What causes depression? Negative thoughts or negative events?
While cognitive therapy has drilled into my head that "negative thoughts cause depression," a part of me wants to re-assert that "problems cause depression."
If depression is so widespread, there must be an evolutionary reason for it. This book on evolutionary psychology suggests that depression slows you down and pushes out distractions, giving you time to find a solution to whatever problem caused you to be depressed in the first place.
But in defense of cognitive therapy, the people who see therapists do so because that evolutionary calculus has gone haywire. In my experience, 90% of my cognitive therapy sessions revealed that there was no problem in the first place, just my negative thinking.
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The mind is software, and we are merely programmers. Where is the manual, though? Here is a site for people not only interested in self-help, but also the mechanics behind it.
My name is Philip Dhingra, and here I will provide everything I know about the process of self-transformation. While I am not a psychologist, I've accumulated, over the years, many ideas on how to create lasting life-change.
Connect to my other blogging at Philosophistry or you can e-mail me.
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