Challenging Depression & Despair: A Medication-Free, Self-Help Programme That Will Change Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

like prose, as though they were a story in a newspaper, would they seem like ordinary everyday language to you? If not, why not?
 
• Why do poets often use rhythm and rhyme? Do the words sound like an incantation or a song? Is there any other reason?
 
• Poets have talked about ‘the language of the heart’, meaning words that spring from the imagination rather than analytical intelligence. Is this ‘the language of the heart’? 
Task 2: Finding the right words
While you are in the Book Church, go over to the section marked POETRY. If you can’t find it ask at the desk. There is one. Try to wipe the look of embarrassment off your face because the word ‘poetry’ is not macho or modern, and because you may associate it with old-fashioned birthday cards, or doggerel written by talentless twits in love.
Real poetry is simply this: very powerful condensed language. The German word for poetry is Gedichte, which actually means ‘condensation’ or ‘concentration’. The words are locked together very tight. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that in a truly great poem, to change just one of the words would wreck the whole, so carefully have they been chosen. A lot of the words carry more than one meaning, so that when you read them the first time, you may only pick up on one. Read again, and you’ll notice more.
Most poems are about emotions. Perhaps yours. William Wordsworth said that poetry was ‘powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity’. Open one of the books and run your eyes down the verses. Find one that holds you. Then look at the title, and the name of the poet. That’s it. You can go home now. But remember the Book Church and come back here again!
    NOTE
1 . Etty Hillesum, Etty, a Diary 1941–43. Jonathan Cape, 1983.





4
    The ‘born loser’
    MINDSETS OF DOOM
    Anyone knows what ‘feeling a bit down’ is like. Such sadness is generally short-lived: low spirits, a bad mood. Life is full of ups and downs and these are the downs. But when the downs become so long-lasting and so severe that we are permanently trapped in a dark cloud, we are experiencing despair. Despairers may adopt the following mental strategies:
• Apathy – I can’t be bothered.
 
• Resignation – I give up, I give in, I submit to anything.
 
• Hopelessness – I don’t expect anything will come of this – it’s all futile.
 
• Stoicism – I never get excited about anything: it all rolls over me.
 
• Effort thrift – If I never try, I reckon I can’t fail.
 
• Cynicism – I can knock anything down with my joyless quips.
    These are all controlling mindsets. They are also destructive mindsets. They place controls on mental energy and emotion in order to avoid pain and effort. They limit the amount of belief and faith we are prepared to give to anything, or anyone. They are mean and miserly with our feelings, yet the whole effect is to render us emotionally bankrupt.
    These mindsets are often the recourse of people who believe they are somehow unfortunate, doomed or unlucky. Born losers may act tough, or they may wallow in self-pity, but deep down they feel the cards are stacked against them, that life is utterly unfair. And the trouble is they are generally proven right. Such mindsetswork like self-fulfilling prophesies, because if you think like a loser, you tend to behave like a loser and you look like a loser in the mirror and to other people. Reality reflects back what we think and believe, like this:
nothing goes out  
↔
nothing comes in
nothing ventured  
↔
nothing gained
no dream or goal  
↔
no motivation
no effort  
↔
no success
no change  
↔
no improvement
    DEAF TO ALL ENTREATIES
    When I worked as a ‘scary Mary’ Restart trainer, long-term unemployed people used to come on my courses with a negative mindset. A lot of them seemed permanently fed up . For these demoralised souls, nothing had ever gone right, and nothing would ever go right. If you asked them