Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?
Inspiration https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25096877
Update: List of "symptoms of major depressive disorder" https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/sy...
Update: List of "symptoms of major depressive disorder" https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/sy...
So is that depression? I have no idea, but I hate the feeling and I pray that once this pandemic is over, the symptoms will fade.
Yep, but the cause in your case is unknown. For example, it could be work burnout causing it. It could be not going outside that is causing it. It could be not socializing that is causing it. It could be your diet. It could be ...
If you can identify the cause you can find a solution. Unfortunately, the best most people have is a shotgun approach where they try a combination of solutions attempting to address every possible cause.
When in a depressed state it makes you want to lay down, to do less. It's exhausting and depending on how bad the depression is sleeping seems better. For the majority, doing the exact opposite of how you feel works to get out of that state, which isn't easy for many, so it helps to take it slow. Sometimes just walking around in a circle in your house for 15-20 minutes can sometimes be enough. This can be done without getting dressed or even thinking about it. It can be done while cooking food or going to the bathroom. It's only 15 minutes and for many that is enough exercise to start feeling not drained again.
For many today depression can be caused by doing too much instant gratification type activities in your free time, which can cause that feeling drained feeling. I find having a hobby can help a lot, because then you're not bored. I find getting a hobby can be hard. It can come from a need, like being aggravated with something and wanting to improve it, but it also comes as a side effect from socializing with people. People talking about what they've been up to, what they're passionate about, or even what they hate, can all plant seeds of inspiration that can eventually lead to a hobby. So for some the solution to this kind of depression is socializing.
And it goes on. This is why talking to a professional (preferably someone who specializes in CBT, but it's not required) can help. It typically only takes a few months of therapy to get out of most kinds of depression.
I would push back on the notion that there has to be a cause for depression. Maybe there is, but it can lead to the dangerous conclusion that it’s somehow one’s fault, when it’s actually a maladaptive behavioral state; a disease.
Fully agree with your advice to talk to a professional.
I see how that could be a concern. To address it, there can be causality without fault. Fault is a kind of blame. Blame is when you take out a timeline and put your finger down on an arbitrary part and say, "It's because of this." and fault is taking that arbitrary point and reducing the event down into actors by saying, "It's because of you everything went wrong."
Looking closely, fault provides no benefit. You can grow and improve by looking at causality. You can learn why someone did what they did and learn from that, which is far more beneficial than the overly reductionist fault. Fault as a default is a lazy way of thinking. Instead we can see the ignorance in ones decision, or the defensiveness in ones decision when they assume another was being harmful to them (eg arguing or retaliation), or we can see the short sighted selfishness in some rare situations (eg, narcissism). Fault is not necessary. It's a hindrance towards a higher resolution view and from that greater awareness comes greater learning capacity, a heightened wisdom, and possibly even heightened intelligence.
Hope is not a bad thing, unless you want to sit around and do nothing with your life and feel terrible. To be concerned with the impossible is a symptom and a cause of depression, called learned helplessness.
The solution in those cases is to not try to solve it, but instead to let the 'emotional' part of the brain do it's natural function and simply process the emotions. It's difficult because the emotional part of the brain does NOT have the ability to use language. It evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, and is the deepest part of our central nervous system, and absolutely necessary for our survival. It can not be shut off or ignored. And in the case of depression, it may or may not be "normal" - but it is doing it's job.
If you try to fight stress (which masquerades itself as problem-solving) it will create more stress. When you're okay in the present moment -- you've let go and accepted how you feel through recognizing the stress is temporary like a rain cloud; it will go away without doing anything -- you can passively and non-interactively observe what is going on, which is the beginning of learning. This learning then turns into answers or at first something to talk about with a therapist. Therapy can help quite a bit with this one. This process of passively observing in a relaxed state no matter how bad you feel, is called meditation, and it's what you're talking about, "let the 'emotional' part of the brain do it's natural function and simply process the emotions".
>And while you can do that if your depression has an obvious cause. . . there are tons of people who are depressed for no obvious reason - OR - there is no way to get out of the situation that's causing it.
That's not really true though. The high majority (88%) of people who go in for CBT therapy are cured from their depression in under 3 months, and of the majority who do not, the largest group is avoidant of psychological work. Yes, there is a small subset of incurable depression. The current theory is it has to do with ones gut biome, but those are estimated to be around 1% of people with depression, and for the majority of those people antidepressants do nothing. They have this constant stomach ache. However, those people can still get benefit by learning how to deal with the situation and live a happy and healthy life. Eg, changing diet can remove many of the symptoms. Calling it depression is even somewhat controversial, because of how different it is from all of the other kinds of depression.
People have yet to realize how far modern psychology has come, in part because most psychologists today practice an ancient form that barely, if at all, helps.
Memories and emotions are not "real" in that they are not the present moment, and being able to stay grounded in the present moment while having these thoughts can help. In metaphor, it's like pinching yourself while dreaming.
