18 ms·

Depression Part Two

977 points by westicle 13y ago

greatergoodguy 13y ago
I'm really impressed by how well this conveyed such a difficult concept. Depression can be so foreign to those that have not experienced it, and the first step to helping people is understanding them.
- knowtheory 13y ago
  The comment threads about this post are definitely an exercise in irony. She touches on, but doesn't get into the fact that she can still pick up on all social cues, and still feels obligated to respond to the imposition that others put on her to feel better and be happy despite the fact that she's unable. And it's the fact that it's not possible for the depressed person to fulfill the social interaction that non-depressed people want (e.g. non-depressed person wants depressed person to cheer up, depressed person knows they can't cheer up) that causes the depressed person to avoid the non-depressed person and their unfeasible demands. Part 1 touches on not giving a fuck about how interacting with others goes down a bit more: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-...
  - tetha 13y ago
    This sounds consistent with what I am understanding so far. To my current understanding, it is necessary to distinguish between a state of mind and a current mood. Certain states of mind just don't support certain moods. Furthermore, for certain states of mind it's hard to get into and hard to get out of. As a silly example, note my daily life. If I sleep in hard, I'm just not in a productive state of mind and I don't get out of that state of mind all day. The result is that I just don't do much that entire day. On the other hand, if I set my alarm clock to 6 in the morning, I get all my chores done to 10 and pull a full workday on hobby projects without breaking a sweat. The "zone" of programmers also appears to be such a state of mind which just doesn't support social interactions well. Depression appears to be similar to this. It's a state of mind that's hard to get out of (or hard to cover up even) and that just doesn't support cheerful and happy moods. From there, our usual stress avoidance mechanisms kick in, for example by avoiding overly cheerful or happy people and things don't improve much.
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    I've suspected for a while now that social interaction is sometimes dangerous to a depressed person, and that finding their own path to happiness (along with the guidance of a professional) can be more rewarding.
- intended 13y ago
  From experience - A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates. You can try explaining or providing aids for people to understand depression, but unless they have an urge to get it and an open mind, they wont. Or worse, they don't want to understand that YOU have it. "Well depression could exist, but YOU don't have it."
  - brazzy 13y ago
    > A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates. Definitely. I once had a discussion on HN with a guy who insisted on seeing depression as an expression of individuality and any attempts of treatment as Brave New Word-ish, evil oppressive society enforcing conformism via happy pills.
    - anonymous 13y ago
      The irony is, if there really were happy pills which you could take to immediately remove depression, every depressive person would be taking them.
    - intended 13y ago
      Wow. Thats taking it in a whole different direction - the brave depressive or feeling depressed is OK.
- l33tbro 13y ago
  It is a barbed concept, and this article does well in articulating "the fog" and the way in which it refuses to evaporate in the sickly glow of Oprah-tudes our culture projects at the sufferer.
afreak 13y ago
I don't speak much about my experience with depression but I avoid it namely because it's hard to describe to people the emotions you feel as you "deal" with it. For about a decade I had noticed a behaviour in my mood and it caused a great deal of grief for my friends, those I worked with, and most importantly myself. It never really prevented me from holding down a job, but it very much delayed me from achieving certain things in my life that I have only recently started to attain. I blame my leaving post-secondary school early partly because of the fact that I could not cope with the demands that it brought upon me as well as the fact that I was losing a lot of interest in things that I once had some level of passion for before. It was never destructive to the point where I wanted to go and kill myself--although there were fleeting moments where I questioned the validity of such an action. However, it definitely brought me down a few notches and it was only when I began to approach the issue seriously that I found myself on the road to actually recovering. I had to let go of certain things to get to this point and it was only by opening up to a select few people did I find myself going down a path to better things. Years of treatment and some self-exploration has brought a level of calm to my life--I haven't seen a doctor about the issue in about three years now. I avoided using it as a crutch in my relationships with people (even when I knew it was probably a part of the tension), but I was less and less uncomfortable telling people once I knew that it wasn't all in my head so to speak. With that said, not everyone understands depression but I cannot condemn them for it because it's a rather convoluted and complex thing to explain. Hell, I don't even know what I am writing here to say the least. Allie's statements definitely resonated with me and I'm glad to see her writing again because her previous post about depression made me think about how things were going mid-treatment. There is no real "cure" to depression but I do think that there is a certain level of exploration that is needed to be done to sort of make the whole issue less of a barrier to what you want to accomplish. Even to this day I still have to struggle with certain aspects of it, but I understand now after so many years of pain that it can be defeated or at the very least put at bay.
- aortega 13y ago
  >There is no real "cure" to depression Not now, but there will be one. IMHO symptoms of depression don't seem as something "psychological" or some trauma. They do not make any sense, and do not help survival of the individual. They seem more like a malfunctioning machine, some chemical missing in the brain. Smart people will figure it out some day, and cure it like they did with many other diseases before. EDIT: do not want to sound like a cheap self-help book, this is my opinion from observing depressed people, and working with lots of malfunctioning machines :)
wisty 13y ago
Quoting some guy off reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1e08me/hyperbole_and_a_half_depression_part_two/c9vsiqa http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1e08me/hyperbole...): >Depression is two beasts, gray anhedonia and black dysphoria. > The gray beast smothers, drains, deadens and numbs; the black beast brings misery, anguish, self hatred and despair. They often work together, the gray sucking away every positive feeling and the black feeding everything negative. But sometimes one is dominant, and if the gray beast gets its teeth all the way into you, it takes away not just positive feelings but everything until you're just a walking shell so empty you can't even fully comprehend what you've lost. > The converse, when the black beast has you, can be much like you describe - you can still feel a kind of dreadful, frenzied joy in short moments as you cling desperately to the edge of the sucking dark hole in yourself, trying to ignore the beast's whispers that any pleasure is a lie that will just make the coming pain more stark and inescapable and utterly deserved. > They're liars, but they're good at it. Because they know you, because they are you. Pieces of you mind that should serve you and keep you stable and safe, but somehow grown and empowered out of all proportion. To live with them and not let them win shows a kind of strength that most people are sadly unable to recognize.
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  They're liars, but they're good at it. Because they know you, because they are you. This, I found, is one of the worst aspects of depression. You begin (if you're lucky) to realize you cannot trust what your own brain is telling you. It's insidious.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    http://www.viruscomix.com/page540.html http://www.viruscomix.com/page540.html
  - lisper 13y ago
    Makes me think of these lines in Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage": You lock the door and throw away the key There's someone in my head, but it's not me That song was my "piece of corn" many years ago.
firefoxman1 13y ago
So what is it called if you have every single one of these symptoms, except actually being depressed? I find myself not caring at all about what others have to say, how they feel, etc. and you can imagine the hurdles that imposes on someone who has to make a legitimate-feeling human connection to sell a product. Social interactions are a game to me (that I've gotten quite good at) but none of it feels real. I haven't felt that need to be dead as described, but definitely concluded that death would be neither good nor bad...and what's the point in waiting, right? Isn't it all the same? And the "everything is hopeless bullshit" attitude i've had many times. I've just concluded that, perhaps...everything IS pointless. But we can enjoy it nonetheless. Enjoy the pointlessness, since it's all we CAN do. Anyway, is there a name for this besides selfish asshole syndrome? Anyone else like this?
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I believe I'm in a similar boat as you. I suspect the difference is of degree. As for what to call it? I consider myself a fairly melancholy, introspective sort of person. That's what I call it. Edit: a quick Google reveals "melancholy" is specifically tied to depression! Maybe I am depressed after all. But anyway, I usually use the word to mean the absence of vitality and vigor, rather than the presence of depression. Closer to "pensive" than "depressed".
- LatvjuAvs 13y ago
  Yes, it is all the same and it is called Life :D Welcome to game.
- almost 13y ago
  Honestly that sounds like depression as well. I've definitely felt like that in the past but I don't have any answers about why or how to change it. Things do have a tendency to change though.
- almost 13y ago
  Honestly that sounds like depression as well. I've definitely felt like that in the past but I don't have any answers about why or how to change it. Things do have a tendency to change though.
ak39 13y ago
Wow, what a beautifully written and illustrated piece. However, I gave up counting the number of times I read about life being "meaningless". The author is more likely suffering from an existential crisis than actually being clincially depressed. He/she is searching for meaning. To feel. Reading some mid 20th century French philosophy might help here. Clinical depression? Boy, that's another ball game altogether. That type of shyte won't result in a beautifully animated and elegantly worded blog. :-/
- GuiA 13y ago
  I'm clinically depressed, and have been for pretty much all of my adult life. It's much stronger at some times than others. A recent "peak" is when I had a panic attack in downtown San Francisco at a concert last Friday night that lasted 2 hours or so and rendered me unable to function in a room full of people and loud noises. It was awful. I've heard arguments similar to yours many times. I've tried mid-20th century French philosophy, and do appreciate it. But it doesn't help. Depression manifests itself differently in different people. There isn't a "correct" form of depression. Telling people that "you're not depressed, you're X, do Y and all will be OK" doesn't help at all. You probably mean well, but making those sort of comments do everything but what you think they do.
  - ak39 13y ago
    I do not intend to downplay the anxiety and the emotional pain of the experience either you or the the OP had. I empathise completely. I myself have gone and continue to go through such "crises" regularly. I feel just as much. My point was: it's ironic that the author talks about the lack of interest in the aesthetic of "life" and the general disinterest in the veritable cornucopia of little toy horse plays around us when he/she did EXACTLY that by writing a lovely, beautiful and well-crafted blog. (I am not being sarcastic.) Doesn't anyone see the beauty and irony in that? Does clinical depression create such works of art? If so, we should celebrate it as a gift!
