3 ms·
Depression has a lot of other negative reinforcement loops. A few examples: Pessimism about other people's thoughts about you -> Expressed cynicism and negativ
by whatshisface 5y ago
Depression has a lot of other negative reinforcement loops. A few examples:
Pessimism about other people's thoughts about you -> Expressed cynicism and negativity towards friends about themselves -> Actual, provoked negative thoughts -> Reinforcement for pessimism.
Feeling like effort is pointless -> reduced effort -> fewer examples of effort succeeding -> reinforcement that effort is pointless.
Feeling unhealthy -> lacking energy -> insufficient self-care -> becoming less healthy.
I think people will come to see depression as a pit in the vast, multidimensional state space of the psyche, that can be approached from an infinite number of directions, and whose mechanism is the random overlapping of thousands of reinforcement cycles, which happen to reinforce the same thing at that one specific point.
- dillondoyle 5y agoFor me, the opposite reinforcement cycle holds true too and is just as important as meds. Exercise -> eat better -> more energy to repeat the cycle and level up
- agumonkey 5y agoI concur. And it seems depression is also an incarnation of the less of balancing mechanisms. You tilt and tilt .. more and more toward negativity, and every reflex idea goes further in this direction. That's why I don't listen to myself much when I'm down. I aim at staying in the middle, doing the simple regular things .. because I want to avoid kicking the feedback loops (staying awake longer, bad hygiene, bad diet, isolation etc). ps: in a way I think social-ness is a balancing mechanism in itself, others can serve as stabilizer quite often, breaking your bias and avoiding loops.