What imo helps the most is realizing everything is impermanent / temporary. If you have a particularly gruesome emotion you can know you don't have to do anything, because it will go away on its own, like a rain cloud, in due time. So you can relax even while freaking out.
what helps me get through the day is exactly this. we're just a sack of liquid chemical that constantly chances its structure. the feeling I experience within a time span of 30 minutes alone between waking up and having my first coffee, or in between forcing myself to put on my running gear and returning from a run, are changing everything. and if things can change in only a few minutes, how I perceive the world over a longer time can too.
some of this comes naturally with age when hormones change. it does have upsides when not everything and everyone is able to spoil my day.
these days I make sure I do not add things into my life as the first approach but to see what I can subtract in order to troubleshot my body and feelings. only after I can't take anything away any more do I see what I might need (and where others earn money on me and are motivated to push me into that direction. some examples that help me personally battle decades of depression:
- eat only half the amount or try intermittent fasting for a month
- cut the booze or weed (one day a week max less if I can)
- take daily walks/runs of at least 30 mins.
- start the morning with a cold shower (prepares me mentally that my day might not be smooth and certainly won't start comfortable)
- leave your phone at home when going out and see how that makes you feel. if you think this is nuts or makes you uncomfortable think about why the lack of an electronic device makes you feel this way.
- always shower right after returning from work (or finishing work). matter of habit for me since I didn't always have an office job. it allows me to unwind and "wash away" all the work stuff. reminds me that I am now at home and prep myself to have different thoughts (if you prefer a bath that's cool but in my case with kids/family I never had time to disappear into the bath the moment I got home. 10 mins shower was always possible). I find this really valuable in a WFH scenario. these days I run/exercise right after work so the shower is simply needed anyway
in case of burn-out:
- compartmentalize my work and private life as much as possible (time wise but if possible also location: in WFH this means work-laptop/phone remains in my home-office powered down as an extra hurdle to avoid me popping in at 23:00 to check up on an important thought ...).
- in case of burn-out: maybe my job is, but my private life isn't a hamster-wheel. cut the training-plan crap and goal setting to a minimum. it's OK to just go for a run and not worry about reaching the correct times set out in the training plan in prep for a marathon where I'm competing against thousands of others. it's OK to compete for fun but don't overdo it.
but everything what parent & GP said too.
About brain fog, mind-wandering etc: I have this since at least 2012. It came with my burn-out back then and a complete melt-down and dissolution of my personality. I feel like my head is wrapped in cotton or there is some barrier between me and my outside world. at the same time I have this I also gained the ability of sitting still without any desire or urge to push forward with anything if I want to. Might be an age thing but I'm now able to play with my own thoughts all day long and don't get stressed by the idea of not communicating with anyone. I still enjoy company and conversation but I also value being able to spend time simply sitting there and thinking (like a lunatic perhaps idk).
Don't forget about "right livelihood"! :)
doing the exact opposite of how you feel
Another tack is to approach the activity as an experiment or exploration. Not I must do this, or even if I do this it will help, but: I wonder if it will help, or even I bet it won't, let's see who's right!
I find for situations like that, the blastoff technique works well. When you find you need to do something, instead of thinking about it, start counting backwards from 5, like you're a rocket getting ready to blastoff. It takes 4-5 seconds for the other part of the mind to come in and override the action, so as long as you jump out of bed before that timer hits zero, it's easy. This way you can do whatever it is you need to get done regardless how you feel. You can always think about how to do it once you've gotten started. It sounds silly but it works very well and is super easy to do. A zen teacher once told me, "Don't think. Do." to mean basically the same thing.
Meaning, for the stone age feelings parts of the brain, to realize that "but I want to stay in bed"?
If one acts faster than that part of the brain, then it's harder for it to mess things up? (Like, feeling sad, worrying, doing nothing)
Work is fun though and getting up in the morning too, but ... Well there are a bunch of other things I've postponed for months now soon
1) A good first step is to see your GP, if you have one, and if you don't look up some reviews and find a decent one. If you're at the point where you lack the motivation to even do that, ask a friend or loved one to do it for you. If you don't have a resource like that around you, just click this link & put in your own zip code: https://www.healthgrades.com/usearch?what=General%20Medical%...
You see a GP first because they should run something like a complete metabolic panel along with tests for things like vitamin D levels. It's entirely possible to get mis-diagnosed with (psychological) depression when there is a more concrete metabolic cause.
Other readers, please please don't downvote this next part for language, use of caps, etc., this is seriously important
2) About it never going away. Oh hell that's the feeling all right. But here's the thing about a depressed brain telling you things: IT IS A FUCKING LIAR. Your mind tells you that, so you feel worse, and it feels even harder to over come, and the spiral continues. You CAN feel better. It might honestly be the hardest thing you ever do, but you have to claw back up inch by inch. Shit, inches can be hard at times. Go for millimeters when you need to. When you get pushed back down at times, IT'S TEMPORARY. Just keep taking that tiny step in front of you. One. Tiny. Step. Motivation is hard. Doing things you liked before is hard. Focus on doing small things. Focus on finding 5 minutes, or one minute, of distraction from your headspace at a time. A good simple technique is to overload your physical senses: 1) Light a candle/spray some scent 2) Put on some background noise-- music, anything 3) Fill a glass (real glass to conduct the cold) to the top with ice, and ANYTHING carbonated. If you don't do soda, go for seltzer or something. Wrap your hands around the cold glass. Keep it near your lips & take sips. You've got all 5 senses covered: Smell, sound, touching the cold, hearing the fizz of the bubbles, the taste as you sip & sensation of the carbonation. You're brain does have a bandwidth limit, and hitting all 5 senses saturates a lot of it. An ice-cold shower is also good. These things aren't silver bullets, aren't a cure: You're looking to get incremental periods of time where you don't feel like crap. Over time, they can build, and get easier. Look for other small 5 minute distractions that take you out of your head, whatever works. Getting out of this is a game of inches.
