111–120 of 215 posts
I'm pretty desperate to get onto a trial. Here's hoping that this gets FDA approval ASAP.
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Fully agree, to me depression is a common symptom that the system of biological processes “outputs”, if you will, when some process isn’t running optimally. Stopped sugar suddenly? Inflammation from food you’re eating? IBS in general? Traumatic upbringing leading to entrenched “thought loops”? Undiagnosed disease? These all and more can have depression as a symptom. My armchair psychologist opinion is the DSM 5 categ…
Which behavioral changes got you there?
Make a mistake? No big deal it’ll be better next time. Learn from it rather than beat myself up for it.
Hit that red traffic light? Time for self contemplation and putting the heated seats on rather than being pissed off I’m delayed 30 seconds.
Get an email that triggers my threat response? Take a breath and think about who I have around me who can help rather than take it all on myself.
Have a read of learned optimism. Great book.
Get therapy. Hit the gym. Go for walks. Brush your teeth for 2 mins. Moisturise. Show yourself as much self care as you can.
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The point I was trying to make isn’t about happiness or sadness per se, rather they depression has mental analogs that presumably are improved after treatment.
It doesn't need analogs. Depression is mental. Legitimately what dialogue are you attempting to start?
My son, who is diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and OCD, and who has been in talk therapy, on SSRIs, and other interventions for years, recently started LENS therapy, also called neurofeedback. (I'm on mobile device, otherwise I'd find the link.) It sounds a lot like a form of TMS. He's had something like 7 sessions, each lasting maybe 15 minutes. The results are nothing short of astounding for our family. H…
That's wonderful that it's helped your son so much. I have done TMS and am curious about LENS for myself and family who have symptoms similar to what you shared. We too have tried most everything else and daily life is an absolute grind. How many sessions did your son require and how long are the results expected to last?
Results were pretty much immediate, though. After his first session (maybe only a few hours later), he self-reported improvements and we noticed a definite change in his mood and attitude.
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There are two truths here which are often taken to preclude one another, but I think they can coexist 1. Depression can be treated and even overcome in some circumstances 2. There are very justifiable reasons many people might be depressed
What I find most troubling is how resources and power get concentrated in hands of the few, and the rest of us (99%+ of the population) are left to deal with the consequences. The few laws that do exist to prevent benefiting parties from raping and pillaging the earth and society at large are slaps on the wrist at best. The default is to toe the line and/or overstep legality and morality. That's what's so depressing…
We are always trying to solve this problem while avoiding the elephant in the room, the current state of society is not very healthy for most people.
I have found that people treat depression and anxiety like a medical condition -- diabetes, or high cholesterol.
Yet I can measure those numbers, compare them with other people similar to me, determine what ranges are outside the norm, and observe changes as I try different strategies to manage them.
Depression, like physical pain, can neither be measured nor compared. And if this analogy holds, then there are those who would rather dull their pain with medication and claim victimhood, rather than find the source of it.
Other comments have proposed that depression may have multiple underlying causes, and thus may require different treatments. I'm curious about the other direction of thinking. What do SSRIs, psychedelics, CBT, and TMS all have in common? Suppose that there is one common cause, or one at least one cause that applies to 90% of cases. And it's treated by all these seemingly disparate methods. That's what tickles my curi…
Maybe there is some kind of local optimum your serotonin-mediated pathways can get stuck in and need help getting out of. In fact, this (generalized outside of just serotonin) is something I do buy as a basis for depression: your brain enters some local optima or learns some poor but good-enough coping mechanisms that keep you going but prevent you from fixing underlying issues (whether it be due to maladaptive behavior, framing or interpreting things negatively, low self esteem leading to poor social performance and consequently lower self esteem). That’s also kinda what CBT is about addressing
> “It’s almost as if you’d already decided how you were going to feel, and then everything you were sensing was filtered through that,” he said. “The mood has become primary.” This is 1000% what depression feels like, once you've properly come to terms with it. Your brain seems absolutely compelled to apply the most horrific, negative interpretation to everything that happens to you. Even when you understand it's wro…
The few that remained (in my personal case, can't speak about others) was a strange sense of gamification of everything. Lift that spoon with only one finger. That allows some influx of positive will but it can get drained real fast (to the point of physiological collapse .. a bit like narcolepsia)
And yeah, long term management basically teach your brain to desensitize to its own bugs so you can at least not drown in negative emotions. But it's a double edged sword cause you're tapering down your own self in the process.
> “It’s almost as if you’d already decided how you were going to feel, and then everything you were sensing was filtered through that,” he said. “The mood has become primary.” This is 1000% what depression feels like, once you've properly come to terms with it. Your brain seems absolutely compelled to apply the most horrific, negative interpretation to everything that happens to you. Even when you understand it's wro…
Anxiety feels similarly. The most valuable thing I've gotten from the past several years of therapy is a better model for how humans actually process information. The simple model a lot of people have is: 1. Receive some stimulus, input, or experience. 2. Process and understand it. 3. Respond to that emotionally. What we actually do is more like: 1. Receive some stimulus, input, or experience. 2. This data is way too…