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The author was doing 45 minute HIIT routines while being depressed. Go figure. I find this kind of articles infuriating. All this narcissistic talk about how t

The author was doing 45 minute HIIT routines while being depressed. Go figure. I find this kind of articles infuriating. All this narcissistic talk about how they handled it and whatever, signaling how they are above all that (the disclaimer at the bottom does not qualify, we are not that retarded). After 30 years of suffering treatment resistant bipolar depression I just find all this diminishing of clinical depression really disgusting and paternalizing (did some editing here, I don't have anything personal against the author) Yes, we depressed people are so retard. We don`t understand how exercise or clean eating benefit us, we cannot organize our lives, we like to suffer...and lose jobs...yeah, of course.

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
I find this kind of comment frustrating. The author repeatedly, throughout the article acknowledges her privilege (e.g. financial security to quit her job) and that these techniques are specific to her. Not just a disclaimer at the bottom. The top comment of HN discussions almost always seems to be a cynical takedown with the least-charitable interpretation of an author's words while assuming the worst intentions.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Welcome to the most toxic corner of the Internet. I had to take a break from this site because it was negatively impacting my mood.
  - dang 5y ago
    Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? Between https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291748 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29289512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29289512, you're in no position to complain about toxicity. It isn't remotely fair to call HN "the most toxic corner of the internet". Like any large(ish) forum, it gets a wide distribution of comments. Inevitably some are toxic—that's how the pubic internet unfortunately works. But the overwhelming majority are not toxic, as anyone can see for themselves simply by scrolling through the public feed: https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments. Having worked hard for years to try to reduce toxicity on this site, I'm definitely open to getting better at it—I know how frustrating it is not to be able to have more of an effect. But it doesn't seem right to be complaining about toxicity in others while clearly adding it yourself.
    - sergiomattei 5y ago
      You're right. I didn't mean to undervalue the great effort that goes into moderating this site. I apologize, thank you for your hard work dang.
      - dang 5y ago
        Appreciated!
mbrodersen 5y ago
Not how I read the article at all. She is not claiming that what she did would work for anybody else or that people who doesn’t do what she did are somehow inferior. Maybe ask yourself why you read it that way? My guess is that it has more to do with how you feel about yourself than what the author is writing.
podgaj 5y ago
I will add another FCK YOU to these people from me, a person living with Schizoaffective Disorder for 45 years. As I have said in other posts, this person was NOT suffering from clinical depression. They were at best suffering situational depression, otherwise called "sadness". And these articles always come from these rich successful people because we all know once you make some money you know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING and you get to write an article about it and make even more money. So as you said, they wrote about this stuff and then people look at us and think it is all out fault. These neoliberal leftists are turning into the worst kind of people. And so who listens to me? I have been studying, on my own Genetics, Nutrigenomics, and Mitochondrial Biology and by changing my lifestyle it has enabled me to get off of the 4 med cocktail I was on. And then she briefly acknowledges her "financial security" as playing a role. Well let's see her trying to do it on disability, homeless, living in a van in the winter. I would say she was able to cure her sadness SOLEY because of her finances. All people with Mental Illness need to push back hard on these articles because they create both inner and outer stigma that ruins us.
- borepop 5y ago
  I responded to the parent comment so I won't belabor it, but I think this take on the article is faulting the author for a claim she never made. The article never even mentions schizoaffective disorder and makes no attempt to propose a cure for mental illness. Discussions about useful approaches for dealing with relatively mild depression are not a criticism of people who suffer from more serious conditions.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    The parent said: > They were at best suffering situational depression, otherwise called "sadness". The blogger didn’t say sadness or mild depression much or at all. They said depression from the get go and made the symptoms seem decently severe at first. Tho again. That is not something that can differentiated from a period of sadness. The OPs schizoaffective disorder does not change anything they wrote.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
borepop 5y ago
It seems like you're suggesting that if the "lifestyle"-type techniques described in the article aren't a solution to your specific situation, then it's condescending and useless to describe those techniques. I don't agree, and I don't think the author was proposing to lay out some universal program for eliminating all forms of depression. She was merely describing what was helpful for her. Obviously people who have more serious conditions may need different interventions, and needless to say there is a whole pharmacopeia of chemical tweaks to be explored above and beyond lifestyle modifications. Those are also valid and valuable.
- Tarucho 5y ago
  First thing first: did the author had clinically diagnosed depression? Or was a self-assessment? What would people think if bloggers start giving advice on how to sort out cancer because they felt some lump in their leg, self-diagnose and decided to cure it with massage? Or giving advice on how to cure cirrhosis because their liver hurt for a couple of weeks. But with depression, for most, it's fine.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  The blog post is not properly describing the person merely was having a rut. Temporary unhappiness. Not clinical depression. However saying all that up front would make the post far less interesting and make the person far less interesting. Clinical depression isn’t that serious or a condition for some people. It still isn’t the non factor the blogger had.
tailspin2019 5y ago
