Out of the Blue: Six Non-Medication Ways to Relieve Depression (Norton Professional Books) Read Online Free Page B

always and hasn’t always been depressed. It can illuminate and prompt skills, abilities, and connections that can potentially lead the person out of depression or at least reduce his depression levels.
    I came across a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote during his presidency that illustrates his deft combination of joining and inviting. (As I said earlier, Lincoln suffered from a lifelong tendency to depression, or what was called melancholy in those days. He had been close to suicide during two major depressive episodes in his younger years.) He found out that Fanny McCullough, the young adult daughter of one of his generals who had been killed during the Civil War, had fallen into a depression that was lasting much longer than the usual grief period. She had taken to her bed in despondency, and her loved ones were worried about her.
    When Lincoln heard of her plight, he sat down and wrote the following letter. (Note: I have italicized some of the Acknowledgment and Possibility parts of the letter to highlight them.)
    Dear Fanny,
    It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases . In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all ; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time . You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is this not so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only believe it to feel better at once.
    I was moved, and hope you are too, by the kind and powerful way Lincoln joins with Fanny’s grief and validates her suffering while simultaneously inviting her out of it.
    THREE TECHNIQUES OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND POSSIBILITY
    How do you join while simultaneously inviting? Here I will show you three simple methods for putting one foot in and one foot out when talking with people who are depressed.
    1. Reflect in the Past Tense
    This first technique may seem too simple, but it can have a subtle and helpful impact. It involves reflecting what the depressed person is telling you as if it has happened previously but is not necessarily occurring now. For example, if a person says, “I don’t want to see anyone,” you might respond, “You haven’t wanted to see anyone.” If the person says, “I am suicidal,” you might say, “You have thought seriously about killing yourself.” In each of these responses, you will notice that the reflection is couched in the past tense.
    To give you a chance to practice this technique, here are two statements that a depressed person might make. Cover up my sample responses below the blank and fill in your “reflect in the past tense” response.
    Depressed person: I’m afraid I’ll never come out of this darkness.
    Your response:
    [Possible responses: “You’ve been really afraid.” “You’ve been feeling pretty discouraged.” “You’ve been worried you’ll never feel better.”]
    Depressed person: Nothing will help.
    Your response:
    [Possible responses: “Nothing has helped.” “You’ve tried a lot of things and haven’t felt better.” “You’ve been thinking that nothing will help.”]
    2. From Global to Partial Reflections
    The next technique for acknowledging and inviting at the same time is to reflect the depressed person’s generalized statements as more partial. When the person says something like “always,” “never,” “nobody,” “nothing,” “everybody,” or another global term, you can reflect her statement or the feeling she is conveying but use more limited words such as usually , typically , rarely , almost nobody , very few people , little , most everyone ,