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Defeating DepressionThe Calm and Sense Way

to Find Happiness and Satisfaction

Leo J. Battenhausen, MA, MSW, LCSW, LCADC

New Horizon PressFar Hills, NJ

Copyright © 2011 by Leo J. Battenhausen, MA, MSW, LCSW,LCADC

This book is not associated or affiliated with Calm and Sense, LLCof Scotch Plains, New Jersey. The phrase “Calm and Sense” is usedhere by agreement between the author and Calm and Sense, LLC.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanicalor any information storage or retrieval system, except as may beexpressly permitted in the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from thepublisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to:New Horizon PressP.O. Box 669Far Hills, NJ 07931

Battenhausen, Leo J.Defeating Depression: The Calm and Sense Way to Find Happinessand SatisfactionCover design: Robert AulicinoInterior design: Susan M. Sanderson

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010906907

ISBN 13: 978-0-88282-324-9New Horizon Press

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 / 5 4 3 2 1

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Dedication

This book is graciously and genuinely dedicated to that mostwonderful, magical, special, outstanding, surprising, amazing,

unique, incredible and totally awesome YOU!

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This book is based on the author’s research, personal experiencesand clients’ real life experiences. In order to protect privacy, the namesand some of the circumstances of the clients (and their families) whograciously allowed me to share their stories have been changed. I thankthem for their generosity and their courage. The symptoms and thera-peutic approaches remain as they occurred.

For purposes of simplifying usage, the pronouns his/her and s/heare sometimes used interchangeably. The information contained hereinis not meant to be a substitute for professional evaluation and therapywith mental health professionals.

Author’s Note

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Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................1

Part One What is Calm and Sense? ...............................................7

Chapter 1 Calm, Defined ...............................................................9

Chapter 2 Sense, Defined .............................................................17

Chapter 3 Calm and Sense in Action ............................................21

Chapter 4 When Calm Calls, How Do You Respond?..................29

Part Two How to Live a Life of Calm .........................................39

Chapter 5 Your Life is Yours........................................................41

Chapter 6 Your Social, Emotional and Professional Portfolio ..................................................49

Chapter 7 You are Not a Slave to Your Past.................................59

Chapter 8 Social Maturity............................................................69

Chapter 9 Emotional Maturity.....................................................73

Chapter 10 Identity ........................................................................77

Chapter 11 Time Keeps On Ticking ...............................................85

Chapter 12 Where Are You? Where Are You Going? .....................89

Chapter 13 Believe In Yourself .....................................................101

Chapter 14 Live In the Moment ...................................................105

Chapter 15 Surviving ..................................................................111

Chapter 16 Worry and Fear..........................................................123

Chapter 17 Finding Courage ........................................................135

Chapter 18 Making Your Own Happiness ...................................139

Part Three Calm and Sense in Love and Relationships ................157

Chapter 19 You Must First Love Yourself ....................................159

Chapter 20 You Cannot Change Anyone but Yourself .................165

Chapter 21 We All Need a Purpose .............................................173

Chapter 22 Having a Healthy Romantic Relationship..................181

Chapter 23 Trust Me: I Love You Just the Way You Are ..............189

Chapter 24 Some Tips For Women ..............................................193

Chapter 25 And Some Tips For Men............................................205

Part Four Some Calm and Sense Tips ........................................209

Chapter 26 Family Matters ..........................................................211

Chapter 27 You Can Pick Your Friends........................................215

Chapter 28 Career and Finances ..................................................219

Chapter 29 In Closing ..................................................................223

Appendix: Calm and Sense Acronyms .............................................229Acknowledgments ...........................................................................231Editor’s Note...................................................................................235Endnotes .........................................................................................239

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Imagine a life free from unpleasant and disturbing feelings of sadness,loneliness, despair, worry, anger, blame, resentment, jealousy and fear.Imagine having unlimited confidence and the ability and power to feelgood about your life regardless of the circumstances you face. What if Itold you that there is such a way of living and that you already have theability to make it happen? It’s true! And you have the keys to that successin your hands right now.

You have picked up this book either because your life is not as Calmas you would like it to be or because something in your life is not makingSense to you. You are looking for both Calm and Sense in your life andyou deserve it. We all do!

Regardless of age, gender, stage of life, economic status, race, reli-gion, daily circumstances, profession, family composition, etc., there aremany things in life today that can cause feelings of unrest, anxiety, inse-curity, frustration, sadness, fear, immobility, lack of confidence, stress, notfitting in… The list goes on and on.

