[THREAD] I want to talk about priming or as I like to call it, the binocular effect. This happens to everyone not just people who are going through mental health issues. The binocular effect is like holding a pair of binoculars. We see in detail certain things while not being

able to see the big picture. Let’s say we are going through very happy moments in our life. Our brain will seem to remember only other happy moments in our life. If we study or learn something while we are happy, the conditions have to be similar in an exam in order for

memory to function well. This happens often in depression and anxiety as well. When we are depressed, we feel that we only remember tragic or depressing moments in our life to the exclusion of positive ones. We may start thinking that our life was only tragic. The reality is that

it is probably not true, we just have a hard time remembering the happy moments because our binoculars are stuck in that depression. We can no longer see the whole reality. This is because our brains are highly situational and function as a network. Our memories are connected

together and what often binds them are emotions. We store happy memories, sad memories, and other types of memories in different networks. So when we have those binoculars, the only memories that come without effort are those connected to that network.

That’s why it is important to recognize that and force our brains to slowly remove those binoculars. We can consciously dig into our memories to get the happy ones. This forces our automatic thought process to remove the binoculars. This is because our long term memories

do not go away. They are sometimes harder to access but they are always there. Another important thing we can do is write down all the positive events we have had everyday. That’s because when we are depressed or anxious, our brain only registers events that confirm our mood

rather than be objective and register everything. When we write down and focus on the whole picture, it essentially forces our brain to look more at the big picture and is not an important tool for recovery. The binoculars effect is one of the things I try to change first in

therapy because it becomes easier to recover after that. Please let me know if you have any questions. Stay safe