'Sticky thinking' hampers decisions in depression

> 'blue skies' and 'quiet mind'

Damn, those simple words just did a little magic in my brain.

> Depression and anxiety, often comorbid, raise the noise floor to the point that it is incredibly hard to feel confident that a decision can be made. This in turn results in a decision NOT being made and progress dragging on.

That's an interesting way to put it! I used to think of it in terms of switching off the parts of my brain that do all the useful thinking, it's like I'm reaching for a tool and the tool is just not there. Last time it happened I even convinced myself that I would never be able to work again - thankfully my boss was very supportive, gave me some time off and allowed me to ease myself back into work. This was almost a decade ago now.

If you wrote a book called "Mental Health for Engineers" I'd read it. You are very good at articulating the subjective experience.

> Depression and anxiety, often comorbid, raise the noise floor to the point that it is incredibly hard to feel confident that a decision can be made.

maybe replace 'depression' with something else but, at work, if i'm on a call with more than 10 people decision making becomes almost impossible. I think anxiety in the virtual room is high and everyone just becomes paralyzed. I've resorted to random dice rolls to make decisions in some of these cases hah.

edit: i'll add that the threat of one of my random dice rolls sometimes triggers the team to come together and figure something out.

>Please seek out help if you are struggling.

Even that process isn't easy. I've struggled with depression and anxiety most of my adult life, and only recently learned that ADHD is a major part of it. Just getting to this point (40+) has been an incredible struggle. Even when you're in the system, it feels like you have to do a lot of the work yourself, which can be impossibly hard. So hard in fact, that you some times wonder if it's even worth it. I'm in a pretty good place now, but it also feels like I still have a long way to go, because it turns out just getting ADHD meds doesn't really fix anything, and also brings with it new problems.

I guess it maybe sounds like I'm trying to dissuade people from getting help - I'm really not, but it's just the first step of an unknown amount of steps.

>'blue skies' and 'quiet mind' that can be achieved with proper treatment

I'm not there, but knowing that it's possible is what keeps me going.

I'd opine that the amount of stress one is under could be similar to the anxiety+depression impact.

Isn't this just what cognitive behavioral therapy is but with different names?

Related: metacognition

Here's a quick story. It's unrelated to depression but it's something related to asking yourself "are you sure?".

I once had stitches which had to be removed after about 2 weeks. It was the only time I've gotten stitches.

It's a weird experience which involves a fair bit of tugging and feeling things you've never felt before along with maybe a little blood.

The doctor told me to let him know if it hurt. After the first tug I said is it normal to feel pain?

Then he asked me if what I'm feeling is really pain or is it a sensation?

Then he did it a few more times and he was right. I wasn't feeling real pain.

I was feeling a combination of sensations I wasn't familiar with. Yes there was a bit of tugging, pressure and a little bit of pinching but I wouldn't register it as "actual pain". Maybe it was like a 1.5 out of 10 on a pain scale. A minor discomfort at most and completely manageable.

But even now, years later I sometimes think back to that experience in other contexts and ask myself "are you sure?" when evaluating situations or thought processes. It's not a lack of confidence, it's more about making sure I'm assessing things in a fair and reasonable way.

Also recommend "Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques" by David Burns. Lots of good content, helped me a lot. Past the initial general chapters, there are some on specific things, such as dealing with trauma from difficult parents, which you can easily skip if they don't apply.

>"Don't Believe Everything You Think" by Joseph Nguyen

I was flabbergasted to hear this, because there's a german book with the very same title (albeit in german, of course) by the comedian Kurt Krömer about his own history of severe depression.

So I wondered who of them borrowed the other one's title, and it turns out both books were published in March 2022 only about two weeks apart. What a strange coincidence.

This echoes my feelings as well. One idea that I feel has helped is: You don't need to take an impulse seriously if it's not helpful.

Often we amplify a thought by thinking that it is important to us. Fair enough. But is thinking that thought helpful to our behaviour or happiness?

It's hard to directly control our emotional impulses but we can tweak their impact ever so slightly by, as you said, observing them.

Either. The main issue is there are so many things in your life outside of your control that trying to use your brain to put a path through decisions based on what might happen in the future or what could have happed in the past will put you in an infinite loop. In my own experience, I've accepted that my brain is really great at taking in inputs and processing them in the background. I rarely need to actually "think" about things.

I will add that in my opinion, white collar jobs increasingly /are/ this emotional labor. We don't need as many people to "do stuff" any more (at least not as part of our organizations directly -- it's mostly been outsourced to workers in the far east), but there is endless demand for people to "drive things forward". This is the case for management of course, but that's been their purpose since their position was invented some time in prehistory. Increasingly, this is also an explicit ask of workers, and some jobs are nearly-explicitly nothing but this (product/project/program managers, scrum masters, etc.), even at the IC level.

"Drive things forward" is shorthand for "stress about and take blame for". If you are being asked to "take ownership", you are being asked to earn your bread by conflating your own self worth with the success of some project, usually one whose success is mostly beyond your control. The paycheck is compensation for the sleepless nights and distant stare you affect with your family at the beach. This /is/ the job.