Imagine what your life would be like if you could remain Calm andmake Sense of all the adverse and unpleasant situations and people youencounter. Can you picture it?

I have worked with countless individuals from all walks of life whohave come into my office seeking help with these or other issues in their

1

Introduction

lives that are interfering with their ability to enjoy life. They believe thatthey cannot overcome their issues on their own.

It is my belief that everyone who comes into therapy is “stuck”somewhere on the journey of or on the adventure that is his or her life.They have tried several things to get “unstuck,” but it didn’t work. Nowthey seek help. Did you know that seeking help is a sign of strength, notof weakness?

Very early in my career, I often struggled with how I could be mosthelpful in my role as therapist in people’s lives. After all, what greater re-sponsibility is there than to be relied on to truly help others—especially ina time of crisis—and what greater honor is there than to be trusted by astranger to do so? I spent hours thinking about all I’d been taught and allI’d read throughout my undergraduate, graduate and ongoing studies, try-ing to put it all together in concise and practical answers to the questions“What am I going to do to help people get past their pain and feel better?”and “How will I help them get ‘unstuck’?”

The solution was simple. Instead of relying solely on the “booksmarts” and theories I had learned in college and graduate school to leadmy working style and to help guide my clients, I started using more andmore Calm and Sense in my approach and—more importantly—I startedteaching this approach to my clients. The results were amazing! Of course,Freud, Jung, Rogers, Ellis, Glassner and all the greats of psychology arecertainly important to learn and understand, but the true “how to” whenit comes to helping others comes only from genuine care for others andthe use of Calm and Sense. Truthfully, the best “teachers” I have ever hadand continue to have are my clients. They never cease to surprise, amazeand educate me.

One of the things I have learned from my clients, regardless of whatspecific “issue” they present to me in their first sessions, is that they areall struggling with some aspect of their lives that is somehow, some way,causing them to experience some degree of depression.

Nobody wants to be depressed. Granted, sometimes feeling a littledepressed—to the point where we just can’t get that looming task done(whatever it may be, from vacuuming the house to cooking a meal to justplain getting up and facing the day)—is a gift in disguise. Why? It signalsus that we need to take some time off; that we need to put aside what’sweighing heavily on our minds and recharge ourselves. Sometimes, in-dulging that feeling for a short time (a few hours, maybe a day) and givingourselves permission to “just be” for a bit so that we can rest and refocus

2 Introduction

is a good thing. But only if we get back up and start moving forwardagain.

On the other end of the spectrum, feeling depressed all the time is asignal that we need to seek professional advice.

Oftentimes, we find ourselves somewhere in the middle, feeling stuckand wanting relief but not really knowing how to get it.

There are so many things—some unavoidable, some preventable—that can cause us to feel depressed. No matter what the circumstances orcauses are, feelings of depression are common, unpleasant (to say the least)and disrupting. Feeling depressed gets in the way of accomplishing whatwe want and need to do. It impedes our ability to feel healthy, both phys-ically and emotionally. It makes the people around us uncomfortable in avariety of ways. No one wants to feel this way. Calm and Sense tells usthat it is all manageable; life can be brighter, happier and more wonderfulif we learn to use Calm and Sense in all we think and do.

Sometimes all it takes to escape a feeling of depression is to turn offthe news instead of continuing to be bombarded with information aboutthe frightening state of the economy, the wildlife being destroyed by thetremendous oil eruption in the ocean, the child who was abducted on hisway to school, the woman and her coworkers who were murdered by thewoman’s estranged husband (who had a restraining order against him)and all of the other unhappy news that seems to be on television, on radioor in the newspapers. Sometimes all it takes is finding something to laughabout. Sometimes it takes a good night’s sleep or a healthy meal. Othertimes it requires reexamining (with a physician or pharmacist) the med-ications we are taking to see if they may be causing us to feel depressed.Sometimes it takes comforting words from a close friend, clergyperson orfamily member. And sometimes it takes a lot more than any of thesethings.

The reality of depression is this: Today, depression afflicts nineteenmillion Americans and millions more worldwide.1 According to a WorldHealth Organization report on mental illness, major depression is the lead-ing cause of disability in the United States and other developed countries.Depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020and studies show depression is a contributory factor to fatal coronary dis-ease.2 Fifty years ago, the average age for the onset of depression wastwenty-nine; today, it is fourteen and a half.3 Additionally, a study pub-lished in Psychiatric Services in April 2004 reported that the amount ofpreschoolers who are clinically depressed has reached at least 4 percent

Defeating Depression 3

7

What is Calm and Sense?

