Humor and Mindfulness for Reactive Depression Stress and Clinical Depression

Hi everybody, this is Monique Thompson, LPC. I'm a professional psychotherapist in the Dallas area, and this is a session on how to manage reactive depression, clinical depression, and stress using a mindfulness technique and humor. First, let's define what's meant by reactive depression, stress, and clinical depression. Actually, everybody's experienced stress and reactive depression at some point. You might not have experienced clinical depression. So we're gonna start with explaining reactive depression because this is the one that I think a lot of people get confused about when it comes to knowing whether or not they're actually quote unquote depressed. Reactive depression is something that would be due to an actual event, something that's happened to you. So it's not gonna come out of the blue. You're not gonna suddenly just start feeling terrible and it's a reactive depression. A reactive depression is come something, for example, if you had a breakup from a relationship or you were a student in school and you had a missed assignment and it was maybe a major exam, or if you were on a job that you loved and you lost your job. So those are obvious things that would cause a person to feel sad. Well, feeling sad does not therefore make reactive depression. After about 6 months, any brain is allowed about 6 months to kind of recover from an event. So about 6 months after an event, you are starting to recover from it by feeling better, doing better, functioning better. If that's not happening, then possibly there's a reactive depression that's going on. Well, a reactive depression is gonna respond to your coping. So for example, you lose your job, a way to cope is by financially recovering. A bad grade in school, a way to recover is developing better study habits, seeing if you can get your assignment turned in later, working through it by coping, right? A clinical depression, not so much. Clinical depression, you could actually be doing fine in school and still be experiencing clinical depression, just a low grumble of darkness deep inside of you. The difference between the two is fairly remarkable, so I'm gonna pause on explaining clinical depression because I wanna explain stress first. Stress, oh my goodness, don't we hear about that all the time? I'm so stressed out, this is stressing me out. Well, There's so many different ways that we mean that. I wanna be clear about what I mean. So stress can be either good stress or bad stress. You know, you're getting married, having that first baby, that could be eustress, E-U-S-T-R-E-S-S, eustress, meaning it's from a positive event. Or it could be distress. You're getting married, you're having the first baby, you know, it could still be distress.

It's different.

