Depressive Surrealism

[citrakayah]

My relation to depression is... a little weird. I have had it, I am pretty sure, for over a decade. Certainly I've had the symptoms and was on medication for most of my childhood. I eventually stopped taking it, though, because it simply wasn't doing anything. And I seemed to be managing it--I was depressed, sure, but not so much that I couldn't function. There was no real risk I'd harm myself; self-harm seems to be something that I'm not really psychologically capable of. At least, not under any conditions I'm familiar with.

So pills didn't work, and therapy didn't work. So I just kind of did... nothing. Which was honestly kind of practical. My depression is worse when I'm actively thinking, and if I'm busy keeping an eye on birds, or removing invasive species, it's difficult to be depressed.

As a side note, I think that fed into my problems with distractibility. If you're splitting your attention three ways and passively reading things, you don't feel much of anything.

And as time went on, depression seemed to actually be something of a benefit. I saw people, over and over again, fall into utopian or otherwise overly hopeful thinking. They overestimated their own capabilities. They thought this new piece of technology they read about in Wired or heard about on Reddit would Save The World. I didn't fall into those cognitive traps (at least, when I noticed other people falling into them), and I knew about the hypothesis of depressive realism. It seemed plausible, so I concluded that my depression was at least part of what kept me from falling for it. Or, alternatively, my depression was the result of not falling for it. Sure, I was miserable, but you know, who wouldn't be? Open a newspaper.

But as time's gone on, it's gotten more and more grating. Because as part of it, or related to it, or something, I seem to just... keep going. Not in the sense of having emotional and mental endurance, though I think I do, but in the sense of being stuck in this rut and never getting out of it. And it feels like the sides just keep getting deeper as the environmental situation gets worse, and the communities I care about wither and die, and I lose opportunities to do stuff I would have enjoyed because I can't be assed to do them.

More importantly, I'm starting to question whether or not my worldview is really more accurate. Perhaps depression overcorrects, and makes me overly cynical about the state of the world--and about other people. Maybe I'm dismissing some things because of it that I shouldn't be.

Comments

[elinox]

Would you say your depression, and how you manage it, is under control? It seems to me, in reading this, that it is. But I wondered how you felt about it.

[citrakayah]

I'm functional. And usually it's there but not that intense. On occasion it spikes, for lack of a better term, and that's pretty miserable but it usually doesn't last that long.

So I'd say yeah, it is. And that might be as good as it ever gets, but it still kind of sucks.

[cobaltdrgn]

I've been there. It seems natural to want to correct back to a neutral point, of neither optimism nor pessimism. Certainly this is one of the less pleasant times to exist in, as if dinosaurs had observed meteors coming from them and knew what they were. I don't think it's irrational to accept that.

But on the other, we have power, up until the very last. Because the only way this continues is by them insisting they have power and us saying yes. If even just an unusually large, but small (say, 10%) of the population moved in a more progressive direction, conservatives would be hosed, and we'd be electing people who'd be listening to progress. Protest theory proves that.

We are powerless (where we wish to be powerful), and have ultimate power (where it matters). That's what I get from my worldview, and after many years of alternating depression and medication (I'm 36), I think it seems pretty balanced.

[cobaltdrgn]

Basically: it's okay to cry and weep over the destruction of things precious. It's okay to simply sit with the bedrock of society and say, yeah, you sucketh.

It's also okay to have hope. But you've probably been told that. It's hard to know which messages someone has been over-bombarded with, when the ultimate message should be: it's okay.

[citrakayah]

I haven't, really. My depression isn't something I speak of often.

Thank you for your words.