    - kolinko 13y ago
      The author of the blog went silent for the past two years because of the depression, and now she got back to drawing because she feels (at least temporarily) better.
LatvjuAvs 13y ago
Time to score some LSD!
wellboy 13y ago
I never thought I could be depressed in any way, but I came to see that hole you were talking about a bit. I think the problem is that when being in depression, one is too much in your head and similar to startups if one can't bounce off their "ideas" from something, they ou commit "idea-incest" and they start getting weird thoughts that are detached to reality. You don't want that and I think as you said, it takes that certain corn to pull you out of that sticky pool of your entangled thoughts. :)
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  ...and this is why you should be doing some basic usability testing and proving out your product to small market samples. You can do this IRL too by doing things such as: - Going to the bar - Grubwithus - Going dancing - Hiking a popular trail etc :)
_m_a_u_r_i_c_e_ 13y ago
Problem is: its just a malfunction of the brain. If somebody has bad eyes you don't request that the person just should make an extra effort to see better and think it is the persons own fault if the amateur 'advise' doesn't help. You give him glasses. If a brain function is affected we are still in the state of hocuspocus, making patients and families suffer more then needed, even make them feel guilty about it. Maybe we just may not have the knowledge for a correct medication, until then the "healthy" people should learn to respect and really listen and take the depressive person serious.Its just a malfunction. It is as it is.
- iSnow 13y ago
  Point is, the eye is a (relatively) straight-forward vision machine. The lens is not the right shape? Wear glasses and the system enters an improved stable state. The brain a continously changing feedback machine. It changes its very physical architecture by what you hear, see and think. Trying to correct it via lobotomy or medication has not really worked out that great and there is reason to suspect it will not work out great in the future. Ironically, substances that indeed improve mood and well-being in depressed people (especially MDMA, but also LSD, Psilocybin, Heroin ) are dangerous, addictive and verboten. They essentially brute force some of the subsystems in the brain (like pleasure/reward) and I believe every substance that does this is going to be addictive.
  - seunosewa 13y ago
    > substances that indeed improve mood and well-being in depressed people (especially MDMA, but also LSD, Psilocybin, Heroin) ... I believe every substance that does this is going to be addictive. Dude, you're misinforming people. There are indeed substances that help depressed people. They are called anti-depressants. The illegal drugs you listed above are not anti-depressants, and therefore you have no rational reason to believe that anti-depressants must have similar properties. Real anti-depressants are generally neither dangerous nor addictive. Please don't misinform people about this.
    - casiotone 13y ago
kruhft 13y ago
Answering the headline: no, eventually everything isn't hopeless bullshit. There's still a lot of hopless bullshit, but eventually you'll find something (or if you're lucky, a few things) that makes all the hopeless bullshit worth putting up with. That's why people find suicide so sad. Almost nothing can't be overcome with time and suicide cuts that time short. You learn this as you overcome things by not giving up. This process is called 'growing up'.
- GuiA 13y ago
  >This process is called 'growing up'. How condescending and uncalled for. Many great men and women committed suicide; it has nothing to do with "growing up" (or variations thereof)
  - claudius 13y ago
    I’d say many great people never grew up either – but that definitely depends on your definition of ‘growing up’. If you define it as reaching intellectual and more importantly emotional stability and maturity, then I can see how you could think of overcoming depressions or other psychological disorders as ‘growing up’.
    - GuiA 13y ago
      "growing up" is a subjective thing and has no unified definition. That being said, conflating lack of intellectual/emotional stability and maturity with depression is terribly short sighted and shows a lack of understanding of what depression is. I'd encourage you to educate yourself beyond the mainstream view of depression (= "oh but only goth teenagers or losers get depressed") before making such claims publicly.
  - kruhft 13y ago
    How interesting that naming a standard process of mental development through adulthood would garner such a negative response. Growing up is a process, not a state, that one is constantly achieving. That process is generally done through overcoming new obstacles and challenges that one hits during their life and overcoming them. From the definition: 3. To develop and reach maturity. 7. To come to be by a gradual process or by degrees; become Suicide is not development, or becoming by a degree, it is an escapism and the most concrete and final way of 'giving up'. By perserveering and overcoming your obstacles you learn that nothing is insurmountable given time, although it is usually never easy. I didn't not mean to be condicending in any way or to insult the decisions of the many great people that have chosen to take their liives. I was just speaking from experience.
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khitchdee 13y ago
Great cartoons!
- treahauet 13y ago
  Seriously! I enjoyed the illustrations a lot!
  - zimpenfish 13y ago
    I want the "resentful bike ride to the video store" one on a cycling jersey because that's what I look like when I cycle.
- netnichols 13y ago
  You should really check out her back catalog. The following is one of my favorites: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
  - neilk 13y ago
    I recently discovered http://reddit.com/r/alot http://reddit.com/r/alot .
3rd3 13y ago
I can‘t decide whether I would be any happier if we lived in a less corrupt would, in a society that has meaningful jobs for everyone and if our governments would care more about our future, education and less about religion. But I believe that most of my depression arises from there.
- mikecane 13y ago
  Maybe "circumstantial existential depression" is an unrecognized area. I agree with you.
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  +1; greed is the biggest factor in my existential depression. The thing I see fighting greed is art for no reason, entertaining absurdity (stuff like Dan Mintz), and passionate things done without a financial motivation.
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shoe 13y ago
Okay, I'm not really sure what to ask, maybe this will make sense? I completely agree that life doesn't carry any _inherent_ meaning and I frequently finding myself faking emotions and mostly just reacting in the way others react in social situations. It's like existential-introversion-apathy. I have so many ideas, and things I want to learn and do, yet I'm too content in apathy to act on many of them. I'm in a good job, but when it comes to my personal life I mostly have a blank stare to respond with. Really, I haven't felt like I've been living for myself for a long time. If it weren't for my girlfriend and my family and knowing that they would be completely broken if I wasn't here, I'm not sure I would still be here. I guess this sounds worrisome, but I've felt like this for the past 6 years and have managed so far. It got worse after college, but now I feel like I'm at a lower equilibrium. I've thought about doing something about this, but I really have no idea. I mostly feel _guilty_ that I even have this "problem". Are these feelings and thinking patterns really a problem? What can be done about them, if anything? I'm a young 20s working male in America. That's a hell of a good dice roll in the global humanity game which is why I feel guilty even writing and talking about this. I don't know, is this a broken way of thinking?
- gordaco 13y ago
  > Really, I haven't felt like I've been living for myself for a long time. If it weren't for my girlfriend and my family and knowing that they would be completely broken if I wasn't here, I'm not sure I would still be here. This hits home. I've been there for about 14 or 15 years. Not so long ago I realized that this was a form of implicit emotional blackmail, which is a very hard situation, because, while it certainly works indistinguishably from standard emotional blackmail, it's not done knowingly or maliciously. I've ended up feeling like I don't own my life... again, not a good situation to be in.
- spion 13y ago
  You shouldn't feel guilty about the dice thing. I think us who live at developing countries on average have it easier when it comes to depression. Our problems are easier to identify and we sometimes even use them to explain our other unrelated problems. Besides we know that developed countries have managed to fix them so there is hope that we might be able to, too, giving us some lofty-looking goals to achieve.
bwb 13y ago
Such a great post, sent to quite a few people and thanks for posting it here!
- westicle 13y ago
  No problems. Lots of other great content on her blog too, but this is the first update in a couple of years I think. I figure knowing more about depression (or sharing someone else's experience of it) might be interesting and/or useful to other hners.
singular 13y ago
This is a fantastic article which gets at a lot of what makes depression so pernicious. It's actually nice to see it presented with cartoons - it could easily come across as patronising/playing down the condition, but Allie does it so well that it instead makes it somehow more approachable, more visceral, and certainly a fantastic way of clarifying the nature of the condition to the non-depressives in your life. One thing she doesn't address (hopefully she simply didn't have to experience it) is the dark side of other's reactions to it - the blame you receive for 'being lazy', or 'being so morose all the time', or the irritability it can engender in you. Understandable if you hadn't explained to them your condition, but I find people react this way even if you do - they simply can't accept something bad like that happening without you somehow being responsible, or they just don't believe you. An even darker side to the disease is those, I don't want to say people, who pick up on your condition, and see it as a weakness to exploit. That's especially the case at work for the more bully-ish types - who better to pick on than a depressive who feels like they're a worthless piece of shit already? I think the more wonderful articles like this there are out there, the more we can attack the stigma of this disease (and mental illness in general), and the more unacceptable it will be for people to take advantage of it.
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  I got excommunicated by my SO who I moved out to California with over being "so negative all the time". That, combined with eliminating the small social circle I had built here in the 6 months prior to that, wasn't the greatest thing for my situation.
navs 13y ago
I don't talk much about my depression. It's terribly difficult trying to talk about feeling nothing. Allie is a wonderfully smart person that perfectly illustrated some of those feelings I've, for years, been unable to articulate.
losethos 13y ago
