mental illness or being human?

Part of the difficulty that comes with dealing with emotional pain is the stigma associated with it. A common perception is that if a person is depressed or anxious, he or she must have something wrong that needs to be fixed. From this viewpoint, our healthy functioning then would be a life completely free of anxiety and depression. I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who isn't anxious or depressed at times. Anxiety and depression are two of the feelings that make us human. One benefit of this realization is that we embrace those feelings to some degree. After all, if it's part of being human, then being distressed every time we feel anxious or depressed sets us up for pain on top of the anxiety or depression we already feel.

This added negative emotion is called a secondary disturbance in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). We are upset (secondary) about how we feel (primary). For example, we're depressed about how anxious we might get, or we're anxious about not feeling totally confident. Not only do we have one struggle, the primary one, but we have exacerbated our problems by bringing a secondary disturbance into the picture.

Now, we have to be careful we don't get upset with ourselves for creating that secondary disturbance, because, if we do so, we've just created another problem. I guess you could call that a tertiary disturbance. You can see this type of upsetting could go on and on, so our ultimate goal is to accept whatever negative emotion we have, so we can focus on a possible solution.  

Here is an example: Billy Bob is attracted Betty Sue and pursues a relationship with her but is ultimately rejected. He then is upset because of that rejection, and such a reaction is understandable. This disturbance would be the primary one. Now, if BIlly Bob gets upset with himself for getting upset, we have a secondary disturbance. If we then teach Billy Bob about secondary disturbances, and Billy Bob gets upset about having a secondary disturbance, we then have a tertiary disturbance. REBT argues that we are best served by accepting the negative feelings of the primary disturbance. If Billy Bob is able to do that, he then could more easily decide on the best course of action. Any number of solutions are possible. He might decide to put himself back out there, hang out with his buddies, take a break from romantic interests, or go play XBox for a while.

If, on the other hand, Billy Bob starts to get down on himself for feeling upset about the rejection, the problem could be amplified. He might start labeling himself negatively, leading to judgement clouded by more intense negative emotion. If he looks at himself and says, "You're weak for letting a girl get you down," he then runs the risks of becoming even more depressed, because he has now failed twice in his mind: once with Betty Sue and once with his reaction.    

So, how we conceptualize our emotions have an impact on whether we feel even worse. And, that is where the misuse of psychology can be dangerous. If I am experiencing a regular human emotion but put some kind of more severe label on it, such as major depression, I run the risk of making a bigger problem. Billy Bob isn't just bummed about the rejection, he now has a significant and challenging health condition he needs to somehow overcome. That's not to say that major depression isn't an actual medical condition, but just that we have to be careful about labeling a completely healthy human emotion, feeling sad, as something much more serious.