I've had chronic depression my whole adult life, sometimes extremely crippling, and I do understand your view point to a degree, but at the same time I didn't really come away from this article feeling "invalidated" in any way. The author's description of her symptoms match pretty strongly to my experience of depression (I would say they match my experience when I'm at my "neutral baseline" - definitely not in my worse moments). From what she's describing it doesn't sound like chronic depression but more circumstantial. But it's definitely depression. She doesn't need to have a badge of "I've had this for 20 years" to have a perfectly valid, and tough experience of depression. She clearly went into it with already established patterns like exercise and a high degree of self awareness, which has served her well during this period and allowed her to move forwards through it. Some of the ideas she talked about were extremely interesting to me too. I've been trying different things for decades and yet there were still a couple of new ideas here that I haven't considered before. For people experiencing depression over a longer timeframe, the experience may be different. But neither experience is invalid, nor invalidates the other. Hope you continue to push through your bipolar! I've been told my depression is "mildly bipolar" whatever that means, but I definitely don't experience the extreme swings on a regular basis that are typically described in relation to bipolar.
- Tarucho 5y ago
  Problem is the author, as most people that say they are depressed self-diagnose. And gives advice. How would people react if author self-diagnosed cancer and gave advice on how to cure it? Depression is disabling illness, why such lightly take?
  - abletonlive 5y ago
    Well for one, because if you ask 5 psychiatrists you'll get mixed diagnoses. You act as if the diagnosis for depression is some black or white thing. We know for a fact that it isn't by the way that it is diagnosed.
    - Tarucho 5y ago
      Parkinson is also not a black and white thing. I have bodily tremors due to my depression, can I self diagnose parkinsons and start giving advice? Would you approve?
Smithalicious 5y ago
Excuse me? You are saying someone else's depression is not "real depression". Who's diminishing whose suffering, here?
- Tarucho 5y ago
  She self diagnoses an illnesses. I have as much as an authority as her to say that her self diagnosis is not depression. I also self diagnose myself with brain cancer and I will start posting advice on how to cure it using my strategies. Do you see the point?
farresito 5y ago
I find it rather sad and ironic that you call his article 'narcissistic talk', yet you are playing the victim, because you allegedly have it worse, half dismissing his situation.
- Tarucho 5y ago
  Bipolar going manic, people understands, bipolar going depressive "such a pussy, I solved depression with zumba" That`s whats get me. Depression is an illness. People wouldn`t accept such take with other illnesses why? This article, as others, perpetuates the stigma.
kranke155 5y ago
Bipolar depression is a chemical illness. You have very little in common with anyone who suffers from regular depression. (I have bipolar)
renewiltord 5y ago
You could take it that way if you like but it resonated with me. During the pandemic I was useless. I contributed nothing at work. I plodded along through life. One day I woke up and lay in bed till the sun went down. I didn’t even pee. Just lay there. The image of the light above my bed still remains with me. And yeah, at one point, at the urging of a friend I went to Barry’s Bootcamp. Then I started going every other day. And then every day for two months. It wasn’t instantaneous. I was still worthless at work. But eventually I quit that job, accepted my losses (which is hard to do if you’ve always won), and moved on. The lesson I learned from this article is different. This person needed these organizing skills in that moment. They needed that mental model in that moment. And they had it not because they developed it in the moment but because it was familiar. Placed in an unpleasant situation, we all tend to the familiar. And for this person, the familiar turned out to be a useful tool. Maybe one could turn it into an implied insult against one’s own behavior. Maybe one could treat it as arrogance to imply it is a fix for one’s own problems. But I think the truth is that this article is intended in the spirit of something I, personally, greatly treasure: the honest human sharing of experiences in a way we can glean some truth about parts of the world we cannot observe. It’s a statement akin to “Here are the patches I’ve applied!” And perhaps when you see those diffs you think “Fuck you! How dare you think this software is so shit that it needs those diffs” or “Fuck you! You think I haven’t thought of that?!” but maybe they don’t think that. Maybe they think it’s just that the software runs better on their machine with those diffs. And maybe they’re just sharing in that respect.
kortex 5y ago
Glad someone else had the guts to say it. That was kinda my first thought - "oh she's depressed, but ranks various kinds of exercise as 'low activation' energy? That's quaint. Oh she was able to bootstrap herself out of her funk after a few months, without therapy or antidepressants? Extra quaint." I absolutely commiserate with your frustration. I've struggled with ADHD and bipolar my entire life. I've been on all manner of treatments and seeing therapists/coaches on a regular cadence, and while I'm doing way better than my darkest times, I balk when people manage to just "be motivated" and do adult things reliably. I do value the data she has provided, but it definitely needs to be tuned to the person and their current condition. The author's experience of sudden onset, of sometimes not being able to get out of bed some days, but also able to hit the weights as a "low activation cheatcode" sounds much more akin to cyclothymia than general depression.
gilleain 5y ago
I think I understand something of your point of view. It is a little hard to be sympathetic for someone who had many resources to sort out what was a relatively minor problem. As others have pointed out, she does acknowledge this privilege and so on. Of course, yes everyone's experience is valid and what worked for them might work for others. I guess part of the problem is that 'depression' is like a long road. Some people are only a little way along this road, some are all the way to clinical depression and beyond. I can't quite imagine what my current mood or mental state would be like if I did not have the financial resources to at least mitigate or forget about things for a while. To switch metaphors, some people are in a shallow well and say 'I just climbed out!' while others are in a much deeper well, with slippery walls, and weights attached to thier feet (or something).
- Tarucho 5y ago
  Yes, well said
andrei_says_ 5y ago
It sucks that we use the term for so many different things, including culturally.
dang 5y ago
Please don't fulminate or call names like this on HN, no matter how wrong or bad some article is or you feel it is. It doesn't help—it only makes things worse—and it's deeply against both the site rules and the intended spirit of the site. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking them more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one as well: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

