"This is, I think, why being depressed can so easily compromise our ability to act. Depression mutes our ability to feel positive emotions, so we loose that sense of which way to go."
This is a key point. I can tell I'm depressed when someone gives me a choice between two things and not only do I not know which to pick, I have absolutely no intellectual or emotional pull towards either. In fact, the very idea of having to make decisions is, in my depression, incredibly stressful. And I used to assume it was due to expectation on the other person's part (maybe a bit of demand avoidance), but I think it's also that I can sense that I don't have in me whatever it takes to have a preference between options, and that's alarming.
I guess in some sense this has to be true! If it were not difficult to turn the difficult problem into hard work, it wouldn't have been a difficult problem in the first place, it would just have been hard work all along.
"This is, I think, why being depressed can so easily compromise our ability to act. Depression mutes our ability to feel positive emotions, so we loose that sense of which way to go."
This is a key point. I can tell I'm depressed when someone gives me a choice between two things and not only do I not know which to pick, I have absolutely no intellectual or emotional pull towards either. In fact, the very idea of having to make decisions is, in my depression, incredibly stressful. And I used to assume it was due to expectation on the other person's part (maybe a bit of demand avoidance), but I think it's also that I can sense that I don't have in me whatever it takes to have a preference between options, and that's alarming.
It just struck me...
turning difficult problems into hard problem is itself a difficult problem.
So when you provide these three strategies, you're making it less difficult.
Am I getting this right?
Yes, that's entirely right.
I guess in some sense this has to be true! If it were not difficult to turn the difficult problem into hard work, it wouldn't have been a difficult problem in the first place, it would just have been hard work all along.