4 ms·
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, tho
by 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 agoI 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.