Alexp
Well-known member
Hi guys,
I’ve suffered from depression most of my life – much of it in the context of social anxiety. I think what helped me the most is understanding why I get depressed, why it cycles and what I can do to change it.
Here is my view on depression:
Any comments or critiques are welcome as always.
To understand depression, I think we need to first look at what sadness is. Sadness quite simply is acceptance of some kind of loss or change (that you don’t like). When we get sad, we are letting go or accepting the situation so that we can adapt and move on with our lives. For example, if we lose a loved one, we use sadness to accept the change, shift our perspective and move on with our lives. We use sadness to accept both internal and external things. The most obvious are the external things such as losing your job or a loved one. The other side is not so obvious, which are the internal things like accepting that we are a failure, we are stupid, we are unlovable, etc.
Now depression – the type that is long term and cycles - is the internal category most of the time. Its when we try to accept bad things about ourselves that cause the cascading effect of depression. The trigger can be anything, but what sustains and fuels depression is when we start trying to accept bad things about ourselves.
For a scenario, lets say that someone did bad on a test, and they start thinking that they are stupid. They start to use sadness to accept this internal change that they aren’t as smart as they thought they were. They are filled with sadness in an effort to accept an internal change. When you start to accept something bad about yourself, you are telling yourself that you are not as good as what you thought you were and this increases the chance that you will start to try to accept other things about your life too such as believing you are worthless, unlovable, dirty and the list can go on and on.
It can bring your opinion about yourself is all areas down and you will spend a long time trying to accept all these bad things about yourself. Sadness and/or depression is never really permanent though. It’s only a matter of time before you will either accept that you really are all these bad things and actually stop being sad about it, or you will realize that its not completely true and not have to accept it completely – usually its somewhere in the middle – but the point is that eventually the sadness and the pain will eventually stop.
As this point you are probably at a stable low point where you’ve adjusted to a world where you think you are ‘not so good’. What do you think would happen next? Maybe next time you do pretty good on a test and a couple other things go your way. You stop and start to realize that maybe you arnt so dumb after all. You start to feel better about yourself and slowly you climb back up to where you where you began. This basically sets up the cycle all over again so that you can fall back into depression over and over again. Next time something goes wrong again, you may start to try to accept bad things about yourself all over again and set yourself spiraling back into depression. Theres a reason why theres comfort in depression and I think its because when we crawl back up we know it just sets ourselves up for fall down again.
Note what the problem really is though – it seems to be an unstable perception of yourself. Sadness and depression are suppose to be one times things that help you adjust once and for all – but when you believe one bad thing about yourself one day and then believe another the next, you set yourself up for quite a ride.
Maybe one day you got into an accident and lost the use of your legs. You would probably be depressed at first, but you would adapt and move on. It wouldn’t cycle, because you would never believe again that you could run and do sports or what not (unless you never fully accepted it – but that’s a different story).
Maybe one day you even realize you really aren’t so good at taking tests. You may feel sadness as you accept it, but it wouldn’t bother you after a while if your perception is stable and realistic and you don’t suddenly believe you are great at taking tests again – because this sets you up to fall all over again.
The moral of the story is (and what I’ve learned over the years) is to be careful at what you try to accept about yourself. If you have a tendency to accept that you are a failure, try to either see where you can do better, or shift the blame when appropriate.
Perhaps the most important thing is that usually the case is that you have too high expectations of yourself. It may seem ironic that the people who are more likely to accept bad things about themselves are the ones who expect the most from themselves. Its generally true because if you cant deal with the intense guilt of not meeting your high expectations, then your mind can do only one thing and that’s to accept the guilt and failure. Manually adjust your expectations to a more realistic level (like telling yourself that its okay to make mistakes) and keep it realistically stable to avoid the rollercoaster ride.
Sorry about the length. Hope it was helpful in someway. Comments welcome, or tell us how you view depression.
Alex
I’ve suffered from depression most of my life – much of it in the context of social anxiety. I think what helped me the most is understanding why I get depressed, why it cycles and what I can do to change it.
Here is my view on depression:
Any comments or critiques are welcome as always.
To understand depression, I think we need to first look at what sadness is. Sadness quite simply is acceptance of some kind of loss or change (that you don’t like). When we get sad, we are letting go or accepting the situation so that we can adapt and move on with our lives. For example, if we lose a loved one, we use sadness to accept the change, shift our perspective and move on with our lives. We use sadness to accept both internal and external things. The most obvious are the external things such as losing your job or a loved one. The other side is not so obvious, which are the internal things like accepting that we are a failure, we are stupid, we are unlovable, etc.
Now depression – the type that is long term and cycles - is the internal category most of the time. Its when we try to accept bad things about ourselves that cause the cascading effect of depression. The trigger can be anything, but what sustains and fuels depression is when we start trying to accept bad things about ourselves.
For a scenario, lets say that someone did bad on a test, and they start thinking that they are stupid. They start to use sadness to accept this internal change that they aren’t as smart as they thought they were. They are filled with sadness in an effort to accept an internal change. When you start to accept something bad about yourself, you are telling yourself that you are not as good as what you thought you were and this increases the chance that you will start to try to accept other things about your life too such as believing you are worthless, unlovable, dirty and the list can go on and on.
It can bring your opinion about yourself is all areas down and you will spend a long time trying to accept all these bad things about yourself. Sadness and/or depression is never really permanent though. It’s only a matter of time before you will either accept that you really are all these bad things and actually stop being sad about it, or you will realize that its not completely true and not have to accept it completely – usually its somewhere in the middle – but the point is that eventually the sadness and the pain will eventually stop.
As this point you are probably at a stable low point where you’ve adjusted to a world where you think you are ‘not so good’. What do you think would happen next? Maybe next time you do pretty good on a test and a couple other things go your way. You stop and start to realize that maybe you arnt so dumb after all. You start to feel better about yourself and slowly you climb back up to where you where you began. This basically sets up the cycle all over again so that you can fall back into depression over and over again. Next time something goes wrong again, you may start to try to accept bad things about yourself all over again and set yourself spiraling back into depression. Theres a reason why theres comfort in depression and I think its because when we crawl back up we know it just sets ourselves up for fall down again.
Note what the problem really is though – it seems to be an unstable perception of yourself. Sadness and depression are suppose to be one times things that help you adjust once and for all – but when you believe one bad thing about yourself one day and then believe another the next, you set yourself up for quite a ride.
Maybe one day you got into an accident and lost the use of your legs. You would probably be depressed at first, but you would adapt and move on. It wouldn’t cycle, because you would never believe again that you could run and do sports or what not (unless you never fully accepted it – but that’s a different story).
Maybe one day you even realize you really aren’t so good at taking tests. You may feel sadness as you accept it, but it wouldn’t bother you after a while if your perception is stable and realistic and you don’t suddenly believe you are great at taking tests again – because this sets you up to fall all over again.
The moral of the story is (and what I’ve learned over the years) is to be careful at what you try to accept about yourself. If you have a tendency to accept that you are a failure, try to either see where you can do better, or shift the blame when appropriate.
Perhaps the most important thing is that usually the case is that you have too high expectations of yourself. It may seem ironic that the people who are more likely to accept bad things about themselves are the ones who expect the most from themselves. Its generally true because if you cant deal with the intense guilt of not meeting your high expectations, then your mind can do only one thing and that’s to accept the guilt and failure. Manually adjust your expectations to a more realistic level (like telling yourself that its okay to make mistakes) and keep it realistically stable to avoid the rollercoaster ride.
Sorry about the length. Hope it was helpful in someway. Comments welcome, or tell us how you view depression.
Alex