Prison is depressing. I have no internet access -- just prison internet. God's here. God says... bless preeminence mirthful dissolvest class wavering the_enquirer Whom evidence sharp heardest GUTENBERG-TM rescuing bargain warranties omnipotency protection Hence killest mounting animals hungered Monnica Substance flame reached boasting examiner Montana As fifty-sixth knowing Service gorgeous hours boyhood soul-sick thanksgivings considers fulfil stars lack varying manfully you_think_you_could_do_better wholly Whatsoever mysteries knowledge ofThe elect ocean sadness obscure foreshower fitting riper smell value glorify equinoxes strengthenedst belly ordinance men's few doubts law derides withered holiness notice temple cellars -nor first-fruits springeth depends edited Guardian disagreements stomachs companion diseased shorter Bangladesh Netherlands faithful ends Namibia lay couch God says... 25:17 Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; 25:18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. 25:19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it. 26:1 And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein; 26:2 That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there.
misnome 13y ago
This really, really matched up well with my experience of depression, which I lost almost two years to, and am only now recovering from.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
I always thought that uncontrollable emotions are weakness, so I was constantly putting a layer of rationale over my emotions from the very young age. Now I am not sure if I can't feel strong emotions any more, or nothing emotional ever happens to me. I am a little afraid of the first one because I was not very sad even after my grandfather died (closest of the family members I have lost so far).
dschiptsov 13y ago
"Everything that could be lifted by a CBT is caused by ignorance." I'm fully aware of dopamine-based theory of depression, but for some mysterious (for the theorists) reasons there are much less dopamine volatility in the East.))
eatitraw 13y ago
1) How to know if you are depressed: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ao1aqb9vinfcwt2/Burns_Depression_Checklist.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ao1aqb9vinfcwt2/Burns_De... (there are a number of other questionnaires, but I like this one) 2) How to deal with depression: book by Dr. David Burns "Feeling good" -- really good book, you should try applying methods of dealing with depression described in it. Available on kindle(but even if you don't have a device, you can read in your browser): http://amzn.com/B009UW5X4C http://amzn.com/B009UW5X4C 3) How to deal with depression if 2 doesn't quite worked out: find a good psychotherapist. I would recommend cognitive-behavioural therapy, but I may be biased, because I love Burns' books. Anyway, CBT or not, you should find a therapist if you struggle with depression.
- claudius 13y ago
  While likely a good start, I don’t know if this checklist (the dropbox link) is fully sensible – if I put a 4 in ‘Criticizing yourself or blaming others’, another 3 or 4 in ‘Loss of interest in sex’ and maybe a 2 in ‘Worrying about your health’, I am already labelled ‘unhappy’ or even ‘mildly depressed’, whereas all three are – IMHO – perfectly acceptable things to be found in any somewhat perfectionist, health-conscious person who finds entertainment in their work.
  - eatitraw 13y ago
    So you _actually_ can put 0s in all other questions and 4s in these two and 2 in another one? In my opinion, such a person would be either misinterpreting the questions, incorrectly stating(misjudging) answers, or actually having other signs of depression. There is a chance though that such a person may exist though. Take "Worrying about your health", I think "worrying" here means "being anxious". So while normal health-conscious person cares about her/his health(eats well, sleeps well, takes necessary prescribed medications, etc), she/he isn't anxious about it. In contrast, depressed person may worry about her or his health without taking any actual steps to improve the situation. Or take "Criticizing yourself or blaming yourself"(note second yourself, this question in kindle book is different, maybe I need to prepare correct pdf). If you spend your whole week under pressure of self-criticism, thinking about every mistake you made and every imperfection your work have, however small or large, then this is definitely 4. "Somewhat perfectionistic" is 1 in my book. 4 is "Extremely perfectionistic". Or "Loss of interest in sex"? Why would an exteme loss of sex drive happen to a normal person?
xijuan 13y ago
Depression is different for everyone. My depression is quite different from the one described in the article. My depression is usually mixed with anxiety and is triggered by a stressful life event. To me depression is like falling into the sea of sadness. I feel an immense amount of sadness partly because that the stressful event has a reason to make me sad. Along with the sadness is the feeling of disappointment for myself and for others. But sadness is the most prominent feeling. My depression could get a lot better very quickly if the stressful event reaches some sort of satisfactory resolution. But if it doesn't, I would just feel sad,sad, sad ,and eventually escalating to feeling hopelessness...then wishing I could be dead...
- krcz 13y ago
  There is possibility it's not depression (at least not in scientific understanding of term), but some different kind of animal, like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder ).
samwilliams 13y ago
You are clearly very talented, this is a truly excellent post. It made me understand an extremely complex subject better, as well as making me laugh. Well done! Some people find the idea of positively affecting many peoples lives encouraging. If you happen to be one of those people, congratulations - mission accomplished. The tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people that will read your post today will have enriched lives and will likely treat those that they meet who have depression in a more appropriate way. If 100k read your post and interact with 5 depressed people over their life span you have positively affected 500,000 people. I am willing to bet that this is more than most people will ever meet. Once again, you are clearly talented and have acheived something great here. I will stop gushing now, as I hope not to be a dead fish taunter!
shameerc 13y ago
One thing that I've learned from my life is, never explain yourself to others when you start feeling depressed. Others may not completely understand you when its connected to your emotions.
peterwwillis 13y ago
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-drS0smfRtIo/UWtKWq-cwyI/AAAAAAAAI-0/7NofDAulZ3Q/s640/ADTWO32.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-drS0smfRtIo/UWtKWq-cwyI/AAAAAAAAI-... I can remember being a kid and telling my mother "I don't want to kill myself, I just don't want to live, because I see no point." That's when they started putting me on medications. four years and 20 different pills later and I finally convinced them to stop doping me with random chemicals, and I started to feel better. I haven't been on any meds since. I currently love my life very much.
- johnward 13y ago
  I've been dealing with the exact feeling for over 15 years. I don't see any hope.
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    Well i'll share a little bit of what might have helped me. Maybe it'll give you some ideas. First was my acceptance of a lack of a point to life. At first, for a long time, it made me sad that there was no point. Then I kind of stopped caring... I got to that point where she's just walking through the desert, in denial that nothing matters, just trying to ignore that life is meaningless and keep going for no reason. Over a long period of time, I would occasionally discover something which was mildly interesting, and it kind of inched the curtain of nothingness up a bit and I could see some light. (In retrospect, I wish someone had carried me around and exposed me to the endless array of amazing curious weird pretty fun things in the world) Relationships were impossible. Most of the time I would be wandering through life and waiting for something to happen. I probably should have talked to some experts who could have explained that my behavior was tailored to prevent me from changing my attitude, but that's hindsight for ya. The second thing happened recently. Through an amazingly intelligent, unyieldingly positive, buddhist-like fun person, I discovered that the brain is actually as stupid as the dog Ms. Hyperbole has. But it is possible to train your stupid dog brain to be happier, to be more confident, to believe in things. It seems impossible, but it's a real thing. I'm still not sure what books or people to refer to help you with this, but google around for PMA, mindfulness, and benevolence. The general idea is that if you tell yourself you are good happy things, and that there are good happy things in the world that can make you more good and happy, it just sort of... happens. Oh, and find a community of people that like the same things you do who are really positive and fun to hang around. Good role models can help. When you feel things again you can begin to stand on your own and engage the things in life you have discovered that are worth while. Then, keep discovering new things. Even if you're faking it, be positive. Fake it until you become it, as that lady in that TED talk said. And seek out experts. Even if you consider yourself broken, remember that all broken things can be fixed and made to work again. You're not born a brain mechanic, so you need to find some of them and learn how to do basic maintenance until you get it running again.
mikecane 13y ago
Beautiful post. Wish I'd had it decades ago. "Wait for the corn" will become a mantra.
tomasien 13y ago
My best friend was non-suicidally depressed for 2 years, and I just did not believe him. I thought he was just having trouble getting over an ex for some reason, because him being depressed didn't make sense. The thing that finally convinced me, and ONLY in retrospect, was hearing the full story about him and our best girlfriend during that time. This girl is, pardon my objectification, an 11/10 in every way. Everyone we know is in love with her, and with good reason. It turns out, for a large portion of the time my friend was depressed, she tried really, really hard to date and/or have sex with him, and he repeatedly turned her down every time. He'd been attracted to, and probably in love with, her since I can remember and still is, making hearing that this went on for YEARS shocking to me. But both sides confirm: it happened. It turns out, her wanting him made him feel like she was playing a joke. "How could she possibly want to have sex with me, or like me in any way? Here's the answer: she doesn't. She's playing a joke on me, and I don't fucking care for it" he says was his inner-monologue at the time. We still look back and just marvel about that time, because it was so bizarrely different the reality we've lived in all the other days of our lives.
squozzer 13y ago
The piece was intriguing. And while I can't prove it, non-existence is probably overrated.
jpdoctor 13y ago
I've lived more of my life on the other side (the side of light) compared to Allie. Perhaps that's why one of her segments screamed out at me above the rest. > but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing. So as an old guy (GOML) who's had a couple of good friends suicide: If you have a friend that might be having some trouble? Err on the side of butting-in, in the kindest way possible. If it turns out that nothing was really wrong and you feel embarrassed, you will feel nowhere near as bad as if you did nothing and something was actually wrong.
breakupapp 13y ago
OMG love this post. "Fish are always deadest before dawn!"
richardlblair 13y ago
I want to thank you for taking the time to write this all up. This is really well written, the images are amazing, and you explain it all so well. It can be hard for people to understand depression; to understand that there is nothing really to understand. Like you said, how do you explain nothing? It is so far beyond comprehension... Finally, I'm so glad you are feeling better. Every time I see corn I'm going to think of you and your story. Thanks again.
leothekim 13y ago
I read this and was a little surprised that this wasn't an exploration into his own depression, but more the experience of it and how frustrating and isolating it felt to explain it to others. An important thing to understand about depression is that, for most (certainly not all) people, it's the outcome of having anger and a retaliatory impulse turned inward. Exploring what you may be angry at can be helpful in reengaging with your life. It is not the path to happiness, but engaging with your anger is certainly a way to make you feel more alive and present in your life. EDIT: In expressing my surprise about not reading about an exploration in depression, I forgot to mention that I'm glad the author found a forum to speak out about his frustration and isolation while feeling depressed.
