4 ms·

This sounds a lot like the 'catastrophizing' that depression often causes, which hurts people and puts them into downward cycles of depression.

by Natsu 5y ago

tux3 5y ago
Incidentally, if GP is worried about pathologizing, this may not be the answer most likely to change their mind.
- Natsu 5y ago
  The thing is, in my observations, depression pushes people into endless sets of no win conditions by punishing them for not obeying ever more restrictive and absurd rules. I don't want to claim what is/isn't a disease, but it's pretty obvious that some thought patterns hurt people a lot once you understand a little about how they work and get people to contort their lives around them. Getting out of that looks more like getting rid of the insecurities more than learning to walk a narrow path through endless fields of eggshells.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    The thing about this you're engaging in a clear fallacy. Depressed people tend to draw negative conclusions and reinforce their conclusions, therefore if someone draws a negative conclusion (that you consider unwarranted), they are depressed and making themselves worse. It's kind of logical for the entire bad-faith exercise involved in this article and the comments defending it. The whole thing is putting elaborate psycho-trappings on the "boomer" complaint of "you kids just too sensitive these days" (but just said about to things you consider fine).
    - Natsu 5y ago
      > The thing about this you're engaging in a clear fallacy. Depressed people tend to draw negative conclusions and reinforce their conclusions, therefore if someone draws a negative conclusion (that you consider unwarranted), they are depressed and making themselves worse. I claimed that depression often leads to catastrophizing, not that catastrophizing is somehow exclusive to depression. So the "clear fallacy" here is reading a comment about how A sometimes implies B, then attacking the notion that B implies A, despite there being no logical connection between the two propositions.
staticman2 5y ago
I don't believe there's any evidence cognitive therapy works better than other forms of therapy for depression, which suggests to me the various claims of how the human mind works ("catastrophizing" or whatever) are not true. "However, studies that compared CBT to other active treatments, such as psychodynamic treatment, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, found mixed results. Specifically, meta-analyses found CBT to be equally effective in comparison to other psychological treatments" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/#!po=0.537634 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/#!po=0....
- Natsu 5y ago
  You don't need anything from CBT to think that depressed people tend to reach for explanations that mean everything is as horrible as possible preferentially. Just being with one for a while will show you that bias very quickly when you hear about how every random person they passed on the street secretly hates them or thinks they're ugly or somehow did something that relates to their biggest insecurity. It's true that I can't prove the world doesn't secretly hate them, but my own experience of literally never thinking about the random strangers I walk past informs my belief that this likely has more to do with the person's insecurity than the reality of what's going on in those people's minds.

This sounds a lot like the 'catastrophizing' that depression often causes, which hurts people and puts them into downward cycles of depression.

by Natsu 5y ago

This sounds a lot like the 'catastrophizing' that depression often causes, which hurts people and puts them into downward cycles of depression.

tux3 5y ago

Incidentally, if GP is worried about pathologizing, this may not be the answer most likely to change their mind.

Natsu 5y ago
The thing is, in my observations, depression pushes people into endless sets of no win conditions by punishing them for not obeying ever more restrictive and absurd rules. I don't want to claim what is/isn't a disease, but it's pretty obvious that some thought patterns hurt people a lot once you understand a little about how they work and get people to contort their lives around them. Getting out of that looks more like getting rid of the insecurities more than learning to walk a narrow path through endless fields of eggshells.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  The thing about this you're engaging in a clear fallacy. Depressed people tend to draw negative conclusions and reinforce their conclusions, therefore if someone draws a negative conclusion (that you consider unwarranted), they are depressed and making themselves worse. It's kind of logical for the entire bad-faith exercise involved in this article and the comments defending it. The whole thing is putting elaborate psycho-trappings on the "boomer" complaint of "you kids just too sensitive these days" (but just said about to things you consider fine).
  - Natsu 5y ago
    > The thing about this you're engaging in a clear fallacy. Depressed people tend to draw negative conclusions and reinforce their conclusions, therefore if someone draws a negative conclusion (that you consider unwarranted), they are depressed and making themselves worse. I claimed that depression often leads to catastrophizing, not that catastrophizing is somehow exclusive to depression. So the "clear fallacy" here is reading a comment about how A sometimes implies B, then attacking the notion that B implies A, despite there being no logical connection between the two propositions.

staticman2 5y ago

I don't believe there's any evidence cognitive therapy works better than other forms of therapy for depression, which suggests to me the various claims of how the human mind works ("catastrophizing" or whatever) are not true. "However, studies that compared CBT to other active treatments, such as psychodynamic treatment, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, found mixed results. Specifically, meta-analyses found CBT to be equally effective in comparison to other psychological treatments" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/#!po=0.537634 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/#!po=0....

Natsu 5y ago
You don't need anything from CBT to think that depressed people tend to reach for explanations that mean everything is as horrible as possible preferentially. Just being with one for a while will show you that bias very quickly when you hear about how every random person they passed on the street secretly hates them or thinks they're ugly or somehow did something that relates to their biggest insecurity. It's true that I can't prove the world doesn't secretly hate them, but my own experience of literally never thinking about the random strangers I walk past informs my belief that this likely has more to do with the person's insecurity than the reality of what's going on in those people's minds.