1-15 同忧郁症作斗争

Battling Against Depression

“I was demoted1 and demoted and demoted,” says Betty Whelan of how her depression affected 1 her job. “I was lying in bed all day watching the clock go round and hating myself for it. You feel worse than a worm on those days, covering up2 for your actions.” Up to then she had led an active life. She had a job with a company and “I was always doing things. I was in a choral society3. I traveled to places. I loved it.” Then her parents died within a year and a half of each other and it was during this time that a deep and serious depression descended 3 on4 her. “To me it was like being in a bottomless pit, not wanting to be there and not able to get out.” The depression paralyzed5 her so much that “I didn't even invite my best friend over because I would have to make a cup of tea for her.”

She was hospitalized three times in three years. She lost her job. In the middle of all this her sister telephoned her to tell her about an international organization called Recovery which had established itself in Ireland four years earlier. She went to a Recovery group meeting and was so taken by it that she attended three groups a week in the first flush6 of enthusiasm. Today she is Recovery's area leader for Ireland and readily admits that she does not know what would have happened to her without the organization and its method. That method involves taking control of your own thoughts and attitudes. “We learn that we can change our thoughts to positive rather than negative,” says Betty Whelan. “For each thing we perform we endorse 4 our selves tell ourselves that we have done very well.” “We work on trivialities7,” she says of the detail in which the method is applied 5. “After all, our lives are made up of trivialities.”

So members give themselves a pat on the back8 for engaging in the simple transactions9 for the day: making a phone call, keeping an appointment, getting up in the morning, and so on. They also try to notice when their chain of thoughts is heading in a dangerous direction either towards depression or towards a damaging degree of exhilaration10 and to break that chain of thought before it gains momentum 611. “Break the fear at its most trivial link,” is how Betty Whelan puts it. Also important to break is the vicious cycle12 which Recovery calls “reviewing and previewing.” That's the common affliction13 in which we keep replaying that upsetting scene with the boss and fantasizing about14 what we are going to say the next time we see the so and so.

Since we rarely actually get around to15 saying it, all we succeed in doing is hurting ourselves, probably to a greater extent than that to which we were hurt by the original incident. “That's detrimental 7 to16 mental health,” says Betty Whelan with considerable understatement. “ We learn to become objective, to think of something else, try and think of something pleasant, something we like doing phone a friend, go out and have a cup of coffee.” Attending the weekly Recovery meeting is a key part of the process for members. There, members talk about how they handled, or failed to handle, problems which arose during the week, and they take it in turn to read extracts from Recovery's principal text, Mental Health Through Will Training, by its founder 8, Abraham A. Low, MD. Dr. Low founded the movement in Chicago, in 1937. Since then, people all over the world have been able to stay out of psychiatric17 hospitals and to lead normal lives by using his approach.

The idea of adjusting your attitude to events as a form of mental health seems old fashioned, and it is. Two thousand years ago the stoics18 were urging people to adopt a positive attitude in the face of life's vicissitudes19 and they probably weren't the first. In recent decades, the increasingly fashionable cognitive 1120 therapies work through enabling people to change damaging thinking patterns (patterns such as seeing a simple setback 12 as a catastrophe 13, for instance), through noticing their first, negative thoughts in reaction to events and replacing them with thoughts which lead to more positive emotions, or through giving themselves very positive messages about their achievements, abilities or situations.

