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Comment by verelo | Hacker News Reader

I’m so sorry for your loss. Something did change, and i think it’s good you feel that. Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it. There were a few exceptions, loss of a child, partner or critical illness.

I’m not sure what comes next but really hope that energy and happiness finds its way back to you with time.

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>Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it.

If you're someone who struggles with chronic depression this statement is extremely demoralizing. But it's also hearsay -- you're a stranger on the internet, so you want me to believe based on a stranger's colleague's wife's alleged research, that depression cannot be effectively treated?

If you want to share that researcher's work, provide a link. Keep your rumors, suppositions, and lay-person's doomer psychology to yourself, unless you are planning to make a post with direct citations that is in effect nothing like the comment you did leave.

People's lives depend on this. You can't just post "if you have depression you'll never be able to change it" cavalierly as though you are an expert and your post has no consequences.

Someone is going to read your supposition, your rumor, believe it, and despair.

Fully agree. And even if there was a legitimate study, it wouldn't be dispositive. I had horrible anxiety and depression for most of my adult life. I believed I would never be a happy person, and that I would always be tormented by my mental illness.

I finally found treatment that worked for me in the pandemic (Ketamine assisted psychotherapy), and it was life changing. It has been 2.5 years since I stopped treatment and I'm 10x happier. I wake up every day happy and curious about what the day will bring.

This is a well known concept called the "Hedonic Treadmill", which exists since the 70ies, not "doomer psychology". It also does not say treating depression is not possible. Depression is a disease.

Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness

Richard M. Ryan, Edward L. Deci

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30652098-self-determinat...

A lot of psych research is bullshit that doesn't replicate - it's the dark ages over there, medicine before germ theory.

My wife has had anxiety and depression her whole life. I have been carefree and happy all of mine. I've been bullied at school, broke to the point of hunger after college in the 90s, and lost my sister to ovarian cancer 5 years ago. And aside from dealing with "in the moment" problems, my brain is always in freewheeling happy mode. Whereas my wife, no matter how "right" her day went, tens to be negative and beat herself up. It's how we're wired. She did therapy and she thinks that 90% of it is bullshit.

However, in the last few years she said that her "negative voices" (not actually schizophrenia, but her own nagging, disrespectful, negative narration) have gotten under control through CBT. She says it's something she needs to work at daily, though, because her brain seems to be wired that way. And she's controlling it and staying healthy without any meds.

So while I think there's something in that anecdote I don't think it means that you can't have a good life.

The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change - that's why antidepressants exist. It's why you should see a therapist for it, and should stop listening to people implying you can just eat different or whatever. This knowledge sucks, but you trying to keep that a secret and shaming someone into silence isn't helping.

> The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change

Wrong. I lost at least a decade of really great years to this belief. It's bullshit. I've made huge strides in my "clinical" depression despite my environment not markedly improving. I did, however, improve myself enough to recognize and stop maladaptive behaviors.

It's hard as hell to change yourself, but you're not immutable.

If you can change it with your environment, you were misdiagnosed

Thank you, I appreciate it.

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