 What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about mental health so if you're like me trying to improve your mental and emotional well-being make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and real quick if you missed yesterday's video I did a video on the nine major differences between the depressed brain and the average brain so make sure you go check that out that'll be linked up in the info card as well as in the end screen all right so before we get started on answering the question are you addicted to depression am I addicted to depression are other people addicted to depression I want to make very clear I am not a therapist I am not a psychologist but you know who is this guy now the prefrontal cortex that youngest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective it understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn't smoke and it tries its hardest to help us change our behavior to help us stop smoking to help us stop eating that second that third that fourth cookie we call this cognitive control we're using cognition to control our behavior all right that is dr. Judson Brewer I just finished uh reading his book the craving mind for a second time absolutely love that book I'll link it down in the description phenomenal book just just go just go get it all right like everybody's like like into like books like habits and stuff like there's this book that is just like a best-seller the power of habit I think this book is a thousand times better doesn't get nearly enough love anyways in his book he uh cites some research and I just learned about this study about people who are addicted to depression and my brain just went so we're gonna be asking and hopefully answering the question are we addicted to depression and trust me baby I know all about addiction so those of you who don't know me I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic but a lot of us have addictive behaviors um we're gonna be diving into addictive thoughts right but we often don't recognize it so let's start let's start with the basic definition of addiction okay just get the the words drugs and alcohol out of your mind just the basic definition of addiction it's a continued use or action despite negative consequences all right so we might be addicted to something if we keep doing it even though it's negatively affecting our lives all right lock that in we're gonna circle back to it towards the end of this video so first let's talk about rumination real quick all right so rumination a lot of us struggle with rumination a lot of my rumination baby girl I ruminate like nobody's business I remember a car ride home from California and at least two or three hours of that four hour drive I had the same thought just over and over and over and over and over and over again like on average did you know we have about 70 to 80 thousand thoughts all right and I think uh it's about 90 percent of them are about the same thing like isn't that crazy all right but anyways they found that rumination is often linked to depression so although depressed people may not like their depressive thoughts and the rumination behind them there is a possibility that we are addicted to them okay so we're going to be looking at this research study that's titled sad as a matter of choice emotion regulation goals in depression so let's read the abstract real quick research on deficits in emotion regulation has devoted considerable attention to emotion regulation strategies we propose that deficits in emotion regulation may also be related to emotion regulation goals we tested this possibility by assessing the direction in which depressed people chose to regulate their emotions i.e towards happiness or towards sadness in three studies clinically depressed participants were more likely than non-depressed participants to use emotion regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness this pattern was found when using regulation strategies of situation selection studies one and two and cognitive reappraisal study three the findings demonstrate that maladaptive emotion regulation may be linked not only to the means people use to regulate their emotions but also to the ends towards which those means are directed so basically they got two groups of people depressed people non-depressed people and they showed them a set of happy sad or neutral pictures okay then they gave them the choice to see that picture again or a blank screen all right and then after that they rated their moves so what they found across the board uh between depressed and non-depressed people is happy images made people happier sad images made people sadder no surprise there now what they also found was depressed people decided to look at the happy images again as much as the non-depressed people but here's the kicker depressed people chose to look at the sad pictures more often than the non-depressed people okay they wanted to look at the sad pictures so scientists in order to confirm a study and its results what they'll do is they'll run it over and over and over again and sometimes what they'll do with those results they're like hold on let's let's try hitting this from a different angle and see if we get the same results so they ran the exact same study but instead of pictures they use audio clips right or um sound bites from pieces of music happy music sad music do you want to listen to it again or do you not want to listen to it again boom same thing happened depressed people wanted to listen to the sad music again all right now here was the most fascinating part to me okay the third time they ran this study they gave people different coping skills all right that would either help decrease their sadness or increase their sadness all right so think about it as being handed one of two options here's a healthy coping skill here's an unhealthy one and what they found is nuts they found that depressed people were more likely to use the unhealthy coping skills that they already knew beforehand would make them feel worse now to the average person a lot of this makes absolutely no sense but if you're like me and you've struggled with depression like this makes a ton of sense right like we do these things like how many times when we're sad do we listen to a bunch of sad music how many times do we watch sad movies when we're feeling down right like they're making us feel worse and it makes sense to us and one of the reasons why they think that might be is because it's comfortable all right it's like the perfect fitting glove or piece of clothing like we know it fits we know what our depression feels like and we know that we can sit in it right so again remember the definition of addiction continuing an action despite negative consequences all right so we continue to do unhealthy things or ruminate on unhealthy thoughts or listen to music or watch sad tv shows or movies right we continue to do those things even though those make us feel worse if you ask me that seems to tick a few boxes on the old addiction checklist so one of the major problems is that for a lot of us our depression becomes part of our identity right we have this fixed mindset of this is me i am a depressed person something that has helped me and what a lot of different forms of therapy do is it helps you realize that your depression is it's a feeling it's an emotion right and even though you might have different um balances with your brain chemistry we identify so closely to it that it's hard to let it go for some of us if we're being honest with ourselves if we stopped being depressed who are we right so that might be part of why we're addicted to it like just to give a great example of like my addiction like one of the reasons i was afraid to get sober was if i'm not the drunk party guy who am i right so without even realizing it we might be holding ourselves back and latching on to unhealthy coping skills right and for some of us when we say oh therapy didn't work or this or that right well maybe maybe it's because we're choosing not to do the healthy coping skills because we're addicted to our depression all right so the first step towards solving any problem is recognizing that there is a problem all right so hopefully now that we have some clarity about this situation we can stop being so damn addicted to our depression and start getting into that solution all right but anyways that's all i got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and don't forget check out the last video if you haven't yet the nine major differences between the depressed brain and the average brain all right and a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel around patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying the mental health books at the rewired soul.com or the merch from the merch store all right thanks again for watching i'll see you next time