Step 4: Adopt an Experimental Attitude
It is crucial that you adopt an experimental attitude. To do so means becoming interested in the outcome no matter what the results are. In other words, whether the alternative behavior has a positive effect on your mood or not, you know you have learned something important. The experiment is not a test of your willpower or a test of whether self-activation is the right approach for you. It is simply a way of seeing whether or not particular behaviors affect your mood. The results can then be used to try other experiments and to include specific changes in your strategy for ending depression.
Sometimes when you are depressed the strength of certain emotions can make it difficult to adopt an experimental attitude. The power of hopeless thoughts and feelings can make changes seem doomed to failure (”I know this won’t work, so why try?”). Depression may have a way of making everything seem like a test of your worthiness (”The fact that this didn’t work just shows how weak willed I am”).
When you’re depressed, your feelings often aren’t a good basis for judging how helpful
changes can be. Depression can be a lot like that little devil on your shoulder trying to convince you that nothing will work, things can’t improve, and it’s all your fault. If this
happens to you, we suggest that you spend no energy trying to argue with the devil on your shoulder. Trying to convince yourself that things will work, or that it’s not your fault, or that you really should have a more positive attitude just keeps zoloft going. Instead, just let the little devil have his say while you continue to plan for and begin the experiment. If you don’t involve yourself in the argument by trying to win it, the negative messages will eventually drift away. Another useful thing to do is to commit yourself to changes, regardless of how you feel. We’ll have much more to say about this later. For now, the main idea is that acting on your plan can potentially have a positive effect on your mood.
Finally, adopting an experimental attitude also means keeping your expectations modest.
Don’t expect the changes you make to turn you into a happy-go-lucky person overnight. Again, the goal is to see what sorts of small changes can affect your mood in particular situations. Even though this is a relatively small step in the path to ending depression, it is a critical one.