I find this kind of comment frustrating. The author repeatedly, throughout the article acknowledges her privilege (e.g. financial security to quit her job) and that these techniques are specific to her. Not just a disclaimer at the bottom. The top comment of HN discussions almost always seems to be a cynical takedown with the least-charitable interpretation of an author's words while assuming the worst intentions.

sergiomattei 5y ago
Welcome to the most toxic corner of the Internet. I had to take a break from this site because it was negatively impacting my mood.
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? Between https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291748 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29289512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29289512, you're in no position to complain about toxicity. It isn't remotely fair to call HN "the most toxic corner of the internet". Like any large(ish) forum, it gets a wide distribution of comments. Inevitably some are toxic—that's how the pubic internet unfortunately works. But the overwhelming majority are not toxic, as anyone can see for themselves simply by scrolling through the public feed: https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments. Having worked hard for years to try to reduce toxicity on this site, I'm definitely open to getting better at it—I know how frustrating it is not to be able to have more of an effect. But it doesn't seem right to be complaining about toxicity in others while clearly adding it yourself.
  - sergiomattei 5y ago
    You're right. I didn't mean to undervalue the great effort that goes into moderating this site. I apologize, thank you for your hard work dang.
    - dang 5y ago
      Appreciated!

mbrodersen 5y ago

Not how I read the article at all. She is not claiming that what she did would work for anybody else or that people who doesn’t do what she did are somehow inferior. Maybe ask yourself why you read it that way? My guess is that it has more to do with how you feel about yourself than what the author is writing.

