All depression starts with thinking about yourself, what you aren’t doing, what you aren’t getting, and how your own expectations aren’t being met by the world.
Stop thinking about yourself, and find a mission that energizes you, and go after it. And it doesn’t have to be grand or massive, small missions that matter will change your perspective quickly. Find a single person that needs help, or one thing that needs to get done, and just do it.
Meaning is the cure for depression.
There seems to be a correlation in how much you use the word “l” “me” etcetera when you have a conversation with someone and how depressed you are.
I at least notice that every time I’ve found myself in a shitty place mentally or moping around, im literally always thinking about myself. Usually it’s beating myself up for not doing enough, but it’s always about me.
Amen. The best way to cure depression is to serve others.
for the vast majority of people, depression goes away from simply not being poor and having a stable income.
the meaning stuff is for a privileged demographic who have no actual reason to be depressed.
Being stressed or having a rough time of it isn’t the same as being depressed. You can be sad about circumstances of events without being depressed.
being poor, having a never-ending rough time & chronic stress, will cause depression (along w all kinds of other problems) and make sure depression & illness stays. creativity & meaning is a luxury beyond basic needs.
a privileged demographic can relatively easily see & find their way out of any rough patch. their depression is silly (unless it’s from trauma or something like that).
The external world does not control your mindset. Thats a suggestion that we are automatons and that someone who is poor has literally no agency on how they even perceive it. There are countless examples that prove this isn’t the case.
Sure stats of depressed people probably tend toward those under lots of stress and bad circumstances, but that doesn’t mean people have no capacity to control their thoughts.
you exist in the real world where rent is due and bills need to be paid. when you continually can barely or not sufficiently pay for these things, you will be depressed.
they are too ill from chronic stress to simply will themselves out of a depressed state of mind. they have control over their thoughts but they know they’re poor. they’re worried about affording rent or what if their kid needs to go to the doctor? how do they oay fir it. what if their car breaks, how will they afford to fix it? can they afford to pay the water bill? etc. etc. legitimate worries. chronic stress. depression.
we’re not just brains in vats.
I still think you are equating two things that are not the same, imo. Being depressed is being helpless and believing nothing will go right and there’s no reason to do anything at all.
Simply being overwhelmed with thinking about what you need to do to get through the day is not depression.
Related: optimism is explicitly not situation dependent, like by definition it isn’t, because all problems are only relative. It’s very much like value. An example might be aboriginal tribes who are deeply poor and don’t even understand the type of wealth available in the world, but does this make them all horribly depressed?
with real depression caused by poverty, you’re not “simply overwhelmed.”
yes, they are depressed because they ~are~ helpless from being poor. they have chronically, for a long time, not been able to get out of being poor. so they are depressed, chronically stressed.
not being poor will fix it for the vast majority of depressed people.
yes, an aboriginal ~would~ ~definitely~ be considered poor against even a poor american. but they’re not worried about paying rent! they also don’t have a data plan for their cell phone bill to worry about! 🤣
but you would be right, concerning a non-poor demographic, depression is largely easily fixable.
I respectfully disagree. “All depression” is a massive claim that should be supported by a significant and compelling amount of evidence. I can confirm that some debilitating forms of depression occur in people who are not thinking about themselves at all. They are often selfless givers of their time and energy. For many of these people depression goes unnoticed. They are not aware. It is often noticed by others first.
One of the fallacies of dealing with depression is the idea that you can just snap out of it, that you can simply think differently about yourself or your situation and you will be golden. While some forms of negative mindset can be countered by reorienting toward positive thought loops, a trait of significant depression is an inability to perform these types of mental gymnastics.
In many cases, the journey of getting past depression is long and often requires teamwork. In fact, it often requires an intense inward selfish focus. All the best.
Great points! I appreciate you sharing your perspective 🫶🏼
This guy has never had a full blown debilitating blow your brains out type of depression. Probably needs to talk more with people who have. Would be happy to start the ball rolling if interested! 😀
