How low mood and doing less feed each other
Low mood and doing less tend to feed each other.
It often starts with something real. A loss, a move, a hard stretch at work, an illness, or a slow pile-up of small things. Life gets harder, and less in it feels good or goes well.
Pulling back makes sense. You cancel plans because you’re tired, skip the gym because it feels pointless, and leave the dishes because they can wait. Each choice brings a little relief.
Over weeks, the relief adds up to a smaller life. There are fewer chances to enjoy something, fewer things done, and more time to dwell. Mood drops further, and everything feels harder to start.
Behavioral activation works on the doing side of the loop, because that’s the part you can change today, before you feel any different.
What the early studies found
When Peter Lewinsohn studied depression in the early 1970s, he had people check off each day which pleasant activities they had done, and rate their mood. The activities came from his team’s Pleasant Events Schedule, a list of several hundred everyday pleasant events, like being outside, talking with a friend, or listening to music.
Mood and activities moved together. In people with and without depression, days with more of those activities tended to be better days. The people who were depressed did fewer of them.
The idea that came out of this work goes roughly like this. When fewer of your actions lead to anything good, whether that’s enjoyment, a sense of connection, or the feeling of getting somewhere, you do less. Doing less leaves fewer chances for anything good to happen, and the loop tightens.
Reviews of behavioral activation still describe this as its basic model. They also point out that it’s hard to measure well, and nobody claims it explains every case of low mood.
Relief now, cost later
Charles Ferster, writing at about the same time, noticed something else. A lot of what a person does when depressed is escape. Staying in bed gets you out of a hard morning. Letting the phone ring spares you a hard conversation. Each one works, right then.
The cost comes later and more quietly. The morning is gone, and a month later you still haven’t called your friend back.
Christopher Martell and his colleagues built on this. They point out that the ways people cope with a hard stretch, like withdrawing, sleeping more, or going over things in their head, often become problems of their own. The first problem may not have been anyone’s choice. The second one often grows out of coping that made sense at the time.
An example
Say someone gets laid off. That’s the first blow, and it’s real. They feel low and a little ashamed, so they stop answering messages from friends, because explaining is painful. They stay up late and sleep in, since there’s nowhere to be. The job search keeps getting put off, because every application stirs up the hurt.
Two months later there are more problems than there were at the start. There’s still no job. There’s also less contact with friends, days with no shape to them, and a growing sense of not being able to get anything done. Reaching out now feels harder than it would have in the first week.
None of this happened because they were lazy. Each step was a reasonable way to feel a little less bad that day.
Seeing your own loop
Therapists often sketch this loop with the person in front of them, using that person’s own details. You can sketch yours. These questions help.
- What happened, or what changed, around the time things got harder?
- What did you stop doing, or start doing less?
- What did you start doing more?
- Which of those changes brought relief at the time?
- What have they cost you since?
Write down a thing or two for each. Most people find their loop is specific to them. One person’s runs through canceled plans, another’s through staying in bed, another’s through working late so there’s no time to think. Whatever shows up in yours is usually where the first small plans come from.
What the loop doesn’t explain
Low mood has causes this loop leaves out, like illness, medicines, hormones, grief, money trouble, and things happening to you that no plan can change. Nothing about the loop puts the blame on you. It describes one part of what keeps low mood going, the part you can usually do something about. If a lot of the rest is going on too, a doctor or a therapist can help you sort through it.
References
- Lewinsohn, P. M. (1974). A behavioral approach to depression. In R. J. Friedman & M. M. Katz (Eds.), The psychology of depression: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 157–178). Wiley.
- Lewinsohn, P. M., & Graf, M. (1973). Pleasant activities and depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 41(2), 261–268. doi.org/10.1037/h0035142
- MacPhillamy, D. J., & Lewinsohn, P. M. (1982). The Pleasant Events Schedule: Studies on reliability, validity, and scale intercorrelation. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 50(3), 363–380. doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.50.3.363
- Manos, R. C., Kanter, J. W., & Busch, A. M. (2010). A critical review of assessment strategies to measure the behavioral activation model of depression. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(5), 547–561. doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.008
- Ferster, C. B. (1973). A functional analysis of depression. American Psychologist, 28(10), 857–870. doi.org/10.1037/h0035605
- Martell, C. R., Addis, M. E., & Jacobson, N. S. (2001). Depression in context: Strategies for guided action. W. W. Norton.
- Martell, C. R., Dimidjian, S., & Herman-Dunn, R. (2021). Behavioral activation for depression: A clinician’s guide (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Helpful links
- Centre for Clinical Interventions: Back from the Bluez, a self-help workbook for depression
- Psychology Tools: Behavioral activation
Everyday Insight’s tools are for education and personal reflection. They are not therapy or medical care, and they are not for emergencies. In an emergency, call 911. If you are in crisis in the United States, call or text 988. Mental health resources