Depression lies • Hacker News Board

Re: Depression lies

#71

Post by huggah » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:13 AM UTC

borplk wrote: post #42

huggah wrote: post #2

We have an incredible capacity for denial and self-deception. For years, I would periodically drop into severe depression; I would stop sleeping, stop eating, stop answering my phone or email. I wouldn't leave my room for weeks on end; on a few occasions I was so successfully reclusive that people worried that I disappeared or died called the police to investigate. A few times I almost did die; I think the biggest re…

I'm noticing some alarming similarities between your description and my current situation. Shit.

Do something! Talk to someone; start with someone you trust (not necessarily a doctor). Catalog your history, list the duration and severity of every time you were depressed enough to impact your school, job, or social life. You're doing this with someone because this is serious trigger territory. If you're on the edge, then do this with a therapist.

Don't try to diagnose yourself from this: the point is to let it sink in that you have an issue, and it's not going to get better unless you do something. Don't skip this step. Now that you're convinced, start hacking at the problem.

I recommend http://www.amazon.com/The-Depression-Cure-Program-without/dp...; but do your own research, talk to people, get better. Get better every day. You'll fail several times along the way; have people you can count on for help. Get better every year.

Maybe it will be an easy, short road for you. Maybe it will be a life-long struggle. That's okay, just make sure you live long enough to find out; it will be worth it. There's only one thing you need to know: problems you ignore won't go away.

Re: Depression lies

#72

Post by paraschopra » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:13 AM UTC

What I'm not able to reconcile is if the despair and anxiety resulting from nihilism is something that should be treated. I'm a staunch believer in existential nihilism (and hence believe life is inherently purposeless and pointless), so time to time it gives a sharp tinge of sadness on the lines of _why am I existing at all_. It's not a suicidal feeling, but very close to it. I have (rightly, so) convinced myself of all sorts of Nihilistic conclusions such as subjective morality, consciousness and free will as not being special rather an illusion and byproduct of evolution, cosmos being huge and indifferent, etc. etc. This belief definitely gives freedom in the sense that you aren't bound by any assumptions, so you can do whatever you desire. But it also leads to slight, nagging, constant sense of unhappiness.

Running a startup being a Nihilist is sort of a difficult task, and once I had blogged about here: http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/startups-and-nihilism-d... -- I tend to agree with Camus on his Absurdist stance, but treating for having such a correct, depressing stance is something I still haven't come to terms with.

Any thoughts on what do mental disorders really mean, or what does treatment of those disorders really mean? My current opinion is that if happiness means blocking or ignoring certain truths (via medication or treatment), then that is preferable. But I'm still undecided on that.

Re: Depression lies

#73

Post by bad_user » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

kevinburke wrote: post #52

bad_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really work? My guess is that's just how slim people tell fat people that laziness got them fat and so they should do more exercise, i.e. people that never suffered from a certain condition giving advice to people suffering from that condition. " I failed the test because I'm stupid " - that's just how I felt when I got rejected after an onsite interview with a certain company that's renowned for its hiring s…

Studies have shown the two to have the same effectiveness rate at treating depression, around 50%. It turns out it is actually healthy to pass the blame. I'd suggest reading one of Seligman's other books, Learned Optimism, for more, but in studies of people in high-pressure situations (freshman year at Army, cold call insurance salesman at MetLife, etc), the most successful people are the ones who externalize (blame…

I don't know, maybe it indeed works, but the problem is you have to believe what you keep telling yourself and that's hard. In regards to seeing the real world and your place in it for what it is, I think that the extremes are hurtful.

For instance many of us here posses an over average intelligence (whether we were born with it, or we acquired it through hard work that's another discussion). Also, many of us here have overinflated egos because of that.

I remember seeing case-studies of smart people that weren't as accomplished as they should be because of fear of failure and rejection. Continually telling your child that she's smart will overinflate her ego, expecting nothing but success after success. A few years later the real world kicks in, and this is a recipe for stress and depression. Another thing that happens is that many of us here are the smartest amongst our acquaintances. This creates sampling-bias; you genuinely start thinking that you are amongst the smartest people alive. But then you start competing with a global pool of other smart people, because of globalization and the Internet, and you witness how you're just a grain of sand on a beach full of smarter people that are more accomplished from a younger age.

I prefer intermediate thoughts rather than blame others. "I should work harder" works better for me than "teacher was in a bad mood", because the first statement might always be true, while the second statement I know deep-down in my gut that it's just an excuse.

Re: Depression lies

#74

Post by neilk » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:15 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #64

kevinburke wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies have shown the two to have the same effectiveness rate at treating depression, around 50%. It turns out it is actually healthy to pass the blame. I'd suggest reading one of Seligman's other books, Learned Optimism, for more, but in studies of people in high-pressure situations (freshman year at Army, cold call insurance salesman at MetLife, etc), the most successful people are the ones who externalize (blame…

I'm skeptical, the way you phrase it. Rather, I've always heard that it's best to think in terms of circumstances and not blame , for both yourself and others. There's a subtle difference between them. You've phrased it as "blame others, not yourself", but both of those alternatives are equally unhealthy. Rather, you should figure out a variety of possible explanations for your low performance, and then ascribe meani…

I read Seligman's book about optimism as well. He studied insurance salespeople for a time, which I think influences a lot of the advice. The best salespeople had a modicum of self-preserving delusion. Not enough to ignore correctable problems with their own performance, but enough to endure all the rejections one gets as a salesperson.

This advice is clearly more applicable to sales than to, say, spacecraft design. But maybe more things are like sales than we think.

Seligman's book is challenging to a hacker personality because he is saying that there's some information which it's best not to ruminate about. Many hackers are naturally inclined to perfectionism: analyze failures, perfect the technique before daring to try again. But a lot of success in life might just be about sheer persistence; trying again without dwelling on failures too much.

