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No Longer Wanting to Die

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Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#91

Post by identityhiden »

rquantz wrote: post #3

As 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…

I highly recommend the book "Feeling Good" (by David Burns) as an alternative to talk therapy. I (and several of my friends) have found it instrumental in overcoming depression. More importantly, it has been clinically studied and IIRC evidence suggests that it's on par with talk therapy or medication for mild to moderate depression.

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#92

Post by tim333 »

Chinmayh wrote: post #65
abandonliberty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is further compounded by the stigma & blame that surrounds mental illness, which can be quite severe in certain cultures/countries e.g. China

Add India to the list

Plus you can get banned from entering the US

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadian-woman-refused...

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#93

Post by javert »

Chinmayh wrote: post #64
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>having no friends for 14 years can be disruptive WHAT THE UNHOLY FLYING FUCK!? How are you not dead? No actual personal relationships closer than coworker or acquaintance, other than possibly your parents? Near-total personal isolation? FOR 14 YEARS!? That would have broken me in mere months.

"How are you not dead?" And what would you have me do about it - Kill myself. Not really a solution. is it? Most rich people will break if they are forced to live in poverty. Most people take what they have for granted. Rarely realizing, how lucky they are.

Yeah, eli_gottlieb's comment was just not accurate. As you know, you absolutely can be lonely for 14 years and be "just fine." You will be lonely, but you will go on living, go on taking pleasure in some things (even if they are minor), and go on hoping for better times ahead. Relationships are not everything. Important, but not everything.

I've gone through a long period (several years) of almost total loneliness, where my only regular contact was with my mom (and she has a brain disability from a stroke, rendering her mostly unable to respond other than "yes" and "no").

A lot of that isolation came from not feeling able to fit in, even with the friends I already had (who I drifted away from). I didn't have anybody at all to call up to hang out with, and nobody called me.

It wasn't 14 years, but I just want you to know you're not alone. I'm still pretty isolated (way more than is OK for most people---even a bit too isolated for myself), but it's not as bad as it was, it's totally bearable without causing me to be depressed. (In fact, being lonely does not cause depression. Depression causes being lonely, though.)

As somebody else said, the "forever alone"[1] type of person is probably actually WAY more common than people think. In fact, I find it a tiny bit comforting that you are out there.

[1] However, that concept is invalid. It isn't determined that a person will be forever alone unless they voluntarily choose to make it so and never make an effort to meet people or allow people to meet them.

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#94

Post by javert »

throwaway3301 wrote: post #73
cpncrunch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Re: [2] But what are you to do when you have no purpose in life? No motivating, goal-oriented activities that you enjoy? For many depressed people, including myself, everything seems pointless and therefore nothing has purpose and nothing is motivating or truly interesting. No one really offers any good advice on this part of the solution and yet it's the most important part! Everyone seems to think that everyone mus…

I just want to say that there are two perspectives expressed in response to this comment. One is the idea that pleasure in life comes from starting out abstract (e.g. with abstract goals) and finding more specific things to enact those goals. The other is the idea that pleasure in life comes from starting out concrete (e.g. pooping, eating, quenching thirst, etc).

The first idea is wrong, the second idea is right.

But from those concrete things you build up more and more abstract. The more abstract things gain meaning (bring pleasure) from the less abstract things.

As a primitive man, you feel cold and want to be warm, so you build a fire. Then you build a house. Then you kill an animal and make a warm coat. Then you build a better bow. Then you learn how to hunt better. Then you start planning years ahead. You move to better hunting grounds, you start saving up firewood, etc. That is the primitive man's version of a career; the same applies to a modern career.

However, you can't reduce the value of the more abstract things to the less abstract things. Saving up firewood is not reducible to the sum of warm nights you get as a result. It has its own, separate meaning. But that meaning is only possible because of the less abstract things.

