I definitely support those who suggest being pro-active. To paraphrase Gandhi: be the good news that you want to see in the world.
Dude. You sound like me about 4 years ago. Here’s a question… Are you sure you don’t actually suffer from depression? I don’t mean ‘I’m unhappy’ (which is what 99% of people who have never suffered from depression think it is about. It’s not, its a brain chemical imbalance). I used to suffer from what they call ‘anxious depression’ which is not the same as the manic depression that’s so popular with celebs, but is way more like the exact feelings you describe. Most people who do suffer from it think (as I did) that they are fine, and that they feel this way because the world really is so fucked up, and if anyone is ill it’s everyone else who is just too fucking numb to the facts. The truth is, you are getting into an over-reactive downward spiral and seeing things totally out of proportion, but you can’t see it that way. If you are well educated and reasonable, it’s even harder to see anything is wrong, because your thoughts and emotions seem perfectly justified.
If you have the same thing I have, you can actually be cured of it! In my case this involved about a year on some god awful drugs that made me want to vomit all the time, but hey, I’d never go back, and once they had kicked in, my own serotonin levels lept up there where they should have been all along. We all like to think that the way we feel about the world is based on rational thought and emotion, but the brain is a physical thing and massively affected by chemical imbalances, just drink a bottle of vodka to see how your world view changes under chemical alteration.
I’m sure I’ll get grief for posting this too, but knowing what I know now, I would hate for someone to put up with the same thing for a few more years because nobody ever told them what might be wrong. I had it for maybe 8 years before a doctor diagnosed me. Looking back, I don’t know how the fuck I didn’t kill someone or jump off a bridge during that time.
I second cliffski’s recommendation. Find a good psych and see if its one of those chronic mild depression cases of Dysthymia. The worse case scenario is that it is and you might have to go through some cognitive therapy and maybe some drugs.
The best case is that you realize that you aren’t really depresses and it’s a passing phase. The world will still suck, but you will feel better about yourself and might even do something productive and constructive so the immediate world around you doesn’t suck.
Thanks everyone for the constructive suggestions.
It does make sense to be more proactive with stuff like volunteer work. Too often a person simply blames all the crap mentioned hitherto on everything around us except for ourselves. At least engaging in something like that and realizing that others are too would provide some proof as to the inherent goodness of humans, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
I guess making a gym schedule and reading would be great diversions too. I definitely don’t do enough of those. Time to dig up my favorite high school texts: Animal Farm (although this might not be the ideal choice for this particular endeavour!) and To Kill a Mockingbird. Aside from the occasional Shakespeare or Dickens or excerpts from random books I don’t remember, I read a lot of young adult fiction (which, in retrospect, was moronic literature). Either way, they’re great starts.
Cliffski:
It’s an interesting suggestion - I’ll look into it but I personally wouldn’t classify myself as having “depression”. My life doesn’t suck on a personal level, I’m doing fine financially, I’m enjoying college, etc. But this shit weighs me down because I’m bombarded with the stark reality every day that people do so much horrific shit to other people (whether mentally or by physically hurting them) on such a large scale that the situation appears completely hopeless.
Sure the media focuses on the events rather than the non-events, and that obviously has to do with the media being sensational, but at the same time the billions of people going about their lives normally and being good people are often outweighed by senseless violence on a much larger scale (relative to the individual symbolic acts of kindness) around the world. I think Einstein made a statement that went something like “our technology has finally surpassed our humanity,” and I really believe that to be the case, perhaps in a different way than Einstein intended the phrase. Our capacity for inflicting suffering on others and lying on a magnificent scale are quite far away from the ideal of the inherent goodness of humanity.
As for the suggestion of political activism, I’ve become so disillusioned with the political process (here and elsewhere) that I believe it is hopelessly corrupt and would rather have nothing to do with it.
Now by actually working on some of the suggestions above I’m hoping to reverse this belief, although I doubt it will be a quick change.
Oh and NoWayJose, congratulations sir on being the first troll to grace my ignore list.
Just to expand on an earlier point, although the media will tend to overemphasize the doomsday scenarios, they need the tragedies to actually occur to begin with, and the shitty thing is there is no shortage of those.
I deal with those feelings a lot, too. The only part of astrology that’s ever resonated with me is when someone explained to me that Aquarius as the “water bearer” means that I tend to carry the weight of the world. Of course astrology is bullshit, but as a metaphor it felt familiar.
