Me, myself, I -- our own worst, best, friend
Jan 24, 2013
Today, I've posted the second in the series from the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine series, Rick Hanson, on what is one of Dr Hanson's ongoing themes -- a variation on The Power of Positive Thinking (replacing thinking with experience):
Transforming the Brain Through Good Experiences
with Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Neuropsychologist
Covered in the session are the following topics:
- Why Ancestral Survival Skills Trip Us Up Today ****
- The Sensitive Amygdala: Why Positive Experience Is Critical for Tuning the Brain
- Making Change - From Individual Neurons to Whole Regions of the Brain
- From State to Trait: Turning Fleeting Experience into Lasting Change
- Why Ten Seconds Matters: Making Every Moment Count
- The Brain's Version of "Vitamin C": The Key Resources Your Client Needs
- Moving from Reactive Brain to Responsive Brain
- How to Target Key Resources: A Clinical Example
- TalkBack with Joan Borysenko, PhD, Ron Siegel, PsyD, and me - get practical ways to use what you've heard with your patients
I've converted the original downloaded video file into one slighly easier to download (reduced in size from 570Mb to approx. 220Mb) -- with some reduction in the quality of the video. Fortunately, I don't think the information content is reduced unnecessarily. In fact, an MP3 audio version is also available: See my webpage here: [LINK]
I also wish to cover today two recent papers related to the title of today's post: In the area of "Social Cognition", we have articles from colleagues of Lauren Alloy, of Temple University -- firstly by Jonathan P. Stange [LINK] then by Richard Liu [LINK], [LINK] of Brown University Medical School -- studies to do with aspects of self-concept, both to do with self-referent inferential style -- not so much what others say about us, but what we assume they're saying -- what we're "hearing" through our filters, filters the product of our biological nature (as Hanson refers to, the "natural", automatic, defensive style) and in particular those defences we put up all too quickly as a result of our past experience of interpersonal abuse and trauma.
Negative inferential style and deficits in emotional clarity have been identified as vulnerability factors for depression in adolescence, particularly when individuals experience high levels of life stress. However, previous research has not integrated these characteristics when evaluating vulnerability to depression. In Stange's research, a racially diverse community sample of 256 early adolescents (ages 12 and 13) completed a baseline visit and a follow-up visit 9 months later. Inferential style, emotional clarity, and depressivesymptoms were assessed at baseline, and intervening life events and depressive symptoms were assessed at follow-up. Hierarchical linear regressions indicated that there was a significant three-way interaction between adolescents’ weakest-link negative inferential style, emotional clarity, and intervening life stress predicting depressive symptoms at follow-up, controlling for initial depressive symptoms. Adolescents with low emotional clarity and high negative inferential styles experienced the greatest increases in depressive symptoms following life stress. Emotional clarity buffered against the impact of life stress on depressive symptoms among adolescents with negative inferential styles. Similarly, negative inferential styles exacerbated the impact of life stress on depressive symptoms among adolescents with low emotional clarity. These results provide evidence of the utility of integrating inferential style and emotional clarity as constructs of vulnerability in combination with life stress in the identification of adolescents at risk for depression. They also suggest the enhancement of emotional clarity as a potential intervention technique to protect against the effects of negative inferential styles and life stress on depression in early adolescence.
Stange's colleague, and co-author on the above paper, Lauren Alloy, has done considerable work on social cognition and psychopathology; examining individuals' causal inference processes (attributions, psychology of controls) and extends research on "negative inferential styles" to research participants with histories of childhood abuse, and in particular examines one possible basis for the recurrent depression that often accompanies such a history.
According to the stress generation hypothesis (Hammen, 1991), depressed and depression-prone individuals experience higher rates of negative life events influenced by their own behaviors and characteristics (i.e., dependent events), which in part may account for the often recurrent nature of depression. Relatively little is known about the interrelation between stress generation predictors, and distal (time remote - early in life, in particular) risk factors for this phenomenon. This study examined whether childhood emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, each uniquely predicted negative dependent events in individuals with a history of depression. The role of negative inferential styles as a potential mediator was also assessed. A sample of 66 adults with a history of depression completed self-report measures of childhood abuse history and negative inferential styles at baseline. The “contextual threat” method was used to assess the occurrence of negative life events over a four-month prospective follow-up period. Childhood emotional abuse, but not sexual or physical abuse, prospectively predicted greater stress generation. Negative inferential styles mediated this relation. These findings suggest that targeting negative cognitive styles in clinical settings, especially in patients with a history of childhood emotional abuse, may be important for reducing the occurrence of negative life events, thereby possibly decreasing risk for depression recurrence. Further research, more closely tracking daily life events, is needed to :"flesh out" the mechanism by which this (these) processes go on to produce depressed states and "depressive thinking":, but I feel this is an important advance. But armed with this knowledge, with the tools and nonjudgemental perspectivel we can undergo change from "worst" friend, who unconsciously engages in behaviour borne of negative cognitive style, to "best" friend acting in our best-informed interests.