Finally: NONE of #2 replaces treatment. It's a single coping mechanism that can work to take the slightest edge off things. Therapy, medication if needed, those should be on your list for consideration. Maybe check out the DBSA: https://www.dbsalliance.org/support/ Groups are everywhere, and if that's not your thing or none are actually near you, they do daily online meetings. Talk or not, or just take it in. Sometimes knowing it's not just you can help, but you'll also hear how other people cope with this. A good inventory of coping mechanisms to take the edge off is very important.
IT WON'T LAST FOREVER. YOU CAN FEEL BETTER.
To most anyone thoughts that pop up in our head come out of a black hole, an unknown. What's actually happening is we're seeing something in the present moment (thinking memories in the present moment too) and that thing we're seeing causes an emotional response, often an unconscious one. The unconscious mind then looks for neighboring memories by emotional lookup and brings those familiar memories up into conscious thought, which is how ideas pop up in our head.
This is a pretty profound insight, because for example, it means when one is in a depressed state, if it is strong enough, all they can remember is memories of being in a similar emotional state causing a memory compartmentalization. This forgetting of positive memories makes depression seem like it's forever. One helpful thing is a photo of a good memory, or a letter to ones self, or another form of nostalgia, which can then pull the person out of the depressed episode. For some people it's enough to end the depression then and there in its tracks.
Likewise, from this understanding, it can be easy to see the challenge therapists face regarding depression and other memory compartmentalization related psychological disorders, because their patient forgets instructions that could help them when they need it most.
This also shows how manipulation works. How, emotional language can determine how a person thinks, programming them. One fun experiment is to watch a bit of Fox and look at the emotions instead of what they're directly saying. You'll start to see things like they're telling people to not trust others, for example, or like how they were saying anything regarding Biden is boring, so you shouldn't watch it, and so on. Manipulation is controversial to talk about, but so is depression, so fuck it. Let's have some fun. ^_^
same for say, abused wives. say they get out of their situation and meet a nice person. then one day that person gets angry that the dog shat in their best shoes and they have a fit which reminds her of her previous relationship. the memories come flooding back.
depression is the same. for me it's been a recurring failure of academic and meritorious achievements. in our society not achieving these things is like a frying pan in the face when you want to do something that requires experience say. sure, I've learned to duck, but everytime life swings a frying pan at my face [being fired, not meeting qualifications, being considered unreliable/unintelligent etc] all those old memories come back. so you end up dodging one frying pan and get hit by another, as if there were some kind of compound interest frying pan abyss. my metaphor for the muscle memory of depression. eventually you just take the hits cause what's the use in trying to dodge the pan?
i will say this though; after being on disability for a decade there is something bitter sweet about the rising levels of depression brought on by covid. while i don't wish depression on anybody whatsoever, and hope one day we'll find some perfect somatic solution to it, misery really does love company.
I'm not sure how to get the depression out of the muscle memory, but i do know we need to do a better job of getting people away from their trauma.
I know how, but it's a deep topic that a single comment on an online forum can barely begin to do justice.
First, I worry of a potential negative side effect of believing in muscle memory, regardless if it is or is not true. The concern is it could lead to the belief of static memory. Memory is impermanent and easy to change; you're not suck with it. So much so, there is a police interrogation technique that does just this to get innocent people thrown in prison. (I'm not kidding.)
How it works is they show a bunch of faces, one with the person they want to be found guilty to the victim. The victim says no to all of them or, "I don't know.." and then later the police come in with a new lineup of photos. All of the photos are different expect the person they want to be found guilty. Usually a second time is enough. The victim will recognize the person shown twice and announce, "It's them. They did it!" If not, they'll keep doing this until that is the eventual consequence. It usually only takes a few times.
One particular interesting study on stripping out memories (or muscle memory if you prefer) is how MDMA therapy works on PTSD. PTSD is a condition similar to anxiety, but different, in which they may have reoccurring nightmares of a horrific event, or if something reminds them of that event irl they may have a traumatic flashback. Clearly their old memories are causing them great distress. So how does this therapy work? Well, MDMA has a side effect of not being able to feel fight or flight on it, and it turns out our memory is read once, write many. This means the second we remember something, it gets erased from our long term memory. Our mind recalls the memory (processes it) and while processing it, it writes a new memory back to long term memory with its contents. On MDMA the fight or flight in the memories can not be processed, so what gets written back is a memory without the trauma attached to it.
Read once, write many has numerous side effects. For example, the very act of recalling a memory over and over again changes it. You can do this experiment on yourself by writing down a story, then recalling it in your memory by saying it out loud like you're telling someone that story. Each time you say it the memory will be modified. Keep going and after around 10 times some details should be obviously wrong. You can then compare this version to the old one to see yourself. It's a solo version of telephone game.
So you can alter your memories, you may be able to even find a way to strip the depression out when being hit over the face (Which you can.), but wait there's more.
How one responds to the present moment is a habit. Every response you will ever give is a habit, even to a new and unexpected situation. It's pretty entertaining to observe the variation of habits people have between cultures. In the US if something unexpected happens like on a hidden game show Americans might be like, "Whaaaaatt??" or might punch someone who startles them, or just in general Americans are very reactive. In the UK when something unexpected happens on a hidden game show they tend to freeze. Sometimes they look around, but they usually pause and wait. It's quite a different response.
