I have a fairly positive attitude. I had an epiphany about ten years ago. I was whinny about something, and then the thought occurred to me that I had never been shot at in my life. I got to thinking about how blessed I was to live in the United States at this time. Most of us live better than kings did five hundred years ago. We have access to food, shelter, medical help, entertainment, and safety far greater than kings could even imagine back in the 1500s.
Sometimes when friends ask how I'm doing I'll reply that "I haven't been shot out today."
I was intrigued by this study - Depressed people have trouble learning 'good things in life':
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While depression is often linked to negative thoughts and emotions, a new study suggests the real problem may be a failure to appreciate positive experiences.
Researchers at Ohio State University found that depressed and non-depressed people were about equal in their ability to learn negative information that was presented to them.
But depressed people weren't nearly as successful at learning positive information as were their non-depressed counterparts.
"Since depression is characterized by negative thinking, it is easy to assume that depressed people learn the negative lessons of life better than non-depressed people - but that's not true," said Laren Conklin, co-author of the study and a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State.
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Interesting.
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Technorati tags: depression
3 comments:
Very interesting! My beloved hubby has clinical depression and anxiety (med-free for several years now!) It's under control now, but you can see it simmering under the surface still in times of stress.
He's the best guy in the world, a true sweetheart. But... he's a raging pessimist. Always expecting the worst possible outcome. Never seeing the silver lining.
If I talk about some great thing we've experienced, he'll have some "yeah but" about something he's worried about from it.
So this research TOTALLY make sense from my personal observations. I worry about the same things he does, but it doesn't overwhelm me because it's balanced with the positives. For him, the positives are just there, they have no real meaning for him.
Very interesting, indeed.
If you don't mind, I'm going to post anonymously, since if he happens to read this (unlikely but you never now), he's likely to assume from it that I'm not happy being with him, missing the positive "best guy in the world" part of it.
Impressive blog. Thanks for sharing with us..
I think there is a balance between being aware of problems and being prepared, vs. being focused on problems and ignoring all the wonderful things in this life.
Balance is often hard.
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