Advantages

Other short articles:
The spiritual element
Choosing a therapist
Tai Chi and depression
Asperger's Syndrome

Links and feedback

The real beauty of the BROH trick is all the things you don't need to do to make it work. There's no need to dig out and examine your childhood traumas; there's no need to dig into the past at all. You don't need to go looking for someone or something to blame. You don't need to come to terms with horrible, deep truths about yourself. You don't need to keep 'mood diaries', with or without a therapist looking over your shoulder. And you don't need to try to substitute new thoughts for old ones.

No digging: sadly, all the therapies I tried went in for digging. The idea seemed to be that the root cause of all the bad thoughts would be found by trying to isolate the original incidents that caused them. The result is seemingly endless, agonising hours talking about yourself to a trained stranger. The more you hate it, the more they see confirmation that they're getting to the truth and you're showing 'resistance'. It occurs to me that it's perfectly reasonable to resist something that's wide of the mark, just as it's perfectly reasonable to show grief at a rock-bottom self-esteem.

A psychodynamic counsellor tried to point out that I had no reason for the low self-esteem, that I was reasonably competent at most things. But it fell on deaf ears. I can only see now that what she was saying made some sense. The depression wouldn't let me see it.

No blame: trying to pin blame on someone else, or something in your past, is surely unlikely to be much help. Perhaps the idea is that if you blame someone else you stop blaming yourself. There are indeed some clear-cut cases - for example a victim of child abuse carrying the blame because she didn't know it was wrong and actually enjoyed the attention. Take it from me, if that's you, you are not to blame for that. But if that's the root cause of lots of other bad thoughts about yourself, recognising it is unlikely to lift them all at a stroke. The depression stops you seeing clearly. Even if you do manage to dig up an incident in the past, which first laid down a bad thought about yourself, it may well have been what would have been a perfectly normal part of experience for someone else. For decades I blamed my low self-esteem on the Church of England because it seemed to be telling me repeatedly that I was worthless. But lots of people have been subjected to the Church of England without getting that feeling out of it. The point is, I'd have heard the message that I was worthless anywhere.

Even if there is a clear 'root cause' of your depression, you need to get rid of the depression before you can look at it properly. This seems like a horrible paradox, but the BROH trick can resolve it.

No affirmations: you certainly don't need all those positive thinking affirmations on Post-it notes around the house telling you you're really as valuable and lovable a human being as anyone else. We all know how hollow they sound when we're swimming through treacle just to get out of bed. Positive thinking looks, to a depressive, like nothing so much as a deliberate exercise in self-deception. Trying to repeat to yourself that you are really a loving, generous person (or whatever) is like trying to tell yourself that black is white. The very fact that you are trying to convince yourself of something is proof that you don't believe it. When a kind friend tries to pay you a compliment you can't accept it. Even if you do accept it, you find half a dozen snags that make it worthless.

No mood diaries or reprogramming: trying to reprogramme youself is a mug's game for most of us when we're depressed. They ask you how you feel, and you've got no idea how you feel. The last thing a depressive needs is a close examination of the whole ghastly business. Changing it, from the point of view of the depressed state, is out of the question. The very idea that you have to chisel away at it bit by bit looks like trying to wear down a mountain with a toothbrush. The BROH trick simply dissolves the mountain.

And the fact is, when you're not depressed, you don't go round carrying the thought that you're a really nice person. You don't actually think about yourself much at all, unless you're aware that there's something that needs changing. The point is: get rid of the depression first. Then you can go about creating the loving and giving human being. If you find you really want to, that is.

Finally, you're allowed to think. The last, but by no means least, advantage of this approach is that it's all done by thinking. There is a spiritual - though tradition-neutral - component because it does involve a shift to a higher level of consciousness - nothing fancy, I promise you:-). The trouble with using a 'spiritual search' to get out of depression is that it seems to be so anti-thinking. All the traditions seem to be saying, as an undercurrent, that if you think too much you're done for. You have to turn off your busy little brain, they say. I used to think that my depression was based on a desperate need to understand the incomprehensible, and that this pointed to some sort of congenital spiritual handicap.

Now I know otherwise. The BROH trick was developed by thinking, and implemented by thinking. You don't have to believe something that seems preposterous, or out of your depth, to do it. But in the outcome, many of the wisdom texts begin to mean something at last. You really have moved on.

click here for the next page
top of this page
BROH home page

Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved
Vivien J. H. Mitchell PhD