3 ms·
A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right. With treatment-resistant depression, it's like yo
by starpilot 7y ago
A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right. With treatment-resistant depression, it's like your "happiness muscles" respond minimally or not at all to training. You're trying to light a pile of ashes.
This is similar with many persistent mental conditions. Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food? Why doesn't someone with a phobia just stop being scared? And so on.
- jodrellblank 7y agoWhy doesn't someone with a phobia just stop being scared? Exposure therapy works for phobias; people exposed to their phobia in a way that increases their anxiety, long enough for their brain to notice they haven't died and recalibrate its fear response, stop being scared. Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food? Because they enjoy eating food? Eating food isn't what they want to stop, being fat or sick is what they want to stop. Eating food is delicious, comforting, filling, reassuring, is it any wonder people resist giving that up? It's not that their eat-less muscle won't respond to training, it's that they won't work their eat-less muscle because that involves eating less, and they like eating. A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right. That doesn't say his happiness muscle is broken and won't respond, it says he has unexplored reasons for preferring the status quo more. He gets more benefit from unhappiness than from doing X. Go explore those reasons.