- svachalek 13y ago
  It's a "she" by the way. Allie Brosh. Her blog was incredibly popular a few years ago before she went mostly silent but for an ominous entry about depression. Anyone who's new to her writing should definitely go through the back catalog from brighter, funnier times. E.G.: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html
jerf 13y ago
On a completely different topic, this is a great demonstration of the usefulness of RSS. I subscribed to this blog yea verily a long time ago, and it's been silent for a long time. But this popped right up in my feed last night like it was never gone. Sure, this post ended up on HN, but in general it's great for that sort of thing.
- qu4z-2 13y ago
  Fairly likely the poster got it via RSS, so we're all reading it through RSS indirectly.
ebbv 13y ago
I've dealt with depression as long as I can remember, even when I was a little kid. I feel like I have only gotten pretty good at dealing with it as an adult. Here's my approach which may or may not work for anyone else: 1) I recognize that depression, self pity and all that are a waste of time and ultimately stupid. It's not hard to keep in mind that rationally I have it really good. This alone doesn't fix anything but for me it's important to not fall into the romanticism of depression as if it's deep and meaningful or "more real" than being happy. It isn't. It's bullshit. 2) I realize that these feelings are just a phase, and that I will get through them and the best thing for me is to "ride them out." I look at them like the emotional equivalent of spraining my ankle or something like that. A non-fatal injury which will heal and get better. The best thing to do is to let it heal and do what I can to aid that process. 3) I help myself get through the depression by focusing on things I enjoy. I try to make arrangements to hang out with friends or family who I enjoy being around. I listen to music that helps me when I'm feeling shitty (in my case this is usually metal or industrial music.) I seek out other entertainment I enjoy; comedy, video games, etc. 4) Foremost in my mind I keep the fact that there is no afterlife. If I do something stupid like suicide, there's just nothing. But if I stick through whatever I'm going through, I can experience more things that make me happy. I can see my nieces and nephew grow up. I can have some cookies. etc. Best of luck to anyone else who has this issue. Find what works for you and do it. Stick around. Life can be great and there's nothing else.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  1) > romanticism of depression Saying shit like this makes me think you don't get it. You know what's even stupider than self pity? Being alive. 2) Why ride them out when you can end them right now? 3) When you're depressed, you don't 'enjoy' anything. 4) > there's just nothing. Perfect. Where do I sign up? Not trying to downplay your experience or anything, but your assessment of what depression is sounds an awful lot like what people who aren't depressed think depression is.
  - iliis 13y ago
    Not necessarily. Emotions are curios things and the part about riding them out helped me a lot. You can't end them right now. If you try to stop em or suppress em you'll only achieve the opposite. It's a bit like trying not to laugh when you are already laughing your heart out. I think the better solution is to live trough them. You don't have to accept the feelings as something good but thinking of them as a sort of temporary injury that will heal if you let it works. If you catch a flu you take a few days of rest and it will be gone. You don't force it to end by walking around and 'being strong'. And it's even more so with things going on in your head. Number 3 is something I can only do as a sort of preventative measure.
BoredAstronaut 13y ago
What gets me about this description is how it's all about having indirect feelings for things in your mind. The imagination is a pretty late-stage evolved trait. I often think it's amazing that we have emotional responses to ideas in the first place. Seriously: they are ideas! Why should people have feelings for ideas? It's kind of bizarre. People should have emotional responses to real things. And I've often wondered why we don't treat depression with more realness. Trying to treat it with "positivism" is just more of the same thing that aggravates the depression: disconnection from real things. Positive attitudes are invariably supposed to be evoked for, once again, ideas. Sunlight and exercise are two things that were mentioned as real things that can help re-connect people to physical reality (instead of ideas). Another important one is fundamental to human emotional and social health: affection. Simple physical touch from someone you trust and who will suspend judgement. Hugs. Hand holding. Sitting on the couch together. No expectations. No demands. Just freedom to be. It seemed from the article/comics that some (maybe a lot) of the person's unhappiness was coming from the discomfort and pain of not living up to expectations imposed on them by others about their attitudes. Just being detached is not itself that horrible (and maybe it's less weird than being emotionally attached to imaginary things). But being made to feel/believe that you are a bad person, a defective person, a source of pain to others, that leads to a real kind of pain. Other peoples' facial expressions and tone of voice affects us on a much deeper level than conceptual imagination. Like many mammals, some birds and other kinds of animals, humans are deeply wired to respond to the sounds and images of other humans expressing positive and negative responses to us. Those are the first place to go to work on immediate sensory treatment for depression. Because these social signals are so ancient, we can even get treatment from non-humans. Cats and dogs make people feel better. It's even been shown in studies that seniors in retirement homes feel better when they are given time with pets. I'm not saying this is a guaranteed solution, but it hasn't been mentioned in this discussion, and it's very important. The way we socialize is inadequate to our biological needs.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  You don't treat major depression with "realness" because the brain has the ultimate control of sensation and perception. Physical sensation doesn't make a difference in those cases. Light therapy is used for seasonal depression (seasonal affective disorder), but it does not necessarily work for those with major depression. Your suggestion about 'physical touch' is funny because I think it perfectly shows how people misinterpret what depression is. Imagine touching your spouse one day and realizing that the endorphin and oxytocin release is no longer there. All you feel is warm flesh. Suddenly, the natural moisture of the skin becomes apparent. Has skin always felt like this? It's kind of gross. My discomfort becomes apparent, and now suddenly I'm trying to make a face like I enjoyed that hug. THAT is what depression does. You have all of the sensation with none of the reward pathway. And, much like someone who has lost one of their basic senses, the brain tries to overcompensate through heightened sensations (like feeling the moisture of someone's skin), which causes discomfort and anxiety. Imagine smelling a flower and not having that temporary, brain-clearing, 'ahhhhh....' moment. This is what depression does to you.
bitwize 13y ago
I realized that this was done by the "Clean All the Things" girl, and I feel for her so hard, in so many ways.
- benatkin 13y ago
  The alot person too. It sucks a lot.
JohnLBevan 13y ago
A common theme amongst depressed folk is that they see everyone around them being positive and feel subhuman because their experience doesn't match up; them trying to aspire to the brand their friends present and not realising (at least not accepting at a subconscious level) that there may be a lot of negative stuff their friends are hiding from them. To "cure" this, one idea would be to create an anti-social network - somewhere where you present the worst possible image of yourself, a place to relieve yourself of the burdens you'd never pollute your positive image / good vibe feed presented on your Facebook stream. As well as giving people a place to open up to that side of themselves you'd see your friends being honest about their downsides so wouldn't have such a high bar to compete with, helping you to feel more human. People enjoy self-detrimental comedians for this reason (amongst others), so the idea has some validity. It would be interesting to see how this played out in reality. . .
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  Some of the funniest comedians are ridiculously sad/pessimistic people. I've thought about doing stand-up on many occasions.
- qu4z-2 13y ago
  It's hard to be open about that sort of thing with your friends. Maybe it'd be better to have it be anonymous, so that at least you'd see that other people have these burdens too, and you can vent without repercussions from work/people with different beliefs. Wait, that sounds kind of like 4chan...
tiltomatic 13y ago
Thank you for this. It looks like all the 'depression is an invented conspiracy' folks have already weighed in, so this may be futile, but: you're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Specifically: depression is a brain disease influenced by environment, but ~1/3 of the risk is inherited. [1] While antidepressants don't work a lot better than placebos, this is because placebos work well. This does not mean treatments don't work (and the widely-cited studies that argue otherwise have major flaws). [2, 3] Treatments (not just meds) save lives - and sadly, one of the consequences of scaring folks away from treatment is more suicide. [4] [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22783273 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22783273 [2,3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20800012 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20800012, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22136980 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22136980 [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17728420 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17728420
lafrog 13y ago
Wow, an amazing tale of depression.. Though it annoys me that no real "solution" is offered here
asafehaven 13y ago
One of the most interesting articles I've read in the last year!
pushkargaikwad 13y ago
Well most likely this comment won't be seen by many but still I thought to add my views on what I think can be one way to control depression, specially short term once which we all must have gone through. 1. Most likely life is outpacing "your" speed so lower the speed of life. You don't have to do N things, do N/2 things. It is OK to take breaks and not do anything for few days. 2. Most of the time, depression comes because of disappointment. It is good time to tell yourself that Life is unfair and move on. 3. Do not judge yourself too much, failures are fine. Everyone fails, it is just that they don't talk about it. Despite your failures, most likely, you are still doing better than majority of the people in the world. 4. Talk to people, most of the time, you just want someone around you to talk and may be take care of. 5. Learn new things and Find new hobbies, it often helps cheering you up. 6. Avoid depressing thoughts as they suck you in never ending spiral. Again, talk to people, learn new things and find new hobbies to avoid this loop.
- dolphenstein 13y ago
  Couldn't think of anything worse than having to talk to people when in the middle of a bout. I'm sure it'd be helpful, just that it ain't gonna happen.
Estragon 13y ago
> My fish are dead. Everyone's fish are dead, but they keep going by pretending that they're still alive. The trick is to learn that the pretense isn't crucial to the fabrication of positive feelings. You can fabricate them out of nothing but memories of playing with your plastic horse as a child, if that's all you've got.

