I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of talk on the news about depression this weekend.. but yeah, I have the feeling that there's some pretty harmful beliefs going around. For a start, there's the belief that you CANNOT control depression (or alcoholism, or every other mental disorder, for the matter), and that your only option is to book some $250 per hour appointment to see a therapist.. or talk to some suicide hotline, that .. quite frankly, doesn't consider you anything special, because it's basically just some under-paid social workers sitting at a call center with sore assholes.. who are trained to mass-answer some phone calls and tell you some generic messages about why life doesn't suck. We'll get some things straight, of course. The brain is like any other organ - and like any other organ, it can fail, surprise surprise...!! Yes, depression is the result of a brain disorder. Actually, it's not as much of a disorder as it is an Evolutionary (mis)adaptation, as is the case with ADHD.. considering how widespread both 'diseases' are. The Evolutionary Advantage of Depression Consider yourself lucky if you only have depression.. and not schizophrenia, or parkinson's, or down syndrome.. because while there's gonna be a lot of aspects of your life that you cannot control ... most depressed people are still very much self-aware and intelligent enough to make it through everyday life. Controlling depression really is all about listening to what the body is trying to tell you. We didn't evolve to sit around in an office under fluorescent light thinking about problems like bills, shitty co-workers .. ... we didn't evolve to drive around in some steel cage and sit in traffic for 30 minutes a day. Not saying that we should all go back to the stone age .. I love technology, the more technology the better. But the human body unfortunately has some very basic needs that we are neglecting with our modern lifestyles. Of course, there's far more to this mystery than just .. 'getting out of your house and going to the gym and going for a run around the block and eating healthy' .. that's only doing 10% of the work. Depression Among Entrepreneurs is an Epidemic Nobody is Talking About There's actually been some studies going around talking about how successful people are more likely to exhibit mood disorders like bipolar, deperssion and ADHD. That's not because Money makes you miserable .. but more to do with the fact that, mood disorders can often create the mindset and give you the fuel that is necessary to succeed in life against all odds. So really, the first thing you should be doing if you become a millionaire, is .. keep playing the game, keep setting goals and achieving them one by one. Keep making more money until you start a space station and send people to mars. Depression really is just the body's way of reminding you that you are standing still .. that there's greener pastures, that what you have is not enough .. but that doesn't make you greedy or ungrateful .. it just means you're ambitious. Ambition is the reason we have electricity, the internet, satellites, etc. If you don't feed that ambition, you die. That's why so many successful people have depression.. but the ones who gave up and committed suicide are the ones who stood still . . and let their thoughts take over, instead of keeping the engine running. Gotta keep going, gotta keep occupied.
I should add, this also applies to things like your financial situation, interpersonal relationships, etc. e.g. If you are poor, it may not be your own fault .. but if you don't do something about it, THEN it's most definitely your fault. This belief of course shouldn't justify leaving the homeless to rot and not caring about those who struggle .. by the contrary, by helping those who struggle, you are helping yourself.. ... you are putting them a level ahead so that they can work on more important things that actually matter, as opposed to digging their way through garbage bins all day long.. and that pays off for the whole community.
Why is there going to be a lot of talk about depression this weekend? Cuz it's winter in the Southern Hemisphere? Or am I missing something?
Depression and hollywood suicides also tend to go hand-in-hand with the topic of Addiction. Addiction is something that many people misunderstand, unfortunately. It's not a fucking disease .. it's just a coping mechanism for underlying pain, it's quite literally, self-medication. If it were only a chemical problem caused by trying a drug 'just once', then we wouldn't have video game addiction, gambling addiction, hoarding, body building addiction, plastic surgery addiction, etc. Self-medication is not a bad thing .. addiction is not a bad thing. You just have to become addicted to the right things. Become addicted to exercise, success, achieving goals .. making money .. helping others.. etc. That in turn gives you the self confidence that you will desperately need to survive. An addictive personality can either make you a junkie, hobo loser .. or it can make you CEO of SpaceX, depending on how it is channeled. Hollywood stars have addictive personalities, 90% of them do. That's why they do so many drugs .. not because they're rich, any hobo can get drugs.. but because their personalities gravitate toward drug use and excess.
Depression means you're ambitious? Depression is from not having money or from having money but not having enough money?
No, pursuing an ambition is just how some people self-medicate their depression .. just like some people succumb to substance abuse, gambling addiction, etc. But being depressed does not make you ambitious. However, it's a good way to self-medicate depression. It's how nature intended you to self-medicate.