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.”

Norman Vincent PealeProtestant preacher, author and professional speaker

Part One

In this section we’ll explore the concepts of Calm and Sense. Youwill learn about the basic components of Calm, gain some insight intohow life crises challenge our ability to stay in a place of Calm and learnhow you can attain and maintain a state of Calm even through what mayseem like overwhelming or impossible circumstances.

We’ll also explore the concept of Sense—a necessary component ofCalm—and how Sense helps us intellectually and logically put things intoperspective.

Throughout this book I share the stories of some of my clients withyou to help illustrate how the components of Calm and Sense work in ourlives and how our choices affect our outcomes. In these stories you willfind things to which you can relate and situations you may have encoun-tered in your own life in one form or another. You may find somethingthat matches an experience or feeling in your life exactly; you may findsomething that resembles an experience or feeling you had. You may evenrecognize some of yourself or someone you know in the descriptions ofthese clients.

We all experience life in different ways, but we all have the samebasic needs to be loved, feel safe and be happy. Calm and Sense will helpyou recognize where you can make changes in your own life to help youdefeat your feelings of depression, find happiness and satisfaction, bringyou closer to living the life you envision for yourself and give you the toolsyou need to do it.

8 What is Calm and Sense?

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Calm, Defined

Calm is the ability to stay focused and at peace with yourself regardlessof what happens around you or to you. We often encounter circum-

stances (the flat tire that happened on the way to the concert to whichyou’ve been waiting six months to go), events (a car that drives througha puddle and saturates you) or people (a nagging boss who is impossibleto please) that disrupt our sense of peace and happiness. When you haveCalm, that disruption quickly finds its place. You can discern whether ornot to allow yourself to spend time being upset about it, take action torectify it, challenge how you perceive it or just let it go. Having Calm doesnot mean that you do not feel the disruption or that you don’t have a gutreaction of anger or frustration. Calm allows you to have the negative ex-perience and move quickly—and, eventually, immediately—to a place ofputting it in perspective and moving forward without absorbing the neg-ativity of it and allowing it to make you feel badly about yourself.

Calm provides us with a sense of Emotional Invincibility in whichwe are in control of our emotions and don’t hand control of them over toother people or circumstances. With Emotional Invincibility, we knowthat when someone does something that angers us, we can still respondin a productive and positive way instead of allowing the other person’sbehavior to drag us down into mirroring his behavior. For example, weknow that when someone insults us, we don’t have to respond by insulting

Chapter 1

her back. When someone yells at us, we don’t have to respond by yellingback. We can take the information the person provided (not the tone oremotion) and choose to either ignore it or use it as part of our constantevaluation of “Am I the person I really want to be?”

To have Emotional Invincibility is to have an unwavering, unchange-able respect for ourselves that is not in jeopardy of diminishing whensomeone says something negative about us. Self-doubt, jealousy, dishon-esty and false perceptions do not impede our sense of well-being andworth. When we have Calm in our lives, we know that we can experiencecircumstances, events and people in a positive way and not dread encoun-ters or fear they will take away from who we are.

When we have Calm, we have three essential life skills that help usstay focused and repel the negativity that comes into our lives from theoutside world and from other people’s “stuff”—the things that interferewith our appreciation of self and the lives we are entitled to live shouldwe choose to do so. Those three essential life skills are the ability to love,appreciate and accept ourselves for who we are. When we have Calm, notonly do we have those strengths, we also truly understand that those threegifts can come only from ourselves. Looking elsewhere, to other people,places or things to bring us Calm and to give us a positive sense of selfmakes as much sense as expecting someone else to make a living for us.In both cases we are responsible for the work and we reap the benefits.This concept ties in to much of what we’ll talk about in this book and youwill find that we return to it often.

When we are living in Calm, we also acquire the ability to use whatI call Reasonable Reasoning, which is a component of Sense and inextri-cably tied to Calm. (We’ll talk more about Sense and its relationship toCalm in chapter 2.) Reasonable Reasoning empowers us to see our ownlives and the world around us in a way that allows us to function and feelpositive and that keeps us from seeing the proverbial glass as being halfempty all the time or blaming circumstances, people, society, jobs, spouses,etc., for all the problems in our lives. We understand that no matter whatlife throws our way, we will survive it and rebalance our emotions. Weknow that the outside influences do not define us, because we are contentwith who we are. Reasonable Reasoning helps us take responsibility forour circumstances and makes it possible for us to look at the things we,ourselves, are doing that may need to be changed or fixed, instead of look-ing for others to blame or for others to fix them for us. It allows us totake a good, honest look at what we are doing that causes us so much

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negativity, blaming, unhappiness and misery in our lives. With Calm, wecan reason reasonably and guide ourselves in a direction toward solutions,not blame!