Relatedly, people are wrong to say that life is pointless. The point is the pleasure and pain you feel. Meaning is derived from pleasure and pain. Nature gave us a source of meaning---that had to be the case for advanced life to evolve, and it's pleasure and pain.

tl;dr 1) values are built from the ground up, not the top down 2) values are based on pleasure and that is the "point"

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#96

Post by Cushman »

a3voices wrote: post #66
stegosaurus wrote: post #13

Treatment 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…

> even getting to the stage of seeing a doctor can fail, because suddenly everything is 'pointless' (bad wording. sorry.) Everything actually is pointless, since all matter and energy will dissipate from entropy on a long enough time span. Also everyone you know will be dead in 100 years, most likely. Also most of these people would go see their doctor if there was a million dollars in gold waiting there for them. It…

> Also most of these people would go see their doctor if there was a million dollars in gold waiting there for them.

I'll caution you against this thinking, in general. If you have a depression so severe it keeps you from seeking help, you're probably well aware that it's a matter of life and death. Even if you're not acutely suicidal, you live day to day just "running out the clock", hoping it doesn't get any worse before you die. The prospect of wealth or fame in your future is not only not enticing; it may well make you feel worse, as self-awareness of your inability to care reinforces your depression.

The idea that people who are not motivated by death will be motivated by money is, while not categorically false, surely fraught.

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#97

Post by davidjnelson »

twobits wrote: post #79
throwaway3301 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: [2] But what are you to do when you have no purpose in life? No motivating, goal-oriented activities that you enjoy? For many depressed people, including myself, everything seems pointless and therefore nothing has purpose and nothing is motivating or truly interesting. No one really offers any good advice on this part of the solution and yet it's the most important part! Everyone seems to think that everyone mus…

IMHO, having, and still confronting the darkness: a) Yes, everything is indeed pointless / "pointless". b) Think about what "pointless" means. It requires an agent to assign and remove importance. Who is this agent? Is it you, is it society, is it what you have been told since born? What's his goals / values / pov? Why exactly is something "important" or not? c) F ck "saving the world". F ck "there is a point in this…

This is awesome, and reminds me of what Eckhart Tolle is describing in his book "A New Earth". Essentially, "your purpose in life is whatever you are doing right now".

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#98

Post by electronvolt »

jmnicolas wrote: post #57
msutherl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally speculative, but I think this might have something to do with a high demand for good therapists. For instance, I spoke recently with a friend who was studying to practice psychoanalysis and when I asked him if he was looking for clients, he turned me down in such a way as to suggest 'you're not on the level of my clientele' or at least 'I have all the clients I need.' This was in New York where I'm sure there…

Or maybe he didn't want a friend as a patient. You're not supposed to bond with your therapist but if you're already a friend it's too late. So his rejection may have been ethical and not about your worth as a patient.

I know as someone who was a caretaker[0] for a partner, it's incredibly hard to separate making responsible choices for someone who can't always make them from your regular actual friendship or relationship with them.

If you were already friends with the person, I really don't see them ever wanting to treat you formally. In the worst case they might have to make the almost impossible decision between involuntarily committing you (if they think you are a danger to yourself/others) and losing a valued friendship, or not committing you against their better instincts to preserve their friendship and risking you harming yourself/others. (Not that you are necessarily in that category ever, but if you're making a decision like "Can I ethically provide treatment for this person?" you really have to think about worst cases.)

[0] I don't have any medical/therapy training, but I wound up spending a few months taking care of someone I was dating who was having a pretty severe manic episode. Very irresponsible of her doctor, in retrospect, who later said the reason he hadn't hospitalized her was because she had me to help take care of her/watch her--and we were both college students and he had met me once, briefly.

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#99

Post by joshmn »

This thread describes so many flaws to the mental health care system. Does anyone want to team up and maybe solve the problem?

While I'm no domain expert, I know a ton about mental health and the process of finding a good provider that you're comfortable with.

I'm a generalist, mostly back-end guy (Ruby/Rails/Postgres) with a good eye for design. I've had a few lucky exits. I think this can be another one.

Email is in profile.

Re: No Longer Wanting to Die

#100

Post by [deleted] »

cpncrunch wrote: post #39
Chinmayh wrote: post #7

I 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…

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