Humans are able to think about themselves as if they were thinking about someone else. We have feelings and make judgements about ourselves; there can be things that we like or dislike; we have relationships with ourselves that can be healing or unhelpful and even abusive. If we are honest we can think or say things to ourselves, and feel emotions (anger and contempt) towards ourselves, that we wouldn’t dream of directing towards other people. We recognize that if we treated others like that it would be abusive. But we treat ourselves like that, especially if we fail in some way, make
mistakes, do things we regret, or just feel bad. At the times we need compassion, we actually give it to ourselves least. Because we believe that somehow being critical, harsh, disliking or even hating ourselves is deserved or can be good, we continue to do it. However, self-criticism, especially feelings of anger, frustration or self-contempt, is bad for your brain (see pages 28).1
This chapter encourages you to develop a more helpful and considerate response to yourself. Your sense of yourself is always with you, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. It makes sense to learn how to have a relationship that is friendly, supportive, healing and stimulates the positive emotion systems in our brain rather than the threat systems.
In depression, thoughts and feelings about oneself can become very negative. I say ‘can’ because this is not always the case. For example, I recall a woman who became depressed when the new people who moved in next door played loud music into the early hours. She tried to get the authorities to stop them, but although they were very sympathetic, they were not much help. Slowly she slipped into depression, feeling her whole life was being ruined and there was nothing she could do.
However, she did not think her depression was her fault or that she was in any way inadequate, worthless, weak or bad. Her depression was focused on a loss of control over a very difficult situation.
Sometimes depression can be triggered by conflicts and splits in families or other important relationships. The depressed person may feel defeated and trapped by these relationships, but not to blame for them. Sometimes depressed people feel bad about being depressed and the effect this is having on them and others around them, but they do not feel that they are bad or inadequate as people;
they blame the depression.
Nevertheless, many depressed people have a poor relationship with themselves. A poor
relationship with oneself can pre-date a depression or develop with it. This chapter will explore the typical styles of ‘self-thinking and feeling’ depressed people engage in, and consider how our
relationship with ourselves can be improved. All the styles discussed here can be seen as types of self-bullying. As you will see, we can bully ourselves in many different ways.1
Social comparison and self-blame
We live in a world that is very judgemental and treats us rather like objects.2 At school, being chosen to play on the football team, getting our first job and so on, we are surrounded by people who can do better than us, who we feel are more attractive, more capable, and so on. What is worse – in schools, through our media and in workplaces, we are constantly encouraged to compare ourselves with others – are we as good as them; as clever, attractive or slim; or as wanted? My research has looked at how people can feel under pressure to strive to keep up and avoid being judged as inferior. You will not be surprised to learn that the more people feel under pressure to avoid being seen as inferior
compared with others, the more vulnerable to stress, anxiety and depression they are.3
Social comparison can be helpful because it helps us copy each other – adopting the same values, wanting the same things and trying to improve ourselves. If we fail at an important task, such as an exam or the driving test, we can feel better if we find out that others have failed too. We might feel guilty at feeling pleased they failed too, but it’s only natural to feel better when you think you’re the same as others.
Depressed people can feel that others are more talented or lucky. As children they may have felt that parents favoured their siblings, or they may feel that their siblings had an easier time growing up.4 Sometimes depressed people have many unresolved problems about these early relationships.
They may feel that they have always lived in the shadow of a sibling – were less bright, less
attractive and so forth. Sometimes parents and teachers have compared them unfavourably with others –‘Why can’t you be like Sam or Jane’ – or maybe they had parents who were always comparing them with others. For example, when Jane came second in class, her father’s reaction was always
disappointment: ‘What’s the matter with coming first?’ His motto was, ‘Second is the first loser’.
Such children grow up in an atmosphere of constant striving to compete with others to win parental approval; they never feel good enough. If you look back at pages 28–9 you can see how this can stimulate the drive system by trying to be ‘better and better or have more and more’ and never being satisfied or content. That is not your fault, but it is something you might wish to work on, to learn how to be more content and understand the roots of your striving and social comparison. Maybe it is
searching for love and acceptance that underlies your striving?
Jim went to university and did well, but his brother Tom was a more practical person and not cut out for the academic life. However, instead of being happy with himself, Tom constantly compared himself with Jim and felt a failure. He would say, ‘Why couldn’t I have been the bright one?’
Babs’ mother was often ill, and as the older daughter she took on responsibility for caring for her.
