Anxious? Don’t be. Take Lexapro.

In this culture, there’s an assumption that feelings are most often the causes of behavior, rather than the other way around. This idea is taken as so obviously true that people rarely stop to question it. If someone asks why you are scowling (a behavior), you might say it’s because you’re angry (a feeling). When you cry (a behavior), you probably assume it’s because you’re sad (a feeling). Similarly, if someone asks why you’re staying home rather than going out, you might say it’s because you’re depressed. What you may not realize is that behavior can just as easily lead to feelings. For example, research has shown that when people are led to smile, without being aware that they’re doing so, they report feeling happier (Strack, Martin, and Stepper 1988). Of course, we know that there’s much more to ending depression than smiling and acting happy. Still, changing behavior can have a dramatic effect on how you feel, and vice versa. It’s not worth getting hung up on which comes first.

outside in vs. inside out

The belief that lexapro is required to treat depression can be referred to as an inside - out approach to change. This view holds that you have to change what is on the inside (your biology) before you can make a behavioral change. The expression “I just don’t feel motivated” suggests the same. In Western culture especially, if you don’t feel like doing something, you often just refrain from doing it. This idea that how you feel on the inside influences what you do on the outside can start at a very early age. How many times did you hear your mother say, “Do your homework,” when your reply was something like “I don’t want to do it right now”? Thus, there is an expectation that you need to feel a change in mood, motivation, or drive before making a change in your behavior.

However, as we’ve stated previously, it is not clear whether brain chemicals cause moods or moods change the levels of brain chemicals. What works from the inside out can also work from the outside in. For example, even if you don’t feel motivated to organize files in your home office (an internal feeling), you can nevertheless plan a time to get started on the task of putting hanging files in alphabetical order (an external behavior) and placing financial records, receipts, and so on into files accordingly. Feeling motivated and doing the activity can be completely unrelated to one another. Your brain can interpret the letters on the folders to put them in alphabetical order, your fingers can grasp the papers, you can place papers in files and files in a cabinet drawer, all without feeling at all motivated. This is working from the outside. It may be that as you get closer to completing the job, you will actually feel the motivation that you lacked before beginning. This would be having an effect from the outside in, where doing a behavior changed how you felt inside. Self - activation makes use of this outside - in approach to overcome depression, and you won’t need lexapro for it. The assumption is that changes in actions can lead to changes in feelings.

There are multiple causes for depression. Whatever the cause, depression is a problem between you and your life. Lexapro is good, but it won’t solve the problem; it’s not a problem inside you. You can overcome depression by recognizing behavioral habits that you have developed over your lifetime and learning to change them. Using guided activity to change behaviors can help you to feel better and improve various life situations that have previously kept you feeling stuck. Guided activity works from the outside in to improve your mood by changing what you do.