Post-College Depression: Part 4 - Using Positive Psychology to Combat the Post-College Blues

This is the fourth post in a series of entries I will be writing on Post-College Depression.

In the first post of this series I talked about what post-college depression is and typical symptoms and causes. In the second post we discussed how a lack of a sense of control over one's life can result in millennials and emerging adults from Generation Y developing post-college depression. In the third we talked about how the tyranny of choice and high expectations can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression after college. Today we will talk about how you can use positive psychology techniques to combat postcollege depression, anxiety, and stress.

What is Your Explanatory Style?
Most of us, at some point in our lives, have met someone who seems to be happy all the time—where their natural state is simply one of consistent happiness. If something bad would happen to this person, such as getting into a terrible accident, developing cancer, or losing a loved one, they would of course suffer a great deal. But if you met up with them a short time later, you would see that they most likely would have returned to their original level of basic happiness.

In contrast, take a person whose natural state seems to one of sadness and gloom and let something wonderful happen in their life, such as getting a good job, falling deeply in love, or coming into a great deal of money. This person would be happy for a while—but check back with them in a few weeks, months, or a year, and you will most likely find that this person has returned to their normal state of melancholy.

One major difference between these two types of people is their sense of life; that is, their general sense of how they perceive and experience the world. People who are generally happy process the events in their lives much differently than those whose natural disposition is one of unhappiness. Happy people hold brightly in the forefront of their consciousness the positive things in life while holding negative things in the background, whereas pessimists do the exact opposite.

What this continues to show is that your own perceptions and attitudes about what you experience have far more to do with your emotional state than any external events do. what’s your explanatory style? No, this is not the latest pick-up line you will hear at a bar on a Saturday night. Your explanatory style is actually the way you describe the events that take place in your life.

In his best-selling book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Seligman describes that one of the most important factors in the development of learned helplessness is how you explain the events that happen in your life: How you think about your problems, including depression itself, will either relieve depression or aggravate it.

A failure or a defeat can teach you that you are now helpless, but learned helplessness will produce only momentary symptoms of depression—unless you have a pessimistic explanatory style. If you do, then failure and defeat can throw you into a full-blown depression. On the other hand, if your explanatory style is optimistic, your depression will be halted.

Pessimists vs. Optimists
There are two major factors that determine your explanatory style. The first is what Seligman describes as permanence. This is when people perceive or explain negatives as permanent fixtures in their life. For example, a person with a pessimistic explanatory style believes that bad events are always going to happen, while someone with an optimistic explanatory style believes that bad events are only temporary and can be changed by their actions.

The difference between the two is that a pessimist will think in permanent terms such as, "I will never find a job that I love,” while an optimist will think in temporary terms such as, "The job I am in is not that great, but if I keep exploring I’ll eventually find one I really enjoy.”

As Seligman explains, "If you think about bad things in terms of ‘always’ and ‘never’ and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style. If you think in terms of ‘sometimes’ and ‘lately’ using qualifiers and blaming bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style.”

But your explanatory style is not limited to how you view bad events. It also influences how you view the good experiences in your life. The interesting thing with this is that you use the opposite type of explaining when it comes to positive things.

For example, people who are optimistic view positive events as permanent rather than temporary, and the opposite is true for pessimistic people, who believe that good events are temporary and fleeting. While optimists think in terms of, “I am good at what I do,” pessimists will think, “I am just lucky.”

Seligman has found that: As for people who believe good events have permanent causes, when they succeed, they try even harder the next time. People who see temporary reasons for good events may give up even when they succeed, believing it was a fluke. People who best take advantage of success, and get on a role once things start going well, are the optimists.

The second component of your explanatory style is what Seligman describes as pervasiveness. As opposed to permanence, which determines how long a person feels helpless, pervasiveness determines whether the helplessness is limited to the original situation or is spread across many different situations.

For example, say you lose your job because your company decided to outsource your position. Some people will restrict this negative event to the professional or financial aspect of their lives, while others will generalize the negativity that comes from the situation to all the areas of their life.

An optimist will make specific explanations for their setbacks, while a pessimist will make more universal explanations. This is not to say that an optimistic person won’t ever feel helpless when they lose their job—it’s just that they will only feel like that for a little while and will eventually move forward.

A pessimist, on the other hand, will let their whole life crumble to pieces because of one incident. And again, the opposite explanation effect holds true for good events. A pessimist will explain good events in terms of specific factors such as, “I got an A because I am smart in chemistry,” while an optimist will explain good events in terms of universals such as, “I got an A because I am smart.”

Using Your ABCDEs
One of the first steps you can take to develop this kind of optimism is learning to recognize and dispute pessimistic thoughts. If you learn to make permanent and universal explanations for good events, as well as temporary and specific explanations for bad events, you will begin developing your resilience against the post college blues and be able to bounce back when adversity hits. A simple but effective technique developed by Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment is the ABCDE technique (2004).

A stands for adversity created by some event, B for pessimistic beliefs you have in response to the event, C for the usual consequences of your beliefs, D for you disputing the routine of your pessimistic beliefs, and E for the energy you create when you successfully dispute your pessimistic thoughts. Let’s take a look at how this method can help you defeat your pessimistic thoughts:

• Adversity: I have applied for job after job and have been unable to find work in my field.
• Beliefs: No one wants to hire me. I will never find a job. I must not have very good qualifications. I am a total failure.
• Consequences: I feel helpless and lost. I feel like I’m never going to find a job. I couldn’t sleep last night. I have just wanted to be by myself all day and not talk to anyone.
• Disputation: Maybe I’m just being unrealistic about this whole thing. The job market is not that good in my field. Maybe I need to start developing new skills or begin looking for jobs in other areas. I am not a total loser because I still think that I have a lot to offer a company. I just need to look and see what else is out there and keep trying.
• Energizing: I am starting to feel better about myself now that I am looking at it from a more realistic perspective. I am now much more motivated to go looking for a new job. I am going to try to not let this type of negative thinking hold me back in the future.

Over the next week, find five situations in which some type of adversity comes up and, using your journal, explain them in terms of the example above. When doing this, pay special attention to your internal dialog. If you begin hearing pessimistic thinking sneak in, dispute those thoughts using the ABCDEs. While you do this exercise, keep in mind that your beliefs are just that—beliefs—and you have the power to change them.

Questions to Comment On:

• Can you identify your explanatory style?
• Are you a pessimist or optimist?
• Do you see any benefits to using positive psychology?

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