However, she didn’t feel appreciated for the role and grew up feeling secretly resentful, but always putting other people first and presenting herself as a nice person. Her anger at the situation, added to thoughts of how ‘compared with her’, her siblings had an easier life, fuelled her depression.
Even though social comparison can give us lots of problems, it’s interesting that sometimes we don’t compare ourselves with Mr or Ms Average or people who are similar to ourselves. Jane, a mother of two who devoted herself to looking after her children, had a number of friends who went out to work even though they had children too. Jane thought, ‘I’m not as competent as them because I don’t go out to work, and I have to struggle just to keep the home going’. When I asked her if she had other friends with children who did not have outside employment, she agreed that most of her friends didn’t. However, it was not them she compared herself with, but the few who did have jobs. Part of the reason for selecting people like this is that we slightly envy them; we want to be like them.
Sometimes when we compare ourselves unfavourably with others, we also think that other people
will have the same judgement of us. Other people will see us as inferior or bad in some way – that we are not as good as other people (recall ‘Mind reading’ on page 207). This can be quite a major problem if we have to open our hearts and share our difficulties.
A young mother’s comparison
Diane felt really depressed after the birth of her child. She found it difficult to feel ‘affection’ for her new baby. She thought that her reaction was different from that of all her friends and therefore there was something wrong with her to feel this way. She was angry and frightened about her depressed feelings and envied what she saw as her friends being happy mothers. As a result, she never told anyone but suffered in silence, feeling different from them and cut off. Had she opened up to others (rather than feeling shamed by her comparisons) she would have found that these are sadly not
uncommon experiences, and are no fault of her own – hormonal readjustment can be really unpleasant and play havoc with our minds.
One of the big benefits in working in group therapy is the degree to which people are prepared to share their problems. Often when one person is brave enough to own up to certain types of negative feelings or experiences, other people feel able to share. Indeed, sharing is much easier when we no longer compare ourselves unfavourably with others but realize we are all in this same boat of living in a world of suffering and hardship.
Even those with status can feel inferior
Social comparison is one reason why people who seem to have quite prestigious positions in society can become depressed. I worked with a doctor who had done well during his training yet, when he qualified, found the work stressful. He thought that he was doing much worse than his colleagues.
Compared with them, he did not feel confident or on a par. As a caring GP he took more time with his patients and then struggled to keep up – but then blamed himself.
Balancing social comparison
Although it can be very difficult to avoid making social comparisons, here are some ideas to think through to help you think about how social comparison works within you.
When you compare yourself with others, choose a target who is most like you. In other words, avoid comparing yourself with those who are clearly a lot better in certain ways. If a comparison turns out badly, consider the reasons and evidence why this comparison may not be an appropriate one for you. We have different genes, backgrounds, talents and abilities – it is not a level playing field.
Think about the reasons for your comparison. Although comparing ourselves with others is very natural, recognize that it can be harmful and keep in mind why you want to do it – what’s the point of it for you? If it has value, such as giving you something you can try to copy, or it inspires you, that’s fine, but if it depresses you – not fine.
If you do compare and feel down, avoid attacking yourself. Try to remember that there are always people who are better at doing certain things or have more, but it does not make you a failure or inadequate because you can’t do these things or don’t have as much.
Think of your life as your own unique journey, with its own unique ups and downs and
challenges. Although you might want to live the life of someone else, this is not possible. Focus on you as yourself rather than you as compared with others.
If you are depressed, avoid labelling yourself as inadequate because you think others don’t get depressed. Sadly, many people do get depressed and anxious.
Spend some time refocusing and thinking about how social comparison can be hurtful for so many of us. It is understandable, but think of ways of dealing with it that are kind to yourself.
Self-blame can come from fear
Self-blame and criticism are strongly linked to depression. When people blame and
self-condemn, there is often a sense of the fear (e.g., of being rejected for mistakes or for not being good enough) and loss. Sometimes we learn to self-blame because we are frightened. Consider this on a world scale. Over thousands of years humans have been very frightened about what life can throw at them. Their children can die of numerous diseases, there can be famines and droughts and all kinds of unpleasant things. In societies throughout the world humans often imagine and then appeal to various gods who might be able to control bad things. Then they have to get them on side and they usually do this by sacrificing, appeasing or promising obedience to the chosen god. Problems arise if this does not work. The following year the diseases still come and so do the droughts, famines and other bad things. People rarely give up on their god as a poor bet; more commonly they blame themselves. They feel they must have done something wrong, or not done things sufficiently right, and have caused
offence or displeasure to the god. Self-monitoring one’s behavior, to check if it is acceptable – and then self-blaming if one thinks it is not – are common if we grow in fear of others. Sometimes in these societies if the gods do not help out there is a blaming of other people, ‘Maybe it was those people who broke the traditions and caused the gods to abandon us’ – and so starts a round of persecution born out of fear.
