Ask yourself «How?» rather than «Why?» — as simple as it is important. Imagine a doctor asking, «How do you feel about your body now?» rather than asking why you’ve gained three pounds. It’s the difference between feeling like we’re being judged and feeling like we’re being heard.
Alice has had to experience a depressive state more than once, and she is well acquainted with psychotherapy. And yet, the psychologist’s request confuses her: instead of looking for the causes of sadness and feelings of powerlessness, he invites her to feel exactly how she experiences them.
She recalls how one past weekend she was sitting at home, unable to move, with shortness of breath, how she did not have the courage to go out somewhere and even put on a disc with some movie.
At such moments, she is overwhelmed by a continuous stream of anxiety and self-flagellation: “I feel so bad because in my life I chose the wrong way too often … I obviously shouldn’t have gone into trading — by the way, it was at work that I met the type who then left me , and now it’s probably too late for me to try to have a baby: at my age, the probability of deviations is four times higher … «
Black thoughts cling to one another, and each of them seems so important that you have to concentrate all your attention on it, abandoning any other business. And what business can make sense if key life issues are not resolved?
It happened that friends distracted Alice from such gloomy thoughts — she went with them to the market or roller-skating. She got better for a while, but then she again plunged into the same endless stream of negative judgments and questions addressed to herself.
The Navajo Indians will never say, «I am depressed,» but they will say, «Sorrow accompanies my spirit.»
Today, in an effort to avoid a repetition of such a scenario, she came to listen to the head of the scientific group of the psychology department of the University of Louvain (Belgium), who offered her a completely different alternative: to refuse not only the depressive retelling of the same facts, but also any distractions that give temporary relief. There is nothing to fight and nothing to run away from. Instead, every time negative thoughts and physical sensations appear, take the position of an anthropologist, curiously observing the life habits of his own body.
These instructions may seem too simple: “Sit on the edge of a chair with your back straight, hands on hips, in a comfortable and dignified position. Pay attention to the sensations in your body, looking for images or words that best describe the nature of what you are feeling. If any thoughts come to your mind, observe their nature. Let them dissipate, and then notice what thought comes next.
Don’t judge if they are good or bad, just notice them. If you find yourself caught in a stream of thoughts clinging to one another, turn your attention to your breathing and see what new ideas want to replace the old ones. It is only about learning to consciously experience what is happening to you here and now. Don’t question why you feel the way you feel or why you think the way you think. Focus only on the «how».
We all would do well to learn how to build this kind of benevolent intimacy—with ourselves and with other people.
Alice noted that when she shifts her attention to her own physical sensations (caused by depression) or considers some disturbing thought, not allowing it to «go haywire», she gradually dissipates. She is aware that depression does not define her personality, but exists alongside her. The Navajo Indians will never say, «I am depressed,» but they will say, «Sorrow accompanies my spirit.»
The question «How?» sets a certain form of benevolent attitude, opening the way to intimacy. At the University of Cambridge, English professor John D. Teasdale has shown that patients who have experienced repeated bouts of depression can learn to build such intimacy with themselves. By teaching them a meditation technique based on thousands of years of Buddhist practice, he showed that it was possible to reduce the relapse rate by more than 50%. This result is comparable to those given by antidepressant drugs.
We would all do well to learn how to build that kind of benevolent intimacy—with ourselves and with other people. A good place to start is to avoid embarrassing “Why?” and more trust in a sensitive mind that will answer all our benevolent “How?”.