I have been diagnosed with clinical depression since 2015, it’s been on and off. Because of this diagnosis, I naturally became interested in medical and talk therapy treatments for depression. In grad school, I had the opportunity to work with a dataset of Facebook posts of users who also had labels as depressed and non-depressed, based on the standard clinical questionnaire.
Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, one of my findings was that depressed people use more personal pronouns in their text, such as “I”, “he”, “she”, and “we”. For instance, I noticed in my own experiences that when I am more depressed, I tend to ruminate more—thinking about how “I” am unlucky not to have many relatives, or how it’s unfair that he/she (some person that I know) is smarter or has a better job or a better life.
I found a skill that helps manage these thoughts. When I catch myself ruminating, I try to engage in reading something technical or objective that doesn’t involve personal pronouns or comparisons or human relationships in general. For example, I might read an article about Python vs Julia, or why high blood sugar is dangerous, or where turtles go in winter in Ontario. I find that even if the ruminative thoughts continue, forcing myself to read and focus on these kinds of articles can help prevent my ruminative thoughts from escalating.
I am not sure what type of skills this could be called – CBT or DBT, but I think it relates more to the DBT skill of “opposite action”. This skills is based on doing the opposite of what our emotions/mind is telling us to do. So if my mind is telling me to sit and ruminate about my life, myself, myself vs. others, I do the opposite – read something that doesn’t involve any personal life at all.
Notes of a Neuropsychiatry Amateur 