I think this dynamic will only get worse with AI tools doing more for organizations. Project managers are at least somewhat paid for their organization skills and executive function, even if they're mostly being paid for stress. If a machine can organize and coordinate, the only thing left for people to do is...have emotions, worry, absorb threats and abuse.

Another way to think about this is that the ownership class can probably find machine substitutes for most white collar labor, but these machines can't be motivated and managed in the ways that B schools have been teaching for 100 years. Yes, Claude can try to fix a bug, but you can't threaten it to squeeze more out of it. Alice has three kids and a mortgage. It's trivial to threaten Alice -- you don't even have to do it explicitly. If her productivity is enhanced with AI, and her bargaining position softened, this becomes even more attractive because the owners can pay her less to do more.

It's interesting this happens. I'm going through it now, and idk why. It's illogical. Feeling wronged by someone just irritates me and there's no recourse for it. Yeah leaving seems to be the only option, but idk if it's sustainable.

when I was on SSRI, I didn't really feel any better. What it was for me is that I didn't reach the bottom so easily. If my mood was normally like from 3 to -10, on SSRI it went from 3 to like -5/-6.

So essentially, you learn to ignore thoughts?

It seems hard to do because some thinking about old mistakes seems essential to not make new ones. Am I missing a key element?

Curious as I think I dwell on the past too much and don’t focus on the present

I learned to meditate (doing this with ADHD was really difficult, but I persevered).

Pushing myself to actually meditate in the midst of a dark spiral is another story. Most of the time I absolutely can't.

Sadly, this only works for problems residing purely in your mind. Lots of depression cases have bodily sources that simply can't be ignored (e.g. touch starvation, wizard).

Mindfulness. Leave phone at home and go for a walk.

Mindfulness and building the habit of letting go - let thoughts pass by like clouds, or landscape passing from a train. You notice the thought, but do not dwell on it.

The initial stage of dwelling gives thoughts footholds and reinforces them without evaluation of their validity. If a thought is worthwhile, you'll come back to it because it will stand out in the landscape of thoughts that went by.

Adopt of mindset of letting thought flow over and through you rather than catching each one and dwelling on it. When thoughts are shallow and numerous, this is like brainstorming.

Close your eyes. Imagine a black tunnel that you are floating through. Every time a thought pops up, paint it black in that tunnel and then float on past it. That includes the thoughts "this tunnel is black" or anything related to your current experience. Just paint it over and float on again.

I self-taught this method at a young age and have picked up a few other "quiet mind" techniques over the years that do similar-ish things. The principle, from my pov, is to basically sit with it and proactively teach your brain to stfu, one thought at a time.

Youtube videos. I use them, and loud, to avoid thinking. I’ve been bullied quite a lot in the last 10 years (you may say as a result of being a capitalist/democracy believer surrounded by left-wingers, but that doesn’t justify bullying), and just understanding that the opponents are bad-faithed, follow no logic, goes to a point where you must let go, independently of any shower argument that you may still run in your head. And listening all the time to scientific arguments, engineering investigations, etc, is soothing because it’s logic.

At one point, the videos became less necessary. It was unhealthy in the highest year of the crisis, but less unhealthy than thinking about winning an argument with a bully.

Of course, who knew that having a lot of distractions and sources of satisfaction could lead to fewer addictions, but sometimes you don’t have them / can’t afford them.

I'm gonna say the opposite of what others say. And it's something that has worked well for me for 15 years.

The way to deal with an unpleasant thought or feeling is to experience it. Find a quiet place where nothing will distract you. Sit down, call back the unpleasant emotion, and experience it. Don't try to "let it go" or anything; don't do any kind of thought processing. Instead, dive into the feeling completely and even "turn the volume up" on it. "These people treated me so wrong!" Let it scratch you. Let it have its say, as fully as possible.

What usually happens for me, strangely, is that the emotion has its say and then I... somehow forget what I was feeling. My mind drifts, the edge blunts, the unpleasantness becomes harder to recall. I try to call it back again with all force, and it comes back, but weaker and weaker each time. And then it becomes just another abstract item of memory, its power over me gone forever.

Something helping me lately is focusing on practical habits and training myself to view thoughts as an outcome of my habits and physical well being, rather than (only) the opposite. In practice simple things like going to bed at a consistent early time, making my bed, shaving and getting properly dressed (on wfh days where its of no consequence otherwise). Exercise, etc. Most important, by far, had been to not view that list of things as all or nothing. Tiniest step helps, even eg cleaning just a couple dishes, single piece of trash, etc. Its helped me see all or nothing thinking as the main enemy, and these little actions as the greatest weapon against it.

The more days I tackle the little things, the more empowered i feel. And the more I notice, now even on days where only half the list of those basic wellbeing hygiene things get done, I still feel tremendously better. Different. And the less need I feel to treat those chores as the goal and lore as a simple means to living a simple good life, and enjoying the good moments. I see the interplay of physically taking care of yourself and others, incremental progress and good habits, and a more balance outlook on life all toed together and all part of a healthier and happier mindset.

Tldr when I start to slip and spend less time diagnosing and more time finding something, anything, small to change course, and am surprised at the ripple effect is (now) has.