Lots of good advice above, but I would add one thing. When you grow up in a supportive environment - or watch a lot of positive children’s television - you are often presented with paragons who “single-handedly changed the world.” It’s good to remember that most people never change the world in huge, sweeping ways. (And those that do rarely do it alone.) It’s too subtle of a point to be taught to kids so I’m not advocating sing-a-longs of “Dust in the Wind” on Sesame Street, but as an adult try to remember that you’re just one person in several billion, and while it’s great if you could fix the world’s ills, even if you just improve the world around you in tiny ways, you’re still leaving the world in better shape than you found it.
And while I didn’t mean this to sound like a lead-in to a sales pitch, have you ever checked out microloan programs like http://kiva.org ? I put about $750 into Kiva last year and have gotten it all back, but in the process helped a few people in the developing world start their own businesses. It’s so much better than black-hole charity, especially when you feel like you’re setting someone up to take care of themselves. I had to take my loan money out of the system earlier this year because I was broke, but now that I’m working steady again getting some more money back in there is one of my highest priorities. The feeling I got when I’d get a little personal update note about someone’s business taking off was amazing.
I know what your saying, that’s why I thought I didn’t have it either. But in fact, depression has nothing to do with being dissatisfied or uspet with your life. it a weird illness, and its worst curse is it’s name, which makes people totally mis-understand it.
Stephen Fry and Adam Ant (80s pop star) are too very high profile examples of depression sufferers. So is the UK TV gardener Monty Don. None of these 3 were dead beats with no money and a crap career, in fact all 3 were very well off despite suffering from it, they also seemed fun, amiable and to be doing well. When I had it really bad, I was working as an IT consultant doing bugger all work for buckets of money, I was married, had a great career and lots of cash.
You can actually seem to have a great life, and still suffer from depression, it’s just a bad luck, roll-of-the-dice chemical thing. I watched a program about adam ant and what happened to him, and one of the band hassled him when he was diagnosed, saying “what have you got to be depressed about, your a millionaire and all the girls want to sleep with you.”, and he finally got to understand that the guy wasn’t depressed ‘about’ anything, it just doesn’t work that way.
The thing is, I’m not sure there’s really a medical test for it, other than talking to a therapist. I was very sceptical until the drugs kicked in, and I realised why everyone else seemed so much happier about the world than me. Looking back on how I used to feel sometimes seems weird, and embarrasing.
I should also point out that we aren’t talking brain-numbing stepford wives style drugs here. I still feel the same way about political events and the way the world is, but it doesn’t actually physically affect me and bring me down beyond the point of where it rationally should.
You could also try reading up on NLP. There is a big part of NLP which allows you to directly control your emotional state. That’s a pretty awesome skill to have.
Joel how long did it take for you to get an update from kiva? I put a little cash in, but never got any email from them whatsoever (although the money went). I presume they only notify you when it’s paid back?
Yeah, you only get updates when someone updates their page, either with a progress report or a loan payback. But you can see all your investments on your “Portfolio” page.
I realized I had a few extra bucks lying around that I could put back into the system, too, so after writing the above post I joined back in. Be sure to diversify! If you look at the historical default rate across all the loans it’s very, very low – 0.23%, I believe – but there are a few of the on-the-ground organizations that have bad rates. (50% or worse, although you can also see that Kiva stopped giving them more money.)
Update: I did get emails from them about my payments via Paypal, though. You should get that, at least.
Thanks for all the info there Cliffski, it’s incredibly hopeful, and I’ll certainly look to get that particular angle sorted with a therapist.
Joel:
That sounds like a great site, thanks so much for the tip. Your point about the children’s cartoons is dead-on as well. And it’s a really good argument for being proactive in one’s own way - it doesn’t belittle efforts in one’s own circle to improve things, even if those individual actions don’t seem like a big deal on a global scale.
Kareem, I’m a psychiatrist.
I often meet people who feel like you do. Some of them really suffer from depression (which, as cliffski said, is a really bad name), but many of them can be dismissed pretty quickly, without any kind of treatment. I think cliffski has some very valuable insights and valid points. His story is also fairly representative of the usual course a (mild-)moderate major depressive episode. The main thing to remember is that there is a light at the end of that tunnel, even if it can be hard to see at times.
