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Women are twice as likely to suffer depression as men are, because on the average they think about problems in ways that amplify depression. Men tend to act rather than reflect, but women tend to contemplate their depression, mulling it over and over, trying to analyze it and determine its source. Psychologists call this process of obsessive analysis rumination, a word whose first meaning is “chewing the cud.” Ruminant animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, chew a cud composed of regurgitated, partially digested food—not a very appealing image of what people who ruminate do with their
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People who in the same six months move, get fired, and get divorced are at greater risk for infectious illness—and even for heart attacks and cancer—than are people who lead uneventful lives. This is why when major change occurs in your life, it is important to have physical checkups more frequently than usual. Even if you are feeling fine, it is particularly important to watch your health carefully when you change jobs, leave a relationship, or retire, or when someone you love dies. Widowers are several times more likely to die in the first six months following the death of their wives than
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In short, cognitive therapy strongly enhanced immune activity—just as we hoped it would.
The fundamental guideline for not deploying optimism is to ask what the cost of failure is in the particular situation. If the cost of failure is high, optimism is the wrong strategy.
Optimism is just a useful adjunct to wisdom. By itself it cannot provide meaning. Optimism is a tool to help the individual achieve the goals he has set for himself. It is in the choice of the goals themselves that meaning—or emptiness—resides.
