our choices about how we think and what we do, also determine which end of the happiness spectrum we live on.
Research psychologist Sonia Lyubomirsky has concluded from her research that while we have a set-point of happiness determined by our genes, this accounts for only about 50% of our mood. Circumstances determine only 10%.
Intentional activity, what we do and how we think, accounts for the remaining 40% of our happiness.
How to Achieve Change
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses a metaphor to help us understand how we change. He suggests we think of ourselves as composed of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is this older, genetically determined and socially programmed part of us. The rider is the part that with intention, persistence and determination can slowly train the elephant to go in a different direction.
While therapy is the first line of defense, there’s no reason you can’t, in addition, design your own program, complete with lists and goals, focusing the determination that comes with the compulsive personality, to retrain your perspective so that your elephant isn’t always lumbering off to the land of depression with you helplessly on top.
“The Practice of And”
Since we’re up against hundreds of thousands of years of programming, we need to make conscious efforts to counteract the negativity bias.
I’ve taken up a tool that I call “The Practice of And.” I try, every time a negative thought or feeling comes up, to acknowledge it, and note that there are also good things. I visualize two canisters, one held in each hand–one containing the bad, the second containing the specific good that I choose to focus on.
Yes, the car needs an expensive repair, and the weather is beautiful.
Yes, a client is going through some disturbing issues, and I can breathe deeply.
Yes, someone put up a negative review of one of my books on Amazon, and all the other reviews are good.
I have found this helpful. But don’t take my word for it. Consider these words of wisdom from someone who has experienced profound suffering and still refuses to be dominated by it. Vietnamese Zen meditation teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn witnessed the killing of hundreds of his countrymen in the Vietnamese war, yet he encourages us to see the beauty in the simple acts of life:
“Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, such as the blue sky, the sunshine, and the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, anytime.”
Leonard Trains His Elephant
Here’s how Leonard became less focused on what’s wrong:
• He identified as often as he could when he was scanning for what was wrong.
· Name and tame. He called it his hyper-vision.
• He tried not to judge himself for his negativity bias.
· It was a part of him that just needed to be reigned in.
· He let himself feel the emotions–fear and anger–which he tried to avoid by judging and fixing.
• He tried to remember the original purpose of his hyper-vision and use it only where appropriate.
· It was very helpful for work itself, but terrible when applied to his co-workers.
• He also explored it’s secondary purpose, the fringe benefits of thinking he knew better than everyone else.
⋅ It was a bittersweet victory that he decided he no longer needed and could no longer afford.
• He practiced the most important skill that a compulsive can develop: letting go.
· It felt extremely strange, but he had to let go of his sense of ethical duty to make sure that everything was done properly.
• He put two more meaningful goals in its place:
· An intention to value peace of mind over fixing everything, and
· An intention to value everything he already had.
Compulsive Personality & Depression Part 3: The Compulsive Hedonic Treadmill
March 18, 2019
Forty-eight hours ago, after a weekend of frantic formatting, I sent my editor the first draft of a book I’ve been working on for almost four years (more on that later). Has finishing it made me happier? Or has this been just one more of those carrots tantalizingly dangled in front of us as we pursue them on a compulsive hedonic treadmill of achievement followed quickly by depression?
This is the third in a short series of posts on depression and the compulsive personality. People who are driven or compulsive function in a number of ways that make us especially vulnerable to depression.
Compulsives may live on their own particular version of the Hedonic Treadmill. We imagine we’ll be happier by completing, perfecting, producing and fixing, and we’ll run like the devil to get to that make-believe paradise of bliss. But even when we do succeed in reaching any of these goals, the warm light of happiness does not shine on us eternally. In fact, we tend to plunge into darkness soon after.
Many people become depressed when they feel that despite achievements they have not been able to find sustainable happiness.
And, at least as importantly, crossing tasks off a list to ward off depression can prevent us from dealing with deeper issues that need our attention, issues such as coming to terms with loss and limitation. Like running from a ghost, just because depression doesn’t hold you fully in its grips doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you.
Contents
The Hedonic Treadmill
Been There Done That
Two Types of Happiness
The Compulsive Version of the Hedonic Treadmill
Evolution’s Short-lived Reward for Getting Stuff Done
Achieving to Avoid Depression
Addiction to achievement
Stepping Off the Treadmill By Savoring Process
The Hedonic Treadmill
The phrase Hedonic Treadmill refers to the tendency we all have to revert to a set level of happiness or unhappiness after experiencing events that we expected to make us happier. The term “hedonic” refers to sensations that are pleasurable. You’re already painfully aware of what the treadmill refers to–boring repetition. Thus certain forms of pleasure become boring and unpleasant when you’re on the Hedonic Treadmill.
Our overall mood doesn’t change much over time because we tend to return to pretty much the same level of happiness a few months after even major positive or negative events or life changes–unless we bring conscious intention to our own personal treadmill, which we’ll get to later.
In a classic study researcher Philip Brickman and his colleagues found that people who won the lottery were not any happier three months after winning than they were before, and people who became paraplegic were about as happy after losing their abilities as they had been before.
Been There Done That
Brickman believed that we adapt to our circumstances. When we experience something really great or horrifically bad, things that feel merely pretty good or merely sort of bad hardly register after that. So, after you’ve won a million dollars, finding a $20 on the street doesn’t do much for you, whereas before it might have made your day.
