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Be careful, because when you use your feelings as the indicator of what to do, you are going to make mistakes
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Internal orientation,
It is one of the risk factors that trigger depression among most humans.
Internal orientation simply means people using themselves as the reference point. They use their feelings to make decisions. They use their feelings to interpret events that happen in their lives.
Be careful, because when you use your feelings as the indicator of what to do, you are going to make mistakes.
Some friends or motivational speakers will advise you to “trust your feelings” or “listen to what your heart tells you.” But most researchers know that this is really bad advice because your feelings can too easily deceive you. People can easily think things are worse than they really are. People can also think things are better than they really are.
One of the values of relationships is having people close enough that you can say to them, “Here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I think about it,” and, hopefully, they care about you enough and are close enough to say to you, “I don’t think you’re right about that.”
Here is a simple example. You call your best friend at 10:00 a.m. in the morning, and the person is not receiving your phone calls. You leave a message: “Hi, it’s me, Susan. I have something disturbing me. I need to talk to you. Please call me back.” It is now 10:00 p.m. at night, and the person has not called you back. If you are a depressed person, what will be your predictable attribution or explanation for why your best friend did not call you back? “She doesn’t care about me anymore.” Then it goes to the next level: “How come people don’t care about me? Why aren’t people ever responsive to me? Why don’t people ever remain my friends?” The next thing you know, you have built this up and built this up until it is literally a suicidal crisis because your best friend has not called back.
That is how it works. That is internal orientation. Training people to generate multiple explanations—why didn’t this person call back? It could be this. It could be that. It could be something else. Which one is it? You do not know. You need to master the art of recognizing what you do not know instead of making things up and then actually believing them. (Cognitive rigidity)
For example, what if your friend did not call back because she was arrested or misplaced her phone? Why not first understand what happened before jumping to the conclusion that your friend is fake and does not care about you?
That is why the most important skill to counter cognitive rigidity is cognitive flexibility. How can you train yourself to generate multiple explanations for things that happen?
When you learn that, you will have taken the right step toward getting out of depression.
Torch Media Africa
