Getting Depressed about Depression: Ruminative vs. Experiential Self Focus

[David Baxter]

Getting Depressed about Depression: Ruminative vs. Experiential Self Focus
By Jody Ribton, Liminality Blog
December 21, 2008

One of the major cognitive factors in prolonging depression is ruminative (or "analytical") self focus. It's a trap that's difficult to avoid - most people who recognize that they suffer from depression will start asking themselves questions like "Why can't I just snap out of it?", "Why do I feel this way?", or, "What's wrong with me?". More often than not this line of questioning makes matters worse. Either you end up feeling frustrated that you can't figure out what's wrong with you, or you reach the conclusion that you are the problem. This then makes you more depressed, compounding your feelings of helplessness, creating a feedback loop.

This is by no means a new discovery, the dangers of rumination have been recognized by psychologists for decades. Rational-Emotive Therapy (a form of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) terms this a "secondary disturbance", i.e. getting depressed about your depression, or getting angry about being angry. To quote Albert Ellis, founder of RET:

Because of their self-consciousness and their ability to think about their thinking, they can very easily disturb themselves about their disturbances and can also disturb themselves about their ineffective attempts to overcome their emotional disturbances." (Ellis, 2003)

Conversely, it's common to hear phrases like "get in touch with your feelings" bandied about, which at first blush seems to promote the very kind of thinking that Ellis suggests that we should avoid. This is the central thesis of Rogerian (or "Client Centered") therapy - that we should try to pin down exactly what it is that we are feeling. There is a subtle, but very important, distinction between the experiential self-focus encouraged by Rogers and the ruminative self focus discouraged by Ellis. Ruminative focus involves questions like "Why do I feel this way?", whereas experiential focus encourages us to question "How do I feel?".

While this distinction has been tacitly acknowledged by psychologists for at least four decades, it's only very recently that studies have been undertaken to prove that there is actually a difference. Results have been mixed. Some studies (Hunt, 1998; Lepore, 1997, as cited in Williams and Moulds, 2007) have found that expressive writing tasks can lead to substantial improvements in mood after negative events, which seems to support the hypothesis that experiential processing can be beneficial. Watkins and Teasdale (2004) found that inducing depressed participants to focus on themselves in an analytical (ruminative) manner increased their tendency to retrieve over-general autobiographical memories (a core feature of maladaptive cognitive processing (Williams et. al., 2007, as cited in Williams and Moulds, 2007)), whereas encouraging experiential processing reduced over-general memory.

The studies that find no correlation between ruminative processing and depression tend to be those that focus on non-personal problems; see, for example, Williams & Moulds (2007). They attempted to replicate the findings of Watkins and Teasdale by showing a group of studies a sad clip from the movie The Shawshank Redemption and then measuring the incidence of intrusive memories when students where asked to analytically reflect on the clip, or experientially reflect on how the clip made them feel. They found no difference between the ruminative group, the experiential group, and controls. However, the authors themselves admit that a probable flaw in the study is that the clip was not sufficient to induce self-referential intrusive memories.

On the whole, the research seems to support the distinction between ruminative and analytical processing. Although it's unlikely to change therapy in any radical way, it does reaffirm many of the central theses of CBT and Humanistic therapy, and, for sufferers of depression, it does serve as a warning not to fall into the trap of berating and questioning yourself. Rather attempt to non-judgmentally identify your feelings, as encouraged by Humanistic and Existential psychology, and perhaps take a stab and expressive writing or keeping some kind of mood diary. Many sufferers report that it's helped them.

References:
Albert Ellis (2003). EARLY THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN AUGMENTED AND REVISED DURING THE LAST THREE DECADES. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 21

Alishia Williams, Michelle Moulds (2007). The Impact of Ruminative Processing on the Development of Intrusive Memories. Behaviour Change, 24

E.D. Watkins, J.D. Teasdale (2004). Adaptive and maladaptive self-focus in depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, (82)

[thephoenix]

I found this article very interesting. One of the things that I know is a issue for me is constantly trying to evaluate my mood or thoughts. When I'm feeling reasonably well, its almost as if I have a road block in my mind that says 'don't do that, its unhelpful and won't make you feel better.', but when I'm feeling low, that road block is absent and my self analysis can cause me a lot of problems and make me feel worse.

Although I'm still doing it and struggling along, I've found Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and a book entitled The Mindful Way Through Depression to help me try to cope with these harmful thinking patterns.

I'm actually going to register in a meditation course starting in the new year to try and help me gain more control over my mind and curtail unhelpful thinking.

[Daniel]

The Mindful Way Through Depression

I am going to finally get that book. It has been on my "to do" list for months now

[FarmerSteve]

That was really interesting. I definitely go through that...didn't even notice the consequences.

[amastie]

...I've found Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and a book entitled The Mindful Way Through Depression to help me try to cope with these harmful thinking patterns.
...

I agree that this is a very interesting article. I also like Eckhart Tolle for picking me up. Haven't heard of the other book. Must look it up.
Thanks