I Guess I'm Just Depressed: The Context of Emotion

Etymologists describe the word “emotion” as a middle 1500s French creation meaning “a public disturbance” with the French word itself being derived from the Latin, meaning “to move away.”  In contemporary culture, we often speak of being “moved” by emotions.  But is it the emotion that is moving us, or is the emotion being moved by something else?

First things first.  If your healthful lifestyle adjustment concerns cognitive-emotional change with the emphasis on emotion, you first must decide what truly is at issue.  People naturally simplify their emotional experience, focusing on one element of the total gestalt or whole.  We regularly believe, for instance, that we are “depressed” and blame that depressed feeling for the internal state that we feel at the moment.  However, emotions rarely are pure; they almost always are a mixture—a composite of feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and physiology.  What you perceive as depression, for instance, might really be an amalgam of disappointment (emotion), irritation (cognition), and fatigue (physiological state).  Moreover, it is possible that the cognitive and/or physiological elements are primary and the emotion is secondary.  Accordingly, something that changes the thoughts or physiology could be a cure for what you self-describe as your depression.

So maybe you are not being moved by your emotions after all.  Think about the context in which the depression occurs.  Your environments, including the natural, fabricated, and/or interpersonal environments primarily could be responsible for the depressed-like thoughts, behaviors, and physiology with which you struggle.  Sometimes the source is obvious.  If you are snowed-in and have lost power, your feelings surely are related to the natural and fabricated environments.  Or if you just had a rip-roaring argument with your associate, the negative feelings most likely are a consequence of that interpersonal confrontation.

On the other hand, sometimes the source of what you regard as depressed mood is not so apparent.  You could be undermined by covert influences.  In fact, anything that primes you negatively, either overtly or covertly, can be the reason for your feeling depressed. 

Psychologists often study priming which means exposing persons to information of a particular type in order to observe the information’s effects.  For instance, Katherine B. Carnelley, Lorna J. Otway, and Angela C. Rowe (2015) presented some research subjects with primes, including priming texts, that depicted anxious and avoidant interpersonal relationships, and other primes that represented secure interpersonal relationships.  Not surprisingly, those in the former condition evidenced increased depressed mood and those in the latter, less.  The point, of course, is not that the negative information incited more depression, but that the information was presented covertly and had no direct personal relevance—that the subjects were unaware of and their lives were not threatened by the primed information.

The implication is clear: Your emotions may be moved by information of which you totally are unaware.  Anything from extended conversation with depressed friends to preoccupation with depressing local or national news could be implicated in your dysphoria.  Look to your lifestyle and lifespace to understand why you feel the way you do.  Make lifestyle adjustments to relieve what seems to be, but is not, a purely intra-psychically determined depressed or otherwise unpleasant mood.

Reference:  Carnelley, K., Otway, L., & Rowe, A. (2015).  The Effects of Attachment Priming on Depressed and Anxious Mood.  Clinical Psychological Science, October 5.  doi: 10.1177/2167702615594998.