Concepts

For the sake of discussion, we can talk about dysthymia in terms of three basic elements:

• low self-esteem - a feeling of worthlessness
• negative, circling thoughts about yourself
• an almost physical paralysis - the general feeling of not wanting to do anything.

OK, when you're mired in the goop they all look like the same thing. But the distinctions are important to understand the mechanisms at work. The important thing is the relationships between the elements. At first glance, it seems obvious - negative thoughts are the expression of the low self-esteem; low self-esteem means you don't want to do anything because everything you touch turns into a pig's ear. You can't change yourself because even the tiniest move towards self-improvement seems like a mountain to climb. So you're stuck.

Now, the thing about the BROH trick is that you don't have to do anything, you just have to understand something. Can it really be that simple? Well, yes it can, and you don't even have to feel guilty about it. Because you don't have to do anything, you don't need to worry about the paralysis - enthusiasm and motivation will come in their own time. So we can concentrate on the negative thoughts and the low self-esteem.

First, the self-esteem. What is it? It's to do with your attitude to yourself in relation to other people. Low self-esteem leads to a habitual subconscious demeanour that says: 'I'm not good enough' and 'you're better than me'. It's a judgement, but more in the sense of a gut feeling than an opinion.

The negative thoughts are an expression of the low self-esteem, and they serve to justify it. They keep coming back to haunt you, either triggered by something or seemingly out of the blue. The sort of thing I mean is: I'll never get the hang of being a decent human being; I'm not a nice person; I never do anything right; and so on. Any hint of criticism, or something that goes wrong, brings one of them to mind, and very quickly the others follow, along with memories which reinforce them, and before you know it you're mired in the goop. You use up a tremendous amount of energy wrestling with them, and it's no wonder your sleep is disrupted and you spend most of your life exhausted.

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, most therapies seem to go in for digging. The idea seems to be that the root cause of all the bad thoughts will be found by trying to isolate the original incidents that caused them. As if that will make them go away! The result is seemingly endless, agonising hours talking about yourself to a trained stranger. The more you hate it, the more they hand you the box of tissues and accuse you of 'resistance'. It seems 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.

No blame: trying to pin blame on someone else, or something in your past, ain't gonna do it either. It might reassure you that 'it's not your fault', but it's not going to make any difference to the way you are now.

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. Positive thinking looks, to a depressive, like nothing so much as a deliberate exercise in self-deception. 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 deny that you're a total pain in the rear end it only makes it worse.

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.

And the fact is, healthy people don't go round carrying the thought that they're a really nice person. They don't actually think about themselves much at all. 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.

All you need is thinking. 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.

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Vivien J. H. Heppel PhD