This review of the Feeling Good Handbook, which I just found, makes essentially the same point:
It really disturbs me that an entire school of thought has developed around the idea that nobody needs to be depressed, and that if they are, it is simply because they are not being "rational". For many people this is true. [...] But for many of the rest of us, being depressed is simply being realistic. [...]
It is almost a scientific fact that people need to be acknowledged. When a baby is ignored by its mother, very often it will get sick and die, even if it gets plenty of food and water. I believe that there is a biological need for love, no matter how old we are. Humans also have a variety of other needs, as discovered by Abraham Maslow in his heirarchy of needs. People who are mentally or biologically inferior have more difficulty in getting these needs met, and to me it is a mistake to label these people as "irrational". We are, indeed, not created equal, nor are we equally capable of being happy. In many cases it will be possible to feel "better", but it may never be possible to feel "good".
That's not quite how it works. Sometimes rational people get depressed and they can tell that their thinking is distorted and un-distorting it doesn't make them feel better. They just feel bad. Meanwhile, some depressed people contribute to their depression through cognitive distortions, such as all-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing that PECOS-9 pointed out, and CBT can help (though not necessarily cure) that subset of people.
But for many of the rest of us, being depressed is simply being realistic.
Feeling bad about a problem is only useful if i...
I started going out with a fantastic girl a couple of weeks ago. Everything is great, except that whenever I've sent her a text message or email requesting something and haven't received a response yet, I experience significant dysphoric anxiety, fearing that her response will be not just "no" but "no and I don't want to date you any more". This is due to brain chemistry or personal history, take your pick—either seems like a possible explanation to me. But there's certainly no evidence supporting the idea that this is likely to happen, nor is the anxiety helping me prevent it or helping me in any other way.
Does anyone have evidence-based advice, or pointers to same, on dealing with this kind of issue? It is the only splotch on what have otherwise been the best two weeks of my life.