With depression we are told to “fake it til we make it,” to “act as if,” to go through the motions until we can feel again. But what if doing so sabotages your health? What if you push yourself straight into a wall of debilitating symptoms? Conversely, what if efforts to baby yourself keep you where you are?
This issue of knowing when to push yourself and when to coddle is undoubtedly one of the most challenging aspects of recovery from depression. I ask myself this question a few times a day.
When trying too hard backfires.
It turns out that trying too hard to reverse depressive ruminations can definitely backfire. A study published in August 2007 in The Journal of Neuroscience showed that there was a breakdown in normal patterns of emotional processing that prevented depressed and anxious people from suppressing negative emotions. In fact, the more they tried, the more they activated the fear center of their brain — the amygdala — which fed them more negative messages.
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