_ Although to most psychologists and affectologists, this passage is preaching to the converted, it serves us well to understand that it is an easy ‘way out’ for most people to blame genetics and hereditary traits for mental or psychological maladaptions like depression, bipolar, neuroses, anxiety, and so on. I’m guessing that many people would reject this idea. They would say that it’s an insult to their intelligence to suggest that they are that fixed on the idea of handed-down genes. ... Yet the same people seem to accept without question the idea that those maladaptions can be cured or at least managed by psychotropic medications – antidepressants, psychotropics. What they need to do is consider the intellectual formatting of their ideas. If we accept that chemicals are needed to change a mental or psychological maladaptions, then we must (ergo) accept that those problems are caused by chemical maladjustments in the brain. And on close inspection, this hypothesis, we must say, doesn’t make any sense at all.

From the perspective of ‘doing therapy’ and helping people feel better, it is not useful to adopt the genetic (hereditary) paradigm.

Even though in my book, I included a whole chapter (chapter nine, “The Gene Illusion”) and examined the ‘predisposition myth’ and what were the other powerful influences that might SEEM LIKE a genetic predisposition, that information was not about proving one thing or another. It is about realizing that what we tend to believe today about genetic predisposition toward depression (or any other psychological, mental or emotional problems for that matter) has never EVER been proven. Saying that it’s never been shown to be true is not the same thing as ‘it’s not true.’ I’m interested in you making your own mind up about the things you’re being told.

__ Anger Management! ... Did you see the movie with Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler? Do you think you might be a person who could do with some “anger management” courses? Maybe even a magistrate has ordered you to “do” anger management at some time in the past. Or, you just know that those outbursts of yours are destructive. It isn’t so unusual for people diagnosed with bipolar – or in older terms, manic depression – to have outbursts, either as a result of their precarious balance of emotions or as a direct result of the medication they have been prescribed.

Or perhaps you’re too afraid of imagining a life of peaceful existence with yourself and those around you because you don’t think you can ever achieve that.

We have a habit of looking outside ourselves for the reasons for our anger outbursts. We tend to blame other things – other events – or other people in our lives, for the things that drive us up the wall. What if I told you that you’re way off the mark with that? Events don’t make you angry; people don’t make you angry. Councils, neighbours, policemen, wives, husbands, kids or parents don’t make you angry.

YOU make you angry.

In my book Beat Depression the Drug Free Way I point up that this business of “how you react” has been a topic of philosophy as long back as people were thinking. Epictetus, the Ancient Greek philosopher said, “we are disturbed not by things, but by the views we take of things.”  He also said, “Control thy passions lest they take vengeance on thee,” but that’s another matter called blow-back.

This is how it works …

You’ve learned that a response that registers as anger works for you, gets you attention, and gets your needs met. But you learned that at a very early age. As a part of the development of the “who we are” part of our lives, the dummy-spits, the tantrums and various other temper outbursts that are often experienced, were successful attempts to find out what works for us in our efforts to get the attention that gets “gains.”  Kids learn this easily; even babies learn it. And it’s then the kick-off to the forming of our later life mode of response and automatic reactions to the things that we don’t like or don’t fit our world-view.

Throughout the history of modern psychotherapy, therapists have puzzled over why some people simply don’t respond to their treatment, and do not make any mental or emotional shifts away from their problems or pathology. In a post in another of my blogs I took a small excerpt from my book, Beat Depression the Drug Free Way that talked about the anomaly – the incongruity – of people actually knowing that antidepressant medication is harmful, but on the other hand they bury that knowledge and go about their lives still taking the drugs.

This post now is an entirely different issue leading to the same outcome. It is that one of people being so at one with their pathology - "loving" what's emotionally out of whack with them. This means that they have found some sort of unconscious comfort and ‘belonging’ in being unwell with a mental problem – or in the DSM’s parlance, mental illness or disease.

Here is a small snippet from a message sent to me by someone who would apparently fit that description.

“… how about if depression isn’t something we fight against or don’t like, that we don’t just take with us, but wholly possesses us, yes – coexists with us, whether interminably and pervasively or fleetingly and stabbingly, whether we like it or not? Depression isn’t an alien. Depression is always right at home. It’s totally acceptable, to the most mindful of minds. …”

In philosophical terms, this writer was actually agreeing with the idea of depression not being the big ogre that pharmaceutical companies and society in general make it out to be: that it’s more natural than we give it credit for. But I strongly suspect that this person was presenting to me the idea that he or she was totally at one with the fact that depression lived with them and took over their existence. That implied, of course, that my writings were of no use to this writer; that he or she was not only unlikely to get any use out of the fight depression shout that I deliver, but there was absolutely no desire to say goodbye to what we can only describe as an ‘old friend’ to this person.

There’s no shame in this, of course. I have known many people who function perfectly and carry on apparently normal lives who continue in a perennially depressed state. My job is not to try to change that lifestyle for them. My job, as I see it, is to offer therapeutic and philosophical assistance if they ask and demonstrate a desire to make life different for them. So I do have to wonder why and how a person who is entirely at one with their pathology – who lives with their depression as though it is an old friend – would ever seek any writings that are obviously intended to assist people who have made a choice to end depression.

One of the very important messages in my book is that our belief systems are vital to the end result of how we run our lives and the choices we make. Choosing to remain in a comfortable pathology, while not seeming to make sense to many, makes perfect sense to an affectologist who understands the strange ways in which unconscious mind drivers operate. Be quite clear about your aims.