Hey, you didn’t ask for pitches, but if your next podcast was an interview series where you host successful people and talk about their mental health challenges, I would absolutely listen to that shit.
It's so fucking hard. Particularly when you're a parent and have to think but how are my struggles affecting my child/ren. I'm barely coping, and I realised the other day quite how much of my life has just been fucking miserable. And now I'm trying to work while functioning as a grown up while parenting my kid who is autistic and ADHD and thinking shit maybe I'm also autistic and ADHD and that might explain why everything is so hard? I dunno, I really enjoy my job but trying to do it while also doing everything else? Just feels impossible.
Just, know that there's a Brit in her late 40s who is really rooting for you and who is really upset that someone said that to you - even though it sounds like they meant well, that doesn't make it ok.
I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy, Alex. Looking at photos of cats and writing a list of three things you’re grateful for every day isn’t going to fix whatever is chemically imbalanced in your brain. Nor is letting yourself off the hook because something is imbalanced and so why bother trying to fight it? As in all things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Don’t be so quick to poo-poo the idea of arranging your world in such a way that the good is emphasised and the rage-inducing, soul-crushingness is diminished, but don’t expect it to be the panacea the group chat seems to think it is either. It could be one piece of the puzzle for you, or it might not make any meaningful difference whatsoever. The thing is, and what I suspect your old friend was trying to say but made a hash of it, you have to actively try to find the pieces that fit even when it feels pointless or too hard. You’ve got a lot of people behind you. ❤️
Thank you for sharing. I feel this to my core. I’ve always struggled with depression, but it’s been so much worse since I had my baby 18 months ago. I was talking to my therapist about the depression, as well as the trauma and anxiety that came with my early baby and his NICU stay and surgery. The therapist said, “Yeah, but baby is fine now. So you don’t need to worry about it anymore.” I never went to see her again. People who haven’t been through mental health issues can never understand. (And perhaps shouldn’t work in the mental health field.) That misunderstanding hurts. So much.
Thanks for sharing this, Cool Dude. As a mildly bipolar person I can definitely relate to a lot of this. Especially how someone else's inability to understand what you're going through can send you spiraling. A few years ago I was dating someone who held the depression against me as a personal failing, and it had the effect of intensifying my feelings to the point where I'd break down and have a full-on panic attack whenever the topic came up with her. Now I'm with someone who seems to understand that sometimes I have sunny days, and sometimes I have cloudy days, and she sympathizes when the clouds occasionally prevent me from having a good time. Moreover, she values my perspective, recognizing that both sides can make valid points (it's a beautiful day today AND the global climate systems are collapsing). When others reject my depressive side, it makes me more depressed; but if they accept it and don't stubbornly demand that I "just get over it", it makes it so much easier for me to bear the weight of it.
I see it in my husband (bipolar3 which manifests as mostly depression) as a full time job of ever sifting balance of chemicals in the noodle. Depending on chemical changing drugs 100% won't work. And believing in the woo woo 100% won't balance a brain out either. It's gotta be a balance of each day and how much woo woo magic you can come up with and the meds that doc (actual psychologist prescribes). And even then the balance doesn't happen every day.
But we have made conscious efforts to enjoy good days.
Talking about the complexities of this is not giving anyone permission to do anything. It's about telling the world that it's not one way or the other it's a grey area and the shade of grey varies on the day.
What you are describing is what I feel—that depression is Other, it is outside myself. I can feel it coming, like a dark storm, or like starting to fall. Churchill called it “the black dog”. It feels like something that happens to me from an outside force (your demon), and once it’s upon me there is nothing I can do. Immobility. The bottom of a hole without light. A tiny voice can say “it will pass; it always passes,” but it doesn’t matter. I sleep. I sleep and sleep because it’s like death, and one day I wake up and feel a little bit better. Enough to get up and eat, look around, and feel this thing slowly passing.
I’m a machine learning engineer and I know this is stupid but learning about neural networks really helped me to stop feeling like “this is just The Secret bullshit” (which I swear to fkn god is literally just cognitive behavioral therapy for people from California.) But anyway. The depression is like sourced from Monkey Brain screaming “bad bad pain agony suffering.” That’s the input to the net, which then tries to output a logical response. And the thing where you literally force yourself to think “Actually I have good qualities and my friends like me” is like backpropogation??? Like it’s reforming the neurons to think that the way to react to “bad bad pain agony” input is NOT to output “ok then I’ll just die!” but instead to like totally devalue that input.
And when people with a psych degree try to convince me of this type of shit I’m like “that’s bullshit and implies the only thing wrong with me is ME!” but I do have a huge degree of faith in multivariable calculus and I DO think that healthy people’s monkey brains aren’t screaming “bad bad pain agony” all day so they’ve never had to learn how to deal with the poisoned input training data.
