“Keeping busy” is based mainly on my personal experience and from what I’ve heard other people say. But in the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (which I didn’t cite because I assume you’re familiar with it), it’s suggested based on self-reports on subjective wellbeing that people are, on average, happier while at work than they are in their leisure time—even though they don’t feel as if this is the case.
In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert also suggests that when making decisions about the future, we rely on our own speculations of how we’ll feel less than on the reviews of those with experience. This isn’t a way of treating depression as much as it is a way of making decisions better at keeping our future selves happy.
I tend to disagree with the idea that a depressed individual should seek flow activities.
Indeed, when I raised up the notion of Flow with my therapist (treatment for depressed moods and anxiety), she was familiar with it but observed that the basic elements of flow : concentration, accurate and adaptive sense of challenge, internal motivation… were the first victims of depression and that I should not expect to get into flow states before I got those back !
Finding flow activities seems to be a good one.
Also—keeping busy?
Are you speaking based on personal experience, or speculating?
“Keeping busy” is based mainly on my personal experience and from what I’ve heard other people say. But in the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (which I didn’t cite because I assume you’re familiar with it), it’s suggested based on self-reports on subjective wellbeing that people are, on average, happier while at work than they are in their leisure time—even though they don’t feel as if this is the case.
In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert also suggests that when making decisions about the future, we rely on our own speculations of how we’ll feel less than on the reviews of those with experience. This isn’t a way of treating depression as much as it is a way of making decisions better at keeping our future selves happy.
I tend to disagree with the idea that a depressed individual should seek flow activities.
Indeed, when I raised up the notion of Flow with my therapist (treatment for depressed moods and anxiety), she was familiar with it but observed that the basic elements of flow : concentration, accurate and adaptive sense of challenge, internal motivation… were the first victims of depression and that I should not expect to get into flow states before I got those back !