podgaj 5y ago

I will add another FCK YOU to these people from me, a person living with Schizoaffective Disorder for 45 years. As I have said in other posts, this person was NOT suffering from clinical depression. They were at best suffering situational depression, otherwise called "sadness". And these articles always come from these rich successful people because we all know once you make some money you know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING and you get to write an article about it and make even more money. So as you said, they wrote about this stuff and then people look at us and think it is all out fault. These neoliberal leftists are turning into the worst kind of people. And so who listens to me? I have been studying, on my own Genetics, Nutrigenomics, and Mitochondrial Biology and by changing my lifestyle it has enabled me to get off of the 4 med cocktail I was on. And then she briefly acknowledges her "financial security" as playing a role. Well let's see her trying to do it on disability, homeless, living in a van in the winter. I would say she was able to cure her sadness SOLEY because of her finances. All people with Mental Illness need to push back hard on these articles because they create both inner and outer stigma that ruins us.

borepop 5y ago
I responded to the parent comment so I won't belabor it, but I think this take on the article is faulting the author for a claim she never made. The article never even mentions schizoaffective disorder and makes no attempt to propose a cure for mental illness. Discussions about useful approaches for dealing with relatively mild depression are not a criticism of people who suffer from more serious conditions.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  The parent said: > They were at best suffering situational depression, otherwise called "sadness". The blogger didn’t say sadness or mild depression much or at all. They said depression from the get go and made the symptoms seem decently severe at first. Tho again. That is not something that can differentiated from a period of sadness. The OPs schizoaffective disorder does not change anything they wrote.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

borepop 5y ago

It seems like you're suggesting that if the "lifestyle"-type techniques described in the article aren't a solution to your specific situation, then it's condescending and useless to describe those techniques. I don't agree, and I don't think the author was proposing to lay out some universal program for eliminating all forms of depression. She was merely describing what was helpful for her. Obviously people who have more serious conditions may need different interventions, and needless to say there is a whole pharmacopeia of chemical tweaks to be explored above and beyond lifestyle modifications. Those are also valid and valuable.

Tarucho 5y ago
First thing first: did the author had clinically diagnosed depression? Or was a self-assessment? What would people think if bloggers start giving advice on how to sort out cancer because they felt some lump in their leg, self-diagnose and decided to cure it with massage? Or giving advice on how to cure cirrhosis because their liver hurt for a couple of weeks. But with depression, for most, it's fine.
skinnymuch 5y ago
The blog post is not properly describing the person merely was having a rut. Temporary unhappiness. Not clinical depression. However saying all that up front would make the post far less interesting and make the person far less interesting. Clinical depression isn’t that serious or a condition for some people. It still isn’t the non factor the blogger had.

tailspin2019 5y ago

I've had chronic depression my whole adult life, sometimes extremely crippling, and I do understand your view point to a degree, but at the same time I didn't really come away from this article feeling "invalidated" in any way. The author's description of her symptoms match pretty strongly to my experience of depression (I would say they match my experience when I'm at my "neutral baseline" - definitely not in my worse moments). From what she's describing it doesn't sound like chronic depression but more circumstantial. But it's definitely depression. She doesn't need to have a badge of "I've had this for 20 years" to have a perfectly valid, and tough experience of depression. She clearly went into it with already established patterns like exercise and a high degree of self awareness, which has served her well during this period and allowed her to move forwards through it. Some of the ideas she talked about were extremely interesting to me too. I've been trying different things for decades and yet there were still a couple of new ideas here that I haven't considered before. For people experiencing depression over a longer timeframe, the experience may be different. But neither experience is invalid, nor invalidates the other. Hope you continue to push through your bipolar! I've been told my depression is "mildly bipolar" whatever that means, but I definitely don't experience the extreme swings on a regular basis that are typically described in relation to bipolar.

Tarucho 5y ago
Problem is the author, as most people that say they are depressed self-diagnose. And gives advice. How would people react if author self-diagnosed cancer and gave advice on how to cure it? Depression is disabling illness, why such lightly take?
- abletonlive 5y ago
  Well for one, because if you ask 5 psychiatrists you'll get mixed diagnoses. You act as if the diagnosis for depression is some black or white thing. We know for a fact that it isn't by the way that it is diagnosed.
  - Tarucho 5y ago
    Parkinson is also not a black and white thing. I have bodily tremors due to my depression, can I self diagnose parkinsons and start giving advice? Would you approve?

