August 2019 – “Ands” Not “Buts”
This month’s TYM has a short description of “proper therapeutic grammar”, specifically, the deliberate use of “ands” instead of “buts”. With depression essentially eager to get us to split off from the world at large, the use of language is one of its tools to get us to peel away from what was, pre-depression, attractive and motivating. So, therefore, the use of language can also get us to reattach to the world and see it for what it is (but what depression has got us to forget), energized, rich, and full of potential.
May your summers or winters (depending on your hemisphere) be going well, and as always, may you be getting only the challenges you’re ready for, and take in all the supports that you have.
“Ands” Not “Buts”: The Importance of Therapeutic Grammar
If we think here about depression as a force with a mind of its own—and it’s a good way to think about it, because it’s actually the case—then one of its great superpowers is its strategic use of grammar. Not anything fancier than its manipulations of conjunctions, and with an even more particular emphasis on the use of “buts” rather than “ands”. But, although those words seem pretty innocuous, the difference makes a huge difference when we are deploying them unconsciously, as they essentially break any unity of our experience into a field of broken shards.
Now, why would depression focus on getting us to use “buts” and not “ands”? Well, as I have written elsewhere (link), depression is a defense mechanism that is reacting to times when we have attached to some goal or connection which is futile, i.e., which is impossible to achieve (or at least credibly feels that way). Depression is monitoring these situations because we only have so much energy to burn, and futile situations burn energy futilely. If we don’t get energy back from an ongoing engagement, then eventually we reach zero energy, which is a more technical way of saying, “we die.” And though that’s true, we don’t easily give up on goals that we’ve deeply attached to; a job promotion that we can see is really never going to happen, but which we have staked our self-worth on, is something that we are loathe to let the go of. So, depression, our very rough and harsh defender, comes up with strategies to keep this from happening, to get us to let go of these futile attachments when we really don’t want to.
One way depression pries our hands off that cherished but depleting goal is to exhaust our physical energy, making the goal impossible to pursue. But another, and arguably more powerful strategy, is to make the world itself—which includes our particular goal—look and feel unenticing. One way it does that is with negative self-talk, and embedded in that kind of internal narration is the view of a world which is denuded of worth, grey and deenergized, and fragmented and rejecting. The latter part is where it manipulates grammar: if it gets us to buy into a world in which things are only competing with, and negating, each other, rather than cooperating, it succeeds in making the world feel harsh, onerous, and ultimately impossible. In doing so, it gets us to drop our futile goal…and everything else at the same time. Depression is unapologetically unsubtle in its work.
Think about a typical depression statement: “My wife loves me, but I feel I’m undeserving.” Language matters, because when we are speaking or thinking it, effectively it acts as an external input to our systems, as if someone else were saying it. Part of us processes it anew, as if it were an observation rather than a declaration, and that part of us is pretty concrete: if it is told something, it will tend to take it for granted. So in this sentence, what is being said is that, yes, my wife does love me—that’s true, and we see that if we’re not so lost in the delusional dimension of depression—but that truth is negated by the fact (even if it’s being stated as a “feeling”) that I am undeserving. The effect is to prevent the fact of my wife’s love from affecting me, from getting into me and changing anything, which makes the outer world feel pointless and unassimilable. Yes, that love exists, but not to me, which supports depression’s goal of cutting us off from the world which, in our futile attachment to it, is seen as threatening to our existence.
If, however, we change that sentence to, “My wife loves me, and I feel I’m undeserving,” we get a very different declaration, and therefore a very different input back into our own systems. Because what is being said there is that two things are equally true and valid, and that the one is not negating the other. The external fact of my wife’s love now can be relevant to me, as well as the experience of feeling undeserving—we get to have both. Instead of being split off from the world, that humble “and” has reconnected us to the world. It has not resolved the ugly feeling of undeservingness, for sure, but it will be much easier to deal with when the world also includes the love of our spouse, than if it’s just wasteland and emptiness out and in there.
So, try to notice when you are speaking in depression’s language, lacing your simple comments with these nuclear-powered conjunctions, and then deliberately change the “but” to “and”. See how that feels, see what happens emotionally, cognitively, and somatically when you make that change. Prime your partner and friends to keep an eye on your usage, and like a good form of the strict school marm, keep you on track with proper (therapeutic) grammar. Of course, depression will attempt to poo-poo this, calling it contrived or hokey, or gaming up the actual reality (that life and you are clearly worthless), but as a part of the puzzle in curing depression, it’s a remarkably potent piece not to miss.
