Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

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Things that help me when I feel depressed:

- Listening to upbeat, energetic music and avoiding depressing music, which tends to make me feel worse

- Walking outside on a clear, sunny day

- Eating my favorite food

- Playing a good game to get my mind off whatever it is that I'm obsessing about

- If I am able to concentrate, reading something by a favorite author, listening to a good podcast, or watching a non-depressing movie (most of my favorite movies are, sadly, pretty depressing, so those tend not to help)

- Doing exercise

- Getting enough sleep, but not too much

- Improving my diet and supplementing to overcome nutritional deficits (this and regular exercise are long-term fixes, and have helped my mood and energy level tremendously)

- Talking to a good friend, or maybe calling a crisis hotline (though the results vary greatly depending on who you wind up talking to)

- Journaling (I've been using a voice recorder for years, and this makes journaling much easier, more natural and faster for me than writing... just talking things through, even effectively just to myself, often helps a lot)

- Talking to a good therapist. They can sometimes provide insights and offer good advice that I otherwise would not have thought of.

- Looking at the stars on a deeply dark night sky, and thinking about how small and insignificant my self, my problems, and everything else on this earth really are

- Reading stories of people who've survived ordeals and overcome tremendous adversity. This again helps me put my own relatively trivial problems in perspective.

- Then, as Nietzsche said, "The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night."

- Finally, I try to remind myself that I've been through this many times before and I always eventually feel better. Time heals all wounds.

When you are actually depressed and not just feel a bit down, those things seem unreachable.

my uninformed opinion on this is that there are countless way to suggest the same thing and maybe one will resonate with you. this would become a motivation to offer earnest advice and be prepared that likely you will not be that magic person.

in this sense advices like "just do X" are useless, while advices like the one above are not.

for sure serious depression is very unlikely to be treated that way, but for every case of clinical depression there are many less critical ones.

Doing all of them is.

Doing one of them isn't.

What did Nietzsche mean by that?

He never said. Nietzsche wrote very aphoristically, and it's often up to the reader to make sense of it.

For me, this saying resonates because I've found that when I think of suicide I feel better because it makes me think that after my death I won't have any more of the troubles that plague me in life. It'll be a relief. In a way, it's hope.

It also, I think, for a time gives me the feeling of control over my life.

The trick, though, is not to actually act on one's intention. I guess I'm pretty good at procrastinating, which has hurt me a lot in many other aspects of life, but it's good in this one sense.

But can a reader who's truly depressed think as rationally as Nietzsche and make sense of it?

Because of the views around suicide and how it can be seen as an "out" for issues that are actually only temporary, associating suicide with hope in any sense could be counterproductive. You have to make these people understand. Sometimes they never intend to understand, and only take the parts that validate their preexisting notions. Suicide and hope in the same statement.

One could also view seriously depressed people as extremely lucid. (If it's not brain damage induced of course)

I never really understood the point of view that depressed people somehow are more realistic, seeing things as they “really are”, while non-depressed people are overly optimistic. Maybe it’s true in the limited setting of a study, but depressed people tend to behave in ways that are basically irrational and counterproductive: staying in bed, passively ruminating about the future, procrastinating and avoiding useful/enjoyable activities, etc. These are not the actions of a rational person, and many (perhaps not all) depressed people would feel somewhat better if they didn’t engage in these types of activities. It’s definitely hard to change this type of behavior, and change is not a magic cure, but it is a useful component.

The reason why I believe the “depressed people are just seeing the world as it really is” line of thinking is harmful is that it encourages people to believe that their depression is simply the result of their accurate world view, and that trying to change things in order to feel better would mean they have to fool themselves.

Reflecting on the states of mind I have when I am or am not depressed, I would say I'm far more lucid and have a more accurate (if less broad) worldview when I'm depressed.

I would think it meant either that when you think about suicide - it is the lowest you can go and things would improve from there. The other way to interpret is that thinking about suicide makes you come face to face with the enormity of death and which consequently helps you get through.

I have interpreted it, and some similar comments, as a way to lessen the pain of expectations and feeling like you're falling short of your own life.

The emotional distance between "perfectly healthy and wonderful" is much much further than "I really could end it and it wouldn't be much difference".

At the worst points, looking at it from the bottom of the hole to just that little bit up, makes it bearable enough to eventually start something, and slowly work back up toward okay.