Smithalicious 5y ago

Excuse me? You are saying someone else's depression is not "real depression". Who's diminishing whose suffering, here?

Tarucho 5y ago
She self diagnoses an illnesses. I have as much as an authority as her to say that her self diagnosis is not depression. I also self diagnose myself with brain cancer and I will start posting advice on how to cure it using my strategies. Do you see the point?

farresito 5y ago

I find it rather sad and ironic that you call his article 'narcissistic talk', yet you are playing the victim, because you allegedly have it worse, half dismissing his situation.

Tarucho 5y ago
Bipolar going manic, people understands, bipolar going depressive "such a pussy, I solved depression with zumba" That`s whats get me. Depression is an illness. People wouldn`t accept such take with other illnesses why? This article, as others, perpetuates the stigma.

kranke155 5y ago

Bipolar depression is a chemical illness. You have very little in common with anyone who suffers from regular depression. (I have bipolar)

renewiltord 5y ago

You could take it that way if you like but it resonated with me. During the pandemic I was useless. I contributed nothing at work. I plodded along through life. One day I woke up and lay in bed till the sun went down. I didn’t even pee. Just lay there. The image of the light above my bed still remains with me. And yeah, at one point, at the urging of a friend I went to Barry’s Bootcamp. Then I started going every other day. And then every day for two months. It wasn’t instantaneous. I was still worthless at work. But eventually I quit that job, accepted my losses (which is hard to do if you’ve always won), and moved on. The lesson I learned from this article is different. This person needed these organizing skills in that moment. They needed that mental model in that moment. And they had it not because they developed it in the moment but because it was familiar. Placed in an unpleasant situation, we all tend to the familiar. And for this person, the familiar turned out to be a useful tool. Maybe one could turn it into an implied insult against one’s own behavior. Maybe one could treat it as arrogance to imply it is a fix for one’s own problems. But I think the truth is that this article is intended in the spirit of something I, personally, greatly treasure: the honest human sharing of experiences in a way we can glean some truth about parts of the world we cannot observe. It’s a statement akin to “Here are the patches I’ve applied!” And perhaps when you see those diffs you think “Fuck you! How dare you think this software is so shit that it needs those diffs” or “Fuck you! You think I haven’t thought of that?!” but maybe they don’t think that. Maybe they think it’s just that the software runs better on their machine with those diffs. And maybe they’re just sharing in that respect.

kortex 5y ago

Glad someone else had the guts to say it. That was kinda my first thought - "oh she's depressed, but ranks various kinds of exercise as 'low activation' energy? That's quaint. Oh she was able to bootstrap herself out of her funk after a few months, without therapy or antidepressants? Extra quaint." I absolutely commiserate with your frustration. I've struggled with ADHD and bipolar my entire life. I've been on all manner of treatments and seeing therapists/coaches on a regular cadence, and while I'm doing way better than my darkest times, I balk when people manage to just "be motivated" and do adult things reliably. I do value the data she has provided, but it definitely needs to be tuned to the person and their current condition. The author's experience of sudden onset, of sometimes not being able to get out of bed some days, but also able to hit the weights as a "low activation cheatcode" sounds much more akin to cyclothymia than general depression.

gilleain 5y ago

I think I understand something of your point of view. It is a little hard to be sympathetic for someone who had many resources to sort out what was a relatively minor problem. As others have pointed out, she does acknowledge this privilege and so on. Of course, yes everyone's experience is valid and what worked for them might work for others. I guess part of the problem is that 'depression' is like a long road. Some people are only a little way along this road, some are all the way to clinical depression and beyond. I can't quite imagine what my current mood or mental state would be like if I did not have the financial resources to at least mitigate or forget about things for a while. To switch metaphors, some people are in a shallow well and say 'I just climbed out!' while others are in a much deeper well, with slippery walls, and weights attached to thier feet (or something).

Tarucho 5y ago
Yes, well said

andrei_says_ 5y ago

It sucks that we use the term for so many different things, including culturally.

dang 5y ago

Please don't fulminate or call names like this on HN, no matter how wrong or bad some article is or you feel it is. It doesn't help—it only makes things worse—and it's deeply against both the site rules and the intended spirit of the site. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking them more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one as well: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html