Once we realize our responses to the present moment are habits, it's as simple (and as difficult) as changing those habits to new habits that are better suited. This can be as extreme as teaching someone with borderline personality disorder how to not freak out and start yelling when they fall in love with someone, to something more subtle like in your situation not responding with being depressed when life gives you a shitty day.
To change ones habits, they have to be aware of the causality. That is they have to see the present moment before their response and then have a planned alternative response. You always have to have an alternative response, as purely cutting out a habit is difficult, but replacing a habit is much easier. Once the cause (the present moment event) is caught before the response happens, a new habit can be put in. It is nearly instantaneous and a massive amount of mindfulness is needed. One way to cultivate this level of mindfulness is by meditating, which has the side effect of increasing mindfulness. This teaching of how to change ones habits to not have negative responses is a key ingredient to removing dukkah or psychological stress, but it is commonly translated to the word suffering. This is a Buddhist teaching (not the religion) which modern day psychology has picked up on. Enlightenment in Buddhism is the end of dukkah, so the end of all negative psychological responses to things. As you can see I can and am giving you a deep dive into this technique anyone can do with a bit of practice showing it's quite real. Enlightenment does not have to be mysterious. It can be grounded in science.
Aggregates are formations of thoughts, which typically manifest as visual elements, such as "seeing" things "in mind". Not necessarily "visualizing", but more like "visual historic recall" or "predictive recall of future events".
Unfortunately (perhaps), I don't do this thing with images or sound. But I am aware others do. I do it with thoughts and feelings.
Although imagery is typical, audio aggregates, feeling aggregates, smell aggregates and more are also possible. Thinking mind aggregates are the worst because they spawn other aggregates! :) Like other types of aggregates (gravel for example) there is usually a good mix of emotion, images, sounds and other sense bases manifesting, in mind.
What Buddha taught was that, in order to "see" these things for what they are, one must sit and focus on "noting" the events/aggregates as they pass our awareness filters. This would give a sense of "causality" to the mediator. By noting these aggregates, over time and with attention, they (the aggregates) will eventually liberate themselves from the mind.
Try sitting until you think of something and then ask yourself internally and very clearly and precisely "Who is it that cares about this?" This is a good technique for bringing thinking mind to a halt for a moment, at least in most.
Anything we do that is repetitive in nature, which does not improve us, is a type of "ill being". Following a recommended path of "well being" will allow us to escape the day to day suffering (assault by aggregates) most experience.
As for manipulation & programming, I used to be an adjunct professor teaching a topic related to persuasion. I always had a few exercises where I'd show a slide with 10 related words for 10 seconds and ask the students, without writing them down, to remember as many as they could. Then I would go through a few, asking them to close their eyes, and I'd repeat a few words, asking them to raise their hands if they remembered one word, then another. Then I would ask them if they remembered an 11th related word, one that was not on the original list. Cognitive priming with the first 10 words usually produced a 50% response of students saying they remembered the word that wasn't even there. It would always get a good laugh. I hope it also left a lasting impression.
One thing interesting about society and its effect on individuals mental state, is it the absolute rating of a society's sanity (however we could rate that) or rather the delta between present and past, along with the perceived prospect of its future delta? You are perhaps touching on this as you are writing going "down" the hill. We might still be at the top of the Mountain, but that's hardly relevant.
That of course does not mean that less sensitive ones don't feel some uneasiness in the environment. They do, but the cook keeps dressing the heating broth with promises of better future, and lulls the frogs into attributing this uneasiness to depression. Because you see, psychiatry is just another cook's tool among forks, spoons and knives.
Erich Fromm did not use the term 'punitive psychiatry' for no reason.
I personally got to the point where I was practically fantasizing about dying and still wasn’t sure if that’s real depression. I think we ease into it and forget what being happy was like, such that the depression practically becomes normal. It’s awful
It's really amazing how easy this is to understand, if you've been through it.
What else can you do when you're hurting like that though. I mean, if you don't have the tools to cope, the mental capacity to endure much more, the experience to draw on to recognize the patterns and trajectories and so on. You're practically forced to deny or defer it when you're unequipped to manage it.
Do a depression test.[1] And remember that there is nothing wrong with being depressed. It's just like having the common cold, it's a temporary illness that can pass.
Seriously, just do the test and if you need meds take them. It can save you a huge amount of pointless lost effort. There is nothing wrong with being depressed.
One thing I can say, at least for me, is that exercise has helped.
The correct way to say this is "I didn't feel".
It might be irrelevant, but if I were in your shoes I would have liked to be shown the correct way to say it. Not trying to be pedantic.
Edit: unless you meant "I haven't felt", which has of course a different meaning.
Universities and Colleges right now are pretending to be accommodating, but the stress on students is outright dangerous right now.
Oh, and the cherry on top? My university is going to have a football game on campus the same day as many of us are taking on-campus finals. Brilliant.
So, I'm both depressed and pissed off. Running on fumes of rage? Motivated by the existential dread of my impending student loans for a semester of education worse that I could have gotten off of YouTube? I don't know man. I just want to not feel like death and have time (and the ability) to breathe.