The human psyche responds more to change than to static circumstances. What seems great at first feels about as exciting as flossing after a while. So, according to this line of thinking, trying to become happier is doomed to failure. You’re right back on that boring treadmill again.
It turns out that while there is some truth to this, it’s not as simple, dire or unalterable as things looked at first. According to research published in The American Psychologist, set points determining mood can change under some conditions.
Two Types of Happiness
Richard Davidson, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has conducted research which indicates that there are two sorts of happiness: a short-lived form of happiness that we experience upon completing a goal (like the deep satisfaction that compulsives experience when crossing things off a list), and a longer-lasting happiness that we can experience as we move toward a goal. These two sorts of happiness involve different parts of the brain, different hormones, and different rates of customer satisfaction.
The Compulsive Version of the Hedonic Treadmill
Compulsives imagine that the first sort of happiness, the kind we experience in completing tasks, getting things organized, fixing problems and perfecting things, will make us feel happier. We may focus so intently on completion that we miss the possibility of the second sort of happiness, the more lasting kind that we get from being engaged in a project and savoring the challenge.
Unhealthy compulsives tend to rush from one goal to the other and never experience lasting happiness. Healthy compulsive enjoy the drive.
Ironically, the process of engaging in any of these activities can make us happier; but the completion of them only makes us happy for a short time.
Compulsives are in the gifted and talented class when it comes to delaying gratification. We tend to think that once we get something done, we’ll feel better, so we tolerate stress and endure pain to get there. (You can find more about this in a post I did about Gratification, on April 30, 2023 in which I describe four different types of gratification and our need for each of them. So far it’s just in the blog but I’ll eventually record it and put it up on the podcast.)
Certainly there are times when we do need to grit our teeth and power through with determination, knowing that it needs to be done and that we’ll grow through it.
But to constantly prioritize the completion of goals keeps us on the compulsive Hedonic Treadmill. And that can bring on depression, or keep us from dealing with an underlying depression.
So, at the risk of repeating what you’ve probably heard already, but have completely ignored because you thought it was soft, trite and sentimental: if you can enjoy your projects as you work on them, you’re more likely to be happy than if you keep trying to get them over with.
Evolution’s Short-lived Reward for Getting Stuff Done
As I wrote in my previous post on depression, we’re programmed to feel pleasure for things that made us more likely to pass on our genes in the environment that we evolved in. Sex is usually good for that. And sugar used to be good for that too because it gave us energy and wasn’t so ubiquitously available. So we still find them pleasurable, whether they’re still really helpful or not.
There are some variations among us, depending on what genes we’ve gotten, but people who are driven usually find pleasure in organizing, planning, correcting, perfecting, and fixing. These have helped us to survive and adapt. We get a subtle hit of pleasurable hormones in the left side of the brain as we’re doing it. This is a sustainable pleasure.
But then, once we check off the box or cross tasks off our list, we experience a brief period of pleasure originating on the right side of the brain caused by a release of different hormones. It can’t last for long, otherwise we wouldn’t get anything else done.
But since it doesn’t last for long, you scan your world for what else needs to be organized, planned, corrected, perfected or fixed. Otherwise you might feel that depression you’ve been trying to avoid.
Achieving to Avoid Depression
Writers, for instance, typically experience some relief at completing an article or book, but depression often comes quickly after. So we start another piece to stave off depression.
Any of you who have read William Styron’s Darkness Visible may remember how depressed he became after finishing a book.
Despite this inevitable let down, if we need to have evidence of our worth, we may come to rely on completion rather than process, and we slide from the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum to the unhealthy end of the spectrum. In doing so we exchange intrinsic motivation for extrinsic motivation; we work because we think it looks good on us, rather than feeling good inside. Depression ensues.
Even so, this can still be addictive.
Addiction to achievement
Some people deal with insecurity by consuming luxury items to prove to others that they have status, thinking that will make them happy. But it doesn’t.
Compulsives try to deal with insecurity and prove their status by achieving perfection or achievement rather than collecting material goods. But it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of insecurity.
Rather than developing a sense of basic self-acceptance, we seek more achievement and an addictive cycle of short-lived relief ensues. As with addiction, we need more and more achievement to simply avoid the painful feelings of withdrawal and depression.
Stepping Off the Treadmill By Savoring Process
To step off the Hedonic Treadmill we need to become aware of what we usually think will make us happy and question it.
If you’re driven, compulsive or type A you probably won’t be able to stop fixing and planning and producing completely, but you can choose whether you invest consciously in savoring them or just getting them over with.
While the satisfaction of major achievements may not take us off the Hedonic Treadmill, the consistent practice of incremental change does seem to help us get off of it and feel a more enduring, albeit measured, happiness. And, it prevents depression.
So, right now:
Try to notice if you lean forward in your body toward some more completed future.
Try to notice what the motivation underneath that urge is.
Substitute appreciation of the present moment and its challenge for future completion. What can you savor about the projects that you’re engaged in now?
Turning in that book draft to my editor did make me happy–for a little while. But the more sustainable happiness comes with the writing itself. So here I am putting words together again, trying to be with it rather than trying to get it finished. And that makes me happy.
