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Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

psychologytoday.com

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Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#181

Post by agumonkey »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #177
slfnflctd wrote: post #52

At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed. I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When it starts to flare up, like with some kind of physical pain, that's telling me I need to pay attention and change things up a bit. Furthermore - and perhaps m…

Is it really better than death? to me, death means salvation, I'll no longer have to deal with troubles.

If GP meant what I think he meant and he did manage to swim out of troubled waters.. I think yeah. And in general I remember that I was born to survive not to die. That every tuesday I get a happy moment.. so things are not fully broken. But I need to remove the noxious part of my life so more happy moments come than sad ones.

Again it's not a universal solution but very often when you change context, you find yourself having it easier. You're not even trying to be happy, it just grows around.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#182

Post by agumonkey »

podgaj wrote: post #113
bluntfang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is hogwash that they think mood disorders are "only chemical imbalances in the brain". Who are you quoting here? What psychiatrists think this? AFAIK, this hasn't been the meta for a long time.

No, I agree with you. I do not find psychiatrists believe that mood disorders are only chemical imbalances in the brain.

it's a default API for brains, but ideas will trigger neurochemistry too .. well I'm sure you got that already

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#183

Post by raindeer3 »

"Anxiety may be due to chronic activation of the fight or flight system. PTSD may occur when trauma triggers the freeze response which helps animals disconnect from pain before they die, and depression may be a chronic activation of that same freeze response." Isn't this a quite good definition of disorders? If a system is chronically activated when it should not, it seems like a disorder.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#185

Post by least »

podgaj wrote: post #168
least wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you or don't you have a disorder? In the first post you made in this thread you very clearly stated you don't. Now you're saying you do. The problem with your post is that you very discretely stated that you don't have a disorder even though you admit to being bipolar. Despite the fact that your "difference" has pushed you to suicide attempts, psychosis, and more. The fact that an effective treatment for you speci…

I only have the disorder when I have symptoms. You get it? Those symptoms are caused by my diet and environment. I am not "Bipolar" because everyone is bipolar, every one has these states, mine are just more extreme when faced with environmental challenges. If someone has a peanut allergy do they have a disease or a disorder? no, they have a different response when exposed to peanuts. I use the term Bipolar Disorder…

> If someone has a peanut allergy do they have a disease or a disorder? no, they have a different response when exposed to peanuts.

They have an "allergy," which is just another medical term like disease or disorder to define something which is abnormal which negatively affects life. If everyone had an "allergy" to peanuts then we'd just call them poisonous.

> As far as your idiotic comment about the medication I need everyone and a while. Well, have you ever taken as aspirin for a headache? Same thing. The aspirin is only needed when you have a headache. Do you have a headache disorder still?

No, because a headache is atypical, while bipolar disorder isn't, like other mental health issues. We define bipolar disorder differently from mood swings. If someone with epilepsy finds improvement in their condition from following a ketogenic diet, that is also them finding an effective treatment for their condition. It does not mean they don't have epilepsy.

> What I am suffering from was clinically diagnosed. I am no longer considered by my doctors to have Bipolar Disorder. Isn't that crazy!? After 35 years of being told this?

What's important ultimately is you found something that works for you and makes your life better for it. Your insights can be valuable but shouldn't be seen as prescriptive to people that aren't you.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#186

Post by perl4ever »

bluntfang wrote: post #96
podgaj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree. But the signal is still the disorder that needs to be fixed. Any psychiatrist will tell you that psychiatric medications only treat the symptoms of mood disorders and that they do not know the cause of most of them. It is hogwash that they think mood disorders are "only chemical imbalances in the brain". They know these disorders are polygenic and environmental. But for some people, a short dose of SSR…

>It is hogwash that they think mood disorders are "only chemical imbalances in the brain". Who are you quoting here? What psychiatrists think this? AFAIK, this hasn't been the meta for a long time.

I can't speak to exactly who uses this terminology, and I have not heard it from a medical professional, but I feel like it lingers on, like in medication pamphlets.