Do reach out to any reliable support you feel you can get to. A lot of university counsellors are apparently not that great, but if you've got a network to help you, use it. Dealing with the pressure of university work plus external stuff can put anyone into a really bad place (speaking from personal experience and the experience of a number of other people I knew from ugrad and grad school).
The thing is, I think I won't achieve those goals, and that makes me anxious, not medically anxious, but there's this constant felling of dread.
So, I wouldn't say I'm depressed, but I have this constant dread that accompanies me everyday.
Medication, meditation, therapy and exercise are great tools for improving quality of life. Not feeling constant dread is wonderful. 10/10 would recommend taking steps to alleviate.
There is decaf out there as good as the best non-decaf coffee (I drink espresso, yum!) and it's a pretty short amount of time before the brain normalizes to decaf and it will wake you up without the negative side effects.
But yah, caffeine while anxious can be not a good time.
After an acclimation period, herbal tea can be a satisfying substitute.
I drink espresso so I'm biased towards certain beans. What you drink, how you drink, and ofc what your tastes are will drastically change what you like. I can tell you, if you don't use a burr grinder it can be hard to tell the difference between most high end beans, even for filter coffee, so there is more to it than just getting the world's best beans.
As far as high end beans go there are three primary categories:
- nutty
- chocolatey
- fruity
Often times nutty beans will be called chocolatey, because chocolate is considered a higher grade, but there is a difference. If you want to play with it, a fun goal is to find the best beans for your setup from each category. Chocolatey beans can be fun to explore with sweet 'n condensed milk sometimes as well, just for the fun of it. Nutty beans you usually can't taste unless you're using an espresso machine. It's typically subtle. Fruity is the kind of beans you'll typically find in a high end café in an urban area and can be quite good when brewing pour over. However, they can be high in acid, but a high end fruity bean will have low acid. Those are rare and tend to be reserved for espresso.
Years ago before Blue Bottle got bought arguably their best tasting beans was their decaf. I think they wanted to show to the world decaf can taste good. I guess it wasn't making money, because the first thing that changed when they got bought was the decaf switched to something not very good tasting. Since then I've been slowly going through decaf espresso beans all over the world trying to find something as good. I've found good beans, but nothing as good.
trust me young person, I've been on disability for depression for the last ten years! it's all been a purgatorius bad dream. align your goals with the work you love and tell yourself it's ok if you don't meet your goals.
I've reached many of my goals. for instance; flying an airplane. but i never was a fighter pilot like i wanted to be.
we are all a set of experiences. unique in this regard. that's the beauty of it all. so don't be less in by the prestige [see my recent posts on prestige ;]
I cut mainstream social media from my life and reduced screen time. I am more optimistic. I am able to fight against the profitable pessimism.
I am reducing the urge to hoard more material belongings. I learnt that on HN. I was able to let go off fancy toys and electronics that I didn't use anymore but kept because I bought them and grown attached to them. If I don't use it, it's better someone else can. I don't want to keep them on eBay for months.
4x faster than before? I don't care to look more unless I need it.
I re-evaluate my room and budget every month in order to cut down what isn't needed. If I don't do that, I will keep using past as a justification for piling up more til I suffocate between Amazon boxes.
I bought a dustbin for my neighborhood because people were throwing wrappers outside and placed it with a note. So far, some people are using it and that makes me happy. Reciprocity is a powerful tool and I am optimistic someone will think about what I did and do the same in future.
I write more using a paper notebook. goals, priorities, learnings, etc. Software note taking tools suck because they limit your freedom on what you can do. At the end of my todos, I make origami pets from them as a reminder of what I able to accomplish.
Don't be afraid of being messy. Here's my notes from a few days ago: https://ibb.co/yPGb4Z8
They aren't coherent but just enough to remind me.
I am currently going through psychology of money (although it doesn't seem that interesting yet) but I can take up a few recommendations if you have any :)
I have been using audible as my primary way to read (listen?) and supplement it with kindle. Reading is too much friction at first but once I get past the first chapter, I am eager to pick up the written book.
I really hate that it took this but I've had my feelings/depression talked down so much by people who don't understand depression, don't believe it's a real thing, etc.
I've had so many conversations with friends this year that go like this; "I've lost my entire personality, I can't motivate myself to get out of bed.. whats wrong with me, is this depression?"
Yes, yes it is. Maybe it's temporary, maybe it's acute or chronic, but that is depression. You never know how long it will last, what it will take from you or how quickly you can overcome it.
Be kind to people.
edit: Reading this again I can't shake that some of you are just so far removed from actually understanding your own feelings and emotions that you can't even recognize that you're depressed. It's absolutely fascinating. "What are depressive symptoms?"
I'll say that one positive of this struggle throughout my life is that I've learned which emotions and feelings I can trust or let guide me. I often don't get it right and focus on the negative but I'm very glad I'm cognizant and it's a bright burning fire of "Yeah I'm depressed this week oh boy let's work on this, I need to make some changes."
For example, I am quite aware that I have some feeling X. I am just not sure whether other people use the word "depression" to refer to X, or something else. Maybe "depression" actually refers to 10 times X, how am I supposed to know?
Sometimes people use the same words to describe different things (or different degrees of the same thing), sometimes people use different words to describe the same thing. I don't have a direct access to your feelings, so how am I supposed to tell whether my feelings are the same?