When we believe that powerful others and people can help, love or hurt us – and when we’re children it is parents and teachers who can indeed do those things – it is natural for us to monitor ourselves, trying not to make them angry with us or to withdraw support and affection. Because we are monitoring ourselves, if things go wrong, we blame ourselves. If parents are in a bad mood, we might wonder what we have done to upset them. Thus a natural style of monitoring and self-blaming can become a style we carry through life. It is useful to remember that a style we learned out of fear – wanting to please and blaming ourselves, wanting to be loved or protected and not harmed – can become a style we use in all kinds of situations. We may never have learned to see the origins of our self-blaming style as being rooted in fear and wanting love.
If you tend to blame yourself, often worrying if you’ve upset people, not done well enough or have various faults – always try to think about what you are really frightened of. Next, write down the reasons why these might be linked to your fears (of rejection, or people becoming angry). You might not be fully conscious of them at first. Consider if these styles have been picked up in childhood. If so, with your compassionate self-focus, consider the possibility that you are blaming yourself not because you really are to blame, but because it feels safer to self-blame and to protect yourself – just like the people who blame themselves if their gods don’t come through for them. If it is about fear, safety and protection, then be honest about this, rather than thinking your self-blame reflects any truth about you!
Taking too much responsibility
Blaming occurs when we look for the reasons or causes of things – why did such and such a thing happen? When we are depressed, we often feel a great sense of responsibility for negative events and so blame ourselves. As noted above, the reasons for this are complex. Sometimes we self-blame because as children we were taught to. Whenever things went wrong in the family, we tended to get the blame. Even young children who are sexually abused can be told that they are to blame for it – which, of course, is absurd. Sadly, adults who are looking for someone to blame can simply pick on those least able to defend themselves.
Sylvia was a harsh self-blamer. Her mother had frequently blamed her for ‘making her life a constant misery’. Her mother was herself a depressed and angry person, but Sylvia accepted her mother’s explanations at face value – as children do. Not surprising, then, Sylvia took this style of thinking into adulthood and tended to blame herself whenever other people close to her had
difficulties. Yet when Sylvia looked at the evidence, she realized that her mother’s life was unhappy for a number of reasons, including a difficult marriage and money worries. As a child Sylvia could not see this wider perspective, but believed what her mother told her. Sylvia had to learn that her self-blame was a style she had picked up in childhood, and practise a more balanced approach.
Sometimes, of course, this is quite frightening because it raises a number of other issues about the kind of person she is and the anger she might now feel.
When people are depressed, their self-blaming can become extreme. When bad things happen or conflicts arise, they may see them as completely their fault. This is called personalization – the tendency to assume responsibility for things that are either not our fault or only partly so. However, most life events are a combination of various circumstances. When we are depressed, it is often
helpful to stand back and think of as many reasons as possible about why something happened the way it did. We can learn to consider alternative explanations rather than just blame ourselves.
The responsibility circle
Many of the things that happen to us are due to many reasons. Here is an example to help you think about this. Sheila’s husband had an affair, for which she blamed herself. Her thinking was: ‘If I had been more attentive, he would not have had an affair. If I had been more sexually alluring, he would not have had an affair. If I had been more interesting as a person and less focused on the children, he would not have had an affair.’ All her thoughts were focused on herself. However, she could have had alternative thoughts. For example, she could have thought: ‘He could have taken more responsibility for the children, then I wouldn’t have felt so overloaded. He could have spent more time at home. If he had been more attentive in his lovemaking, I might have felt more sexually inclined. Even if he felt attracted to another woman, he did not have to act on it. The other woman could have realized he was married and not encouraged him.’
One can then write down these various alternatives side by side and rate them in terms of
percentage of truth. Or one might draw a circle and for each reason allocate a slice of the circle. The size of each slice represents the percentage of truth. In Figure 13.1 you can see how this worked for Sheila. The two circles represent a depressed view and a more balanced view. Note how some
percentage of truth. Or one might draw a circle and for each reason allocate a slice of the circle. The size of each slice represents the percentage of truth. In Figure 13.1 you can see how this worked for Sheila. The two circles represent a depressed view and a more balanced view. Note how some