Self-medicate? I assume your talking about coping mechanisms. Even healthy coping mechanisms, without moderation, can become unhealthy. Also, it's important that you set REALISTIC goals that you believe you can reach. Both short term and long term. Some of my problems: Depression/ADHD/social anxiety disorder/PTSD/OCD Have you been diagnosed with depression? If so, how do you deal with it? Or are you only talking about S.A.D?
Ive struggled with depression all my life. I grew up in a very abusive situation. While you can control depression to an extent, its not something that is done easily. I wish I could just take a pill and heal myself but unfortunately its not that easy. Depression is a battle. A constant battle with yourself, a constant battle with your emotions and your own brain telling you that you are not worthy of life, a constant battle for the survival of your self. Depression is war. It is a war within you. It is a war between the part of you that wants to survive and the part of you that was broken long before you could learn how to use that broken part. Depression is hard. I think about killing myself quite often but the small things in life that mean a lot to me give me enough strength to carry on and fight. Growing is one of the things saved my life as well as meeting my partner and playing jazz music. I mourn the death of Chester as he was one that understood me as a child when no one else would listen." Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal" is one of the lyrics that when I heard as a child it would give me solace. Solace that someone out there understands my struggle. Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk
What blows me away when something like this happens is the fact that people like Chris Cornell and Chester were fathers to young children. You know they had to be going through some serious anguish in their lives to be willing to walk away from that.
I think you are using personal experiences to funnel every suicidal depressed person into one category. I think something you said yesterday is very applicable here Jane. It isn't black and white.
You can't directly control how you feel about things, but you can control your behavior. And through controlling behavior you can feel better about things. Whenever I feel myself slipping like that I make a conscious effort to change my routine. Usually it's because I've let myself slip back into bad habits.
I was going to write an essay then fell asleep, maybe I will later. I agree with the most part OP but there are people with chemical embalaces that do require medication. I'll write one up about how to take control of your depression of people that have it due to social reasons among other things. If I don't get too high.
Behavior is how the environment influences you. Hence behaviorist. Behavior isn't what most people think it is, you don't control your behavior, it controls you but you can control your environment to positivist influence your behavior.
I agree with this. As a bio major with a psych minor, it is absolutely infuriating that people assume the biogenic theory of depression to be fact, even among academia. Depression is NOT always caused by chemical imbalances of neurotransmitters. Depression is a condition that is multi-factorial, and often not without co-morbidities. If depression was simply due to monoamine imbalance, then pharmaceutical intervention would work 100% of the time. It doesn't. From what I know a sizable portion (25%) or so do not respond to prescription treatment. The entire field of psychiatry has been hijacked by Big Pharma. Big Pharma will have you believing you have a disorder from the vague criteria put out by DSM-5. Coupled with the American healthcare model of throwing pills at problems, mental disorders aren't taken seriously enough by those who suffer with them while simultaneously overprescribing serious meds to people who do not have disorders. People think they can keep up their shitty and unhealthy lifestyle and that a magic pill will solve their issues. No, healthcare and well-being is far more holistic than that. But alas, doctors nowadays would rather just hand you a script and send you on your way. Additionally, you have the disastrous trend of medicalization that wants to make everything a medical problem that can be treated with medicine. Some people just want a label, something to justify why they feel inadequate. It's easier to blame depression, anxiety, and ADHD for your shortcomings than to face reality. It's not like it's hard to get a diagnosis anyway. I went to a psychiatrist for something completely unrelated to depression, and she was trying to prescribe me depression meds. Whether it be depression, anxiety, or ADHD - the rise in diagnoses is rising rapidly and pharmaceutical companies are reaping in the cash. Doctors are being driven by a fee for service model that makes it their absolute best interest for you to come in once a month for no other reason than to refill your script if they are narcotics. It's actually quite sad because once you look at how healthcare is managed globally, you really start to see that we pretty much do everything backwards in the States.
Mine might run in the family. My dad suffers from depression. I feel like I'm more of an "anxiety causes depression" kinda person. I am a nervous person, that's just who I am. But the constant stress and easily getting worked up takes a toll on me. And that's just me alone, not including the stressors from everyday life. The way I act because I'm stressed or anxious is negative sometimes and when I mess I up I put myself down for it. Down to the point of "well I can't do this right and I just feel like shit so often, things would be better if..." and then it's just convincing myself that those words are true "oh well you're also a shitty parent" I quit a temp position once because of it. I literally just left one day, middle of the day too. I was getting some disturbing thoughts at work :/ But mostly my monster just holds me back from getting things done. Been fighting against it though, just gotta keep an eye on Panic.