My score on the BDC

Okay, I was going to wait until tomorrow to post this, but people are apparently afraid to post their own scores. So I'll post mine.

Today when I took this test I scored a 29, which is higher than I would have guessed it to be. That is almost as high as I scored when I first went into therapy in the spring of 2001. Back when I wished I could just die because I hated my life so much and thought my kids and husband would be better off without me. So, I guess I've been in denial about how bad I've been feeling about life. I mean, I knew that I've been slipping a bit in recent weeks, but I didn't think I'd score that high.

Now, it is important to recognize whether you are feeling down because of a recognizable event; pregnancy hormones, significant personal loss, etc. Everyone feels down sometimes, and for good reason. But if you find you've been feeling low for a period of time, certainly more than a month, you need to take steps to do something about it.

I believe that for myself, at least, my depression is much much worse when I fall back into old, destructive habits of thinking. I talked a bit about some of these habits in this post. These patterns of thinking can be changed, and when we make the effort to identify and change the way we think, we can begin to feel better rather quickly. It takes conscious effort, but it can be done.

So, starting tomorrow, I will begin posting about the habits of thinking that produce the negative feelings that make us feel depressed. This project is probably gonna take more than a week, isn't it?