Get It Done When You're Depressed (14 page)

In reality, depression makes you think many, many things that aren’t true—often they’re not even
partially
true. If you listen to these thoughts, they can take over your day and sometimes your life and make it difficult to do what you need to do. And sometimes the thoughts are such outrageous lies that you might cause considerable problems when you make choices based on those wrong thoughts.

It might seem odd to think your brain is lying to you, but facts are facts. If your brain says you’ve never gotten anything done and it’s obvious you’ve done many things throughout your life, then the thought is obviously a lie. You can’t always depend on your brain to work properly and lead you to thoughts that are real when you’re depressed. The thoughts can be very, very wrong, and if you act on them, you can easily sabotage the work you’re currently doing as well as future projects.

When these thoughts start, ask yourself,
Are these really my thoughts? If I ignore what my brain is saying and actually examine my thoughts to find the reality of the situation, can I get the project done?
And then think of how the well you would talk to the depressed you, and you’re on your way to counteracting the lies.

Has your brain told you any of these lies?

I have a hard time distinguishing the real me from the depressed me. I often wonder how it’s possible that depression mimics my voice, my thoughts, and my actions, but totally distorts and twists them into something that’s not me.

It’s like being in a the scene from the movie
Enter the Dragon
where Bruce Lee is in a room of broken mirrors. No matter where he looks, he sees an image of what looks real, but in reality, there’s only one true image. He can’t tell where the bad guy is. He’s guessing and has his hands out in front of him in a kung fu stance, and he just can’t tell what to do!

That’s what it’s like for me. All these images look the same, but only one is the real me. I get lost in the whole thing. Do I really hate myself that much? I think it would be a bit easier to hear someone saying these things about me out loud because I could at least be more objective. I could say, “That’s not true. This person just doesn’t like me.”

It took me a long time to learn how to deal with the lies my brain bombarded me with. I did learn, though. When I have a totally mean thought about myself now, such as
You’re the worst worker in the office and people only keep you around because they have to,
I really examine where the thought’s coming from. I used to think it was lack of self-esteem, but it’s not! I truly don’t think this way when I’m well. I believe in my work. So I now know what a brain lie sounds like and I talk back.
This is not true,
I tell myself.
The real me doesn’t feel this. I don’t have to listen to this. It’s a lie.
It’s all about awareness.

I listened to the thoughts manufactured by my brain from age 14 to 35 and thought they were real. Even when the evidence pointed to the opposite, I believed what I heard in my head simply because it was my own head! No one else was talking in there. Or so I thought.

When I started to treat my depression, I noticed that these thoughts had a pattern. When I was faced with a job that felt too big, my brain told me it was too big and then listed all the reasons I would never get it finished. I would get excited when I had an idea for something and then it would just fizzle out, and I would move on to something new. I’ve always wanted to write self-help books, but I never got past outlining the original idea. The thoughts were just too strong.

Many people might think I had low self-esteem and I just didn’t believe in myself. This might be the case for some people, but not for me. If that were true, then all the self-help books I read and therapists I saw for 20 years would have helped me get things done. Nothing really helped until I finally realized that my brain was wrong.

Some scientists think a major factor that causes and makes depression worse is a perceptual bias. When confronted with the facts, depressed people are very likely to notice the negative things in others, in themselves, and in the world in general.

This also applies to their views of the future. They don’t see the future in terms of possibilities but rather see a future clouded by negative bias. In the depressed person’s world, the future looks hopeless, and pessimism abounds. Negative conclusions such as
I can’t do anything right
or
No one will ever love me
are taken as fact, when in reality these might not be accurate conclusions at all. Strongly held negative beliefs often pervasively color every moment and are a major contributor to ongoing depressed moods.

If you’ve been depressed a long time, it’s possible you’ve been conditioned to listen to and believe the thoughts your depressed brain feeds you. You have to recondition yourself to notice the difference between the truthful things your well brain says and the lies your depressed brain tells you.

Here are some other thoughts to consider:

Remember:
Ben Franklin said, “Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self?” When you’re depressed, the real question is, “What has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy brain? ”

It’s much easier to get things done than worry about
not
getting things done. This might sound very simplistic, but the absolutely best way to get out of an
I-can’t-do-anything
mood is simply to do something. Thinking and stressing about all you’re not getting done takes a lot more energy than getting up and just doing the dishes, creating a presentation, or taking a walk.

Right now, make a deal with yourself that you’ll do what you need to do today so when the worrying and obsessing starts over what you’re not getting done, you’ll see it as a sign that depression is thinking for you and it’s time for the real you to take over.

The depressed brain will always tell you that it takes much longer to do something than it actually does. It’s always off base. It can also make you dread something you know you have to do on a regular basis, even the smallest things such as taking out the garbage. You think,
Oh no, I have to do it again. I hate this. I just can’t do this today.
You’re not only setting yourself up to avoid a project, but you’re also ensuring that the project will be difficult when you finally do get around to it.

The day you realize that it takes a lot less time to do something than to worry about it is the day you can increase your productivity 100 percent.

What do you consistently put off in your life?

Think of the worry factor and then the time it actually takes to do something. Which choice is more constructive?

Cleaning my house feels impossible when I’m depressed. Literally impossible. I don’t even want to walk into the kitchen. If someone asked me how long I thought it would take to clean my house I would have said six or seven hours. Talk about distortion! Instead of facing this six or seven hours (I now know this estimate is way off), I would get more upset as my house got messier and messier.
Look at me,
I would think,
I can’t even keep my house clean.
It was way too overwhelming.

Then one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I
forced
myself to walk into the kitchen and do one thing. It would feel exhausting, but I always felt better afterward. Then I would have to sit down for a bit before I could get up and do one more thing. I realized that I can easily clean my entire house in two hours.

It can take longer on the days when I’m depressed; actually, on those days I just do a little at a time. But at least the kitchen gets done. And it hardly takes any time at all. I always feel better when I wake up to a clean house.

I’ve been depressed off and on for weeks (nothing new for me), and it’s very easy for me to think about writing this book and how I’m behind and how it will be a mess and no one will like it and it won’t help anyone and it’s too hard …
Wait a minute!

Thinking this way takes a
lot
of energy with no reward. Sitting down and writing a paragraph takes little energy and actually has huge rewards—that paragraph.

People who are depressed are often plagued with self-doubt. They lack the confidence that they’ll be able to be effective in whatever tasks they take on, and they predict failure in all they do. Anticipation of failure or the belief that their efforts will be in vain can lead to procrastination. Procrastination then fuels the fires of low self-esteem, and it all becomes a vicious cycle. It makes sense that a depressed person puts off something they’ve estimated to take much more time than it really does. The fact that depression can also result in very low energy also adds to the problem.