I am not big on reading self-help books on depression or anxiety. Partly because I think most of them are shite, and secondly because my filter system between other people’s issues and mine gets a bit hazy, and too much seeps over to my corner of the garden.
If I had to immerse myself in a book about someone and their issues, it would only be a matter of time before I started exhibiting the same issues.
I am funny like that.
That being said, on Saturday I stopped at The Book Lounge in Roeland Street, primarily to get a gift for the lovely Julie Hall, but whilst there I decided to spend my children’s inheritance on books. For me.
This book titled: “The Mindful Way through Depression – Freeing yourself from Chronic Unhappiness” by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel, and Jon Kabat-Zimm jumped off the shelf at me.
I have no idea why, the cover looks like something from a really bad Jodi Picoult novel, and it is titled SELF HELP/PSYCHOLOGY – which would normally have me running for the hills – or at the very least rolling my eyes in sarcasm and prejudgement.
I picked the book up, parked my rather large rump on the leather couch and read a few pages. I did it with a slightly raised eyebrow as I was expecting the usual “decide to be happy and you will be” bullshit.
I am pessimistic that way, go figure.
The part where I knew I was hooked was the example mentioned on page 20
You are walking down a familiar street … You see someone you know on the other side of the street … You smile and wave. The person makes no response … just doesn’t seem to notice you … walks right past without any sign of recognizing your existence.
Question:
How does this make you feel?
What thoughts or images go through your head?
The example illustrates the ABC model of emotions. The A is the facts of the situation. B is the interpretation we give to the situation, while C is our reaction.
Logically one can work through this exercise and come up with the possibility that the person on the other side of the road was listening to his iphone and you could not see the earphones, and he did not see you. Or maybe he was really distracted as he was thinking about a fight with his wife earlier in that day, and did not hear me, or notice me.
That is logic. All of those are possibilities.
Me = immediate hot flush to my face, shoulders and chest and I start to feel this gnawing feeling that the person did not “not see me” he did. But he ignored me because I had slighted him or I had upset him, or I done something to offend him. But I had done something to upset/annoy/alienate him, and now he was angry at me. Why do I do this to people? What the hell is wrong with me?
{you can see I get totally lost in the interpretation of a situation, and tend to see the bubonic plague and the big bad wolf in everything}
Today is Monday night, and I still feel bad that the guy on the other side of the street did not acknowledge me.
Please let me bring you back to the fact that this did not happen to me, it was merely an example in an introduction of a book. But since Saturday I have been running through the ways I could have offended this person. This imaginary person. On a street I have never walked on. A greeting I never made, because it is fiction.
Crikey moses!! Does this give you some idea of how warped General Anxiety Disorder is and how really ‘out to lunch’ my thought process is?
I am going to sit here and sip my wine, and wonder whether my script can be filled yet, and whilst I wait think a bit more about the “guy on the other side of the street and what I have done to hurt his feelings…”