It just kind of depends on how the person perceives their moment. So what's a eustress moment for one person could be a distress moment for the next person for just different reasons. However, whether it's eustress or distress, you actually have a stress response inside of the brain. Now coping with this, distress is a little bit, you know, it has other children, if you will. So with distress, we have acute or chronic distress. So an example of acute distress, using those job and academic situations, you lose your job, it's an acute distress because it responds to problem solving. So you figure out a way to get a new job, or you figure out a way to go get job training, or you go back to school, or you open up your own business, or you somehow decide to become an investor that's gonna replenish your income. You figure out a way to solve the problem of having, you know, food, clothing, and shelter. And now that acute stressor has responded to problem solving. So acute stress responds to problem solving. Chronic stress, on the other hand, is not going to respond to you trying to control the situation. Chronic stress is something that is outside of your control. Maybe you have a parent who has an illness that is going to deteriorate over time, something like MS or Alzheimer's or dementia. They— that's not going to get better. So it's a chronic stressor. And the way you cope with a chronic stressor is actually by using avoidance. Avoidance means that you're going to refrain from trying to control the situation. And instead, you're going to cope internally, you're going to find ways to take care of yourself, mind, body, spirit. So you're going to look at the cellular level, A cellular level, biologically speaking, means you're gonna try to be in your best health at a cellular level, and you're going to try to make sure that you take care of the brain, heart, and other organs. So that means you're gonna eat foods that are brain healthy, you're gonna eat foods that are heart healthy, you're gonna do activities that are brain and heart healthy. So there's cardio activity, there's yoga, there's hydration, and it's avoidance of things that could cause deterioration of organs and cells. So Basically any maladaptive things that you're going to try to avoid because the chronic stressor is not going anywhere, right? And you are present in it. So you've got to take care of yourself. So there's the body part of it. Mind part of it. So mind part of it is mindfulness. And any number of activities can help promote neurogenesis, which is brain cell growth, and neuroplasticity, which is where you're trying to create stronger neural pathways. in your prefrontal cortex and not have a lot of activity in your limbic system where you're having anxiety and stressful thinking. So you're trying to learn ways to keep the brain in a relaxed response so that thinking occurs. This is your mind coping. And you're trying to recover more quickly even when a stressful event happens. So there's the mind part of it, which for that one, you might get some support. You might, for example, if you're Alzheimer's caregiver, you might attend a support group for other people who are caregivers to help you with that level of support you need and how you manage coping with it mentally. Or you might see a therapist of your own so that you can cope mentally with what's going on. Spiritually speaking, is being able to hear God, opening up your heart, working through all of your spiritual issues so that you have That major support as a component in dealing with the uncontrollable. So you being able to have that relationship may require any number of steps, right? But you want to engage. You want to be able to say, I'm engaged there. I'm working through that. I'm opening up my heart. I am trying to deal with myself so that I can hear God and I'm opening myself up. And then maybe how I'm dealing with myself is just Intentionally being open with my heart open to hear so that I can work through my spiritual coping, right? So mind, body, spirit, this is how you're gonna cope with the chronic stressor. What if it's traumatic stress, right? So traumatic stress is different from chronic stress and acute stress because traumatic stress means something terrible happened. I mean horrible. So this is a near death, a near miss, a close call that happened directly to you, or it may have happened to someone very closely connected to you. I mean, we know from studies done during 9/11 that if you very much identify even with a group of people where something terrible has happened to them, you experience traumatic stress as well. Now, we're not talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, all right, we're saying traumatic stress. Well, what is the difference? Traumatic stress means that the amygdala are overly responding to the stimulus of fear. And there's a creation of hypervigilance, re-experiencing the moment as if it's really happening, over-engagement in trying to not think about it, possibly nightmares, but not quite meeting the criteria for PTSD. What makes a person meet the criteria for PTSD? There's going to be a loss of functioning, a loss of functioning. Okay, so where they were able to go to work, they can't go. Where they were performing in school, it's just not happening. They're not getting out of bed. They're not being productive. This is just a shell of the person that you used to know. Well, likewise, when we're defining these areas, right, clinical depression, you're going to see the same thing. How is clinical depression different from reactive depression? Well, reactive depression, I'm still trying to cope and I might not be coping at my optimal level, but I'm right there in that 80, 90% of my optimal level. When it's clinical depression, I'm flunking out of this class, right? I'm getting an F in class. When it comes to going to work, I'm getting an F. When it comes to taking care of myself hygiene-wise, I might not be doing so well there. I'm not getting out of bed. I'm clinging to those pillows for dear life. It's not happening. I'm not engaging. I'm not engaging with people. I'm not able to connect with people and it's just not happening, right? So I'm not functioning, but I'm not functioning in a very significant way. So I'm not just having a bad day, I'm having a bad every day. And it's possibly despite my best efforts. I might internally want to get to work, want to get to school, want to do things, and it's just not happening. So Clinical depression or any other mental disorder, we're talking about functioning. Your functioning is going down the drain despite your efforts to put different kinds of stoppers in that hole. It's just not working, right? So traumatic stress, we might experience when we have a near-death, near-miss experience or someone close to us has it. Disorders happen when functioning is affected. Okay. So what do you do? Well, mindfulness is a technique that helps with neuroplasticity. At some point in life, you're gonna have to accept that there's a role you play in your brain's development. Now, at one point we thought in science that the brain developed at a certain point in lifespan, stopped developing. We know now that that is not true. You continue to create neural pathways throughout your life. But what neural pathways you create has a lot to do with what you attend to. So for example, you have a day's events and what you attend to is anxiety, anger, worrying, sadness. You attend to a negative affect. You're gonna grow neural pathways in being able to do what you attend to. But let's say that you focus your intention on remaining relaxed and acknowledging moments and maintaining a nonjudgmental stance about yourself and about others so that you can think, right? And so that when you're thinking, your thinking is clear and rational. So now you're making stronger choices. Once that makes sense, and you're pulling into yourself help from others because you're willing to connect to other people. Spiritually speaking, you're opening up your heart intentionally, opening, opening up that heart so that you can hear God. Your willingness is there to submit and to do good things with compassion and gratitude for being alive and for sharing good things from yourself. with others when you're in this relaxed state. The agitated brain, don't trust it. Don't trust that brain for a second. But that's the brain that you're using when you're not engaged in the relaxed brain, okay? And ways to get to the relaxed brain are, there are many, but we're gonna learn one today, which is using meditation and a sense of humor, okay? So let's walk through a quick exercise. Your younger self is your morning self. Your yesterday self, your 5 years ago self, your younger self is the moment before, right? So we're just gonna go one day back. All right, so one day back, looking at yesterday morning, however you manage that morning, we're going to acknowledge it and set it aside. Remain unaffected, experiencing compassion and gratitude. For having lived and yet continuing to live and acknowledging in this present moment the duality of your mortality and the inevitable moment when you will no longer be here.