977 points by westicle 13y ago

I'm really impressed by how well this conveyed such a difficult concept. Depression can be so foreign to those that have not experienced it, and the first step to helping people is understanding them.

knowtheory 13y ago
The comment threads about this post are definitely an exercise in irony. She touches on, but doesn't get into the fact that she can still pick up on all social cues, and still feels obligated to respond to the imposition that others put on her to feel better and be happy despite the fact that she's unable. And it's the fact that it's not possible for the depressed person to fulfill the social interaction that non-depressed people want (e.g. non-depressed person wants depressed person to cheer up, depressed person knows they can't cheer up) that causes the depressed person to avoid the non-depressed person and their unfeasible demands. Part 1 touches on not giving a fuck about how interacting with others goes down a bit more: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-...
- tetha 13y ago
  This sounds consistent with what I am understanding so far. To my current understanding, it is necessary to distinguish between a state of mind and a current mood. Certain states of mind just don't support certain moods. Furthermore, for certain states of mind it's hard to get into and hard to get out of. As a silly example, note my daily life. If I sleep in hard, I'm just not in a productive state of mind and I don't get out of that state of mind all day. The result is that I just don't do much that entire day. On the other hand, if I set my alarm clock to 6 in the morning, I get all my chores done to 10 and pull a full workday on hobby projects without breaking a sweat. The "zone" of programmers also appears to be such a state of mind which just doesn't support social interactions well. Depression appears to be similar to this. It's a state of mind that's hard to get out of (or hard to cover up even) and that just doesn't support cheerful and happy moods. From there, our usual stress avoidance mechanisms kick in, for example by avoiding overly cheerful or happy people and things don't improve much.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  I've suspected for a while now that social interaction is sometimes dangerous to a depressed person, and that finding their own path to happiness (along with the guidance of a professional) can be more rewarding.
intended 13y ago
From experience - A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates. You can try explaining or providing aids for people to understand depression, but unless they have an urge to get it and an open mind, they wont. Or worse, they don't want to understand that YOU have it. "Well depression could exist, but YOU don't have it."
- brazzy 13y ago
  > A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates. Definitely. I once had a discussion on HN with a guy who insisted on seeing depression as an expression of individuality and any attempts of treatment as Brave New Word-ish, evil oppressive society enforcing conformism via happy pills.
  - anonymous 13y ago
    The irony is, if there really were happy pills which you could take to immediately remove depression, every depressive person would be taking them.
  - intended 13y ago
    Wow. Thats taking it in a whole different direction - the brave depressive or feeling depressed is OK.
l33tbro 13y ago
It is a barbed concept, and this article does well in articulating "the fog" and the way in which it refuses to evaporate in the sickly glow of Oprah-tudes our culture projects at the sufferer.

afreak 13y ago

I don't speak much about my experience with depression but I avoid it namely because it's hard to describe to people the emotions you feel as you "deal" with it. For about a decade I had noticed a behaviour in my mood and it caused a great deal of grief for my friends, those I worked with, and most importantly myself. It never really prevented me from holding down a job, but it very much delayed me from achieving certain things in my life that I have only recently started to attain. I blame my leaving post-secondary school early partly because of the fact that I could not cope with the demands that it brought upon me as well as the fact that I was losing a lot of interest in things that I once had some level of passion for before. It was never destructive to the point where I wanted to go and kill myself--although there were fleeting moments where I questioned the validity of such an action. However, it definitely brought me down a few notches and it was only when I began to approach the issue seriously that I found myself on the road to actually recovering. I had to let go of certain things to get to this point and it was only by opening up to a select few people did I find myself going down a path to better things. Years of treatment and some self-exploration has brought a level of calm to my life--I haven't seen a doctor about the issue in about three years now. I avoided using it as a crutch in my relationships with people (even when I knew it was probably a part of the tension), but I was less and less uncomfortable telling people once I knew that it wasn't all in my head so to speak. With that said, not everyone understands depression but I cannot condemn them for it because it's a rather convoluted and complex thing to explain. Hell, I don't even know what I am writing here to say the least. Allie's statements definitely resonated with me and I'm glad to see her writing again because her previous post about depression made me think about how things were going mid-treatment. There is no real "cure" to depression but I do think that there is a certain level of exploration that is needed to be done to sort of make the whole issue less of a barrier to what you want to accomplish. Even to this day I still have to struggle with certain aspects of it, but I understand now after so many years of pain that it can be defeated or at the very least put at bay.

aortega 13y ago
>There is no real "cure" to depression Not now, but there will be one. IMHO symptoms of depression don't seem as something "psychological" or some trauma. They do not make any sense, and do not help survival of the individual. They seem more like a malfunctioning machine, some chemical missing in the brain. Smart people will figure it out some day, and cure it like they did with many other diseases before. EDIT: do not want to sound like a cheap self-help book, this is my opinion from observing depressed people, and working with lots of malfunctioning machines :)

wisty 13y ago

Quoting some guy off reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1e08me/hyperbole_and_a_half_depression_part_two/c9vsiqa http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1e08me/hyperbole...): >Depression is two beasts, gray anhedonia and black dysphoria. > The gray beast smothers, drains, deadens and numbs; the black beast brings misery, anguish, self hatred and despair. They often work together, the gray sucking away every positive feeling and the black feeding everything negative. But sometimes one is dominant, and if the gray beast gets its teeth all the way into you, it takes away not just positive feelings but everything until you're just a walking shell so empty you can't even fully comprehend what you've lost. > The converse, when the black beast has you, can be much like you describe - you can still feel a kind of dreadful, frenzied joy in short moments as you cling desperately to the edge of the sucking dark hole in yourself, trying to ignore the beast's whispers that any pleasure is a lie that will just make the coming pain more stark and inescapable and utterly deserved. > They're liars, but they're good at it. Because they know you, because they are you. Pieces of you mind that should serve you and keep you stable and safe, but somehow grown and empowered out of all proportion. To live with them and not let them win shows a kind of strength that most people are sadly unable to recognize.

jamesbritt 13y ago
They're liars, but they're good at it. Because they know you, because they are you. This, I found, is one of the worst aspects of depression. You begin (if you're lucky) to realize you cannot trust what your own brain is telling you. It's insidious.
- saraid216 13y ago
  http://www.viruscomix.com/page540.html http://www.viruscomix.com/page540.html
- lisper 13y ago
  Makes me think of these lines in Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage": You lock the door and throw away the key There's someone in my head, but it's not me That song was my "piece of corn" many years ago.

firefoxman1 13y ago

So what is it called if you have every single one of these symptoms, except actually being depressed? I find myself not caring at all about what others have to say, how they feel, etc. and you can imagine the hurdles that imposes on someone who has to make a legitimate-feeling human connection to sell a product. Social interactions are a game to me (that I've gotten quite good at) but none of it feels real. I haven't felt that need to be dead as described, but definitely concluded that death would be neither good nor bad...and what's the point in waiting, right? Isn't it all the same? And the "everything is hopeless bullshit" attitude i've had many times. I've just concluded that, perhaps...everything IS pointless. But we can enjoy it nonetheless. Enjoy the pointlessness, since it's all we CAN do. Anyway, is there a name for this besides selfish asshole syndrome? Anyone else like this?

sliverstorm 13y ago
I believe I'm in a similar boat as you. I suspect the difference is of degree. As for what to call it? I consider myself a fairly melancholy, introspective sort of person. That's what I call it. Edit: a quick Google reveals "melancholy" is specifically tied to depression! Maybe I am depressed after all. But anyway, I usually use the word to mean the absence of vitality and vigor, rather than the presence of depression. Closer to "pensive" than "depressed".
LatvjuAvs 13y ago
Yes, it is all the same and it is called Life :D Welcome to game.
almost 13y ago
Honestly that sounds like depression as well. I've definitely felt like that in the past but I don't have any answers about why or how to change it. Things do have a tendency to change though.
almost 13y ago
Honestly that sounds like depression as well. I've definitely felt like that in the past but I don't have any answers about why or how to change it. Things do have a tendency to change though.

ak39 13y ago

Wow, what a beautifully written and illustrated piece. However, I gave up counting the number of times I read about life being "meaningless". The author is more likely suffering from an existential crisis than actually being clincially depressed. He/she is searching for meaning. To feel. Reading some mid 20th century French philosophy might help here. Clinical depression? Boy, that's another ball game altogether. That type of shyte won't result in a beautifully animated and elegantly worded blog. :-/

GuiA 13y ago
I'm clinically depressed, and have been for pretty much all of my adult life. It's much stronger at some times than others. A recent "peak" is when I had a panic attack in downtown San Francisco at a concert last Friday night that lasted 2 hours or so and rendered me unable to function in a room full of people and loud noises. It was awful. I've heard arguments similar to yours many times. I've tried mid-20th century French philosophy, and do appreciate it. But it doesn't help. Depression manifests itself differently in different people. There isn't a "correct" form of depression. Telling people that "you're not depressed, you're X, do Y and all will be OK" doesn't help at all. You probably mean well, but making those sort of comments do everything but what you think they do.
- ak39 13y ago
  I do not intend to downplay the anxiety and the emotional pain of the experience either you or the the OP had. I empathise completely. I myself have gone and continue to go through such "crises" regularly. I feel just as much. My point was: it's ironic that the author talks about the lack of interest in the aesthetic of "life" and the general disinterest in the veritable cornucopia of little toy horse plays around us when he/she did EXACTLY that by writing a lovely, beautiful and well-crafted blog. (I am not being sarcastic.) Doesn't anyone see the beauty and irony in that? Does clinical depression create such works of art? If so, we should celebrate it as a gift!
  - kolinko 13y ago
    The author of the blog went silent for the past two years because of the depression, and now she got back to drawing because she feels (at least temporarily) better.