Re: Depression lies

#75

Post by huggah » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:19 AM UTC

chmike wrote: post #29

huggah wrote: post #2

We have an incredible capacity for denial and self-deception. For years, I would periodically drop into severe depression; I would stop sleeping, stop eating, stop answering my phone or email. I wouldn't leave my room for weeks on end; on a few occasions I was so successfully reclusive that people worried that I disappeared or died called the police to investigate. A few times I almost did die; I think the biggest re…

You could be bipolar with a hypo maniac phase. You should check this with experts.

I was initially diagnosed with a Major Depressive Disorder; my first round of SSRIs sent me into a manic episode. That was enough to get me diagnosed with Bipolar II. I question whether that was an accurate diagnosis; my experience with bipolar medication was pretty awful, and with behavioral treatments (CBT and environmental changes) I seem to do okay without them, which is much more rare for people who suffer from Bipolar than for people who suffer from MDD.

Re: Depression lies

#76

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:32 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #74

nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical, the way you phrase it. Rather, I've always heard that it's best to think in terms of circumstances and not blame , for both yourself and others. There's a subtle difference between them. You've phrased it as "blame others, not yourself", but both of those alternatives are equally unhealthy. Rather, you should figure out a variety of possible explanations for your low performance, and then ascribe meani…

I read Seligman's book about optimism as well. He studied insurance salespeople for a time, which I think influences a lot of the advice. The best salespeople had a modicum of self-preserving delusion. Not enough to ignore correctable problems with their own performance, but enough to endure all the rejections one gets as a salesperson. This advice is clearly more applicable to sales than to, say, spacecraft design.…

So, for a lot of the social professions, success is realizing that other people have minds of their own who may or may not agree with you, and that if they don't, that doesn't necessarily reflect on you or mean you're doing anything wrong. So if you blow an interview, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're stupid, it could just be that you drew a bad question or a bad interviewer or just weren't what the company was looking for.

I've been struggling with this for a while in the context of dating, which is another area where you'll face lots of rejection that usually isn't your fault. I think that's a lot healthier than to phrase it as "blame others" - you should respect others, but realize that what they want is not necessarily what you want. Heck, put that in a dating context and you can immediately see the problem: somebody who blames the girl when they're rejected is a creep, not a success.

Re: Depression lies

#77

Post by mquander » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

paraschopra wrote: post #72

What I'm not able to reconcile is if the despair and anxiety resulting from nihilism is something that should be treated . I'm a staunch believer in existential nihilism (and hence believe life is inherently purposeless and pointless), so time to time it gives a sharp tinge of sadness on the lines of _why am I existing at all_. It's not a suicidal feeling, but very close to it. I have (rightly, so) convinced myself o…

Your despair and anxiety don't result from your philosophical beliefs, which should be trivially obvious since lots of people share your beliefs and do not regularly suffer from despair and anxiety.

You can feel how you please, but you aren't being faced with the binary choice of "believe X and be sad" or "disbelieve X and be happy." You also have the choice of "change whatever weird thing in your head correlates a belief in X with sadness." Feel free to just fix the unhappiness and leave your philosophy alone.

Re: Depression lies

#78

Post by huggah » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

jhuckestein wrote: post #11

one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year This is something that frightens me. What is a "diagnosable mental disorder"? I'm willing to bet this statement was far from true 50 or a 100 years ago. Not because I think people got more depressed or anxious, but rather because we're looking harder to "diagnose" things. I think there's a big danger, especially in psychological afflictions,…

I am quite confident that mental disorders are not just more diagnosed, but also more common than they used to be. I don't know what all the causes are, but I suspect that it is somewhat akin to the "obesity epidemic" and that it has many factors of debatable relevance. There are social and environmental factors that are causing profound differences in disease rates; there's no reason to suspect that mental diseases are any different.

For my money, I would say that increase rates (real rates, not diagnosed rates) of mental disorders have gone up considerably due to, in no particular order:

* dietary changes

* environmental toxins

* less time spent outdoors (in bright sunlight)

* more sedentary lifestyles

* more low-level, long-term stress

* broader, shallower social circles (more severely exceeding Dunbar's number)

* changes in social norms (less physical contact, more space and time spent alone)

Some of the above probably have no effect, and there are probably important factors I didn't mention. But I think that as a population, we are more ill than we were generations back---not just more over-diagnosed or more often diagnosed.

Re: Depression lies

#79

Post by orangeduck » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

paraschopra wrote: post #72

What I'm not able to reconcile is if the despair and anxiety resulting from nihilism is something that should be treated . I'm a staunch believer in existential nihilism (and hence believe life is inherently purposeless and pointless), so time to time it gives a sharp tinge of sadness on the lines of _why am I existing at all_. It's not a suicidal feeling, but very close to it. I have (rightly, so) convinced myself o…

Ultimately nihilism is non-prescriptive as to how you should behave or feel. Under nihilism you can very easily turn "Why Bother?" into "Why Not?", or "Why do I exist?" into "Why would I not exist?" - because all are meaningless questions.

At least this is how I deal with the fatalist aspect. Live you life as you would "normally", take the actions you think are best and do what gives you emotional fulfilment. Nihilism is only a weight if you secretly want meaning (and are somehow disappointed that your actions are meaningless). Happiness isn't blocking certain truths, it is just a biological state. If you truly do not believe or wish for a meaning then Nihilism sets you free.

Re: Depression lies

#80

Post by adeelk » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 9:53 AM UTC

> About one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. That means if you think about your 10 favorite people in the whole world two of them could be at risk of suicide.

No, that means on average, an arbitrary set of eight adults contains two with a mental disorder. (Presumably this refers to adults in the U.S.)