Because of a quirk of my life, I ended up majoring in philosophy in college. I was focused on analytic philosophy (essentially math), but the existentialism class I took has really stuck with me in a way I would have never imagined. I honestly hated the class, and I honestly don't care for most existentialist writers, but Camus just did it for me. He seemed to treat the "the answer is to create your own meaning in life" as masturbatory, and pointless. I am a human animal, and happiness an evolutionary adaptive feature. The idea that I ought to be happy has it backwards, we don't live for happiness, feelings of/seeking happiness is part of what perpetuates life.
Camus stories are all based on people who basically rebel against this pointlessness. Camus' point is that we can choose to live in spite of the pointlessness, instead of trying to find a reason to, and that this is a perfectly reasonable way to live. E.g.: the doctor in The Plague goes on even though he can't stop the plague he's living though.
I try to work on things that could help society, even though I think they will likely come to nothing. I like a cup of coffee in the morning. I like to play golf. I like to go to a trivia night at a bar with close friends. Does this make me "happy"? Ehh... I don't think so. Still, I'm intentional in choosing to live this way, in spite of chasing an elusive happiness.
I take mental health seriously. I see a therapist when it gets too much, I'll see a psychologist when I need to. I try to do things that will leave this world better than when I started here, but don't think my perceived lack of happiness that others have is something I need to focus too much on. Perhaps the way I deal with life and my bouts of depression is not helpful to you and your depression. Perhaps you're living through pain. I just hope that the awkward existentialism that has helped me through many parts of my life his helpful to a few other people out there that haven't considered this perspective.
This resonated with me in a way very few things ever have. It doesn't mean much, but I feel you. Thanks for articulating something I can never find the words to describe.
Hey, Alex. I don't have anything insightful to share, but your post reached me and stung me and made me pause just a minute for introspection. I share some of your struggles while some you describe are less familiar. All pain is valid, no matter how far we've made it on paper. You can look for the logic and sometimes you'll find some but usually you won't. At least that's my experience. There's no good answer to "why are you depressed?" and I doubt there ever will be. But your work has helped me over the years and thousands of others and depression or no, I hope you feel proud.
I never understood when people say that they choose to be happy and focus on the bright side etc... apart from being blissfully ignorant it also feels strangely competitive. Going through childhood with adhd I have always been told that I could do better, put in more effort, challenge myself. Took me 30 years and therapy to realize that I had every right to be angry, anxious and depressed because it was outside of my control and I was already living the best and only version of myself.
Good read, Alex. It’s such a miserable disease to be living with. Would you ever give the “woo woo” a try? Meditation and mindfulness seemed like complete nonsense until I gave it an honest go.
also though, fuck the secret, fuck manifestation, fuck the law of attraction, fuck louise hay et al, and even fuck "the secret garden", which I was surprised and dismayed to discover is an early example of all of that nonsense, barely-hidden in a children's book, incorporating Theosophy:
just yesterday I was talking with my husband about how so many people I know seem to love being in their 40s+, that they feel like they're out of fucks to give about what anyone thinks of them and it's freeing... whereas I (almost 45) feel a constant existential dread that things aren't just going to somehow suddenly be "good", I'm not going to spontaneously be "happy", and while I don't feel the agonizing kind of panic and depression I did when I was younger, I also don't feel like I have energy or ambition. Like I'm just kinda plodding through and waiting for things to get better... but how and what, I have no clue.
If I give your friend the benefit of the doubt, I think I understand what they're saying, because I've been saying it to myself. I have so much that I am sincerely grateful for, and life is going by so quickly, and apparently these 45 years I have spent kind of statically waiting to know how to enjoy. And now that life doesn't seem so long - it seems to race by more all of the time - and my kid is a teenager, and my career is not what I thought it would be, and I don't have youthful energy or naivete to fall back on, maybe what is actually missing is me making the time/ effort to do the things I'm pretty sure will add to my happiness or contentment quotient. Like, I personally do know that writing silly gratitude lists, that making time to see friends, that putting my phone down, that eating well and exercising, etc etc etc., actually really does improve my mood. It doesn't fix everything, but all of those things I rebel against because I don't want to do them, that drive me insane because I don't want them to be what helps me, because I don't want the adults in my brain telling me what to do to be right, that I feel are too cliche to do, ... they do help me. I continue not doing them - I've stopped going to therapy - I feel stuck and then I reinforce my stuckness by saying I'm too stuck to get unstuck.
tl:dr: I feel you very much, and I fear that my brain is basically addicted to the worry and negativity it's been immersed in these 45 years... for me, it's almost equal parts the depression itself, and the total cluelessness about how to live without the depression itself (and I'm using "depression" as a not totally accurate stand in for the way my brain works).