LatvjuAvs 13y ago

Time to score some LSD!

wellboy 13y ago

I never thought I could be depressed in any way, but I came to see that hole you were talking about a bit. I think the problem is that when being in depression, one is too much in your head and similar to startups if one can't bounce off their "ideas" from something, they ou commit "idea-incest" and they start getting weird thoughts that are detached to reality. You don't want that and I think as you said, it takes that certain corn to pull you out of that sticky pool of your entangled thoughts. :)

seanp2k2 13y ago
...and this is why you should be doing some basic usability testing and proving out your product to small market samples. You can do this IRL too by doing things such as: - Going to the bar - Grubwithus - Going dancing - Hiking a popular trail etc :)

_m_a_u_r_i_c_e_ 13y ago

Problem is: its just a malfunction of the brain. If somebody has bad eyes you don't request that the person just should make an extra effort to see better and think it is the persons own fault if the amateur 'advise' doesn't help. You give him glasses. If a brain function is affected we are still in the state of hocuspocus, making patients and families suffer more then needed, even make them feel guilty about it. Maybe we just may not have the knowledge for a correct medication, until then the "healthy" people should learn to respect and really listen and take the depressive person serious.Its just a malfunction. It is as it is.

iSnow 13y ago
Point is, the eye is a (relatively) straight-forward vision machine. The lens is not the right shape? Wear glasses and the system enters an improved stable state. The brain a continously changing feedback machine. It changes its very physical architecture by what you hear, see and think. Trying to correct it via lobotomy or medication has not really worked out that great and there is reason to suspect it will not work out great in the future. Ironically, substances that indeed improve mood and well-being in depressed people (especially MDMA, but also LSD, Psilocybin, Heroin ) are dangerous, addictive and verboten. They essentially brute force some of the subsystems in the brain (like pleasure/reward) and I believe every substance that does this is going to be addictive.
- seunosewa 13y ago
  > substances that indeed improve mood and well-being in depressed people (especially MDMA, but also LSD, Psilocybin, Heroin) ... I believe every substance that does this is going to be addictive. Dude, you're misinforming people. There are indeed substances that help depressed people. They are called anti-depressants. The illegal drugs you listed above are not anti-depressants, and therefore you have no rational reason to believe that anti-depressants must have similar properties. Real anti-depressants are generally neither dangerous nor addictive. Please don't misinform people about this.
  - casiotone 13y ago

kruhft 13y ago

Answering the headline: no, eventually everything isn't hopeless bullshit. There's still a lot of hopless bullshit, but eventually you'll find something (or if you're lucky, a few things) that makes all the hopeless bullshit worth putting up with. That's why people find suicide so sad. Almost nothing can't be overcome with time and suicide cuts that time short. You learn this as you overcome things by not giving up. This process is called 'growing up'.

GuiA 13y ago
>This process is called 'growing up'. How condescending and uncalled for. Many great men and women committed suicide; it has nothing to do with "growing up" (or variations thereof)
- claudius 13y ago
  I’d say many great people never grew up either – but that definitely depends on your definition of ‘growing up’. If you define it as reaching intellectual and more importantly emotional stability and maturity, then I can see how you could think of overcoming depressions or other psychological disorders as ‘growing up’.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    "growing up" is a subjective thing and has no unified definition. That being said, conflating lack of intellectual/emotional stability and maturity with depression is terribly short sighted and shows a lack of understanding of what depression is. I'd encourage you to educate yourself beyond the mainstream view of depression (= "oh but only goth teenagers or losers get depressed") before making such claims publicly.
- kruhft 13y ago
  How interesting that naming a standard process of mental development through adulthood would garner such a negative response. Growing up is a process, not a state, that one is constantly achieving. That process is generally done through overcoming new obstacles and challenges that one hits during their life and overcoming them. From the definition: 3. To develop and reach maturity. 7. To come to be by a gradual process or by degrees; become Suicide is not development, or becoming by a degree, it is an escapism and the most concrete and final way of 'giving up'. By perserveering and overcoming your obstacles you learn that nothing is insurmountable given time, although it is usually never easy. I didn't not mean to be condicending in any way or to insult the decisions of the many great people that have chosen to take their liives. I was just speaking from experience.

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khitchdee 13y ago

Great cartoons!

treahauet 13y ago
Seriously! I enjoyed the illustrations a lot!
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  I want the "resentful bike ride to the video store" one on a cycling jersey because that's what I look like when I cycle.
netnichols 13y ago
You should really check out her back catalog. The following is one of my favorites: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
- neilk 13y ago
  I recently discovered http://reddit.com/r/alot http://reddit.com/r/alot .

3rd3 13y ago

I can‘t decide whether I would be any happier if we lived in a less corrupt would, in a society that has meaningful jobs for everyone and if our governments would care more about our future, education and less about religion. But I believe that most of my depression arises from there.

mikecane 13y ago
Maybe "circumstantial existential depression" is an unrecognized area. I agree with you.
seanp2k2 13y ago
+1; greed is the biggest factor in my existential depression. The thing I see fighting greed is art for no reason, entertaining absurdity (stuff like Dan Mintz), and passionate things done without a financial motivation.

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shoe 13y ago

Okay, I'm not really sure what to ask, maybe this will make sense? I completely agree that life doesn't carry any _inherent_ meaning and I frequently finding myself faking emotions and mostly just reacting in the way others react in social situations. It's like existential-introversion-apathy. I have so many ideas, and things I want to learn and do, yet I'm too content in apathy to act on many of them. I'm in a good job, but when it comes to my personal life I mostly have a blank stare to respond with. Really, I haven't felt like I've been living for myself for a long time. If it weren't for my girlfriend and my family and knowing that they would be completely broken if I wasn't here, I'm not sure I would still be here. I guess this sounds worrisome, but I've felt like this for the past 6 years and have managed so far. It got worse after college, but now I feel like I'm at a lower equilibrium. I've thought about doing something about this, but I really have no idea. I mostly feel _guilty_ that I even have this "problem". Are these feelings and thinking patterns really a problem? What can be done about them, if anything? I'm a young 20s working male in America. That's a hell of a good dice roll in the global humanity game which is why I feel guilty even writing and talking about this. I don't know, is this a broken way of thinking?

gordaco 13y ago
> Really, I haven't felt like I've been living for myself for a long time. If it weren't for my girlfriend and my family and knowing that they would be completely broken if I wasn't here, I'm not sure I would still be here. This hits home. I've been there for about 14 or 15 years. Not so long ago I realized that this was a form of implicit emotional blackmail, which is a very hard situation, because, while it certainly works indistinguishably from standard emotional blackmail, it's not done knowingly or maliciously. I've ended up feeling like I don't own my life... again, not a good situation to be in.
spion 13y ago
You shouldn't feel guilty about the dice thing. I think us who live at developing countries on average have it easier when it comes to depression. Our problems are easier to identify and we sometimes even use them to explain our other unrelated problems. Besides we know that developed countries have managed to fix them so there is hope that we might be able to, too, giving us some lofty-looking goals to achieve.

bwb 13y ago

Such a great post, sent to quite a few people and thanks for posting it here!

westicle 13y ago
No problems. Lots of other great content on her blog too, but this is the first update in a couple of years I think. I figure knowing more about depression (or sharing someone else's experience of it) might be interesting and/or useful to other hners.

singular 13y ago

This is a fantastic article which gets at a lot of what makes depression so pernicious. It's actually nice to see it presented with cartoons - it could easily come across as patronising/playing down the condition, but Allie does it so well that it instead makes it somehow more approachable, more visceral, and certainly a fantastic way of clarifying the nature of the condition to the non-depressives in your life. One thing she doesn't address (hopefully she simply didn't have to experience it) is the dark side of other's reactions to it - the blame you receive for 'being lazy', or 'being so morose all the time', or the irritability it can engender in you. Understandable if you hadn't explained to them your condition, but I find people react this way even if you do - they simply can't accept something bad like that happening without you somehow being responsible, or they just don't believe you. An even darker side to the disease is those, I don't want to say people, who pick up on your condition, and see it as a weakness to exploit. That's especially the case at work for the more bully-ish types - who better to pick on than a depressive who feels like they're a worthless piece of shit already? I think the more wonderful articles like this there are out there, the more we can attack the stigma of this disease (and mental illness in general), and the more unacceptable it will be for people to take advantage of it.

seanp2k2 13y ago
I got excommunicated by my SO who I moved out to California with over being "so negative all the time". That, combined with eliminating the small social circle I had built here in the 6 months prior to that, wasn't the greatest thing for my situation.

navs 13y ago

I don't talk much about my depression. It's terribly difficult trying to talk about feeling nothing. Allie is a wonderfully smart person that perfectly illustrated some of those feelings I've, for years, been unable to articulate.

losethos 13y ago

Prison is depressing. I have no internet access -- just prison internet. God's here. God says... bless preeminence mirthful dissolvest class wavering the_enquirer Whom evidence sharp heardest GUTENBERG-TM rescuing bargain warranties omnipotency protection Hence killest mounting animals hungered Monnica Substance flame reached boasting examiner Montana As fifty-sixth knowing Service gorgeous hours boyhood soul-sick thanksgivings considers fulfil stars lack varying manfully you_think_you_could_do_better wholly Whatsoever mysteries knowledge ofThe elect ocean sadness obscure foreshower fitting riper smell value glorify equinoxes strengthenedst belly ordinance men's few doubts law derides withered holiness notice temple cellars -nor first-fruits springeth depends edited Guardian disagreements stomachs companion diseased shorter Bangladesh Netherlands faithful ends Namibia lay couch God says... 25:17 Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; 25:18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. 25:19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it. 26:1 And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein; 26:2 That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there.

