What we get wrong about depression advice

A go-to slogan can actually make things worse for the sufferer

(TL;DR: Depression is not always relieved by thinking differently; often, it is eased by reconnecting with our senses and the present moment rather than endlessly evaluating our thoughts.)

Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art included big brushstrokes, bold colors, the juxtaposition of text and image, and heavy layering of anatomical diagrams, symbols, and everyday objects. It is wildly interesting, and many people love it. He would also add graffiti. One of the things he became known for was crossing out some of the words of graffiti.

Why go to the trouble of including graffiti that you’re going to cross out?

Basquiat once suggested that crossing something out actually draws more attention to it. And he was right. If it were merely the word itself, you might pass over it. But once someone has gone to the trouble of crossing it out, the eye is drawn. The tension around the word makes us double our interest in the message.

Our thoughts are only part of the problem

What we get wrong about depression, either for ourselves or in our advice to those suffering, is to say that the depressed simply need to deal with their negative thoughts. We even have a slogan, “you gotta get rid of stinkin’ thinkin’”. Unfortunately, the truth isn’t that simple, and following that advice can make a sufferer more prone to depression relapse.

I want to acknowledge that there is truth to looking at our thoughts. For the depressed, if not for everyone on earth, our thinking is in fact a percentage of the problem. However, brain scans have shown that the same skill of looking into our thoughts can feed a depressed person’s cycle of suffering. The routine and weighted examination of thoughts can actually send a person deeper into depression.

When we, the depressed, fixate on evaluating our thoughts, it can essentially become the same thing as rumination, an activity that, according to science, puts a person at risk for depression relapse.

It’s like Basquiat’s crossed-out words: focusing on and eradicating a thought (stinking or otherwise) actually spins our attention into hyperfocus and fixation, and we become further doomed to cycles of rumination. We’re no better if we’re ruminating with negative thoughts, or if we’re ruminating on whether our thoughts are negative, and how to rid ourselves of them.

If we add guilt, shame, theological weight, and self-identification around failure to the process, we’ve ironically dug a hole while trying to get out of a hole.

So, while many a well-intentioned advice-giver has dunked on the struggle of depression by offering a tidy bit of advice that offers some comfort (more to the speaker than the sufferer), I’m afraid the advice they give is a cartoonishly simplified message that can further hurt broken people.

Expansive, curious, and in the moment

Professor of Psychology Dr. Norman Farb says one better answer isn’t to abandon thinking but to sidestep the endless evaluation with something called ‘sense foraging’. On a recent podcast with Dan Harris, Farb said:

…the problem comes when we are cut off from our body, from our senses…The problem isn’t having sad or depressive thoughts. It’s that there’s no release valve when we’re completely disconnected from our senses.

The act of taking a pause and feeling or noticing something you had previously been unaware of is a way to break from ruminating. In Farb’s brain research, it is key to avoiding the likelihood of depression relapse. It’s opening wide what he calls the ‘sense doors’ and taking in previously unnoticed colors, a smell, the shape of a distant wisp of cloud. Whatever is readily available to anyone.

When repeated throughout a day, the carry-on effect is freedom from the endless self-evaluation that can be the locked door behind which depression grows.

It seems too easy

If all this seems too easy, I would say that’s the subtle brilliance of it. If, like me, you are given to rumination, hyperfixation, and maximizing effort, simply noticing fresh, available sensation is a game-changer. It’s not distracting ourselves; it’s activating a new, unexpected neural pathway. The world begins to look hopeful again in slow incremental departures from our endless evaluation.

We could talk about mindfulness meditation, breathwork, or a year in the Himalayas, chanting with Tibetan monks. But the truth is, even if we’re interested or have the resources, we might not commit to any of it. Many people who need significant change rarely follow through. Sense foraging is close at hand; everything is there for us to notice more thoroughly than we have so far.

Just think of how glorious a walk is if we’re not on a call or listening to a podcast, but noticing something new. If nature ever bores us, look a bit closer for a bit longer. All we need to do is direct our attention, and we step away from what Farb calls the “conceptual evaluative self.”

To sum it up

On the same podcast, Dan Harris repackaged the idea in a few simple lines, and I think he did a good job.

Let me see if I can only just be the dummy here and see if I can restate it in ways that might approximate accuracy. I think what you’re saying is that the problem comes when we are cut off from our body, from our senses… The problem isn’t having sad or depressive thoughts. It’s that there’s no release valve when we’re completely disconnected from our senses.

Connecting to our senses in faith

The routine of sense-foraging practice can be brought into our devotional life. One thing we see in the Psalms is that they often move away from endlessly analyzing thoughts, feelings, and the writer returns to the concrete. Things visible in his life with lots of sensory data to forage:

• A deer

• A shepherd

• A tree by water

• Mountains

• Birds

• Streams

• Thunder

• Tears

• Bread

• Sleep

• Sunrise

The Psalms are remarkably oriented towards contemplative and embodied spirituality. The psalmist repeatedly “forages” through creation and bodily experience to discover what is happening, what’s here to be noticed.

I get the sense that David watched, touched, smelled, and generally inhabited the present in a way that allowed him to navigate his hardships. His valley of the shadow of death was not a death sentence, but a place he and his senses were passing through. Take a page from him and begin to forage for what’s here.

Be well, friends.