Sandy's Good News

Depression magic bullet

I just happened to check out a discussion about depresssion and Seasonal Blues on a decorating forum that I frequent. All the woman were trying to help the poster who was seriously depressed. Many suggested that she take a "little pill" just like they do. The thought process was the famous one that goes around, with the assumption that depression is a "disease", and comparing it to diabetes, and so....  That leads to a slippery slope. (Read the article I recently posted on how drug companies achieve this thought process with PR companies that "brand" diseases so that you come to your "own" conclusion that you need their drug.

The advise that worked the best on the poster was to engage in conversations with others and get her attention outward. That reminded me of my own story of the "magic bullet depression medicine" : 

One day, after receiving awful news, the kind of "I feel like rolling over and dying" kind of news, I forced myself to get on with it by using a piece of advice my wise friend Drew gave me years before. Its always worked like magic for me. Drew is a long time Scientology counselor and I've done a fair amount of it myself.

Here is what Drew said to me one particularly gloomy day: "Sandy, your job is to give other people "wins'." If you can think with this, you'll see that it can change *everything*, because your attention will automatically go outwards instead of inward. Thats the key. If you get the idea that wherever you go, that every person that you interact with should feel better for having interacted with you, you now have a job, instead of an illness.

So this one day, years after that advice, after the new "bomb" that hit my life, I dragged myself out to the grocery, and just started looking around while shopping. I started to observe the other shoppers and look for the good in each person. Pretty soon I was able to ease my attention off my crushing news, a tiny bit at a time. I observed a mother and a daughter, a man pushing a cart. They all have their own story, and I imagined what that might be. I decided each person had some goodness and found something I could like about them. I got a few smiles.

Before I knew it, I found myself in the baking section where something happened to me that has never ever happened before. A lady there was holding a gourmet foodie mag and looking at the spices. She showed me the recipe she was looking at and started to talk about cracked pepper, and asked me for an opinion about which pepper to use. Well, we ended up next talking about baking, and I asked her for advise on a desert I was making for my mom's birthday. One thing led to another, and we ended up in a 10 minute conversation with the woman pouring out her story to me (I didn't ask for it I was just being a good listener). (Truthfully, I was intently listening to her and "being interested" so that I could keep my mind from wondering to my awful problem).

 She told me how she is a dermatologist, but is really a foodie and how she would much prefer to be involved in food which is her passion. And part way through the conversation, she reached for my hand and gave me the warmest heartfelt handshake you would ever get from a friend, no less a stranger, looked intently in my eye, and said "Hi, I'm Nancy."

I walked out of that grocery completely uplifted, and that was the beginning of the resolution of the problem/news that I had earlier gotten. I could get outside myself enough to make correct decisions and respond to others involved without wrong emotions or making anyone wrong. My very awful problem/ news began its tricky resolution at that point with that magic bullet advise. And each time I found myself introverted on the awful news, again, I found someone to be interested in and did my "job": giving other people wins. Try it. Its the best "pill" in the world. Good luck. And here is my version of Nancy's desert idea. It came out uglier than Nancy would have made it but the love is what counted.

 

How do you know if you have "Social Anxiety Disorder"

I know that at times I can be shy.  But wait a minute! Social Anxiety Disorder? Shyness is a disease? Here is an article by Dr. Carl Elliott, M.D.,  that might shed light on this topic. " How to brand a disease--and sell a cure.  The author explains how by creating a brand (disease), consumers can be naturally led to think that taking a drug is necessary and that the idea was theirs in the first place. 

From the article:

    "If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.

For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."

Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding." read more...