Changing one shit-hole job for another one, for instance, won't help. We might not know what kind of work will make us happy. Dumping one hopeless relationship and then starting another hopeless affair will not make one feel better. Maybe we need to learn about what a good relationship looks like, and learn how to build one. — Bitter Crank

Depression is like experiencing an intense form of selfishness, so it was tough deciding between the final two in your poll because of this; while I agree that social and environmental conditions initiate the onset of depression, is it because of self-defeating ideas and delusional thinking? I think that a good, mature relationship first needs to begin with yourself and I remembered reading Erich Fromm' books the following (thanks to this thread I picked it up again from my bookshelf);

Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites. The selfish person does not love himself too much but too little; in fact he hates himself. This lack of fondness and care for himself, which is only one expression of his lack of productiveness, leaves him empty and frustrated. He is necessarily unhappy and anxiously concerned to snatch from life the satisfactions which he blocks himself from attaining. He seems to care too much for himself, but actually he only makes an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate for his failure to care for his real self. Freud holds that the selfish person is narcissistic, as if he had withdrawn his love from others and turned it towards his own person. It is true that selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. — Fromm

Several years ago I experienced a number of difficulties by a number of different people around me including colleagues in my job at the time that I was humiliated to a point I almost came to believe that I was worthless, which caused me to stop eating and becoming very sick. The hollow feeling was intense, I can assure you. I recovered because I started to take care of myself and understand what it meant to love both myself and others, particularly through forgiveness and a brutal honesty about what it is that I want, which required an entire structural change in my environment. I was delusional prior to this and thus allowed toxic people to influence me. I studied law, but I changed my career to youth work and have never been happier working with children. Yes, we need to learn what a good relationship looks like and that ultimately starts with the relationship we have with ourselves.

We'll take up the tragic cases of unimaginative workaholics in another thread — Bitter Crank

Well why there are not many interesting things to do around, that's why work is so useful. I'd go so far as saying that most people would go insane if they did not have to work. I just notice most people around me - without work in their lives, they'd lose their minds and jump off a building. Work isn't only necessary for the economy, it's also a means of social control - to prevent people from going crazy.

Even though the entry level stuff was annoying at times, I enjoyed a sense of being on the way. My efforts were accumulating. I was paying off the house, not renting. — dog

Yeah, that's like me with entrepreneurship. I'm slowly growing and expanding, but I need a lot more capital than I have or could get in the next 1-2 years to do the things I really want to do. So I'm happy because I feel I'm on the right path and progressing, but on the other hand, I still can't do the work I really want to do. I do have a comfortable position for one person socially and financially now, but that's nothing when you want to grow a business. What is enough or more for a person is insufficient for a company.

In other words, you don't have a response to my argument, it looks like. — Noble Dust

I don't see your argument. There is no how to stopping to give a damn, just like there is no how to moving your legs. And if you stop giving a damn, your mental condition may improve - it helped me, as I said.

I don't see your argument. — Agustino

My argument is that your argument sucks. I'm sorry that you suffered from mental illness at one time; but I'm confident that there are shades of mental illness; and for you to assume that what worked for you will work for anyone, myself included, is incredibly naive and uncharitable.

There is no how to stopping to give a damn, just like there is no how to moving your legs. — Agustino

Horrible analogy; stop moving your legs by stopping their movement. That analogy says nothing about mental health.

Depression is a social disease. You get it when people humiliate, berate, and reject you It gets worse when you do not have a friend in the world. It is very bad when you are isolated in the solitary confinement of a crowd. When ten-damned-things-after-another hinder you from every side, and when you feel rejected and despised by all, eventually you are going to feel defeated and worthless. Want to make it worse still? Drink heavily, use recreational drugs to feel better for a little while, gamble for a short high (while you go broke and get something else to worry about). — Bitter Crank

Saying that depression is a social illness is not very helpful. Yes, of course Noble Dust will feel perfectly happy if you make him a world-renowned musician - that's trite! It's like saying that I'd be elated if I suddenly had 1 million dollars that I could properly invest - no wonder! Everyone already knows that. So yeah, if you want to put it that way, then depression is the result of not having your wants met, which is pretty much the normal state, since we always want more than we have usually.

The Cure is Change, and let me be the first to admit great difficulty achieving the kind of change that I really needed to make. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but change takes time. So do you recommend being depressed until that change takes place? :P

Horrible analogy; stop moving your legs by stopping their movement. — Noble Dust

Yeah, and you stop giving a damn, by stopping to give your attention to certain thoughts.

