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Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

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Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#201

Post by dawg- »

odyssey7 wrote: post #174
dawg- wrote: post #156

Here's an important thing from the article: >it's most likely to occur in mildly depressed people—those suffering from major depression, by contrast, are more likely to suffer from larger distortions in their thinking. I wonder if we have overly-pathologized the regular melancholy that comes with every day life? If mildly depressed people actually see the world realistically, maybe nothing is actually wrong with them…

The way this is framed, an underlying question is whether medicine should make normal lives better, or just treat disease. I would definitely say yes to making normal lives better in addition to treating disease.

I love that you pulled that question out of my post because I hadn't even considered it. Definitely food for thought!

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#202

Post by tim333 »

VvR-Ox wrote: post #35

Why am I not surprised? The world is really going down right now and just following news what's going on is reason enough to cry like a baby or lose it completely. That's one of the main reasons why many people take drugs - it helps to forget what's happening around us and it makes us numb enough to stop feeling the constant pain when we think about the things happening to our brothers and sisters who aren't lucky en…

The world is getting better in many ways. Check out Pinker et al. eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ&t=770s

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#203

Post by itronitron »

cryoshon wrote: post #152
rtkaratekid wrote: post #102

I'm not so depressed these days (thankfully) but this "realism" does tend to manifest is different ways. I'm very self-conscious about not dragging people down because some thoughts that I think daily that are normal for me, seem to be absolutely psychologically crippling for people who previously hadn't, or didn't want to think such things. Usually when I do express these thoughts they're in the form of semi-dark hu…

keeping my realist comments to myself took me more than two decades to become competent at. it'll take me another two decades to master. the trick is to understand that all people live in a marginal headspace where engagement with the nature of the world is heavily filtered and limited so that their psychology can continue to mostly function on a day to day basis. this is true whether you are a "realist" or "pessimis…

i eventually realized that while some of my co-workers should probably hear things, they don't necessarily have to hear it from me

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#204

Post by JackRabbitSlim »

etrautmann wrote: post #64
psychoslave wrote: post #61

Let's be realistic: there are only humans with subjective narrow view of the world out there. And whoever will tell you that you are more/less realistic than some other category of people are judging you by their own narrow opinion of what is the ultimate-true-real-reality™. I hope this helped you to feel more depressed.

So the flat earthers are just as tuned into reality as the rest of us?

Yep. Our cognitive deficits and delusions are just normalized in society EG; "Meritocracy" and the American Dream. Theirs are sensationalized and mocked not because it's wrong but because it's not normalized.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#205

Post by bena »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #102

I'm not so depressed these days (thankfully) but this "realism" does tend to manifest is different ways. I'm very self-conscious about not dragging people down because some thoughts that I think daily that are normal for me, seem to be absolutely psychologically crippling for people who previously hadn't, or didn't want to think such things. Usually when I do express these thoughts they're in the form of semi-dark hu…

I had a small application that was going to debut for the higher ups. It pulled in data from multiple sources. Somebody asked me if I was nervous because the head of the organization was going to see it.

I told him "We're all going to be dead in 50 or so years and none of this will have mattered. So, not really."

The response was "Holy shit, that's dark".

But I think I do use nihilism to cope with potentially anxious thoughts. I know that I can't make any meaningful contributions to the universe on any sort of scale that would be noticeable. So making a mistake isn't the worst thing in the world.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#206

Post by tim333 »

journalctl wrote: post #66
buboard wrote: post #8

Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed?

I just learned about King Leopold and what he did to the people of Congo [1]. How anyone can be at all educated about the world and not be depressed is beyond me. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free...

At least that stuff is dying out.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#207

Post by blue_devil »

It's important to understand that realism is an "interpretation" stage. Before we get there, we selectively _attend_ to and process stimuli. It is at this attention stage, and usually for (personally) emotional stimuli that depression can affect the things which we "see" (attend to).

Biases in attention and interpretation in adolescents with varying levels of anxiety and depression https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2017.1...

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#208

Post by tim333 »

Kye wrote: post #142
pknopf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love it if you could find that comic!

I can't find it, but xkcd also had a take on it. https://xkcd.com/167/

There are a few like that on the web eg

https://66.media.tumblr.com/f2cfd1111f36dc195ab9e6aefc239faa...

https://www.reddit.com/r/nihilism/comments/b22xg0/may_i_offe...

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#209

Post by blue_devil »

ZitchDog wrote: post #110
riskneutral wrote: post #80

I used to feel this way, then I discovered meditation and now I am almost always in a positive state of mind. In my experience, it is depressed people who are not seeing realistically, and they are caught in cycles of mental delusion. Happiness achieved in this way is just about truly accepting the "depressing" realities and being okay with it all including your own depressing reactions to the realities, and then not…

I had a very different and difficult experience with depression and meditation. Meditation highlighted the depression / anxiety and made me very aware of it, which made me feel the pain very clearly and deeply. It was like watching my brain stab itself repeatedly for hours on end. Meditation + SSRI is a great combination for me.

Meditation can be a double-edge sword because it's an attention training practice. You can think of it as a torchlight - you learn to regulate the torchlight, but what comes in focus is still controlled by something else.

The process relies on a circle of attention-interpretation and so on and so forth. So merely training attention without changing associations and interpretations may not be very helpful for some people.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#210

Post by kls »

ZitchDog wrote: post #110
riskneutral wrote: post #80

I used to feel this way, then I discovered meditation and now I am almost always in a positive state of mind. In my experience, it is depressed people who are not seeing realistically, and they are caught in cycles of mental delusion. Happiness achieved in this way is just about truly accepting the "depressing" realities and being okay with it all including your own depressing reactions to the realities, and then not…

I had a very different and difficult experience with depression and meditation. Meditation highlighted the depression / anxiety and made me very aware of it, which made me feel the pain very clearly and deeply. It was like watching my brain stab itself repeatedly for hours on end. Meditation + SSRI is a great combination for me.

Just wanted to drop in here and say that I am glad they have worked for you, and I wish you continued success.

For those that have not responded to SSRI's there is other options, one that is showing significant success rates is Ketamine Therapy: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/ketamine-for-major-depre...

The numbers are better than ECT which was alway considered to be the baseline as it is very effective but used as a last line due to some of the negative effects of treatment.

As for me, SSRI's did not work, I have co-morbid ADD as well. So the ADD meds do a really good job of papering over the really bad parts of depression and keeping me functioning until I come out of a down spell. That being said, I plan to try ketamine therapy now that it has been approved.

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