Two other types of inflated responsibility

There are two scenarios where inflated responsibility may not follow the other examples.

Depression – The voice of depression is hopeless, helpless, guilty, and worthless. If you are experiencing depression, your hopeless, helpless, guilty, or worthless thought might not arrive with a spike of anxiety. Rather, you might already have those feelings and then the content of your thinking arrives in your mind with a ruminative texture that reinforces the depressive mood. This is also inflated responsibility. The nature of depression is that helpless, hopeless, guilty, and worthless thoughts and feelings arrive in your body and then you behave as though those thoughts and feelings are true, giving them more meaning than they deserve.

Recovery from depression involves understanding the depressive pattern and attempting to bring flexibility to depression reinforcing behaviors. As an example, if you are feeling worthless and helpless, your behavioral urge will be to give up. Any problem-solving behavior (to which you do not add self-criticism) has the opportunity to shift your feelings of worthlessness and helplessness.

Positive outlook towards responsibility of thoughts – The belief that what shows up in your mind has special meaning and is important for its own sake creates experiences that may not involve a spike of anxiety, but maintain inflated responsibility nonetheless. The following specific beliefs will keep you stuck in your thoughts, regardless of content:

● If I worry about something, that means I care. Or if I don’t worry that means I don’t care enough.

● Worry protects me from surprises, from having expectations that are too high, or from bad things happening to me.

● I would feel too uncertain or anxious if I didn’t worry. Or, if I’m feeling anxious or uncertain, I should worry to figure it out.

To overcome your positive outlook about responsibility of thoughts focus on choice and values.

● Am I choosing to think about this? If given the choice to think or act on this idea, is what I’m doing the best strategy to get a real answer?

● Do I value the time I spend on this?

● Would I choose to think about this and stay with this regardless of how I feel?