Yeah, and you stop giving a damn, by stopping to give your attention to certain thoughts. — Agustino

Wow, your first thoughtful contribution to this thread. Well done.

Wow, your first thoughtful contribution to this thread. Well done. — Noble Dust

Now will you ask me how do you stop giving your attention to certain thoughts? :P

Nah.

Nah. — Noble Dust

Ahhh finally! Enlightenment! :D

Perhaps a misinterpretation?...

The young man version involves a disgust at what life requires. The old man version (and I'm not that old) involves jadedness. — dog

Both lack any authentic relationship with the external world, that bond formed through genuine love. Most of what people form is really an infantile dependency that superficially attempts to covert this alienation by keeping them preoccupied, following and trying to be close to others and yet no matter how close they try to get, they always feel this sense of insecurity and a deep sense of anxiety because they feel - which is a form of knowing - that this alienation is not overcome. They become jaded, mechanical, and the continuity of their existence is almost entirely based on routine amusements as they passively consume to pass the time.

This brings to mind a quote from M. Eckhart: "If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus he is a great and righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally."

authentic relationship with the external world — TimeLine

I am authentically inauthentic :D

I was of the opinion that being mentally healthy (not being depressed being part of it) required a social life - family, friends, no/few enemies, etc. I think most people think this way.

However, there are examples, some great thinkers, writers, artists, even the average Joe, among them, who've lived solitary lives. In fact some of them actively avoided companionship. I don't think they complained of depression. How do such people cope with life? Why aren't they killig themselves?

I think the answer lies in a sense of purpose. If a person finds something that she's passionate about then that's all she needs to live a fulfilling life. She doesn't need friends or family or other social crutches.

Also, the world is generally presented as a depressing place. All religions have the common theme of a ''better place'' - heaven. Even if heaven isn't real the notion itself is evidence that our world is - to put it mildly - unsatisfactory.

Rationality is paramount. Homo sapiens = wise man. We're, ceteris paribus, rational animals.

Given we're rational AND there are plenty of good reasons to be depressed (old age, disease, poverty, war, hunger, etc.), I'd be more surprised if there was less depression in the world today.

The Cure is Change, and let me be the first to admit great difficulty achieving the kind of change that I really needed to make. — Bitter Crank

I was disappointed to hear the cure, but then not to hear the specifics. I'm not being sarcastic. You pointed out that unhappiness seems to be linked to being stuck with prior bad decisions, perhaps to be in a rut, to be living out a monotony. What specifically were the changes that freed your from your depression?

I've been situationally depressed from family deaths and personal life issues and things like that, but I have very fortunately not been subject to what I hear others describe, which is a depression that seems to linger, to have no specific cause, and therefore no specific solution. For that, I think people turn to drugs (Rx and otherwise) to help alleviate the pain because it's not clear what else to do. But I'm wondering if you're suggesting that the stimulation of variety is perhaps a solution to even long term depression..

Saddness is the way the Mind knows that change is needed in one's path.

Depression is the result of inability or willfulness not to change.

It's difficult because humans are mostly habit, so one must try to imagine an answer: change to what? I find the arts most helpful when trying in imagine an answer.

I was disappointed to hear the cure, but then not to hear the specifics. I'm not being sarcastic. You pointed out that unhappiness seems to be linked to being stuck with prior bad decisions, perhaps to be in a rut, to be living out a monotony. What specifically were the changes that freed your from your depression? — Hanover

Change cannot be a solution, since change requires time and effort right? So someone who is depressed generally, at least that was my experience when I was depressed, isn't willing to put in effort, and in any case cannot stop being depressed until that said change takes place per BC's hypothesis (which again requires time).

Also it's useful to note that unhappiness isn't the same as depression. I sometimes feel unhappy, because I feel there's a long way to go to reach my goals. But I'm not depressed since I have energy and drive to move towards my goal.

So depression, in my opinion, is eliminated by a contextual understanding and acceptance of the situation. But a degree of unhappiness remains if you aren't where you'd want to be. There is no way as such to eliminate that until you reach whatever goal you want to reach (and that may take even 20 years for some) - well there is, but I haven't managed to achieve it completely. It involves switching your perspective from being goal-oriented to being process-oriented. What happens then is that you're no longer concerned with whether you reach the goal or not, but rather with whether you are, at every single moment, doing what is in your power to do to get closer to the goal. I'm trying to function more by that process-oriented mindset, but not always succeeding.

