4 ms·

My pet theory around anxiety/depression is: For many people, the two are deeply intertwined and often share a root cause: The need to feel like a capable agent

My pet theory around anxiety/depression is: For many people, the two are deeply intertwined and often share a root cause: The need to feel like a capable agent in the world. Anxiety is your brain saying, "You need to do something, but you're going to screw it up so obsess about how to avoid that!" Depression is your brain saying, "You need to do something, but it won't help anyway so just give up." I'm over-simplifying, of course, but the gist is that we're wired to want to do and we feel bad when we aren't doing enough or what we're doing doesn't matter. The modern world is antithetical to that. We are surrounded by media that provides short term gratification to consume but involves absolutely no action or agency on our part. After an hour of TikTok scrolling, our body and subconscious is screaming that we should be doing something. Punching a time card at a bullshit job burns all of our energy but provides no meaning in return. Physical activity addresses that. It's both good for us at an actual kinesthetic level, but it is also the strongest, simplest signal that we can send our brains that, "Look, I am an active functional agent in the world." I like to imagine Martians setting up a human zoo. If you were building a zoo for any kind of animal, you'd certainly make sure the animals had plenty of room to move and explore. You'd give them things to do, and make and move. If it's an animal that digs, you'd give them dirt to dig. If it builds nests, you'd give them twigs. You sure as hell wouldn't stick them in a tiny box with a screen and a button that just changes what's on the screen. That would be torture. Martians building a human zoo would give us room to walk and run and explore, materials to craft with, and other humans to connect to emotionally and physically. Instead, many of us have put ourselves in that dumb empty box with just a screen or two, and then we're surprised when we don't feel good.

avgcorrection 3y ago
> Instead, many of us have put ourselves in that dumb empty box with just a screen or two, and then we're surprised when we don't feel good. “Stop hitting yourself” is a common pet theory on depression.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  “Everything is out of my control” is a common pet theory about self treatable mental illnesses.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    That most things are a mixture of things in and out of your control is a completely normal attitude to most things that we don't arbitrarily decide is just complete self-hitting. EDIT: But let's just think of something that might take months to change (this might be exercise routines): that falls into the set of things that you can change yourself but that can't be condescendingly described as something that you do habitually and are “surprised that you don't feel good” (it's 90% about habit-building and 10% about intellectually understanding the cause and effect). It's not a simple “one weird trick”.
- munificent 3y ago
  I could have worded this better by saying that "a combination of personal choices, cultural norms, and societal pressure has led to us being in dumb empty boxes". A failure mode I see in today's Western culture is an inability to reason carefully about the intermingling of agency, responsibility, guilt, and blame. Tied to my original pet theory is another pet theory that it is this cultural cognitive dissonance that exacerbates many of our psychological problems. If you point out that someone suffering depression could improve it by doing XYZ, the knee jerk response someone invariably raises is "you're just victim-blaming them for being depressed. It's not their fault and making them feel bad just makes it worse." But interpreting the statement that "you could improve your depression by doing XYZ" as blame is a narrative framework imposed upon the claim. It's the person claiming "victim-blaming" that is forcing the depressed person into the role of "victim". An equally valid narrative framework is that pointing out that a depressed person could improve it by doing XYZ is in fact honoring the person by attributing to them agency and the ability to improve their own life going forward. I understand completely the desire to not shame or blame people suffering mental illness (which is why I talk about my own struggles with it all the damn time). But once they have a mental illness, you can't take away their responsibility for what they do about it without also taking away their agency. The trick is to help people feel they have agency while also having the grace to not feel horrible if they make mistakes.
JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
> > Punching a time card at a bullshit job burns all of our energy but provides no meaning in return. Exactly, our brain is not wired for the centralization of food production and energy production. Thanks to Globalization everything is being produced in the most convenient location but at what cost? Even for the producers it's not even fathomable that they are feeding the world and providing energy to the world. They understand conceptually but they don't feel it in a limbic way. Not the same feeling of you hunting down a huge deer and kill it and then bring it back to your village where everybody treats you as a hero because you have provided food for a week. Everything is super safe and there is a huge margin but at what cost? When everything is super safe it means that there is no room for heroes saving the day anymore. Some people react to that by going back to the simple life and they find peace in that, some others pursue drugs, the party life etc. some others gaslight people into believing that what they do is as vital and as fundamental as killing a huge deer to procure your village food for a week in time of food scarcity . They hope that if they can convince a whole bunch of people to believe that, they will believe it too.
1MachineElf 3y ago
You've got a great point and analogy presented here. Your dumb empty box with one or two screens is indeed part of the problem, but it's also connected with what's being communicated by those screens. Our collective understanding of human of life is being reduced to measures of material wealth. Such ideology has contributed to the rise in suicide among young people in the US and other countries. >Martians building a human zoo would give us room to walk and run and explore, materials to craft with, and other humans to connect to emotionally and physically. Suppose the happiest humans in the zoo are the ones with an understanding of their relationship to the Martian zoo staff. The most content among them would know that appeasing the Martian zookeepers means more food, stuff to play with, and even more humans to enjoy. Those who try to oppose them or hide from them will have their efforts wasted - the Martian zookeepers effectively see and know all. Any human attempts at order will have to contend with the higher order of the Martian zookeepers. Being ignorant of the Martian zookeepers has it's own risks, as it would disconnect the captive humans from the true meaning of their own existence. IMO a deeper source of depression among modern-day humans is linked to a similar existential crisis.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Instead, many of us have put ourselves in that dumb empty box with just a screen or two, and then we're surprised when we don't feel good. “Stop hitting yourself” is a common pet theory on depression.