I wonder what could be good ways to "calibrate" one's words against each other
So thereafter two people who say "depression" mean the same thing and X strength
No matter how you decide to see it, it ends up blaming someone. If you decide the problem was the same, then you can blame the first person for not trying hard enough: "see, the second person had the same problem, but they didn't give up, they thought positively, tried harder and overcame the problem, why can't you do the same?" But if you decide that the problem was not the same, then you can blame the second person: "see, you were able to do it after all, which shows that you were only pretending to have the problem, unlike the people who actually suffer from it and cannot do anything about it!"
Of course in real life many problems are on a scale; for different people doing X may be "easy", "difficult but possible", or "impossible". But many people want to round this to "yes" or "no". -- "Either you have depression or you don't. Either it is possible to do X when you are depressed, or it is not. If it is possible, then people who claim they are too depressed to do X are just lying. If it is not possible, then people who manage to do X with great effort were lying about being depressed." -- It works similarly for topics other than depression, too.
That means there's a way for the cannot-do person to actually do it, s/he just needs to figure out how, maybe with help from others
Good news?
And there's no need to blame him/her -- not any more than someone who got a cold which can happen to everyone
I wonder what caused you to thinking in terms of blame and lying
(The other scenario -- when the can-do person in fact did sth else and says it's simple -- can be annoying indeed)
E.g. I have no idea what depressive symptoms are.
This can be caused by anger, despair, loss of a loved one, brain chemical imbalance, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.
Severe symptoms would including thinking about harming yourself or others.
For example here are two things drastically different and the medical industry considers both to be depression:
1) Being overly pessimistic and skeptical to the point of believing nothing is worth trying and nothing can be done. "Nothing I try will ever help me. My depression will last forever." This can come in the form of rationalizing why nothing will work when they have a problem, so they get suck. (An example of learned helplessness.)
2) Catching a chronic cold that may or may not cause irritable bowel syndrome that has the side effect of inflammation in the stomach which then in turn minimizes or outright removes the ability to feel positive emotions. Some may experience other side effects beyond inflammation, like long term cold symptoms where they want to lay in bed all day, not socialize, or do much. They feel sloth-like in an identical way to one feels when they have a cold, minus the sinus pressure and coughing.
And coincidentally the best advice for dealing with it is I got from HN comment that really gave me a huge insight into why i was feeling the way I was feeling and a simple fix to remedy it somewhat.
Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unknowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years.
During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset.
For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins.
That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue.
link to original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618
Every day, my daydreams would be about whether or not today was the day I'd decide to kill myself to end my misery. The hardest part was finding a way to kill myself without hurting those I did care about: my family. Any way I gamed a suicide: it would result in somebody in my family blaming them-self, or someone else, over it. And I didn't want to die like that.
I don't really remember when it started. I know my first serious suicidal thought freaked me out (to the point where I cried myself to sleep that night). But I also know that it didn't take very long until I accepted the constant haunting of suicide as my everyday normal. The period lasted for years.
I must emphasize how _NORMAL_ depression feels when you have it. You wake up with it, you got to sleep with it, and then tomorrow morning you wake up with it again. You learn to live with it. You forget what life was like before you had depression.
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I don't have any advice for people in depression. All I can say is that I somehow climbed out of it and absolutely don't have it anymore. If I knew how it happened, then I'd tell you. But as far as I can tell, it was just dumb luck.
I do have advice for people who are worried about someone with depression however. You cannot convince them that their feelings of depression are "non-normal". Depression is just with you, its something you carry in that period, just how you live your life. The concept that you could even possibly shed the feelings is boggling.
If you want to talk about depression, with someone who has depression, then you cannot treat it as if it were "special" or "exotic". Depression is just every-day life for someone with depression. Telling someone that they can "get rid of depression" would be like saying... you don't have to poop anymore. It just doesn't "make sense" on any level when you have depression. I mean, yeah, life would be better if I didn't have to poop all the time, but I expect that I'll have to poop tomorrow.
Yes. Though that is not always the case, people can experience depression in different ways, but many people don't realize they're depressed until a chance conversation with a doctor raises an alarm bell.
I wish good luck to all of you out there who might be going through this for the first time in your life, or those for whom it is a regular (yet unwelcome) visitor.
I want to buy a smart trainer for my bike but they're all sold out at the moment. I'm too scared to ride on the roads at this time of year: it's permanent twilight, the roads are always wet which disguises potholes, and there are dead leaves everywhere.
I know that exercise really helps, so I hope I can get that smart trainer soon. I've been going for short walks but I really need that kind of exercise that leaves you struggling to think afterwards.
I have started to go running during the lock down in March where I live. I recommend you get a good pair of running shoes if you want to start. Also I used a sports tracker on my phone to track progress, which helped me stay motivated.
For me usually after the first 15 minutes of running, my brain stops thinking and is just focusing on the running and my immediate surroundings.
It could also be cookie-based, but something to keep in mind if you have privacy concerns.
I imagine they could simply keep track of whether you voted or not, and not which specific choice you made. That way your choice remains private but we would not be able to show even you which choice you made.
I’m sure Reddit tracks each upvote and downvote individually and doesn’t just increment a score counter somewhere.
News that covid can cause neurological deficits in 20% of infected + increased rates of infection?
It's a fancy way of saying "The unusual depressive episode (which can be normal) has lasted at least two weeks (not as normal)". How that exact number was determined I'm not sure (though it was the APA), but that's the standard everyone follows.