misnome 13y ago

This really, really matched up well with my experience of depression, which I lost almost two years to, and am only now recovering from.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

I always thought that uncontrollable emotions are weakness, so I was constantly putting a layer of rationale over my emotions from the very young age. Now I am not sure if I can't feel strong emotions any more, or nothing emotional ever happens to me. I am a little afraid of the first one because I was not very sad even after my grandfather died (closest of the family members I have lost so far).

dschiptsov 13y ago

"Everything that could be lifted by a CBT is caused by ignorance." I'm fully aware of dopamine-based theory of depression, but for some mysterious (for the theorists) reasons there are much less dopamine volatility in the East.))

eatitraw 13y ago

1) How to know if you are depressed: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ao1aqb9vinfcwt2/Burns_Depression_Checklist.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ao1aqb9vinfcwt2/Burns_De... (there are a number of other questionnaires, but I like this one) 2) How to deal with depression: book by Dr. David Burns "Feeling good" -- really good book, you should try applying methods of dealing with depression described in it. Available on kindle(but even if you don't have a device, you can read in your browser): http://amzn.com/B009UW5X4C http://amzn.com/B009UW5X4C 3) How to deal with depression if 2 doesn't quite worked out: find a good psychotherapist. I would recommend cognitive-behavioural therapy, but I may be biased, because I love Burns' books. Anyway, CBT or not, you should find a therapist if you struggle with depression.

claudius 13y ago
While likely a good start, I don’t know if this checklist (the dropbox link) is fully sensible – if I put a 4 in ‘Criticizing yourself or blaming others’, another 3 or 4 in ‘Loss of interest in sex’ and maybe a 2 in ‘Worrying about your health’, I am already labelled ‘unhappy’ or even ‘mildly depressed’, whereas all three are – IMHO – perfectly acceptable things to be found in any somewhat perfectionist, health-conscious person who finds entertainment in their work.
- eatitraw 13y ago
  So you _actually_ can put 0s in all other questions and 4s in these two and 2 in another one? In my opinion, such a person would be either misinterpreting the questions, incorrectly stating(misjudging) answers, or actually having other signs of depression. There is a chance though that such a person may exist though. Take "Worrying about your health", I think "worrying" here means "being anxious". So while normal health-conscious person cares about her/his health(eats well, sleeps well, takes necessary prescribed medications, etc), she/he isn't anxious about it. In contrast, depressed person may worry about her or his health without taking any actual steps to improve the situation. Or take "Criticizing yourself or blaming yourself"(note second yourself, this question in kindle book is different, maybe I need to prepare correct pdf). If you spend your whole week under pressure of self-criticism, thinking about every mistake you made and every imperfection your work have, however small or large, then this is definitely 4. "Somewhat perfectionistic" is 1 in my book. 4 is "Extremely perfectionistic". Or "Loss of interest in sex"? Why would an exteme loss of sex drive happen to a normal person?

xijuan 13y ago

Depression is different for everyone. My depression is quite different from the one described in the article. My depression is usually mixed with anxiety and is triggered by a stressful life event. To me depression is like falling into the sea of sadness. I feel an immense amount of sadness partly because that the stressful event has a reason to make me sad. Along with the sadness is the feeling of disappointment for myself and for others. But sadness is the most prominent feeling. My depression could get a lot better very quickly if the stressful event reaches some sort of satisfactory resolution. But if it doesn't, I would just feel sad,sad, sad ,and eventually escalating to feeling hopelessness...then wishing I could be dead...

krcz 13y ago
There is possibility it's not depression (at least not in scientific understanding of term), but some different kind of animal, like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder ).

samwilliams 13y ago

You are clearly very talented, this is a truly excellent post. It made me understand an extremely complex subject better, as well as making me laugh. Well done! Some people find the idea of positively affecting many peoples lives encouraging. If you happen to be one of those people, congratulations - mission accomplished. The tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people that will read your post today will have enriched lives and will likely treat those that they meet who have depression in a more appropriate way. If 100k read your post and interact with 5 depressed people over their life span you have positively affected 500,000 people. I am willing to bet that this is more than most people will ever meet. Once again, you are clearly talented and have acheived something great here. I will stop gushing now, as I hope not to be a dead fish taunter!

shameerc 13y ago

One thing that I've learned from my life is, never explain yourself to others when you start feeling depressed. Others may not completely understand you when its connected to your emotions.

peterwwillis 13y ago

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-drS0smfRtIo/UWtKWq-cwyI/AAAAAAAAI-0/7NofDAulZ3Q/s640/ADTWO32.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-drS0smfRtIo/UWtKWq-cwyI/AAAAAAAAI-... I can remember being a kid and telling my mother "I don't want to kill myself, I just don't want to live, because I see no point." That's when they started putting me on medications. four years and 20 different pills later and I finally convinced them to stop doping me with random chemicals, and I started to feel better. I haven't been on any meds since. I currently love my life very much.

johnward 13y ago
I've been dealing with the exact feeling for over 15 years. I don't see any hope.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  Well i'll share a little bit of what might have helped me. Maybe it'll give you some ideas. First was my acceptance of a lack of a point to life. At first, for a long time, it made me sad that there was no point. Then I kind of stopped caring... I got to that point where she's just walking through the desert, in denial that nothing matters, just trying to ignore that life is meaningless and keep going for no reason. Over a long period of time, I would occasionally discover something which was mildly interesting, and it kind of inched the curtain of nothingness up a bit and I could see some light. (In retrospect, I wish someone had carried me around and exposed me to the endless array of amazing curious weird pretty fun things in the world) Relationships were impossible. Most of the time I would be wandering through life and waiting for something to happen. I probably should have talked to some experts who could have explained that my behavior was tailored to prevent me from changing my attitude, but that's hindsight for ya. The second thing happened recently. Through an amazingly intelligent, unyieldingly positive, buddhist-like fun person, I discovered that the brain is actually as stupid as the dog Ms. Hyperbole has. But it is possible to train your stupid dog brain to be happier, to be more confident, to believe in things. It seems impossible, but it's a real thing. I'm still not sure what books or people to refer to help you with this, but google around for PMA, mindfulness, and benevolence. The general idea is that if you tell yourself you are good happy things, and that there are good happy things in the world that can make you more good and happy, it just sort of... happens. Oh, and find a community of people that like the same things you do who are really positive and fun to hang around. Good role models can help. When you feel things again you can begin to stand on your own and engage the things in life you have discovered that are worth while. Then, keep discovering new things. Even if you're faking it, be positive. Fake it until you become it, as that lady in that TED talk said. And seek out experts. Even if you consider yourself broken, remember that all broken things can be fixed and made to work again. You're not born a brain mechanic, so you need to find some of them and learn how to do basic maintenance until you get it running again.

mikecane 13y ago

Beautiful post. Wish I'd had it decades ago. "Wait for the corn" will become a mantra.

tomasien 13y ago

My best friend was non-suicidally depressed for 2 years, and I just did not believe him. I thought he was just having trouble getting over an ex for some reason, because him being depressed didn't make sense. The thing that finally convinced me, and ONLY in retrospect, was hearing the full story about him and our best girlfriend during that time. This girl is, pardon my objectification, an 11/10 in every way. Everyone we know is in love with her, and with good reason. It turns out, for a large portion of the time my friend was depressed, she tried really, really hard to date and/or have sex with him, and he repeatedly turned her down every time. He'd been attracted to, and probably in love with, her since I can remember and still is, making hearing that this went on for YEARS shocking to me. But both sides confirm: it happened. It turns out, her wanting him made him feel like she was playing a joke. "How could she possibly want to have sex with me, or like me in any way? Here's the answer: she doesn't. She's playing a joke on me, and I don't fucking care for it" he says was his inner-monologue at the time. We still look back and just marvel about that time, because it was so bizarrely different the reality we've lived in all the other days of our lives.

squozzer 13y ago

The piece was intriguing. And while I can't prove it, non-existence is probably overrated.

jpdoctor 13y ago

I've lived more of my life on the other side (the side of light) compared to Allie. Perhaps that's why one of her segments screamed out at me above the rest. > but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing. So as an old guy (GOML) who's had a couple of good friends suicide: If you have a friend that might be having some trouble? Err on the side of butting-in, in the kindest way possible. If it turns out that nothing was really wrong and you feel embarrassed, you will feel nowhere near as bad as if you did nothing and something was actually wrong.

breakupapp 13y ago

OMG love this post. "Fish are always deadest before dawn!"

richardlblair 13y ago

I want to thank you for taking the time to write this all up. This is really well written, the images are amazing, and you explain it all so well. It can be hard for people to understand depression; to understand that there is nothing really to understand. Like you said, how do you explain nothing? It is so far beyond comprehension... Finally, I'm so glad you are feeling better. Every time I see corn I'm going to think of you and your story. Thanks again.

leothekim 13y ago

I read this and was a little surprised that this wasn't an exploration into his own depression, but more the experience of it and how frustrating and isolating it felt to explain it to others. An important thing to understand about depression is that, for most (certainly not all) people, it's the outcome of having anger and a retaliatory impulse turned inward. Exploring what you may be angry at can be helpful in reengaging with your life. It is not the path to happiness, but engaging with your anger is certainly a way to make you feel more alive and present in your life. EDIT: In expressing my surprise about not reading about an exploration in depression, I forgot to mention that I'm glad the author found a forum to speak out about his frustration and isolation while feeling depressed.