What specifically were the changes that freed your from your depression? — Hanover

It was actually two events that one would normally classify as very negative that brought about the necessary change. The first was getting fired. While the job had been right up my alley, I had never worked in a place where the group dynamics of the staff were as negative as these were. Firing was salvation, in this case. Because of the recession, I received a year of unemployment compensation (twice the usual 6 months) at the end of which it was obvious to me I wasn't going to go back into the workforce. The second event was my partner's long illness and death, then grieving. Sometime in 2011, the two decades long depression lifted.

I was the recipient of these changes, not the author. Looking back, I was the author of several decisions that kept my life in the same rut -- such as the kinds of work that I sought out. There were self-defeating behaviors and some delusional ideas about life that made things worse. Retirement, and living alone, mooted a lot of that. I don't say "corrected" because some of these delusions about life are still kicking -- like unrealistic expectations, erroneous ideas about work, economic organization, social dynamics, and so on.

Change is the solution, but I wasn't very successful in engineering the kinds of changes that would have led to better outcomes. There were times before I settled on "depression" as the problem that I seemed to be trapped inside a self-referential bubble where "reality" just didn't penetrate. Then there were times I was totally realistic and highly productive. I tried, but couldn't develop sufficient self-insight to avoid ending up in the ditch again.

So, I still recommend making "the right changes", whatever those might be. But if one is lost in the forest, it's going to be tough finding the right changes to make.

Anti-depressants might help one cope, but they are not a cure. The idea that antidepressants will cure depression is probably a dead end.

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But what of the Stoics and Cynics? Surely their indifference isn't apathetic yet liberating.

Anti-depressants might help one cope, but they are not a cure. The idea that antidepressants will cure depression is probably a dead end. — Bitter Crank

Eh. While I agree there's more to curing depression than anti-depressants, I don't think this is right either. Anti-depressants work for some people. How do we know? We can ask them, and they say so.

I don't think there is a Cure to depression, but cures. Descriptions of depression vary widely from person to person. They're grouped thematically, but we don't understand the mechanism of depression terribly well -- in part because we don't understand the mind terribly well. I think the safest inference here is to treat "depression" as a term which references a wide range of mechanisms, though symptoms are thematically similar to an observer. If that be true then there simply isn't a Cure, because "depression" references a multiplicity of possible mechanisms at play.

Which is why I'd say the golden standard for evaluating whether a cure is working or not is not double-blind analyses of groups, but rather what a patient says about their condition given x, y, and z.

just STOP IT! — Agustino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BjKS1-vjPs

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I agree with much said here. I have noticed two types of love, the first being a neediness, a possessiveness, something filled with expectation and obligation, something that is measured, scored, and constantly being tested and evaluated. It's critical, demanding, and corrected by retaliation, manipulation, and withholding of affection. It is a type of love that seems to me to bring nothing but misery to both parties, yet I see people cling tightly to such relationships, I guess for fear that they might have to eat their lunch all by themselves.

The other is altruistic, accepting, caring, and to a point unconditional, causing tremendous vulnerability. It is the love a parent (a good parent that is) has for his or her child, and if it can be extended to another person, the rewards are limitless. Consistent with that personality profile would be someone who is likely involved in service projects, volunteerism, and who watches out for strangers. I don't know, but there's a clear distinction between the two. And I don't pretend that this altruistic profile is masochistic or involves self-suffering at the expense of other's happiness. It is in fact the source of happiness and contentment, meaning that selfishness ironically is one of the surest paths to self-destruction.

I stated in another post that I believe a significant amount of unhappiness is caused by bad parenting, and I really believe that. I think we have kids out there who really don't know what real love is, having never experienced it, but instead being bounced between mom and dad and watching and hearing their hatred towards one another. Of course, mom and dad probably know no better either.

We live in a society that has automated and systematized most jobs, so that the average person is relegated to mindlessly pushing buttons and being measured against some standard, never being motivated by a manager, but instead only being audited by him with productivity charts and graphs. And when he or she arrives home, he or she is measured by his or her spouse against the time of arrival versus the time of expected arrival and perhaps against all sorts of other metrics. Obviously, should both know true love, the failure to live up to the various concrete standards wouldn't be of as much concern as would be the concern for the other's suffering. That is to say, I never needed a reminder to feed my child, and I never asked myself whether his contributions warranted his being fed, nor did worry about whose turn it was to feed him, or whether I fed him disproportionately. My only concern would be that he not be hungry. Should I feel my contributions were significantly greater than my spouse's, it wouldn't be anger that I felt in having the excessive workload, but it would be concern of her lack of concern over me and our child, which would be a signal of her lack of love, or perhaps worse, that she is of the former type I described that does not know what love is.

