Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Habitual Negative Self-Comparisons Produce A Sense of Worthlessness

A single negative self-comparison does not imply a general sense of worthlessness and lack of self-esteem. A single negative self-comparison is like a single frame of a movie that is in your consciousness at a single moment, whereas a lack of self-esteem is like an entire movie full of negative self- comparisons. In addition to the specific negative self- comparison impressions you receive from each of the movie's frames, you also take away a general impression from the movie as a whole--personal worthlessness. And when later reflecting on the movie, you may at a given moment remember either a single frame or your general impression of the movie as a whole, and both the specific and the general views give you the impression of worthlessness.

A depressive reviews so many thoughts of individual negative self-comparisons that she develops the general impression of lack of personal value--worthlessness--which reinforces the individual negative self-comparisons. The never-ending flow of neg-comps also contributes to the sense that the person is helpless to stop the flow, and causes the person to lose hope that the painful neg-comps will ever cease. The general impression of worthlessness then combines with a sense of helplessness to cause sadness. The relationship between negative self-comparisons, lack of self esteem, and sadness may be diagrammed as in Figure 4.

Put the above discussion another way: At any given moment you have in your mind something like a school report card -- call it your `Life Report' -- with grades on it for a variety of "subjects." You write the grades for yourself, though taking into account how other people judge you, of course, to a greater or lesser degree. The "subjects" include both life conditions, such as the condition of your love life or marriage, and activities, such as your professional achievements and your behavior toward your granduncle.

Another category of `subjects' on the Life Report are future occurrences that matter to you and which are related to your `success' or `failure'-- on the job, in your relationships with others, even religious experiences. These are marked "High hope" or "Low hope".

The "subjects" are marked "important" (e.g. professional achievement) or "unimportant" (e.g. behavior toward granduncle). Again, other people's judgments influence you, but probably less so than in their judgments about how you are doing in specific activities.

The over-all state of your Life Report - the larger proportion of those "important" matters that are of your own doing are marked positive or negative--constitutes your self- esteem or "self image." If there are many important matters marked "bad," the composite constitutes low self-esteem and a poor self-image of yourself.

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