Are You Depressed or Just Realistic?

Source: Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock

Henry is a local scientist who came to see me about six months ago because of his increasing stress and unhappiness. Despite being very successful at his work, having a wonderful partner and family, a lovely house in a safe community, and money in the bank, Henry decided he need to talk to a professional for the first time in his life because he felt very anxious and depressed.

What follows is an amalgam of Henry's worries, stressors, and concerns. While this post highlights Henry's angst, it is important to note that many of my patients are currently presenting with very similar complaints.

Here’s a brief excerpt of my most recent session with Henry:

Clifford: “Hey, Henry. Nice to see you. I have some ideas I’d like to discuss—but before venturing into my agenda, can you please tell me yours?”

Henry: “Nice to see you too, Clifford. Ya know? I’m really beaten down and worried by all the craziness going on in the world. I thought just dealing with the pandemic was the worst of it.”

Clifford: “I think I know how you feel. What part of the 'craziness' is troubling you the most?”

Henry: “Geez! Everything. It’s all mushed together. I know I started seeing you because I was feeling a lot of pressure coping with the pandemic and trying to work and keep my family safe. But so much more has been happening lately. Instead of getting better, it feels like things are just getting worse and worse.”

Henry went on to enumerate a litany of hot-button issues and concerns that many people likely find deeply distressing regardless of their political ideology or basic worldview. They included the ongoing pandemic; worsening gun violence; increasing social divisiveness and civil unrest; the weakening of democracy; the prevalence of misinformation; the "weaponization" of the internet and social media; and Vladimir Putin's brazen invasion of Ukraine.

For Henry, the crux of the matter boiled down to his belief that most people don’t have good reality testing. He feels that they have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction and telling the difference between crazy conspiracies and actual truth. He sees all sorts of superstitious, paranormal, paranoid, and magical thinking permeating our culture and society, as well as greed, hypocrisy, and corruption. A very depressing outlook, indeed.

Yet despite his pessimism and the fact that he was feeling sad and anxious, Henry did not meet the criteria for major depression or clinical anxiety. I believe that Henry’s distress and unhappiness were simply features of “depressive realism”—a totally rational and reality-based yet psychologically challenging worldview.

The theory of depressive realism (e.g., Alloy and Abramson, 1979) posits that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.

But many people who are not suffering from actual depression also have a very realistic yet unhappy-making worldview because they also are inclined to make accurate assessments and arrive at valid conclusions that, unfortunately, reinforce their negative, but rational, cognitive bias. The difference between someone suffering from depressive realism and a non-depressed individual who simply has a reality-based but “depressing“ view of the world comes down to the severity of symptoms. Clinically depressed people tend to have biological symptoms (e.g., disturbances with sleep, energy, appetite, concentration, motivation, and sex drive) while people who are merely grounded in the unhappy realities of the world suffer mostly from mental distress.

In today's world, it could be argued that people who are not biased toward negativity have poor reality testing while people who share Henry’s accurate and realistic outlook are very well anchored in it. Indeed, I argue that as soon as one realizes the world has absolutely no interest in human happiness, and assumes personal responsibility to create as full and fulfilling a life as possible, the better off they will be—at least from the standpoint that they’ll be more grounded in reality.

Depression Essential Reads

Are We Teaching Youngsters How to Be Depressed?

5 Reasons Why Depression Looks Different in Everyone

Remember: Think well, act well, feel well, be well!

Copyright 2022 Clifford N. Lazarus, Ph.D.

This post is for informational purposes only. it is not intended to be a substitute for help from a qualified health professional. The advertisements in this post do not necessarily reflect the author's opinions nor are they endorsed by him.