Hey, you didn’t ask for pitches, but if your next podcast was an interview series where you host successful people and talk about their mental health challenges, I would absolutely listen to that shit.
A lot of your posts make me cry. This is one.
It's so fucking hard. Particularly when you're a parent and have to think but how are my struggles affecting my child/ren. I'm barely coping, and I realised the other day quite how much of my life has just been fucking miserable. And now I'm trying to work while functioning as a grown up while parenting my kid who is autistic and ADHD and thinking shit maybe I'm also autistic and ADHD and that might explain why everything is so hard? I dunno, I really enjoy my job but trying to do it while also doing everything else? Just feels impossible.
Just, know that there's a Brit in her late 40s who is really rooting for you and who is really upset that someone said that to you - even though it sounds like they meant well, that doesn't make it ok.
💙
I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy, Alex. Looking at photos of cats and writing a list of three things you’re grateful for every day isn’t going to fix whatever is chemically imbalanced in your brain. Nor is letting yourself off the hook because something is imbalanced and so why bother trying to fight it? As in all things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Don’t be so quick to poo-poo the idea of arranging your world in such a way that the good is emphasised and the rage-inducing, soul-crushingness is diminished, but don’t expect it to be the panacea the group chat seems to think it is either. It could be one piece of the puzzle for you, or it might not make any meaningful difference whatsoever. The thing is, and what I suspect your old friend was trying to say but made a hash of it, you have to actively try to find the pieces that fit even when it feels pointless or too hard. You’ve got a lot of people behind you. ❤️
Thank you for sharing. I feel this to my core. I’ve always struggled with depression, but it’s been so much worse since I had my baby 18 months ago. I was talking to my therapist about the depression, as well as the trauma and anxiety that came with my early baby and his NICU stay and surgery. The therapist said, “Yeah, but baby is fine now. So you don’t need to worry about it anymore.” I never went to see her again. People who haven’t been through mental health issues can never understand. (And perhaps shouldn’t work in the mental health field.) That misunderstanding hurts. So much.
Thanks for sharing this, Cool Dude. As a mildly bipolar person I can definitely relate to a lot of this. Especially how someone else's inability to understand what you're going through can send you spiraling. A few years ago I was dating someone who held the depression against me as a personal failing, and it had the effect of intensifying my feelings to the point where I'd break down and have a full-on panic attack whenever the topic came up with her. Now I'm with someone who seems to understand that sometimes I have sunny days, and sometimes I have cloudy days, and she sympathizes when the clouds occasionally prevent me from having a good time. Moreover, she values my perspective, recognizing that both sides can make valid points (it's a beautiful day today AND the global climate systems are collapsing). When others reject my depressive side, it makes me more depressed; but if they accept it and don't stubbornly demand that I "just get over it", it makes it so much easier for me to bear the weight of it.
I see it in my husband (bipolar3 which manifests as mostly depression) as a full time job of ever sifting balance of chemicals in the noodle. Depending on chemical changing drugs 100% won't work. And believing in the woo woo 100% won't balance a brain out either. It's gotta be a balance of each day and how much woo woo magic you can come up with and the meds that doc (actual psychologist prescribes). And even then the balance doesn't happen every day.
But we have made conscious efforts to enjoy good days.
Talking about the complexities of this is not giving anyone permission to do anything. It's about telling the world that it's not one way or the other it's a grey area and the shade of grey varies on the day.
What you are describing is what I feel—that depression is Other, it is outside myself. I can feel it coming, like a dark storm, or like starting to fall. Churchill called it “the black dog”. It feels like something that happens to me from an outside force (your demon), and once it’s upon me there is nothing I can do. Immobility. The bottom of a hole without light. A tiny voice can say “it will pass; it always passes,” but it doesn’t matter. I sleep. I sleep and sleep because it’s like death, and one day I wake up and feel a little bit better. Enough to get up and eat, look around, and feel this thing slowly passing.
I’m a machine learning engineer and I know this is stupid but learning about neural networks really helped me to stop feeling like “this is just The Secret bullshit” (which I swear to fkn god is literally just cognitive behavioral therapy for people from California.) But anyway. The depression is like sourced from Monkey Brain screaming “bad bad pain agony suffering.” That’s the input to the net, which then tries to output a logical response. And the thing where you literally force yourself to think “Actually I have good qualities and my friends like me” is like backpropogation??? Like it’s reforming the neurons to think that the way to react to “bad bad pain agony” input is NOT to output “ok then I’ll just die!” but instead to like totally devalue that input.
And when people with a psych degree try to convince me of this type of shit I’m like “that’s bullshit and implies the only thing wrong with me is ME!” but I do have a huge degree of faith in multivariable calculus and I DO think that healthy people’s monkey brains aren’t screaming “bad bad pain agony” all day so they’ve never had to learn how to deal with the poisoned input training data.
