Pervasiveness: Part 3 of 5

Permanence is about time. Pervasiveness is about space. When you get heart palpitations are you able to forget about them once they pass? Or do you get depressed for the rest of the day or start worrying about the next time you might get them? Some people can put their troubles neatly in a box and go about their lives even when one apect of it--their health, for example, is suffering. Others bleed all over everything. They catastrophize. There have been times, when I have had heart palpitations that I can barely muster enough strength to get out of bed. The depression becomes so heavy it effects my entire life. I no longer want to exercise, spend time with my loved ones, leave my house, or go to my job. I just want to wallow in self-pity and curse my bad luck. I believe the key to accepting heart palpitations is to accept that not only will they last forever (permanence) but that I can still go on with my life and do the things I want and need to do. I may have to pause and relax or deep breathe when they are occurring, but once they are finished, I should be able to bounce back and get back into the game of life. Today, I had a fun but busy morning hanging out with extended family. I felt very sleepy after lunch but wasn't able to take a nap until after my in-laws had left. I got some pretty scary heart palpitations and when I went to lay down I could feel I was in bigeminy. I freaked out at first but I was able to calm done and fall asleep. A few years a go, that episode would have caused me to be depressed for the rest of the day. It would have caused me a lot of anticipatory anxiety for the next couple days. But today, after I woke up, I felt good. I acknowledged that the heart palpitations were temporary due to fatigue. I was able to get up and go on with my day. I even went to the mall. Today, I did not let my PVC episode bleed into the rest of my life.

Permanence: Part 2 of 5

People who give up easily believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent: The bad events will persist, will always be there to affect their lives. People who resist helplessness believe the causes of bad events are temporary.

In 1965, Seligman and some of his colleagues set up an triadic experiment for creating an animal model of helplessness. The first dog was given escapable shock: By pushing a panel with its nose, the dog could turn off the shock. The second dog was given inescapable shock: Nothing the dog could do would cease the shock. And the third dog was given no shocks at all. All 3 dogs were then placed in an experimental shuttlebox. All three were given shocks but they could easily escape the shocks by hopping over the low barrier dividing one side of the box from the other. Within seconds the dog that had been taught to control shocks discovered that he could jump over the barrier and escape. The dog that earlier had received no shocks discovered the same thing. But the dog that had found nothing it did mattered made no effort to escape, even though he could easily see over the low barrier to the shockless zone of the shuttlebox. Pathetically, the dog gave up and lay down, though it was regularly shocked by the box. It never found out that the shock could be escaped by merely jumping to the other side.

What do all these depressing animal experiments have to do with me and my heart palpitations? Well, sometimes I feel like I'm the dog that has learned that no matter what I do, I will be permanently "shocked" by heart palpitations. In fact, sometimes when I get them bad, I literally feel like someone is zapping at my heart and making it go into arrhythmia. At this point I feel helpless and start to whimper. I get anxious and even more depressed that I'm so powerless. I feel like the permanence of having to forever deal with heart palpitations and the anxiety that comes with it is just too much for me to bear. Even though I know that there are things that can help alleviate them, sometimes I'm just too depressed to even try again.

But there is hope. Once I believe that heart palpitations are never permanent, that they will come and go in my life like the passing of the wind, that the future of medicine and technology will someday discover a cure for heart arrhythmia, that I have the choice to take care of myself and reduce my stress levels, that I can trust my doctors and their benign diagnosis, and that I'm in the hands of a loving God, THEN they will only bother me temporarily. They'll still bother me, but they will go away. I will learn to leap over the barrier from depression to life.

Learned Optimism : Part 1 of 5

For the most part, I have come to accept the occasional heart palpitations. However, when I have a lot of stress, illness, or hormonal fluctuations and my heart goes into arrhythmia, I sometimes get very depressed. Usually, I get down because of the chronic nature of my condition. To think that there is no cure, and that I could suffer with them for the rest of my life, is uber depressing. To not always have the energy to do or accomplish things in my life for fear of stress and its effect is also depressing. I was feeling pretty low after the holidays when I told my mom how devastating it is when you feel like there's no real hope and you'll be living with misbeats forever. Her response is one I had heard her tell me before. "Ali," she says, "doctors are always coming up with new medicines, procedures, cures. I'm confident that you will find some sort of relief in your lifetime." "But mom," I protest, "if doctors are always saying that I'm fine, why would anyone be working on a cure for some benign pvcs?" And she replied, "They're bothersome to enough people. I'm sure they're working on something to alleviate them in the future."

Now I have no idea how sound her research hopes may be, but one thing is for sure. When it comes to my health, my mom is an optimist. And I'm the pessimist. I recently stumbled across the book "Learned Optimism" by Martin E. Seligman. His book is full of research on why individuals get depressed and how pessimists can in fact learn to be optimists. But not through mindless devices like whistling a happy tune or mouthing platitudes, but by learning a new set of cognitive skills. I will discuss the how to change part in the last of my series.

Whenever something good or bad happens to us, we react in our explanatory style. So whether we give up easily, believe we are deserving or become hopeless all have to do with our view of our place in the world. Seligman argues that there are 3 crucial dimensions to our explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. I will discuss each of these in detail because I believe they are key to wading through the waters of a chronic condition.