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Lifting depression is easy to do
— when you know its cause
continued...

too, effective psychotherapists know how to treat psychological trauma, even the most severe symptoms of PTSD. But the way our culture conditions us, and the harm this can cause, is more problematic and less widely known. We lack enough objectivity to recognize our own conditioned behavior and responses, so we don't examine them consciously (Griffin & Tyrrell, 2007).

It follows that depression is always secondary to another problem: a signal that there are obstacles preventing a need, or group of needs, from being met, and the person is worrying about this. Clearly, the feeling that life has meaning and purpose comes from being motivated to actively engage with it to get our needs met. When we lose motivational energy and cease to engage, meaning quickly drains away. Naturally enough, the additional distress this causes compounds the worrying, which further depresses mood and can even lead a person to think of killing themselves. We now need to explain why worrying causes excessive REM sleep and how this leads to exhaustion and anomie.

Why We Evolved to Dream

Dreaming takes place in the stage of sleep known as REM (rapid eye movement). All mammals and some birds show REM sleep. The other stage of sleep, non-REM slow wave sleep, is the vital recuperative period when the brain is reinvigorated and the immune system boosted so we feel refreshed when we wake up. For many years, one fact puzzled sleep scientists—the finding that depressed people have proportionally more REM sleep than non-depressed people, and that their REM sleep was more intense. To explain this, we need a little diversion into biology.

When warm-blooded mammals evolved, they consumed five times more energy than reptiles, so a means had to be found to conserve energy. But, from a physiological perspective, any emotional arousal of their autonomic nervous system was an expectation that action was required. And action burns up energy. Moreover, every arousal is only a part of a larger cycle that includes taking the action to dearouse the expectation and, since not all expectations are fulfilled, and some had to be suppressed for expedience sake, this raised a problem: To conserve energy and not be driven manic, mammals had to find a way of dealing with unfulfilled expectations left over in the autonomic nervous system, otherwise they could not maintain the integrity of their instinctive responses. Nature's solution was to translate these expectations into dream scenarios during REM sleep and metaphorically act them out. That's why dreaming deals with the whole gamut of emotions — any anticipations not fulfilled before we slept — so dreams can be happy, sad, angry, anxious, fearful, loving, sexy, etc. This is known as the expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming (Griffin & Tyrrell, 2003).

The Dreams of the Depressed are Never Happy

Depression, of course, is a very powerful emotion, and incessant worrying about things that the person believes can't immediately be solved generates a huge number of unfulfilled negative expectations, every one of which gets added to the list and has to be deactivated in order to complete the autonomic nervous system's arousal/dearousal circuit. This puts enormous pressure on the brain's dreaming process as it furiously fires off the orientation response, causing excessive autonomic arousal discharge in REM sleep, burning up energy and reducing the amount of recuperative slow wave sleep, leading, in turn, to physical exhaustion, loss of motivation to do things and subsequent depression.

So waking unrefreshed, and with no motivation, occurs because one's sleep pattern is unbalanced, which is physically exhausting due to the decreased amount of restorative slow-wave sleep, and mentally draining due to the increased firing of the orientation response (which normally fuels our daytime motivation and attention capacities, which is why depressed people find concentration so difficult) during dreaming. Motivation drains away, as if the brain's battery is flat when our orientation response is overused.

This also explains other symptoms, and why so many depressed people have nightmares! Not being able to fall asleep, for example, is the worry circuit — catastrophic thoughts going round and round in their heads, preventing them from doing the hemispherical switch that normally precedes falling asleep. And waking up early is a sort of survival mechanism for the brain, a response to energy depletion in the glial cells, which are not getting enough sugar to compensate for the energy being used up by the excessive dreaming. When we lose motivational energy and cease to engage, meaning quickly drains away. Naturally enough, the additional distress this causes compounds the worrying, which further depresses mood. 

Breaking the Cycle of Depression

When we explain all this to our depressed patients, after calming them down to access their higher cortex, it is as if a light clicks on in a dark room. For the first time, they see why they are locked into a cycle of negative thinking and are so exhausted. They intuitively realize this explanation correctly explains their condition and recognize that, if they can stop the worrying, the depression will lift.