Many of the suggestions in this thread are good, and I think you should try out the ones you like. As an extra help, try to write down, diary-style, exactly what you do and how you felt before and after. Stuff that feels trivial today might feel differently in a few days and vice versa. Your memory is a not a static thing, so having stuff in writing can be a great help.
If that helps, terriffic, problem solved.
If that doesn’t help, don’t be discouraged. It is not a sign of your own shortcomings. It’s simply an indication that you might need some help.
If the problem persists, seek professional help. Even if it might feel like a huge step, it’s really not worse than seeing your doctor for a cough that just won’t go away. Often you’ll be dismissed and told that it’ll go away, but sometimes the problem, be it a cough or a depression, can require monitoring or treatment.
Good luck.
Well that’s the thread folks.
The only thing I’m ashamed about is falling for your bait.
Kareem, I feel the same way. I usually check out the news before I do anything else during the day, and by the time I’m done reading I’m depressed. I wish success wasn’t equated to money.
Just change mentalities to the republican (American political party) credo. Fuck the world, fuck everyone else, don’t care, and look out for yourself.
Hey, the Republicans seem happy and have no pent up issues, it’s got to work, right?
WRONG!!!
This is truly your depression talking. There is no rational way to justify this claim. If this were in fact true – if violence literally outweighed the billions of daily acts of kindness (which are entirely non-symbolic, there is NOTHING symbolic about genuine kindness), then we would all be dead or dying already!
For fuck’s sake, man, just count the number of people who experience violence each day relative to the number of people who don’t. There are VASTLY more peaceful people in the world than violent people.
The above conviction of yours – that you seem to think is grounded in objective rationality – is in fact an irrational belief that is a symptom of your depressive thinking. You need to seriously question that belief, and its effect on you and your life. You may think that it’s just a bland fact, but it’s not – it’s weighing you down and causing you to doubt whether life is worth living. And it’s not even close to being fucking true! So stop it – your life may well depend on it. (And God knows the more people who think like that, the worse off everyone is!)
Alright, that one was insulting, so I’ma pop out my ‘‘goodness to humanity’’ epeen. I’ve got a good thousand hours logged (far more than what was required for Eagle) in community service. Hell, I’ve even spent Thanksgivings and Christmasses at soup kitchens, grinding up discount salami and mixing it into my special sauce of horseradish and mustard (for sandwiches… it isn’t that bad, but it makes me glad I’m a veg). I’ve done everything from cleaning up other people’s crap in public parks to organizing and running a blood drive or three. I spent this summer in Pennsylvania helping my brother with his own Eagle Project: setting up a mini golf course for disadvantaged kids from Philly at a free camp.
If I advocate a flip solution, it’s because I firmly believe that people posting their problems on the internet aren’t really looking for The Truth – they’re looking for some entertainment. The real cure to this sort of problem is simple as hell: turn off the damn computer and volunteer to help your fellow man.
Yeah, come on. “I’m so depressed I don’t know what to do, so I’m gonna log on to Qt3 and see if they have any ideas.”
I’m still in the porn camp. For me, dumb TV sitcoms seem to do a great job of numbing my mind whenever things start to get a little hairy. If I can veg for an hour or two in front of the tube, I’m usually good to go (to sleep). I imagine porn would do the same.
But I’m also wondering about porn in Dubai. Can you get it there? I mean, yes, I know you can find it online, but can you pop into the local 7-11 and ask Harold Winthrop III behind the counter (see my little joke??) if he has the latest copy of Barely Legal? Or is it not even barely?
Explain how I baited you into accusing me of trying to trick Kareem into a charity scheme where I skim 25% of the donated money.
Explain how I baited you into accusing me of trying to trick Kareem into joining the Peace Corps so he can “build mud huts.”
Explain how I baited you into asking how hard it was for us to just be happy we aren’t the ones getting murdered, and move on.
Explain, you rotten little pile.
^-- The man speaks the truth, and he is not overstating the case. Proof: The fact that you and almost everyone you know will walk down the street in broad daylight today and live to tell the tale.
NoWayJose,
If the guy’s posting about it instead of doing something about it, that would also be a symptom of depression. Because the tough thing about depression is the very nature of the disease keeps one from doing something about it.
Kareem,
There is no shame in seeking professional help. It can’t be any worse than what you’re going through now, can it?