Because fundamentally, I think, it is necessary to try to get people to comply with medication that seems to help sometimes, while avoiding the reality that the way it works is not known.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#187

Post by _ywdj »

kej wrote: post #164
_ywdj wrote: post #158

Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like others have described, when I started experiencing symptoms of conditions resembling anxiety, depression, ADHD, mild bipolar, paranoia and CFS/ME, I initially sought mainstream medical psychiatric treatment and undertook talk therapy and was prescribed anti-anxiety…

>an approach that involves identifying and releasing traumas, attitudes, behavioural patterns, self-perceptions and defense mechanisms that are held in the subconscious mind Could you elaborate on this part? What does "identifying and releasing" look like, in practice?

This is where discussions about this stuff can go off the rails, as the main modality I've used has links to the chiropractic profession (even though I think that profession is highly dysfunctional and many or even most of its practitioners are quacks at best and frauds at worst).

Anyway, the modality I've most used is a technique called NET (neuro-emotional technique), which (I believe) is similar to a practice called Psych-K (I've never done this one but I'm told they're similar). Both of them use muscle-testing to identify incongruences between different aspects of the mind and body (e.g., conflicting/incompatible desires, beliefs or values).

I've also done plenty of Holotropic Breathwork and Ericksonian Hypnosis, some EMDR, some EFT/Tapping, and some use of basic affirmations. Someone else I know well has done a lot of a practice called Family Constellations, as well as another practice that focuses on healing the trauma of birth - though I've not done either of those practices.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#188

Post by baron_harkonnen »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #177
slfnflctd wrote: post #52

At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed. I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When it starts to flare up, like with some kind of physical pain, that's telling me I need to pay attention and change things up a bit. Furthermore - and perhaps m…

Is it really better than death? to me, death means salvation, I'll no longer have to deal with troubles.

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”

-- E. Cioran

The trouble with "death means salvation", and believe me I know that yearning, is that you don't get to experience this salvation. Suicide is literally not the answer, because you will never get to experience the relief on the other end. This is the essence of Cioran's quote here. It would have been better to not exist, but it's too late for that now and ceasing to exist will not, in fact, afford you any sense of relief. The only relief you feel is in the fantasizing about death itself.

Eventually you will die and after that point it won't matter how long or how painfully you've lived. From the perspective of death life doesn't matter at all, but you won't be alive to experience that perspective.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#189

Post by filleduchaos »

wittyreference wrote: post #68
framecowbird wrote: post #4

I'm most surprised to learn that this _isn't_ the current prevailing view in the medical profession. I am not a doctor, but it's always seemed more natural to me to view depression and anxiety as adaptive behaviours - albeit perhaps ones that can end up being triggered too far. I read an article once (wish I could find it) that one advantage of mild depression was as sort a "call for help and support" from other embe…

Largely because articles like this generally focus on what I think of as “layman’s depression”, or “layman’s anxiety.” That is, a mild form of the condition that straddles the gray area between “personality” and “mild personality disorder,” that diminishes quality of life in a perceptible but not devastating way. Then you go work on a psych floor and meet people whose depression is so severe it induces catatonia; peo…

> That is, a mild form of the condition that straddles the gray area between “personality” and “mild personality disorder,” that diminishes quality of life in a perceptible but not devastating way.

I otherwise agree with your comment, but depression and anxiety aren't personality disorders or personality related at all. Depression is an affective disorder. Anxiety is its own class of disorder.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#190

Post by volkl48 »

User23 wrote: post #132
podgaj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree. But the signal is still the disorder that needs to be fixed. Any psychiatrist will tell you that psychiatric medications only treat the symptoms of mood disorders and that they do not know the cause of most of them. It is hogwash that they think mood disorders are "only chemical imbalances in the brain". They know these disorders are polygenic and environmental. But for some people, a short dose of SSR…

Amphetamines have shown some promising results in actually curing depression. There is a vicious cycle of depression where the anhedonia and lack of motivation cause the sufferer to allow the underlying causes to get even worse leading to deeper depression. Amphetamines can help break that cycle and ideally even start a virtuous cycle where their use can be tapered and eventually discontinued. It's vitally important…

That seems perfectly reasonable to me as a line of reasoning, and I'm not casting doubt on whether it could work.

With that said, I also wonder how many of those people had undiagnosed ADHD/if such studies involved screening for ADHD.

Unmanaged ADHD leading to consistent failures in life and other difficulties -> depression/depressive symptoms from the consequences, lack of achievement, etc over the long term, is a pretty common story.

And obviously, the responsiveness of those with ADHD to stimulants is pretty well-known.

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