All right, so take a deep breath in with me to maybe a count of 4 and release, exhaling through your mouth for a count of 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Continue inhaling deep breaths, exhaling, and see your yesterday morning. Zoom in, see yourself about the first few hours of the morning. Zoom into your younger self, zoom out. Acknowledge that moment, set it aside, let it kind of flow very gently, flow away from you. Acknowledge Inhale and accept that moment. Remain unaffected. Set your intention of compassion and gratitude toward that moment as it flows away. Very grateful to your younger self for having lived and yet living so that now you live. Inhale. Exhale, fast forward midday.

A few hours have gone by.

The morning is done. Maybe the morning's activities didn't quite get completed as you would like. The day's pace might be picking up. Kind of reflect on some of the people you interacted with. Zoom in, see their faces. Zoom out. Inhale. Acknowledge them. Set that moment aside. Let it flow out from you. Inhale. Exhale. Remain unaffected. Just let that moment very gently flow away from you, sending compassion and gratitude to your younger self for surviving that moment, living And yet living so that you now live. Let's fast forward to the early afternoon. The day's almost done. If you were working, you might have had some tasks that are un— that are not completed, some things that are left undone, some boxes left unchecked. Wanna acknowledge those boxes and those things and those calls and those people. Kinda zoom in, see a moment there, zoom out. Inhale. Exhale. Let the moment very gently flow away from you, sending gratitude and compassion towards your younger self. She lived through it. He lived through it. You lived through it. You let— you continue to live. Acknowledge that moment.

Remain unaffected.

Inhale. Exhale. Fast forward to your evening. Maybe you got to bed at the time you'd like to have, and maybe you didn't. Perhaps there is lots undone, or there may be a sense of completeness. Without judgment, let the day end. Let your younger self have sweet slumber. Even if it was not a restful night, now look at that night and set it aside without judgment. Relax. Inhale. Exhale. Just blow that night away. Let it fall away from you. All right, you're gonna continue to breathe. If you had your eyes closed, you might open them now. Just kind of very gently return to your present moment. Kind of relax your shoulders, relax your neck. Maybe very gently shake your head yes to this day. Open up the heart. Relax. Receiving. Relax. Now shaking that off.

God love it, you had a good day yesterday because you're deciding to now. Now, however that day went, it likely was a comedy of errors if it's anything like my life. Things went incredibly Lucille Ball silly, or just these major disasters that were horrific at the time, it's laughable now. And maybe some things in your life, it's too soon to laugh. But I love this quote by Marie Osmond. If you're gonna laugh about it later, you may as well laugh right now. So go ahead and take a look at the things that now you can look back and smile. Have a lighthearted look back and a lighthearted look forward. Your future self has today to live. And some of the things you know ahead for your day, instead of looking at them with disdain and stress, kind of have a lighthearted, humorous look at it and give yourself permission To laugh, to smile, to kind of have a little chuckle about how this is gonna go. And stay in that moment, stay in that moment of laughter and smiling and lightheartedness about your future self, your present self, and your younger self.

Why?

Well, chemically speaking, you wanna allow your brain to shower itself with good things.

Mm-hmm.

And when we laugh, when we have a sense of humor, it has a protective biological factor that helps you to make it through these different kinds of stress and helps you to cope. And it lessens the intensity of your experiencing of a low mood. So when you're laughing, you're helping yourself gain ground. When you have a distressed outlook, you're losing ground. People who have fairly severe forms of clinical depression really have a hard time having a sense of humor or laughing. So laughing now both helps you to buy a little bit of time, right? Helps you to buy a little bit of time so that you can cope because your brain is gonna think better when it's relaxed.