>:O excellent therapy! (Y)

Do you get tired of living?
The answer to that is based on your conclusions, no one gives a d*** . So tell me again, why do I want to stay alive?

If one is lonely or hurting, something is missing in that person's life. Refusing to acknowledge it will lead to death, just as ignoring the discomfort of strenuous exercise or hunger will lead to death if nothing is done to change it. A little discomfort is good to build endurance and patience, but so much will not build anything, but take what little you had before. Hence, a continuation in the state of not caring will eventually lead to an eternal solution.

I agree! It's funny...the skit is obviously meant as a joke, but in reality it's very good advice in many cases. We have much more control over our own minds than society would have us believe.

Do you get tired of living? — Lone Wolf

Yes, so then you sleep :D

So tell me again, why do I want to stay alive? — Lone Wolf

It's the default position. I find myself being alive. It would take work to change this, and there is no hurry, death is coming anyway.

If one is lonely or hurting, something is missing in that person's life. Refusing to acknowledge it will lead to death, just as ignoring the discomfort of strenuous exercise or hunger will lead to death if nothing is done to change it. — Lone Wolf

Yeah, that might be the case, in which case the person ought to identify what is missing - if anything - and then identify if they can do something about it, and then if they can, and it's not an immoral thing, they ought to try to do it. But without being attached to the outcome.

It's funny. I hadn't been following this discussion but I have a lot of experience with depression and unhappiness. I thought I might have something to offer, so I read through all the posts. As I read, there were lots of places where I thought my experiences might be relevant. I especially like @Agustino's "Just snap out of it" recommendation. Finally, I decided not to participate in any detailed way.

As I read, I was struck by the tone of the discussion. I don't think I've read another thread on this forum where people were more definitive about what they believe and dismissive about what they don't. I think that probably comes from the fact that a lot of us have intimate knowledge of depression and the kinds of ways of addressing it that work and don't work for us. We've sweat and bled for a long time, many of us decades. We have a lot at stake in believing that we know the right way to deal with something that has damaged our lives.

As I read, I was struck by the tone of the discussion. I don't think I've read another thread on this forum where people were more definitive about what they believe and dismissive about what they don't. — T Clark

I know I'm fairly new here, but in my experience this has been pretty commonplace.

I especially like Agustino's "Just snap out of it" recommendation. — T Clark

I take it you're being facetious here? Or did I read that wrong?

We can only speak to our own experiences when it comes to this sort of thing, and there are those of us (myself included) who have found that mental/emotional/psychological distress doesn't have as much power over us as it often seems. I've have had these realizations where something is upsetting me or causing me anxiety or stress, or I'm feeling very down and hopeless about life or whatever it may be, and I realize that all I have to do is change my attitude. Nothing can harm you unless you allow it to, and everything is a matter of perspective. By changing your perspective, you change your reality.

This is all a product of my study and love for Stoicism and Taoism, but in practice I have found these things to be extremely helpful and they have contributed to my overall happiness and well-being. I also do believe that, barring severe chemical imbalances (aka clinical depression or other real mental illnesses), everybody can benefit from these concepts just as I have.

I don't know about others here, but I don't use the terms "depression" and "clinical depression" interchangeably, they are two very different things. We all have experience with depression, but not everyone has experience with clinical depression, and that isn't an easy fix by any means. You cannot will yourself into curing true mental illness, as far as I am aware.

Yes, so then you sleep :D — Agustino

Sure, but unfortunately, one cannot sleep 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

It's the default position. I find myself being alive. It would take work to change this, and there is no hurry, death is coming anyway. — Agustino

Why should I want to stay alive? There is a difference between wanting life and merely tolerating one's existence. So what reason do I have to live? If death is coming anyway, why not hasten it with a little work?

Yeah, that might be the case, in which case the person ought to identify what is missing - if anything - and then identify if they can do something about it, and then if they can, and it's not an immoral thing, they ought to try to do it. But without being attached to the outcome. — Agustino

And if how should one identify what is missing?
Being attached to outcomes is human nature. If one puts in effort in a relationship, then that demonstrates an attachment. You will be hurt if the other person suddenly decides to leave without explanation unless you are not human. If you spend your entire life working towards a goal but see no progress nor any signs that you are making the world a better place, then you will die with regrets because you have developed an attachment. Without attachments, one has no reason to work towards anything nor to do anything. If one does not care about the outcome, then why bother to put any effort into anything? If you have no attachments, then you have no purpose.