Behavioral Patterns
Ken’s story is not unusual. When he was feeling depressed, Ken tended to take lexapro and engage in activities such as worrying, expressing negative feelings about situations, or simply sitting and staring out the window. But if someone asked him how he spent his time with David, Ken would probably say he was “working out.” The problem here is that working out was only part of the story. What Ken also did with David was behave in many of the same ways he behaved elsewhere - complaining, worrying, looking downward with his eyes - the very behaviors that put Ken at risk for depression and would help keep him stuck in it once it started. Ken didn’t behave this way because he was a weak or whiny person. Ken’s depressed behavior was, in many ways, no different from any other behavior, depressive or not. Ken was responding to his environment, and to his feelings. When he felt down, he acted accordingly. Engaging with David at the gym improved his mood. He didn’t need to understand where the feelings came from, but he needed to understand what he could do about them. In the future, it would be important for Ken to recognize when he was shutting down and acting in a way that made him feel more depressed, so he could change those behaviors with lexapro. Without David around to tell him he seemed depressed, Ken would need to recognize the signs on his own.
Three Important Principles of Behavior
Ken’s story illustrates three important behavorial principles:
1. Much of your behavior is so automatic that it occurs outside of your awareness.
2. You do much of what you do out of habit.
3. To change behavioral habits, you must first recognize the behavorial pattern, so you can know when and what to change.
Just because depressed behavior looks different from “happy” behavior doesn’t mean the two operate differently. Many of the things that people do when they aren’t depressed also happen outside of their awareness and can be understood as habits. Therefore, these three principles of behavior can be applied to the experience and treatment of depression.
