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I get the sentiment and I'm glad youve found your passion but I most definitely see that you're right when you say you know nothing of depression and the startu

I get the sentiment and I'm glad youve found your passion but I most definitely see that you're right when you say you know nothing of depression and the startup community. Not to knock you at all but depression is one of those things that you can only "get" if you've experienced it. Like sex or love or being a billionaire. It's almost indescribable. I've been to the depths of it and back. Imagine the worst sadness you've ever felt in your entire life. Multiply that by 2. Then add in a feeling of loneliness. The kind of loneliness where you feel like a man with no home, no family, no friends, and strangers hate you. Then your own mind turns against you. All logic is gone and your inner voice is on an infinite loop telling you that there is no way out, things always have and always will be this way, that you are not exactly worthless but worth less than any person you know including strangers on the street (yeah, that includes the homeless and destitute). Now that you imagine feeling this way you also must imagine taking every ounce of energy you have and throwing it away. You have no energy, you're constantly tired, and your body even aches as if you were sick at times! The worst part of all is that these negative thoughts and feelings feed on each other, digging you deeper and deeper into depression. People in that state will do anything they can to make it stop. Drug abuse/self medication is very common along with suicide. When you're depressed you can't see that there's a way to gradually make your life better so you reach for instant gratification. The instant gratification only leads to more problems. It's such a vicious cycle that you just wouldn't believe. So I'm a person who's been affected by deep depression and it's consequences and I'm also just about to reach my first anniversary of being in business. Startup depression has hit me hard twice in this past year (most likely because I'm more prone to it). So after my long rambling rant I'll get to the point: there are no easy answers but one thing that will help out people suffering from this is just to talk about it publicly. There are far more people suffering than we know about. Whenever I see a post on startup depression I have the exact opposite reaction to when I see yet another post about how someone loves Emacs. I think "thank god! I'm not the only one!". Just talking about it is a big relief to people because they know they're not alone and can learn or help each other. There will never be enough posts about startup depression. Ever.

lusr 15y ago
An excellent description of severe depression. I wonder how many people who have never experienced a depression episode will manage to have empathy for it, though. I say this because now that I'm on the path to recovery, it seems I can recognize all aspects of your description based on my memories but I can't comprehend my memories as a personal experience any more. It's almost as though I'm trying to access a memory written for an incompatible mental model (like trying to load an old version of file into newer software). In a way this makes perfect sense because what CBT did was restructure my mental model of the world. It also seems give me a useful way to understand why healthy people struggle so much to understand depression - the underlying causes (chemical imbalance; dysfunctional thought processes) are incompatible with their way of reasoning about the world. I completely agree that being open about one's difficulties is crucial to recovery and living a healthier mental life. It's unfortunate how many apparently depressed people I know in my field who identify with applying the concepts I've explained to them (from CBT), but the second they find out the book I recommend to learn more ("Feeling Good" by David Burns) is about "depression", they ALL lose interest. (I understand this, though, because I was the same until I reached a point where I had to do something about my depression or risk serious consequences.)
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  I totally empathize. It's the same for me. I remember the experience just enough to describe it but at the same time it's almost like it was happening to a different person. I can feel other memories of times I was happy or in love or what have you (though admittedly less intensely) but the memories of depression are just different. There are a lot of things in life you can't understand until you experience it and so the best we can do is teach others empathy and just educate them as best we can on what we go through, why it comes about, and possible treatments as well as how to not treat a depressed person like they're somehow handicapped but instead just ill. Ignorance is what drives the prejudice and the "just snap out of it, you pussy" type of comments. Great book recommendation too! I read that book when I first sought help and it's really spot on. Most psychiatric professionals recommend it and I would argue that it's the gold standard of self help books for depression. I don't even like to call it self help though. It's really partly self help exercises mixed in with education. It's definitely not pop psychology and is based completely on solid science. Maybe people you recommend it to think its another pop psy book full of pseudoscience. It gets updated pretty frequently too. Great book.

lusr 15y ago

An excellent description of severe depression. I wonder how many people who have never experienced a depression episode will manage to have empathy for it, though. I say this because now that I'm on the path to recovery, it seems I can recognize all aspects of your description based on my memories but I can't comprehend my memories as a personal experience any more. It's almost as though I'm trying to access a memory written for an incompatible mental model (like trying to load an old version of file into newer software). In a way this makes perfect sense because what CBT did was restructure my mental model of the world. It also seems give me a useful way to understand why healthy people struggle so much to understand depression - the underlying causes (chemical imbalance; dysfunctional thought processes) are incompatible with their way of reasoning about the world. I completely agree that being open about one's difficulties is crucial to recovery and living a healthier mental life. It's unfortunate how many apparently depressed people I know in my field who identify with applying the concepts I've explained to them (from CBT), but the second they find out the book I recommend to learn more ("Feeling Good" by David Burns) is about "depression", they ALL lose interest. (I understand this, though, because I was the same until I reached a point where I had to do something about my depression or risk serious consequences.)

billpatrianakos 15y ago
I totally empathize. It's the same for me. I remember the experience just enough to describe it but at the same time it's almost like it was happening to a different person. I can feel other memories of times I was happy or in love or what have you (though admittedly less intensely) but the memories of depression are just different. There are a lot of things in life you can't understand until you experience it and so the best we can do is teach others empathy and just educate them as best we can on what we go through, why it comes about, and possible treatments as well as how to not treat a depressed person like they're somehow handicapped but instead just ill. Ignorance is what drives the prejudice and the "just snap out of it, you pussy" type of comments. Great book recommendation too! I read that book when I first sought help and it's really spot on. Most psychiatric professionals recommend it and I would argue that it's the gold standard of self help books for depression. I don't even like to call it self help though. It's really partly self help exercises mixed in with education. It's definitely not pop psychology and is based completely on solid science. Maybe people you recommend it to think its another pop psy book full of pseudoscience. It gets updated pretty frequently too. Great book.