> At 35, I was divorced and had to start from scratch.
That seems to be the root of the problem. Do you have children?
Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
41–50 of 107 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#42As others have stated, the biggest thing is to stop beating yourself up - stop calling yourself damaged. Also, you need to start exercising - it is the only thing for me personally that will keep "the darkness" at bay. The research and neurobiology behind exercise being an effective modulator of mood is all solid. Further, I recommend you listen to Jocko Podcast [1] - by Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL commander,…
Everything else sounds good, but McCain is not what he seems: http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-...
Fair enough... Then I'll stick to my original examples of Col. Bill Reeder, and Capt. Charlie Plumb.
Check out their stories on the podcast:
Charlie plumb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XgwpDnalZE
Bill reeder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHIxtd-oYTs
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#43Meditate, meditate, meditate. It's a rich world with a lot to learn and will definitely help. You've already mentioned air (nature) and exercise, which I would endorse as well. Try Bikram, hard to be depressed after a sweat like that. Get some sun. Read "the seeing that frees" and "right concentration." GL
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#44People don't put the same meaning behind "mentally damaged". Some people are really mentally damaged. You don't sound mentally damaged to me.
Mentally scratched and dented, maybe. Strip the old finish, sand it down a bit, and refinish, and that brain will look just like new.
OP is probably old enough now to accept that everyone eventually dies and becomes forgotten, and it's best to do things for yourself in the present, instead of fueling some invented myth of your own future importance. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
Your brain is just dumping different quantities of different chemicals all over itself, and it's making you think you've gone crazy, just because it's different from what you remember from when you were younger. Well, you haven't gone crazy. The same thing happens to a lot of people. You get to a certain age, and your kids become more independent, your parents die, your pets die, your career hits a plateau, and maybe your spouse has some of the same stresses and blames you in some way for them, and that becomes yet another stress. Exercise and diet help balance your brain chemicals, but then again so do prescription drugs, herbal remedies, and recreational drugs. Some people resort to religion or psychedelics or both. Some people start a second batch of kids or adopt or get several cats. Some start to write books or music, or create visual art. Some splurge on luxury goods. There are a lot of ways to try to get back to feeling "normal" again; some actually work, and some are just placebo.
Ultimately, the common factor is that all these people realize that they are mortal, and their time is running out at the rate of one day of life per day on the calendar. They're afraid they're wasting it. But no matter what you do, you're going to die, and then everyone who cared about you or hated you will also die, and it may well be that your greatest accomplishment will be to spend your entire lifetime just propping up a trade economy with tasks that have little meaning when considered individually. But maybe you and the 7 billion other people also doing existentially meaningless grunt work manage to support themselves for species survival, and also collectively put together a colonization mission somewhere other than Earth, and you contributed more than a 7-billionth share of that accomplishment. Hooray for humanity; hooray for you!
If you can't find meaning in your life, just make one up. If it's a bad one, it will be forgotten; if it's a good one, it too will be forgotten. Your memory might last 2 years, or 2000 years, but it won't be you--you will be dead and gone. The important thing is that your chosen meaning motivates you to continue living your life, even when you have become genetically useless to the species and so many of your former peers seem to have gained more social status than you in the same amount of time. You don't need to be great and influential. Just being is enough, and you can be whatever you want to be, instead of someone else's child, or someone else's parent, or someone else's spouse, or someone else's employee.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#45You've got strengths and are already aware of several variables (exercise, fasting) you can control to increase your well-being and decrease your suffering. I encourage you to keep moving in the direction of ever increasing possibilities. I offer you 3 Immutable Laws of Forward Motion:
1. Pain. 2. Uncertainty 3. Ceaseless Effort
Any attempts to exonerate yourself from these laws will necessarily lead to the sense of being stuck (without options) and hopeless (without possibilities). However if you accumulate skills to embrace these laws, you will increase well-being both for yourself and those you care about.
When you say, "things in my life have been a lot harder to do/achieve than they should...", you're headed for a dead end. Any plan that seeks contentment as a destination is likely to be a dead end. The best game to play has no promise of "win" or "lose". It's the game where you get to keep playing. Evolution seems to be playing that game, and it has produced some fairly numinous wonders. You being one of them.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#46Like a few other mentioned, don't label your self as damaged and even avoid labling yourself by a prognos you might or might not have gotten. During my life i have seen quite a handful of people with rather small problems blowing them up into unreasonably large sandcastles that only prohibited further development and covered every bridge they wanted to pass. Like many other here i loved computers as a kid but growing…
One nit to pick, a beginning rider should NOT get a 1000cc superbike and then use it for an adrenaline rush. That's a ticket to the ER/morgue.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#47First, stop thinking of yourself as mentally damaged. You're normal. If by the time you're 30-40 and you haven't realized that all new things that you encounter will eventually go away, then you're mentally damaged. It's a normal transition from shortsighted childishness to farsighted maturity. You're in the prime of your life. You're at a stage where you have skills and experience to do lots of things and make decen…
> First, stop thinking of yourself as mentally damaged. You're normal
I think it's unhelpful to assert things like that when we don't have enough information for making definitive statements. Perhaps they do have some genuine and serious issues? We can't know just from the description given. If they do then acting like they don't isn't very helpful.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#48Like a few other mentioned, don't label your self as damaged and even avoid labling yourself by a prognos you might or might not have gotten. During my life i have seen quite a handful of people with rather small problems blowing them up into unreasonably large sandcastles that only prohibited further development and covered every bridge they wanted to pass. Like many other here i loved computers as a kid but growing…
One nit to pick, a beginning rider should NOT get a 1000cc superbike and then use it for an adrenaline rush. That's a ticket to the ER/morgue.
Also depending on where you live you might want to be careful about riding a bike... honestly would never ride one in the WDC area.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#49Like a few other mentioned, don't label your self as damaged and even avoid labling yourself by a prognos you might or might not have gotten. During my life i have seen quite a handful of people with rather small problems blowing them up into unreasonably large sandcastles that only prohibited further development and covered every bridge they wanted to pass. Like many other here i loved computers as a kid but growing…
One nit to pick, a beginning rider should NOT get a 1000cc superbike and then use it for an adrenaline rush. That's a ticket to the ER/morgue.
Seconded. A 250cc bike will still give you more acceleration than almost any car, will cost 1/10th the price, and limit the accident-causing potential of goosing the throttle.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 this year, and have depression. Any words of wisdom?
#50Like a few other mentioned, don't label your self as damaged and even avoid labling yourself by a prognos you might or might not have gotten. During my life i have seen quite a handful of people with rather small problems blowing them up into unreasonably large sandcastles that only prohibited further development and covered every bridge they wanted to pass. Like many other here i loved computers as a kid but growing…
One nit to pick, a beginning rider should NOT get a 1000cc superbike and then use it for an adrenaline rush. That's a ticket to the ER/morgue.
Anecdote: My step-dad taught my how to ride and gifted me a 500cc Yamaha. Every rider I talked to would tell me something like "it's not a matter of if you're going to crash, but when." This stuck with me, and after riding and having fun for two years I gave it up before my luck ran out.