Because of a quirk of my life, I ended up majoring in philosophy in college. I was focused on analytic philosophy (essentially math), but the existentialism class I took has really stuck with me in a way I would have never imagined. I honestly hated the class, and I honestly don't care for most existentialist writers, but Camus just did it for me. He seemed to treat the "the answer is to create your own meaning in life" as masturbatory, and pointless. I am a human animal, and happiness an evolutionary adaptive feature. The idea that I ought to be happy has it backwards, we don't live for happiness, feelings of/seeking happiness is part of what perpetuates life.
Camus stories are all based on people who basically rebel against this pointlessness. Camus' point is that we can choose to live in spite of the pointlessness, instead of trying to find a reason to, and that this is a perfectly reasonable way to live. E.g.: the doctor in The Plague goes on even though he can't stop the plague he's living though.
I try to work on things that could help society, even though I think they will likely come to nothing. I like a cup of coffee in the morning. I like to play golf. I like to go to a trivia night at a bar with close friends. Does this make me "happy"? Ehh... I don't think so. Still, I'm intentional in choosing to live this way, in spite of chasing an elusive happiness.
I take mental health seriously. I see a therapist when it gets too much, I'll see a psychologist when I need to. I try to do things that will leave this world better than when I started here, but don't think my perceived lack of happiness that others have is something I need to focus too much on. Perhaps the way I deal with life and my bouts of depression is not helpful to you and your depression. Perhaps you're living through pain. I just hope that the awkward existentialism that has helped me through many parts of my life his helpful to a few other people out there that haven't considered this perspective.
This resonated with me in a way very few things ever have. It doesn't mean much, but I feel you. Thanks for articulating something I can never find the words to describe.
Hey, Alex. I don't have anything insightful to share, but your post reached me and stung me and made me pause just a minute for introspection. I share some of your struggles while some you describe are less familiar. All pain is valid, no matter how far we've made it on paper. You can look for the logic and sometimes you'll find some but usually you won't. At least that's my experience. There's no good answer to "why are you depressed?" and I doubt there ever will be. But your work has helped me over the years and thousands of others and depression or no, I hope you feel proud.
I never understood when people say that they choose to be happy and focus on the bright side etc... apart from being blissfully ignorant it also feels strangely competitive. Going through childhood with adhd I have always been told that I could do better, put in more effort, challenge myself. Took me 30 years and therapy to realize that I had every right to be angry, anxious and depressed because it was outside of my control and I was already living the best and only version of myself.
This too shall pass.
Good read, Alex. It’s such a miserable disease to be living with. Would you ever give the “woo woo” a try? Meditation and mindfulness seemed like complete nonsense until I gave it an honest go.
also though, fuck the secret, fuck manifestation, fuck the law of attraction, fuck louise hay et al, and even fuck "the secret garden", which I was surprised and dismayed to discover is an early example of all of that nonsense, barely-hidden in a children's book, incorporating Theosophy:
https://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/the-secret-garden/
just yesterday I was talking with my husband about how so many people I know seem to love being in their 40s+, that they feel like they're out of fucks to give about what anyone thinks of them and it's freeing... whereas I (almost 45) feel a constant existential dread that things aren't just going to somehow suddenly be "good", I'm not going to spontaneously be "happy", and while I don't feel the agonizing kind of panic and depression I did when I was younger, I also don't feel like I have energy or ambition. Like I'm just kinda plodding through and waiting for things to get better... but how and what, I have no clue.
If I give your friend the benefit of the doubt, I think I understand what they're saying, because I've been saying it to myself. I have so much that I am sincerely grateful for, and life is going by so quickly, and apparently these 45 years I have spent kind of statically waiting to know how to enjoy. And now that life doesn't seem so long - it seems to race by more all of the time - and my kid is a teenager, and my career is not what I thought it would be, and I don't have youthful energy or naivete to fall back on, maybe what is actually missing is me making the time/ effort to do the things I'm pretty sure will add to my happiness or contentment quotient. Like, I personally do know that writing silly gratitude lists, that making time to see friends, that putting my phone down, that eating well and exercising, etc etc etc., actually really does improve my mood. It doesn't fix everything, but all of those things I rebel against because I don't want to do them, that drive me insane because I don't want them to be what helps me, because I don't want the adults in my brain telling me what to do to be right, that I feel are too cliche to do, ... they do help me. I continue not doing them - I've stopped going to therapy - I feel stuck and then I reinforce my stuckness by saying I'm too stuck to get unstuck.
tl:dr: I feel you very much, and I fear that my brain is basically addicted to the worry and negativity it's been immersed in these 45 years... for me, it's almost equal parts the depression itself, and the total cluelessness about how to live without the depression itself (and I'm using "depression" as a not totally accurate stand in for the way my brain works).
Thanks for this; sorry for the rambles