4gotunameagain 3y ago
“Everything is out of my control” is a common pet theory about self treatable mental illnesses.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  That most things are a mixture of things in and out of your control is a completely normal attitude to most things that we don't arbitrarily decide is just complete self-hitting. EDIT: But let's just think of something that might take months to change (this might be exercise routines): that falls into the set of things that you can change yourself but that can't be condescendingly described as something that you do habitually and are “surprised that you don't feel good” (it's 90% about habit-building and 10% about intellectually understanding the cause and effect). It's not a simple “one weird trick”.
munificent 3y ago
I could have worded this better by saying that "a combination of personal choices, cultural norms, and societal pressure has led to us being in dumb empty boxes". A failure mode I see in today's Western culture is an inability to reason carefully about the intermingling of agency, responsibility, guilt, and blame. Tied to my original pet theory is another pet theory that it is this cultural cognitive dissonance that exacerbates many of our psychological problems. If you point out that someone suffering depression could improve it by doing XYZ, the knee jerk response someone invariably raises is "you're just victim-blaming them for being depressed. It's not their fault and making them feel bad just makes it worse." But interpreting the statement that "you could improve your depression by doing XYZ" as blame is a narrative framework imposed upon the claim. It's the person claiming "victim-blaming" that is forcing the depressed person into the role of "victim". An equally valid narrative framework is that pointing out that a depressed person could improve it by doing XYZ is in fact honoring the person by attributing to them agency and the ability to improve their own life going forward. I understand completely the desire to not shame or blame people suffering mental illness (which is why I talk about my own struggles with it all the damn time). But once they have a mental illness, you can't take away their responsibility for what they do about it without also taking away their agency. The trick is to help people feel they have agency while also having the grace to not feel horrible if they make mistakes.

JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago

> > Punching a time card at a bullshit job burns all of our energy but provides no meaning in return. Exactly, our brain is not wired for the centralization of food production and energy production. Thanks to Globalization everything is being produced in the most convenient location but at what cost? Even for the producers it's not even fathomable that they are feeding the world and providing energy to the world. They understand conceptually but they don't feel it in a limbic way. Not the same feeling of you hunting down a huge deer and kill it and then bring it back to your village where everybody treats you as a hero because you have provided food for a week. Everything is super safe and there is a huge margin but at what cost? When everything is super safe it means that there is no room for heroes saving the day anymore. Some people react to that by going back to the simple life and they find peace in that, some others pursue drugs, the party life etc. some others gaslight people into believing that what they do is as vital and as fundamental as killing a huge deer to procure your village food for a week in time of food scarcity . They hope that if they can convince a whole bunch of people to believe that, they will believe it too.

1MachineElf 3y ago

You've got a great point and analogy presented here. Your dumb empty box with one or two screens is indeed part of the problem, but it's also connected with what's being communicated by those screens. Our collective understanding of human of life is being reduced to measures of material wealth. Such ideology has contributed to the rise in suicide among young people in the US and other countries. >Martians building a human zoo would give us room to walk and run and explore, materials to craft with, and other humans to connect to emotionally and physically. Suppose the happiest humans in the zoo are the ones with an understanding of their relationship to the Martian zoo staff. The most content among them would know that appeasing the Martian zookeepers means more food, stuff to play with, and even more humans to enjoy. Those who try to oppose them or hide from them will have their efforts wasted - the Martian zookeepers effectively see and know all. Any human attempts at order will have to contend with the higher order of the Martian zookeepers. Being ignorant of the Martian zookeepers has it's own risks, as it would disconnect the captive humans from the true meaning of their own existence. IMO a deeper source of depression among modern-day humans is linked to a similar existential crisis.