注释：

1.demote [di5mEut] vt. 使降级；使降低地位

2.cover up 掩盖；掩饰

3.choral [kC5rB:l] adj. 合唱的；～society 合唱团，合唱会

4.descend 2 on袭击；突然降临

5.paralyze [5pArElaIz] vt.〈主美〉使瘫痪

6.flush [flQF] n. 一阵感情；兴奋

7.triviality [trivi5Aliti] n. 琐事；琐碎

8.a pat on the back〈口〉赞扬；鼓励

9.transaction [trAn5zAkFEn] n. 业务；（一笔）交易

10.exhilaration [i^7zilE5reiFEn] n. 活跃；兴奋

11.momentum [mEu5mentEm] n. 势头；冲力

12.vicious cycle恶性循环

13.affliction [E5flikFEn] n. 苦恼的事由；折磨

14.fantasize [5fAntEsaiz] ～about 从事空想；幻想

15.get around to抽出时间来做（或考虑）

16.detrimental [7detri5mentl] adj. （与to连用）有害的；不利的

17.psychiatric [saIki5Atrik] adj. 治疗精神病的

18.stoic 9 [5stEuik] n. 斯多葛派学者；禁欲者

19.vicissitude 10 [vi5sisitju:d] n. 世事变化

20.cognitive [5kC^nitiv] adj. 认识的；认知的

同忧郁症作斗争

　　“我被降级、降级、再降级，”贝蒂·惠兰在讲述她的忧郁症是如何影响她的工作时这么说道。“我整天躺在床上看着钟不停地走，我怨恨自己。那些日子一个人为自己的行为掩饰，觉得自己不如一条小虫。”在那之前，她可是过着积极的生活。她在一家公司工作，“我总是有事可做。我参加了合唱团，我去各地旅行。我热爱这种生活。”后来，在一年半时间里，她的父母先后撒手人寰，就是在这段时间内，她患上了严重的忧郁症。“对我而言，就像陷入了一个无底深渊，不愿陷进去，也无法摆脱出来。”忧郁症使她的生活处于严重的瘫痪状态，“我甚至不想邀请最好的朋友来玩，因为我不得不为她泡茶。”

　　她3年中住过3次医院，因此她失业了。在这期间，她姐姐打来了电话，告诉她有关一个名为“康复”的组织的情况，这个组织是4年前在爱尔兰成立的。她去参加了一次“康复” 小组会议，立即被吸引住了。在开始的热情兴奋中，她一周内参加了3个小组会议。如今她是“康复”的爱尔兰区域负责人。她乐意承认，如果没有这个组织及其方法，她真不知道自己会成什么样子。那种方法包括控制自己的思绪和态度。“我们发现，我们能够改变我们的思绪，使之成为积极的、正面的，而不是消极的、负面的，”贝蒂·惠兰说。“我们要认可我们做的每一件事情——告诉我们自己，我们干得很好。”“我们每天做的都是些微不足道的小事，”她在谈到应用这种方法的详情时说。“归根结底，我们的生活是由许多小事组成的。”

　　所以会员们自我鼓励做那些日常的简单事务：打电话、赴约会、早上起床等等。他们还注意什么时候自己的思路是在朝危险的方向发展——朝着忧郁方向或者具有伤害性的兴奋方向发展——在其达到严重势头之前，切断那条思路。“在最不起眼儿的那一环节破除恐惧感，”这是贝蒂·惠兰所说的方法。另一件重要的事是，要打破那种“康复”协会称之为“事后回顾与事先预观”的恶性循环。我们通常的苦恼就是，我们脑中不断重新出现跟老板在一起的烦人情景，同时又幻想着我们下一次看到谁时打算说些什么。

　　由于我们实际上难得有机会说出来，所以，我们最终只是自我伤害罢了，这样或许比原来那件事对我们的伤害还要大。“那对精神健康是有害的，”贝蒂·惠兰很委婉地说。“我们要学会客观，想点别的什么，想并试着做一些快乐的事情、我们喜欢做的事情——给朋友打电话、出去喝杯咖啡。”参加每周的“康复”聚会对会员来说是康复过程中至关紧要的一部分。在会上，会员们谈论他们是如何处理好那周出现的问题，或者是为何没有处理好那些问题。他们轮流朗读“康复”协会的主要课本《通过意志训练达到精神健康》中的章节。这本书是协会创建人医学博士亚伯拉罕·洛撰写的。1937年，他在芝加哥发起了这场运动。自从那时以来，世界上的人们就可以不去精神病院，而用他的治疗方法就可以过着正常人的生活。

精神健康的一种方式是调整态度，适应事件。这个方法似乎已经陈旧了，确实也是。两千年前，斯多葛派哲学家就力劝人们面对世事变化要采取积极的态度，他们或许还不是最早这样做的人。近几十年来，越来越时髦的认知治疗法是使人们改变有害的思维模式（例如，把平常的挫折看作是大难临头的这种思维模式），或使人们注意到自己最初对事件作出反应时的消极情绪并代之以积极情绪，或使人们对自己的成就、才能或处境采取积极的看法。