Campanula Psychological Services

Tag: interpretation

  • How to identify feelings

    How to identify feelings

    Sometimes it can be hard to know what we are feeling.  Maybe you’ve been told that some feelings are bad or that what you are feeling is wrong.  If you grew up in an emotionally chaotic household you may have learned that feelings were dangerous and best surpressed.  Or maybe, as if often true, you are feeling several things all at once and some of them are even contradictory!

    Despite the challenges, its important to be in touch with our emotions.  Feelings can give us the energy we need to face challenges, communicate to others our state of mind, and communicate to ourselves.  Emotions help us identify our values, needs and wants as well as signal that something needs attending to.  Emotions are not good or bad or “negative” or “positive”.  Everything we feel is valid, although some feelings are more comfortable to experience than others.  Finally, stopping to name our emotions gives us some time and space from our feelings, and helps to keep our emotions from escalating.

    Here are some ways to help put a name to our feelings:

    • What just happened?  What is this feeling a reaction to?  Did something not turn out the way you hoped?  You might be feeling sad.  Did you just receive a wonderful surprise?  You might be feeling happy. 
    • What interpretations are we making about this event?  If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly, you might be feeling angry.  If you believe you might lose someone important to you, you might be feeling fear.
    • What are you feeling in your body?  Emotions affect everyone differently, but there some basic physical reactions that are common.  For example, fear may make it hard to breathe, causes our heart rate speed up and muscles to tense.  Butterflies in the stomach is another common effect of fear.  Sadness feels heavy, saps our energy and motivation, while anger feels hot.  When we are angry our muscles tense and our hands may clench.  Next time you feel a strong emotion pay attention to your body to discover your unique physical manifestations of emotion.
    • One of the quickest ways to identify emotions is to be aware of your impulses.  For example, if you feel like fleeing, your probably afraid.  If you want to ask for forgiveness, you are probably experiencing guilt.  If you have an urge to smile and act silly, you are probably happy.

    Naming and accepting our feelings opens up a whole new world of experience, adding colour and texture to our lives.  While it might take some effort, if you want to revel in the pleasant feelings and better tolerate the uncomfortable ones the work is worth it.

  • The Function of Depression

    The Function of Depression

    It is no secret that how we interpret something has a big influence on how we react to it. For example, a friend cancels a lunch date with no explanation. I can choose to believe that they hate me, have something better to do, have an emergency, or overslept and are adjusting their schedule accordingly. By choosing an interpretation, I am also choosing whether to feel hurt, worried, or disappointed. The interpretation I choose is influenced by a variety of factors including past experience, temperament and sometimes by societal norms and expectations.

    Depression as an illness

    Depression has been with the human race since at least the start of recorded history, and probably long before that. How we interpret depression, what we see as the cause, has changed with the times. Since perceived cause determines perceived cure, how we deal with depression has also changed with the times.

    In the latter half of the past century, biological explanations of depression overtook psychodynamic ones. Depression was seen and marketed as a chemical imbalance in the brain, and treatments focused on correcting that imbalance. This shift lead to new antidepressant medications that have saved lives and enhanced the quality of life for millions. It also legitimized depression as a medical disorder, hopefully relieving some of the stigma around mental illness. The downside of acknowledging only biological causes of depression is that it puts recovery in the hands of medical professionals and out of the hands of the individual experiencing it.

    Depression as a signal

    A recent study, summarized here: https://www.psypost.org/the-surprising-psychological-benefits-of-framing-depression-as-a-functional-signal/ looked at whether shifting one’s understanding of depression from a disease to having an important function influences how the individual responds. This functional interpretation flows from the evolutionary perspective: does having depression give an advantage in certain situations; does it serve an important function in survival?

    They found that those who interpreted their depression as a sign that something needed to be looked at in their lives had a greater belief in their own agency and ability to overcome depression than those who saw depression as an illness. They also engaged in less self-stigma, and had stronger beliefs in the adaptiveness and manageability of their condition (measured by endorsing items such as “experiencing depression can lead to new insights”). These positive impacts were stronger among women participants than men.

    This study did not explore whether this change in perspective was related to the rate or likelihood of recovery from depression. Anecdotally though, in my experience those who take an active role in recovering from depression have better outcomes. Whether or not depression truly serves an adaptive function we may never be able to prove or disprove, but it seem clear that a what we chose to believe about depression can have an impact on how we chose to deal with it.