svachalek 13y ago
It's a "she" by the way. Allie Brosh. Her blog was incredibly popular a few years ago before she went mostly silent but for an ominous entry about depression. Anyone who's new to her writing should definitely go through the back catalog from brighter, funnier times. E.G.: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html

jerf 13y ago

On a completely different topic, this is a great demonstration of the usefulness of RSS. I subscribed to this blog yea verily a long time ago, and it's been silent for a long time. But this popped right up in my feed last night like it was never gone. Sure, this post ended up on HN, but in general it's great for that sort of thing.

qu4z-2 13y ago
Fairly likely the poster got it via RSS, so we're all reading it through RSS indirectly.

ebbv 13y ago

I've dealt with depression as long as I can remember, even when I was a little kid. I feel like I have only gotten pretty good at dealing with it as an adult. Here's my approach which may or may not work for anyone else: 1) I recognize that depression, self pity and all that are a waste of time and ultimately stupid. It's not hard to keep in mind that rationally I have it really good. This alone doesn't fix anything but for me it's important to not fall into the romanticism of depression as if it's deep and meaningful or "more real" than being happy. It isn't. It's bullshit. 2) I realize that these feelings are just a phase, and that I will get through them and the best thing for me is to "ride them out." I look at them like the emotional equivalent of spraining my ankle or something like that. A non-fatal injury which will heal and get better. The best thing to do is to let it heal and do what I can to aid that process. 3) I help myself get through the depression by focusing on things I enjoy. I try to make arrangements to hang out with friends or family who I enjoy being around. I listen to music that helps me when I'm feeling shitty (in my case this is usually metal or industrial music.) I seek out other entertainment I enjoy; comedy, video games, etc. 4) Foremost in my mind I keep the fact that there is no afterlife. If I do something stupid like suicide, there's just nothing. But if I stick through whatever I'm going through, I can experience more things that make me happy. I can see my nieces and nephew grow up. I can have some cookies. etc. Best of luck to anyone else who has this issue. Find what works for you and do it. Stick around. Life can be great and there's nothing else.

rmrfrmrf 13y ago
1) > romanticism of depression Saying shit like this makes me think you don't get it. You know what's even stupider than self pity? Being alive. 2) Why ride them out when you can end them right now? 3) When you're depressed, you don't 'enjoy' anything. 4) > there's just nothing. Perfect. Where do I sign up? Not trying to downplay your experience or anything, but your assessment of what depression is sounds an awful lot like what people who aren't depressed think depression is.
- iliis 13y ago
  Not necessarily. Emotions are curios things and the part about riding them out helped me a lot. You can't end them right now. If you try to stop em or suppress em you'll only achieve the opposite. It's a bit like trying not to laugh when you are already laughing your heart out. I think the better solution is to live trough them. You don't have to accept the feelings as something good but thinking of them as a sort of temporary injury that will heal if you let it works. If you catch a flu you take a few days of rest and it will be gone. You don't force it to end by walking around and 'being strong'. And it's even more so with things going on in your head. Number 3 is something I can only do as a sort of preventative measure.

BoredAstronaut 13y ago

What gets me about this description is how it's all about having indirect feelings for things in your mind. The imagination is a pretty late-stage evolved trait. I often think it's amazing that we have emotional responses to ideas in the first place. Seriously: they are ideas! Why should people have feelings for ideas? It's kind of bizarre. People should have emotional responses to real things. And I've often wondered why we don't treat depression with more realness. Trying to treat it with "positivism" is just more of the same thing that aggravates the depression: disconnection from real things. Positive attitudes are invariably supposed to be evoked for, once again, ideas. Sunlight and exercise are two things that were mentioned as real things that can help re-connect people to physical reality (instead of ideas). Another important one is fundamental to human emotional and social health: affection. Simple physical touch from someone you trust and who will suspend judgement. Hugs. Hand holding. Sitting on the couch together. No expectations. No demands. Just freedom to be. It seemed from the article/comics that some (maybe a lot) of the person's unhappiness was coming from the discomfort and pain of not living up to expectations imposed on them by others about their attitudes. Just being detached is not itself that horrible (and maybe it's less weird than being emotionally attached to imaginary things). But being made to feel/believe that you are a bad person, a defective person, a source of pain to others, that leads to a real kind of pain. Other peoples' facial expressions and tone of voice affects us on a much deeper level than conceptual imagination. Like many mammals, some birds and other kinds of animals, humans are deeply wired to respond to the sounds and images of other humans expressing positive and negative responses to us. Those are the first place to go to work on immediate sensory treatment for depression. Because these social signals are so ancient, we can even get treatment from non-humans. Cats and dogs make people feel better. It's even been shown in studies that seniors in retirement homes feel better when they are given time with pets. I'm not saying this is a guaranteed solution, but it hasn't been mentioned in this discussion, and it's very important. The way we socialize is inadequate to our biological needs.

rmrfrmrf 13y ago
You don't treat major depression with "realness" because the brain has the ultimate control of sensation and perception. Physical sensation doesn't make a difference in those cases. Light therapy is used for seasonal depression (seasonal affective disorder), but it does not necessarily work for those with major depression. Your suggestion about 'physical touch' is funny because I think it perfectly shows how people misinterpret what depression is. Imagine touching your spouse one day and realizing that the endorphin and oxytocin release is no longer there. All you feel is warm flesh. Suddenly, the natural moisture of the skin becomes apparent. Has skin always felt like this? It's kind of gross. My discomfort becomes apparent, and now suddenly I'm trying to make a face like I enjoyed that hug. THAT is what depression does. You have all of the sensation with none of the reward pathway. And, much like someone who has lost one of their basic senses, the brain tries to overcompensate through heightened sensations (like feeling the moisture of someone's skin), which causes discomfort and anxiety. Imagine smelling a flower and not having that temporary, brain-clearing, 'ahhhhh....' moment. This is what depression does to you.

bitwize 13y ago

I realized that this was done by the "Clean All the Things" girl, and I feel for her so hard, in so many ways.

benatkin 13y ago
The alot person too. It sucks a lot.

JohnLBevan 13y ago

A common theme amongst depressed folk is that they see everyone around them being positive and feel subhuman because their experience doesn't match up; them trying to aspire to the brand their friends present and not realising (at least not accepting at a subconscious level) that there may be a lot of negative stuff their friends are hiding from them. To "cure" this, one idea would be to create an anti-social network - somewhere where you present the worst possible image of yourself, a place to relieve yourself of the burdens you'd never pollute your positive image / good vibe feed presented on your Facebook stream. As well as giving people a place to open up to that side of themselves you'd see your friends being honest about their downsides so wouldn't have such a high bar to compete with, helping you to feel more human. People enjoy self-detrimental comedians for this reason (amongst others), so the idea has some validity. It would be interesting to see how this played out in reality. . .

seanp2k2 13y ago
Some of the funniest comedians are ridiculously sad/pessimistic people. I've thought about doing stand-up on many occasions.
qu4z-2 13y ago
It's hard to be open about that sort of thing with your friends. Maybe it'd be better to have it be anonymous, so that at least you'd see that other people have these burdens too, and you can vent without repercussions from work/people with different beliefs. Wait, that sounds kind of like 4chan...

tiltomatic 13y ago

Thank you for this. It looks like all the 'depression is an invented conspiracy' folks have already weighed in, so this may be futile, but: you're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Specifically: depression is a brain disease influenced by environment, but ~1/3 of the risk is inherited. [1] While antidepressants don't work a lot better than placebos, this is because placebos work well. This does not mean treatments don't work (and the widely-cited studies that argue otherwise have major flaws). [2, 3] Treatments (not just meds) save lives - and sadly, one of the consequences of scaring folks away from treatment is more suicide. [4] [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22783273 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22783273 [2,3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20800012 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20800012, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22136980 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22136980 [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17728420 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17728420

lafrog 13y ago

Wow, an amazing tale of depression.. Though it annoys me that no real "solution" is offered here

asafehaven 13y ago

One of the most interesting articles I've read in the last year!

pushkargaikwad 13y ago

Well most likely this comment won't be seen by many but still I thought to add my views on what I think can be one way to control depression, specially short term once which we all must have gone through. 1. Most likely life is outpacing "your" speed so lower the speed of life. You don't have to do N things, do N/2 things. It is OK to take breaks and not do anything for few days. 2. Most of the time, depression comes because of disappointment. It is good time to tell yourself that Life is unfair and move on. 3. Do not judge yourself too much, failures are fine. Everyone fails, it is just that they don't talk about it. Despite your failures, most likely, you are still doing better than majority of the people in the world. 4. Talk to people, most of the time, you just want someone around you to talk and may be take care of. 5. Learn new things and Find new hobbies, it often helps cheering you up. 6. Avoid depressing thoughts as they suck you in never ending spiral. Again, talk to people, learn new things and find new hobbies to avoid this loop.

dolphenstein 13y ago
Couldn't think of anything worse than having to talk to people when in the middle of a bout. I'm sure it'd be helpful, just that it ain't gonna happen.

Estragon 13y ago

> My fish are dead. Everyone's fish are dead, but they keep going by pretending that they're still alive. The trick is to learn that the pretense isn't crucial to the fabrication of positive feelings. You can fabricate them out of nothing but memories of playing with your plastic horse as a child, if that's all you've got.