EDIT: I believe a variation of this question is standard as part of the PHQ-9 which is a screening/benchmark quick self-assessment for depression.
Maybe the parent was considering the potentially depressive nature of facing lockdowns again.
I’ve gotten better at mitigating it over the years. Vitamin D supplementation, light box therapy every morning, and near daily exercise is key. Getting the routine dialed in before mid-November is crucial.
His podcasts cover a lot of the book and have some live therapy sessions etc...
If you are in the Bay area he works with a clinic that dos TEAM therapy in Mountain View.
I consider myself an expert in depression and anxiety having had them since I was a teenager. His book Feeling Good helped me. I first picked it up 10-15 years ago and never read it. I finally did read some of it in the past 2 years, but in actuality it has been the podcasts that have really helped.
There's another podcast called "Therapist Uncensored" that is also really great.
Anxiety is expecting a negative future / negative outcome.
An anxiety disorder is incorrectly assuming a negative future, often frequently and often.
If you're not regularly concerned about the future, then it's okay, it will go away. Though, maybe a therapist can help teach you ways to relax in the meantime? It's going to be two months before anything scary can happen, so that's a long time to be anxious. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I guess I also worry about the health of the relationships I have with important people in my life and what I'm doing to maintain them.
I don't think any of these things qualify as depression though. It just feels like to me that's what life is.
Question is what can we do? Without resorting to therapists and pills ...
Maybe the first thing is to have a bit humour and perspective about it - reminding ourselves that this too shall pass.
Here is a German lock yourselves at home government propaganda piece for your entertainment:
But one of the things you get from a normal job is a regular schedule.
If you start working from home you can all of sudden let go of that schedule. Working at odd hours, only being tied down by a few online meetings.
The trick is of course recognising what has happened and then find of way of recreating the missing bits: I.e. forcing a 9-5 schedule on your work even if you don't have to.
What youngsters particulary don’t want is being frown upon and treated like irresponsible kids -- and this video contains enough humour to make the point, without sounding dumb and patronizing.
Also: this is an Australian initiative that encourages you to ask yourselves and others: Are you OK? https://www.ruok.org.au/how-to-ask
Thankfully I was a high performer pre covid so I didn't get punished for this. It took me two months into covid to realize something was wrong. I scheduled a meeting with a psychiatrist and requested adderall. I was mostly trying to fix my issues with work.
Obviously he was hesitant to give me it and instead gave me prozac. Prozac was absolutely horrible, it made my apathy worse and heightened the intensity of my mood swings. I stopped after a week.
My next appointment I tried wellbutrin and I have to say this drug is life changing. It's helped me regulate my eating and sleeping patterns, I can focus through entire meeting at work. I can actually get stuff done and Im not completely apathetic towards life.
Note: drugs affect people in different ways. My experience might not be yours but I recommend if you are struggling to try seeking help.
Don't let a cursory search warn you off, it is not a traditional stimulant, and not considered addictive. It can also be an excellent second-line treatment for depression. It's what keeps me functional during periods where depression bleeds through my normal treatment plan. Check out this article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16035049/
It consists of 9 questions and surprisingly accurate. It helped me identify my depression.
I got close to clinical depression before so I know what it feels like. Today, what I feel is something I attribute to Autumn's reduced daylight (darned harsher in Northern Germany, where even the sun seems to need government clearance to even just appear nowadays, and the government is most of the time too busy with other things to grant it so), plus the disruptions of being in "quarantine" (yeah unfortunately I haven't really settled to my personal "new normal" yet).
On the bright side, I've actually managed to achieve several of the goals I set myself to back when we thought WFH would just be, 2-4 months. I overplan, there's usually a ton of things I want to do and achieve, no way it would've fit in that initial 2-4 months. Now, I'm actually pretty satisfied with myself if I think about it.
Really feel like I'm an outlier here, but it's really possible to fight this and get better, even if you've felt this way from early childhood.
It's been a long, hard year, and for once I'm doing better in it, even if the outside world seems to be going to hell. It seems the inverse of what should be going on as we head into winter, but I'll take it.
Felt depressive symptoms? Almost everyday for over a decade. Would I say I'm depressed though? No. And that's not due to stigma of it or something. I see a therapist but I don't feel depressed and he doesn't seem to think I'm depressed. There's something special about what I'd consider depression. Something where you're depressed because there's a hopelessness to your situation and it's somewhat unreasonable to feel that way for as long as you have. I think of it like: "Is someone who is being tortured everyday in a prison cell and know there's no chance they'll be able to escape depressed if they're acting sad all the time?" <-- I feel that way in my life at times because that's what I deal with. It isn't physical torture but more of emotional and psychological. Knowing that you could maybe make it in an area but are not and might not ever... it's draining. When you're completely on your own for it and no one you've ever grown up with has ever gotten anywhere near where you're at or done things like you've done... And the work is terrible and the people are horrible. And no one can support you except yourself...
It just... well, it's draining. So, I feel drained most days. Depressed? Not really. Again, if the context was different, I'd feel fine and be quite happy day to day (give me money, give my a nice manager, give me decent work). It's that the context is so bad. I tend to think of depression as... almost no matter the context, you're gonna be sad and not enjoying things. I still enjoy stuff - it's just that I have that nagging thought of how I need to keep pushing... I need to get further because I'm still so far behind from what I wanted to be. And I don't know how to get there because I've never seen anyone like me do it.