Mm-hmm.

After having a good belly laugh, your brain returns to a beautiful level of relaxation. So what are we trying to do here? One, we're trying to get you to relax the brain and we're trying to build these neural pathways so that it makes it easier to laugh. So we're doing 2 things. We're building neural pathways and we're showering your brain with happy chemicals So that it actually has protection against the negative and adverse effects of stress. Okay, so thinking about your future self, it's powerful to laugh. We laugh and give ourselves a social signal that it's okay, that things are gonna be alright. And somewhere in the frontal lobe and the reward centers of the brain, people who are experiencing severe depressions, it's kind of— they start laughing less, your humor goes away. So what you want to do to kind of cope with even depression is try to get yourself to laughter. Find things— it's so amazing that, you know, we have such access to information through the internet. Find things that make you laugh, find things that at least make you smile. It's important that we experience laughter and humor as a way of coping through life. You want your brain to be in its best shape. Right? In its best shape. And one of the things that helps us to be in our best shape is to have a good functioning brain. That brain is the key. When your brain can think, you can figure things out. When your brain cannot think, that agitated brain comes up with some silly ideas that you pay for later. And the cost can be pretty significant, pretty dear. You know, some high-dollar things. Addictions are high-dollar things. Maladaptive coping can cause you to lose productivity, cause you to lose money, cause you to lose your life, cause you to lose relationships. So, you know, as ironic as it is to say, you wanna take humor seriously. It's a way of you coping through things and landing on your feet instead of landing on your back. So what are we taking away from today? Today's coping skill, we did the meditation so that we got the brain into a relaxed state, and then we allowed ourselves a little sense of humor. And you don't have to wait until your brain is in a relaxed state to laugh about something because laughing helps you to get into a relaxed state. But have a lighthearted look at your life and let it go. All right, so then we're gonna quickly go back into that meditative state because I want you to dig down deeper now, okay? Go back to a moment that's pretty bad. Pick something in your memory that maybe, you know, is really on the edge there of distress to trauma. Pick something there. All right. Let that image come up. Zoom in, zoom out.

Set it aside. Inhale. Slow exhale. You might close your eyes if you want. You don't have to. Very gently start breathing and pulling yourself away from that moment, allowing the moment to gently flow away from you, separating yourself from it. Inhale, exhale. Have compassion and gratitude for your younger self for making it through that moment and living so that you yet live. Inhale, exhale. Let that moment drift further away from you. Remain unaffected, experiencing the life you're in now, living. Inhale, exhale, keep breathing and letting that moment flow away from you. Now, if you had your eyes closed, you might open them now very gently, come back to this present moment and shake it off. You are here. That moment is gone.

And somehow you've now cleaned out that emotional closet, you know, got rid of a little bit of the hoarding behavior.

And you're letting it go.

Let that moment go. Kick it all the way out there beyond the universe. You know, take your bat, bata bata swing, knock that out of the park. You have now cleaned out a little piece of that emotional closet, some of that drudgery. Letting it go. You're here. You're here and you're still standing.

It's a good day because you're here.

It's not a good day because it becomes good.

It's a good day because you're here. Let your heart open up.

Hear what God has to say. What is God saying to your heart right now?

Jot a note down. What do you hear him saying? Believe in the goodness of living.

Believe that things can work out, and when they don't, let it go and laugh about it.

Move on. Alright, so this concludes our session today on using humor and mindfulness to cope with stress and Depression, reactive depression.

If you actually attended the seminar, then you have your materials. If you don't have the materials, you can send an email to me, Monique Thompson, LPC. You can send an email to counselor@northdallascounselor.com, or you can visit the website Monique Thompson, LPC, and select any of the materials, free downloads, lots of self-help tools. I just believe in you using yourself, your brain, to its best potential. This is how we make it through the world as beautiful, peaceful, loving people, using your brain for your powers of good, not evil. And that means that you're using your relaxed brain, not your agitated brain. All right. So I hope everybody has wonderful, wonderful moments ahead, refreshed mornings, relaxed evenings, using your brain for good. Good thinking and pushing yourself to protect the brain using humor and mindfulness. Have a great day.