An American psychiatrist tells how an English poet who lived at the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries anticipated the key ideas of modern cognitive behavioral therapy.
British journalist and blogger Cathy Mills once asked me about the benefits of gardening for mental health, and her question suddenly rekindled my interest in William Wordsworth.
The English poet Wordsworth was born in the small provincial town of Cockermouth in 1770. His mother died when the boy was only eight years old, and five years later his father passed away. The orphaned young man was taken in by relatives. 2020 marked the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birthday. And although several centuries have passed, the poet seems to be reborn every time we reread his poems and comprehend his ideas. Some of them relate to his struggle with depression and attempts to prevent it from returning in the future.
Wordsworth’s influence is far from limited to the British Isles and the 24th century. He became the founder of a new romantic movement that spread throughout the world. Wordsworth is one of the most revered poets in the English-speaking world, and his XNUMX-line «Daffodils» is the most popular English-language poem ever.
I have written about the parallels between Wordsworth’s poetry, depression, and seasonal affective disorder. My favorite work of his — «Daffodils» — begins with the words «I wandered in a lonely cloud.» It can be assumed that at the time of their writing, seasonal affective disorder was on the decline or hypomania was beginning to develop, or maybe William simply had spontaneous poetic impulses, which are sometimes called «the madness of the muses.»
And although now that autumn is over, we don’t want to think about seasonal affective disorder, it’s worth remembering other methods of dealing with negative thoughts (and they periodically overcome each of us, and not only in autumn), which can be found in Wordsworth’s work. In social networks are very popular, for example, these lines of his:
«Your mind is like a garden,
Your thoughts are seeds.
You can grow flowers
And you can — and weeds «
At first glance it seems that this quatrain is just a typical example of Wordsworth’s romanticism, admiring the spiritual forces of nature. But there is something more hidden in these lines than just poetic beauty. Seen as a metaphor for concepts accepted in modern psychology and psychiatry, Wordsworth’s idea can be seen as a precursor to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which teaches patients to change their way of thinking and deal with spontaneously occurring harmful «cognitive distortions» (thinking errors).
Both Wordsworth and CBT theory claim that we are able to control our way of thinking, thereby controlling our mood. In psychoanalysis, the main form of psychotherapy before the invention of CBT by Dr. Aaron Beck, it was believed that the way we think is largely predetermined. Beck, on the other hand, argued that we are able to change our habitual reactions to events and, thanks to this, change our attitude towards life in general. If we manage to do this, the attitude of others towards us also changes, so a kind of “chain reaction” of positive changes is launched.
We are able, by our own efforts, to «weed» our minds from «weeds» — those same cognitive distortions, while «watering» and «growing» beautiful flowers (that is, useful and constructive thoughts). Over time, these flowers will produce their own seeds, thus starting an eternal cycle of flower reproduction. «Weeds» are better to destroy in the bud, so that they do not interfere with our «flowers» to bloom.
It turns out that we can replace psychiatric terms with Wordsworth’s poetic images, retaining the meaning and essence of both. Growing a flower garden from seeds will take time and effort, just like learning CBT techniques. But in both cases, it will not take so much time and effort. And there, and there the results will have to wait, but our patience will pay off handsomely.
So, simplifying and using Wordsworth’s metaphors, let’s imagine that all our spontaneously arising thoughts can be divided into «weeds» and «wild flowers».
As soon as a negative, counterproductive thought spontaneously enters our consciousness (i.e., cognitive distortion occurs), we can immediately remind ourselves that it is a “weed” and immediately disprove it. «Jumping to conclusions», «thinking in black and white», «expecting the worst», «exaggerating», «exaggerating» and «underplaying» are all types of mental «weeds» that should be uprooted to make room for «wild flowers». This is much more enjoyable than the “negative reinforcement” recommended by some behavioral therapists, who advise wearing a tight band around your wrist and snapping it painfully at yourself every time an unwanted thought or impulse pops into your head.
This simple approach is not described in the standard guidelines for CBT, and it is probably too simple to try to get a grant for serious research on its effectiveness according to the standards of evidence-based medicine. But you can easily check it for yourself. My personal experience confirms that this approach can at least serve as a useful warm-up before applying more serious CBT techniques — and sometimes one “warm-up” is enough.
This technique can be compared to the well-known «creative visualization», which is used, for example, in the treatment of «flashbacks» (suddenly occurring painful memories of trauma) in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Creative visualization is also used by some coaches to increase the motivation of athletes. The goal of visualization exercises is to replace negative and disturbing mental images with positive and life-affirming ones. So in our technique, we replace the mental image of weeds suffocating us with a beautiful flower garden.
Wordsworth’s idea was absolutely correct, although in his time modern clinical terms had not yet come into use. Maybe this is for the best — if the current methods of therapy were available at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, we could lose many beautiful poems. After all, it was not for nothing that Freud said: “Wherever I go, it turns out that a poet has already been there before me.”
Posted by Sharon Packer, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Mount Sinai Hospital School of Medicine, New York