Two factors are crucial to getting them to this point: helping them understand that our genes are driving us to get our innate needs met, and the expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming. We then reach agreement with them as to what they must do to stop the worrying and rebalance their sleep pattern and, using guided imagery, rehearse the actions they need to take. In other words, we harness their imagination to solve problems instead of worrying about them. This last step is vital because, whatever the brain focuses attention on, it tries to bring about (Griffin & Tyrrell, 2004).

Of course, those who are depressed because of traumatic experiences, we de-traumatize. They usually recover quickly after that. And if the environmental pressures need addressing, other agencies might be brought in to help. The Human Givens approach draws no artificial boundaries between mental, physical and social problems, but aims for a seamless service that helps address all of a person's needs. We are also developing techniques for helping depressed people with Asperger's syndrome, because they don't respond well to guided imagery.

The Therapeutic Protocol for Lifting Depression

Step one. Build rapport. Lower arousal—calm the depressed person down so his or her higher cortex can come into play. Find out what emotional needs are not being met (what are the causes of worry). Find out about his or her good qualities, achievements, abilities, etc. Don't just history-take.

Step two. Use any means to stop the worry cycle and help create new, positive expectations to replace the old, negative ones. (Depressed or anxious people should not have forms of counseling or psychotherapy that encourage introspection or emotional arousal since this tends to increase the number of worries a patient can ruminate about and is therefore unintentionally harmful.)

Step three. Refocus attention away from negative expectations towards getting needs met (encourage physical activity, getting pleasure back in life, improving relationships, solving the problems that cause worry and challenge negative thinking).

Step four. Stimulate the imagination (using guided imagery) to appreciate his or her resources, see how things can be different, build hope and rehearse new behaviors. Include helpful metaphors, stories, etc.

As much as possible, this should be attempted in the first session in order to bring about sufficient improvement to give the client hope that he or she can get better if treatment is continued. Treat postnatal depression in the same way.

Down the ages, whenever the environment failed to provide healthy, balanced and appropriate physical and emotional nourishment, children and adults became mentally unstable or insane, just as is happening now. It follows from what we have outlined that the only answer there ever will be to mental distress is to create a culture where as many people as possible get their innate needs met on an ongoing basis.  

In the UK, human givens psychotherapy is often referred to as "the missing heart of positive psychology" and recognition of its contribution to mental health and education is growing. As well as psychotherapy, where it leads the field in gathering robust, practice-based outcome data, the human givens approach is influencing parenting, education, social work, back-to-work programs and management skills training. Americans, however, are unlikely to have heard of it because it arose in the 1990s in the UK and Ireland, and the resources to spread it beyond those shores are not available. We would like, therefore, to thank Michael Yapko for suggesting we contribute our ideas about depression to this issue of Family Therapy Magazine.

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References

Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking. Chalvington, UK: HG Publishing.
Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. Editors (2007) An idea in practice: Using the human givens approach, Chalvington, UK: HG Publishing
Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Dreaming reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad. Chalvington, UK: HG Publishing.
Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I., & Winn, D. (2004). How to lift depression […fast]: The human givens approach. Chalvington, UK: HG Publishing.  

© Family Therapy Magazine 2008

This article appeared in the American publication: Family Therapy Magazine Volume 7, No, 6 (2008)

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Joe Griffin, MPhil, is director of studies at MindFields College. His 1997 book, Origin of Dreams: How and Why We Evolved to Dream, offered the first holistic synthesis, a recognition of the interdependence of the biological and psychological, that explained the origin, function and meaning of dreams. He is co-developer of the human givens approach to psychology and behavior and widely recognized in the UK and Ireland as one of the most informed and entertaining speakers on human behavior.

Ivan Tyrrell is principal of MindFields College, which has about 12,000 attendee students a year, and editorial director of the Human Givens journal, which he founded in 1993. He worked for many years as a psychotherapist.  

> More information can be found in the following book by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

For more information on lifting depression from the human givens approach, please visit:
lift-depression.com

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> More information, including all references, can be found in the following book, by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

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