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No Longer Wanting to Die
31–40 of 108 posts
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#32Hacker News unfortunately seems to be more and more about depression/psychology and less and less about positive entrepreneurship and tech/programming. I want to be inspired.
Are you depressed?
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#33I am not surprised that a treatment that is so effective to the author has remained unknown to him for so long. I have had feelings of suicide for the last 14 years. I personally hate meeting psychologists, because they can be so unpredictable. Some of the better ones prescribed me medicine, some of the worse ones, told me I had to stop crying and find solutions to my problems, that I was lazy. I was also told becaus…
> I am in a state where every moment is sad
Please, keep trying.
As for trial and error, we're far from knowing everything. Among a list of things known to have worked for various people, it is still somewhat trial and error finding out which of those things will work for any individual.
We're big bags of meat, bone and mystery, and solving that mystery is a challenge, for ourselves and for our practitioners.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#34Treatment for depression is badly handled almost universally... It seems as if people still don't generally understand that it's more than 'feeling a bit sad'. If you break your knee, you will (99.9% chance) go and see a doctor. If the first doctor doesn't fix it, you'll see another. Your knee is broken, unusable, painful and you have a drive to fix it. A more serious injury will generally result in a friend/family m…
Not to mention the social stigma that still(!) haunts depression (and virtually all psychological injuries). Few physical injuries have any sort of stigma - and the ones that do are usually associated with depression. Certainly it would be better if that stopped entirely (and, as with homosexuality in general, and gay marriage, it seems to be happening).
That said, I actually have sympathy for the stigmatizers. From their perspective a perfectly healthy person with no overt negative stimuli is profoundly unhappy for no reason. That's got to be frustrating because it's completely and totally opaque, untouchable, alien, and unaddressable. The condition stymies the compassionate person, making a mockery of their good intentions. That is frustrating, even angering, and is probably the cause of the ambient hostility that lingers around depression. Depressives behavior appears stubbornly self-destructive, which essentially and irreducibly thwarts the will of those that care for them.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#35As someone who has suffered from moderate but not debilitating depression for much of my adulthood, one thing that has always stood in the way of getting treatment has been finding a damn therapist. Back when I was a broke, insurance-less musician, I went to inexpensive sessions with a student therapist who listened to me talk for a semester but offered very little in the way of help. Shortly after getting insurance…
Oh wow. That's even worse than the therapist I tried to see after getting out of undergrad and finding myself depressed with adulthood. I said that I was depressed with the thought that life after graduation consisted exclusively of work and materialism. He said I was being immature and should grow up.
Psychotherapists and psychiatrists often seem to be utter shit at serving patients as normatively neutral medical professionals, ie: not treating their own lifestyle preferences or ideological frameworks as the One True Way to Live.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#36Treatment for depression is badly handled almost universally... It seems as if people still don't generally understand that it's more than 'feeling a bit sad'. If you break your knee, you will (99.9% chance) go and see a doctor. If the first doctor doesn't fix it, you'll see another. Your knee is broken, unusable, painful and you have a drive to fix it. A more serious injury will generally result in a friend/family m…
Not to mention the social stigma that still(!) haunts depression (and virtually all psychological injuries). Few physical injuries have any sort of stigma - and the ones that do are usually associated with depression. Certainly it would be better if that stopped entirely (and, as with homosexuality in general, and gay marriage, it seems to be happening). That said, I actually have sympathy for the stigmatizers. From…
It doesn't matter much if a person is sad for no reason, no one wants to be around someone who is sad.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#37I had a brother that committed suicide 7 years ago and his story was similar to yours.
A history of extreme emotional swings and hospitalization for attempting suicide.
I was the best man at his wedding. Once he got married and had three sons I thought that was the end of that part of his life.
In my mind, no one with three little boys could ever kill themselves.
I was wrong. As soon as his marriage started to fall apart, he did it.
If anyone reading this knows someone that suffers from depression, never underestimate the power of depression.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a little more than that - he was talking about the HAARP conspiracy theory as well. It just became clear he didn't approach the world rationally. I'm sure for some people he would be a great therapist, but not a good match for me.
Wow, that's and extremely weird thing to come up from the therapist in a therapy session.
That, and the bit about prayer, sounds like the therapist was focusing on his own needs rather than the needs of the client.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#39I am not surprised that a treatment that is so effective to the author has remained unknown to him for so long. I have had feelings of suicide for the last 14 years. I personally hate meeting psychologists, because they can be so unpredictable. Some of the better ones prescribed me medicine, some of the worse ones, told me I had to stop crying and find solutions to my problems, that I was lazy. I was also told becaus…
Here are some suggestions that worked for me, and may (or may not) help.
I find that depression -- at least for me -- has two main causes:
[1] Excessive emotional response to bad situations (similar to what the author of this article is experiencing).
and:
[2] Insufficient motivation/goals/joy.
My solution to [1] is twofold: mindfulness and resolution. Be aware that excessive negative emotional responses are bad (as they lead to depression), so it is better to just observe bad situations and try not to get overly emotional. Secondly, try to resolve the issue (either by actively managing it, or by accepting that the world is just like that and you can't change it), so that the conflict doesn't arise in future.
For [2], the solution is to have a purpose in life, with motivating, goal-oriented activities that you enjoy. I suspect this might be the issue for you. There is more to life than having a well-paid job. I gave up very well paid contract work 15 years ago, as I hated it. Since then I have worked on my own business. I earn a hell of a lot less money now, but I'm much happier.
Having friends (or at least social contact) is also important to mental health, even if that is just saying hello to people you meet on the street, or chatting to like-minded people online.
Please don't wait for something to happen. Take charge of your life and do something about it. Being depressed all the time is an unnatural state, and is your brain's way of telling you that you need to change something in your life. Sometimes you need to make major changes in your life to make things better.
Feel free to email me at cpncrunchhn@gmail.com if you want to chat.
Re: No Longer Wanting to Die
#40Hacker News unfortunately seems to be more and more about depression/psychology and less and less about positive entrepreneurship and tech/programming. I want to be inspired.
I suspect that it might be because the people who are driven to be entrepreneurs also have a higher likelihood of suffering from depression.
Yes. Unlike the parent, I welcome reading such stories. It keeps me cognizant of the risks of ignoring mental well-being. I think our professions (programming in particular) has more mischief potential because it makes it easy to drift into solitude while remaining productive. I can easily do my work locked up in a room with my computer sustained by Instacart without much human interaction, but therein lies sorrow. You couldn't work like that if you were a dentist or a plumber. I sometimes envy the forced social interactions of other professions.