Every day we are challenged by events, people and situations thatare extremely frustrating and anger producing. The secret to Calm lies inour ability to choose to use the power and instincts we have within us toreact in productive and positive ways instead of overreacting to these chal-lenges and disturbances in life or allowing them to negatively influenceour love, appreciation or acceptance of ourselves.

The Ten Year RuleI told you that you can begin living a Calm life right now and that Calmdepends on your ability to react to everyday unpleasant situations in apositive way. Here are two tools I often teach my clients to help themmake immediate progress on their ways to Calm. You can begin to usethem now too. The Ten Year Rule is a very simple tool that helps deter-mine how much energy you should invest in an encountered challenge ordisturbance. It works like this: When you experience an unpleasant eventor situation, ask yourself, “Will this matter much to me ten years fromnow?” If the answer is yes, then the situation definitely requires some en-ergy and thought as to how to react to it accordingly. If the answer is no,then why give it so much energy, frustration or the power to ruin yourday? With this perspective, you can choose not to invest (and waste) yourenergy but embrace Calm instead.

The Five Minute RuleI also teach my clients the Five Minute Rule. Sometimes we find ourselvesover-involved in trying to change other people in order to help them. TheFive Minute Rule works like this: If you notice something you feel needschanging in a friend, relative or coworker, etc., ask yourself, “Will thischange take more than five minutes to fix?” Things like a crumb on hisshirt, a collar turned inside out or smeared lipstick can be quickly cor-rected in five minutes or fewer. Things like being overweight, loud, insult-ing or arrogant could take years to correct and how much good would itdo (for them or for you) to try to change things in that moment?

Knowing when it’s beneficial to become involved and when it’s notis a major component of Calm. You have the power of choice. Anothermajor component of Calm is understanding your own limitations and re-specting others’ boundaries as well as you do your own. Using these tools

Defeating Depression 11

will help you begin to reserve your power, make positive, healthy choices,reduce the negative effects outside circumstances have on your daily lifeand may even help improve your relationships with those around you.

Consider how many times you have said or heard someone saythings like, “I’ve told him a million times that he needs to stop drinkingso much!” or “How many times do I have to tell her that she doesn’tsqueeze the toothpaste out the right way?” While these are two extremelydifferent examples, both are potentially toxic subjects in a relationship.(Sadly, I have seen people divorce over the “toothpaste conflict.”) Willthere be an eventual “last time” that we tell someone to make this changeand he or she finally listens? Probably not. There are some things in lifewe either choose to learn to live with when we care about someone or wechoose to leave the situation. Outside of personal relationships, we alsoencounter situations where we can choose to accept things as they are orwalk away from them. Living a Calm lifestyle and reasoning reasonablyallows you to make these choices confidently and comfortably.

Our lives follow a path that is based on the choices we make,whether they are conscious and deliberate or unconscious and by default.Yes, circumstances that are out of our control arise and affect the courseof our lives. Even then, we can choose how we react to them. Calm is alifestyle we can intentionally choose to live and in choosing Calm we alsochoose to make positive, healthy decisions about how we handle negativeexperiences and circumstances. Calm is a permanent state of mind thatdoes not come and go. When we fully embrace Calm, it becomes who weare. We radiate it, we live by its principles, we encourage it and we demon-strate it in all we do. In fact, we dwell happily and comfortably in Calm,because it allows us to believe in who we are and does not allow any neg-ative intrusion (like judgmental or accusatory comments or negative cir-cumstances) from others or outside forces to bring us down. When you’rehappy with who you are, none of those things matter. Calm is a protectivespace where we flourish, create and grow!

Let me share with you the story of Hank, one of my clients. Hankfirst came to me when he was twenty years old. His main problem wasdepression. Hank was an only child, born in New York to parents whoimmigrated to the United States from Asia. Hank’s father was well-edu-cated and worked for a large pharmaceutical company; his mother was aregistered nurse. Hank’s father was also an alcoholic, which was the rea-son that he eventually lost his high-paying position. When I first metHank, his father had been out of work for three years and was spending

12 Calm, Defined