Quotes from Richard O'Connor

The real battle of depression is between parts of the self. Depressed people are pulled under by shadows, ghosts, pieces of themselves that they can't integrate and can't let go. The harder they work, the more they do what they know how to do, the worse things get. When their loved ones try to help in the usual ways, the commonsense ways that only seem natural expressions of caring and concern, they get rejected.

3 Chris Peterson's book, A Primer in Positive Psychology, is full of practical

You know very well what the right choice is, yet you keep making the wrong one.

They might medicate themselves with alcohol and drugs. Their families didn't know how to help; neither sympathy nor moralizing seemed to have any effect. In this way, the depressed person gets caught up in a vicious circle from which there seems to be no escape.

On a human level, helping people understand that they have a disease can free them from much of the guilt and self-blame that accompanies depression. They can learn different ways of reacting to stress

We know that infant rats who receive more licking and grooming from their mothers are less fearful and more intelligent as adults, have better immune systems, and are more attentive mothers themselves.

Anxiety develops a hair trigger, ready to go off at stimuli that we don't even notice. Not understanding what made us anxious, the conscious mind searches for an explanation, and often enough creates its own.

Psychotherapy and medication both produce similar changes in brain functioning.18 There is a biochemical process in depression, but the individual has been made susceptible to depression through life experiences.

If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, certain areas of your brain light up on scans; with good treatment, those areas gradually dim and others light up more.

A powerful example of beliefs at work: When schoolchildren are encouraged to believe that their bad grades come from lack of effort rather than lack of intelligence, they show remarkable gains in both persistence and accomplishment.

there's evidence to show that "certainty" is only a feeling, like anger or excitement, the result of unconscious forces at work in the brain.

If you have two years of sobriety behind you, then take a drink, you're much more likely to keep on drinking because the mere act of taking a drink—an irrevocable decision—will make you suddenly start to discount all the information and experience you have about the value of sobriety. You'll rationalize (I can control my drinking), minimize (A few drinks won't kill me), and deny (Well, I guess I never really was an alcoholic).

Alcohol and other drugs may be used to give relief from the depression. But the relief is only temporary, at best, and usually the person just hates himself more for giving in to temptation. Alcohol itself is a depressant, and long-term alcohol abuse may lead to chronic depression

People with depression, however, share a whole set of stories about the world that are highly distorted, and because their stories are self-fulfilling prophecies, they maintain and reinforce the depression.

In our relationships with others, we have unrealistic expectations, are unable to communicate our own needs, misinterpret disagreement as rejection, and are anxious and unassertive in our presentation.

we can reprogram our own brains through focused practice of any new skill, through attending to ourselves in a mindful, noncritical way.

Pleasure and desire are altogether different things in the brain.

When my wife asks what I want for dinner, pasta or chicken, and I say I don't care, what I'm often missing is that she's asking for a little companionship, a little mutual ownership of a decision.

motivation follows action instead of the other way around.

Science knows now that our brain does not simply store our experiences. Each experience changes the brain, structurally, electrically, chemically. The brain becomes the experience. If we are careful about the experiences we give our brains, we can change the brain itself.

A study of the brain using new technology showed that the thinking areas practically shut down when people were made to listen to information that contradicted their political beliefs. Conversely, when they heard information that tended to confirm their beliefs, the happiness centers of the brain lit up.

The hedonic treadmill says that no matter how much you have right now, you will want more, and when you get more, you will want more still—unless you're wise enough to save your money for some of the things that do lead to happiness.

Procrastinators tend to buy self-help books about procrastination, then take them home, put them on a shelf, and never read them.

We experience a powerful reluctance to narrow our options—so powerful that we often miss out on good opportunities in order to avoid losing the remote possibility of something better.