During my last acute depression I avoided everything that could trigger my sad or scary thoughts. Nearly anything that evoked emotion (whether positive or negative) fell into this category. I stopped watching romantic comedies, tragedies, or virtually any type of entertainment with salient emotional themes. I avoided my normal activities because the flatness I felt in place of my usual enjoyment was too conspicuous. I avoided people as much as I could.
All this avoidance left me with an unhealthy amount of time to ruminate on my thoughts--precisely what I was trying to avoid doing. After all, I didn't want to "practice" my irrational thoughts, thereby strengthening them. Avoidence also shrunk my world to just a handful of people, places, and activities. My life played out mostly in my bedroom (almost entirely in my bed), and it probably looked to others like I spent my entire day staring at my peach-colored walls.
Actually, my body may have been immobolized but my mind was racing. It was going over, and over, and over a handful of guilty and scary thoughts that consumed my mind, crowding out my ability to think about (much less do) anything else.
As I recovered, my mind became strong enough to resist the thoughts. Inititally I was only able to keep my mind on something other than the guilty thoughts for a few seconds at a time, but as the months passed I worked up to a couple of minutes of sustained attention. The thoughts would still intrude, but as long as I could keep myself distracted I could minimize my discomfort.
During this recovery, one activity that was both safe (it didn't trigger scary thoughts) and effective (it could keep my mind on something else for awhile) was reading mystery novels. Detective stories provided enough intrigue to hold my fragile attention for a few minutes at a time but they stayed well within the realm of intellectual brain-teasing entertainment--they weren't emotional triggers because their character development and emotional themes were refreshingly superficial. Importantly, they allowed me to escape my narrowed world and sick bed--at least in my imagination.
Below is an article describing just how therpeutic mystery novels can be.
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