Probably a sentiment he borrowed from Schopenhauer.

“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.“

"Worst case scenario, you can step off the train!"

> Listening to upbeat, energetic music and avoiding depressing music, which tends to make me feel worse

Anecdotally, this would have completely the opposite effect on me. If I was frustrated or down in high school I would listen to Whitehouse or something and get over it by virtue of the fact that there exists someone orders of magnitude more manic than I was. It made my feelings seem trivial in comparison.

Even when I'm not feeling down, listening to stereotypically upbeat music is sure to make me feel down. I would wonder how people could produce such an upbeat thing and speculate how such upbeatness could be acquired. Then I would conclude they're just in a separate plane of existence from me, unreachable by any means, and by then I'm feeling more down than I was.

This is when I'm not depressed.

> Time heals all wounds.

I can never bring myself to believe this, depressed or not. Some people are born a certain way, and there's no real cure for whatever condition they have. If it is meant that we only live a single lifetime then I'd be inclined to believe it, but in that case I don't think such a statement will help people questioning the value of staying alive.

Coincidentally I was reading Johnny Got His Gun the other night, which is probably an antithesis to this statement. Imagine you're a veteran, no arms, no legs, no mouth or eyes or ears or anything really except one's own mind. All of it blown off by shrapnel. Nothing but your own thoughts to pore over the details for the rest of your existence. Can time literally heal such wounds?

Depressed people, or people who aren't even depressed currently but have been through it enough times, will take any adage thrown at them and like a martial artist find some way to redirect the intended meaning behind the words into one which fulfills their personal outlook on life. You can mean perfectly well by saying such while it will end up having the opposite effect. And you might not even know this is the case when the other person says "thanks" or something. They know if they give the generic universally acknowledged upbeat, energetic response people expect, the other party will be satisfied and go away. Anything to make them so they won't have to listen to words that will never mean the same things again.

It's difficult to get through to people who do not think rationally. For all you know they might not even be seeking advice but merely validation that nobody really, truly cares enough to get to the bottom of their psyche, their desires, them, and instead regurgitate Inspirational Quote of the Week as if it were something resolvable over the course of a day. When they receive that validation it only solidifies their position.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try. I will not give mental health advice for these reasons.

But that's how it can go.

"listening to stereotypically upbeat music is sure to make me feel down"

It doesn't have to be stereotypically upbeat music. It should be music you actually enjoy and make you feel more energetic and lifts your mood up. If listening to depressing music does that for you, great.

"I can never bring myself to believe this, depressed or not. Some people are born a certain way, and there's no real cure for whatever condition they have."

I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for my own experience, and in my experience with time I've always eventually felt better. Maybe I wasn't "cured" of my depression, and I'd always feel depressed again eventually too, but at least for some time I'd find relief and my feelings of gloom and doom would be behind me. I could even smile and laugh for a time, and enjoy myself. For me depression comes in cycles and waves.. I've learned to ride them out.

"I was reading Johnny Got His Gun the other night, which is probably an antithesis to this statement. Imagine you're a veteran, no arms, no legs, no mouth or eyes or ears or anything really except one's own mind. All of it blown off by shrapnel. Nothing but your own thoughts to pore over the details for the rest of your existence. Can time literally heal such wounds?"

Oh, come on. That's a super extreme example. Do you have your limbs, sight, speech, and hearing? If so, you're much better off than Johnny. He'd have probably have given anything to have a fraction of what you have for a single day. You should try to appreciate that and be grateful for it.

There's a way of looking at life that helps you and a way that hurts you. Focusing on how miserable and unlucky you are will inevitably lead you in a downward spiral. Count on it. Instead, do everything in your power to focus on the positive aspects of your life and how you can improve your life. That way leads to healing. Your choice.

Also, I'd strongly recommend you watch some videos on Brooke Ellison and Kyle Maynard. Ellison was paralyzed from the neck down when she was hit by a car when she was 11 years old. Maynard was born a congenital amputee, missing half of each arm and leg. Ellison wound up going to Harvard and becoming a professor. Maynard became a champion wrestler and climbed Mount Kilamanjaro.

These are people who've overcome adversity the like of which most of us can not fathom. They're far from alone, either. I like to seek out stories like this, because they put my life and my problems in perspective, and really inspire me to appreciate what I have and make the most of my life.

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