Anxiety for something like a test is normal -- since you can take the test away and the anxiety goes away.
If it's worse than that it could be depression, including things like panic attacks.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/sy...
HN promotes interesting discussion; MacOS breaks because Apple's servers are pooped, Google is sued for using mobile data to send them data, privacy concerns in every major OS while the EU is focused on taking down content in record times and abolishing encryption or mandating access to every data record created by any EU citizen that must be stored for the rest of time, increasingly AI is used to judge our posts for compliance and sometimes it makes mistakes such as when Youtube goes haywire and bans/deletes you because it doesn't understand nuance/context as you try to raise a twitter/reddit/PR storm and "we're very sorry this happened, your channel is blessed again until next time", at the same time there's misinformation everywhere as the world's top authorities such as the POTUS is knowingly spreading FUD causing anger and division in society and leading to real world consequences (even death in some cases) as it is apparent Twitter is out of control yet they love the attention said POTUS has provided their platform yet if you look at comments/replies it's just insanity, yet we keep feeding the algorithms that are implicit in our own bias and whatever is promoted to us must be the truth whilst opposing viewpoints are hidden in favor of your own beliefs that these algorithms keep you locked in to, as people's entire experiences of what was once the beautiful web had to offer is now witted down to just a few small platforms, giants such as Amazon use its leverage to remove competitors it dislikes and is often 'the' marketplace people frequent impacting smaller businesses as they struggle to compete on Amazon's terms as local services (such as libraries) need FB to advertise their affairs to the local community otherwise the information doesn't exist and again has real-world consequences...And yet we carry on day by day as if everything is fine and dandy...
...So yeah, life is great! but don't worry, I am sure some super AI knows who is writing this message and will ding me a few points on the scale...Let's hope it's enough to keep them at bay and not get sent off (there was news a while back about an 'AI' studying for suicide references in a games chat and alerting the authorities, I kid you not).
Welcome to 2020.
[1] : https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/F01-F99/F30-F39/F33-...
If you feel depressed, but did not managed to go to a specialist yet, I suggest you try it out because it makes a huge difference.
Obviously the opposite extreme exists as well: people who are in terrible health condition and don't even notice. So again, self evaluation is not very good.
On sleep, exercise, etc., you are absolutely right. And I see what you're getting at with your general comment, but I this part I highlighted implies that a depressed person may have a degree of control over their mental state & ruminations that many people experiencing hardship do not have. For those people, it may, to some extent, be possible to develop coping mechanisms to get there, but if a person lacks strong coping mechanisms then developing them is often sped up significantly through some form of treatment.
That long list of things might help someone (especially given "drink mostly water" tends to suggest "don't drink very much alcohol") but it's unlikely to contain anything particularly first-order for a genuinely depressed person, and some of the "don't think too much about your health" suggestions seem actively mischievous.
I've known a couple teetotalling regular-schedule folks with great exercise habits etc. etc. who have carried out their praiseworthy and abstemious schedules right up to they moment they stepped off a building or bridge, in one case leaving behind a couple small kids.
Since you're new to CO I hope you'll also contribute to the local issues. Today we're helping unhoused Coloradans have water to drink at Benedict Fountain Park. We do this every Sunday.
Simple interactions like doing grocery shopping leave a sinking feeling in my stomach for like hours. Motivation is down the drain as well.
Who doesn't experience at least one depressive symptom?
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/24/how-bad-are-things/
archived link with nicer design:
- music (including live music (streaming is fine))
- dance
- talking with random people about mostly anything (dialup smartphone app)
- rest
- something else
I'm tempted to put up a poll asking whether to keep the poll or the original thread, but I have to go offline for 90 minutes and I don't want HN to blow any fuses.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=follow-up%20by%3Adang&dateRang...
It seems likely the options are lacking in the lower end of the spectrum as well, there's a big jump between not at all and several days worth of symptoms
It would spark a flamewar about survey design if we ever tried that anyhow. For one thing these are all self-reported.
At the same time, perhaps multiple polls phrased only slightly differently but yielding significantly different results is a lesson in the overall problematics of polls, surveys and questionnaires.
I certainly didn't know about the feature.
This isn't a mental health community, but these posts happened and got their upvotes and that shows there's a group of HN readers right now for whom this is as important as anything else they might find on HN. It could be there's folks who can't or won't see what they need to see to help themselves outside of the serendipity of HN happening to bubble them up to the front page.
But there are exceptions to everything and the two threads are curiously distinct, in a way that makes merging them feel a bit wrong, like merging two different meals or something. So I think it's fine for indecision and oddity to win out for a change.
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I had severe depression for a few years that became debilitating at the start of 2020 causing me to be unable to socialize or work or do anything but sleep. I was a terrible friend, parent, spouse, and employee. I tried multiple anti-depressants and therapists, but nothing helped. This august I found a psychiatrist that also did ketamine treatment and it was a miracle. Literally the day after my first treatment I wasn’t depressed and have had zero depressed feelings since. It was surreal. Depression had define my life for so long. I wish the treatment was more accessible, but unfortunately it is very expensive and not covered by insurance. If anyone is struggling and would like to learn more, please reach out.
Linking to the previous comment and maybe adding a bit of context is much better. Edit: like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25098276!