The Curse of the Strong

[sabotabby]

pofflewomp linked me to Depression: Curse of the Strong, which is a good, plain-language discussion of what clinical depression is. (Irritating website alert, though; turn your speakers off.) It cuts right to the heart of the bootstrapping, pull-your-self-together advice that you get all the time if you have any sort of mental illness, and for that alone, I felt that it deserves a signal boost.

When you think about it, it is not surprising. If a weak, cynical or lazy person is put under pressure and suffers a set of stresses, he will immediately give up, so he never gets stressed enough to become ill. On the contrary, if the strong type I have described is put under stress, he will go on and on and on, constantly striving, way beyond the point that the body (or more specifically the limbic system) is designed for. Eventually the wheels begin to fall off and symptoms appear. At this point the averagely strong person with a solid self-esteem will stop and say something like, ~'Hang on, this is silly, I'm making myself ill, others are going to have to pitch in and take some of the strain". So he pulls back a bit and thus avoids illness.
...

That is what this condition is - a blown fuse. In my view, understanding this is crucial.


So, what do you do? Well, the first and most crucial action is to stop fighting it, give in. This of course is anathema to the sort of person who finds himself in this awful state. After all, he has overcome every other difficulty or challenge he has faced in his life by effort and diligence, to give in is unthinkable. In any case, all his friends and even loving family will be offering their homespun wisdom : "Go on, pull yourself together, get more interests, get yourself out more, get more friends, come and have a party."

I can guarantee, if you take this advice, you will get worse.

Anyway, have a read.

Comments

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

If anything you need less stuff in your life, keeping oneself busy isn't exactly a cure.

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

You know the more I think about this the more I think the main problem is that people don't understand there is a difference between Depression and Being Sad. I often get Being Sad and doing lots of shit to fill my time and distract me is the perfect cure, Depression on the other hand doesn't seem to work like that. I have thankfully never been Depressed, I have been depressed with a lower case but not in a long term clinically diagnosed way. It seems Depression is one of those illnesses one needs to have to actually understand and give real advice about. It's like telling someone with chicken pox not to scratch, you don't understand how bad it is unless you've had it.
Also if you misspell clinical it suggest rabbinical as a possibility which has nothing to do with this but I thought it was funny to say rabbinically depressed.

You're right, many people don't get the difference

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I Get Sad. Yeah, sometimes filling my time or talking to friends distracts me out of it. Sometimes I just want to Turn My Brain Off for a while (computer solitaire sometimes works if my hands feel okay; certain kinky activities are more reliable but haven't been an option recently). And sometimes it's just a matter of waiting it out -- or going to sleep and expecting to feel different when I wake up.

But yeah, agreed, Depression doesn't work like that. You're still depressed when you wake up, or when your friends go home, and initiating any of the distractions yourself can be difficult nigh impossible in the first place.

(And then, of course, there's fatigue from long-lasting physical pain, and the frustration of being in too much pain to go out and have fun, which (a) other people often mistake for either Depression or Being Sad and try to suggest "solutions" based on their misinterpretation, and (b) can wind up causing depression, just to complicate matters. But I digress.)

For some Depressed people, maintaining social activity is important to avoid having isolation feed a vicious cycle ... but that's just to try to keep things from getting even worse; it doesn't magically cure 'em, AFAICT. (And yes, I can certainly see -- quite clearly -- how for others, the stress of preparing to be social can be too much for an already overloaded psyche, and even worse than the isolation.)

Now the last few times I've been Depressed, I have had an easy, magic-bullet solution (just stop taking the meds that were making me depressed -- that class of meds is now listed as an "allergy" in my records), but it's almost never that easy. And even then, it was a week before I was myself again.

Re: You're right, many people don't get the difference

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

But yeah, agreed, Depression doesn't work like that. You're still depressed when you wake up, or when your friends go home, and initiating any of the distractions yourself can be difficult nigh impossible in the first place.

(And then, of course, there's fatigue from long-lasting physical pain, and the frustration of being in too much pain to go out and have fun, which (a) other people often mistake for either Depression or Being Sad and try to suggest "solutions" based on their misinterpretation, and (b) can wind up causing depression, just to complicate matters. But I digress.)

For some Depressed people, maintaining social activity is important to avoid having isolation feed a vicious cycle ... but that's just to try to keep things from getting even worse; it doesn't magically cure 'em, AFAICT. (And yes, I can certainly see -- quite clearly -- how for others, the stress of preparing to be social can be too much for an already overloaded psyche, and even worse than the isolation.)
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*DING-DING-DING-DIIING*!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Word.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. I'll have to think about this for a bit.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

sounds about right, from what i've seen.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

i dont have the option of not being strong. i give into it, i wind up on the street.

me, i just distract myself with as much bullshit as possible. the internet, video games, tv, booze.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed that about the article too. The example he uses of one his patients is somebody with three kids in private school. For most of the people I know, the options aren't "private school or public school". It's "pay the rent or tell the kids they're going to be living with their dad 'cause mom has to move to a shelter".

[ebourland.livejournal.com]

>>deserves a signal boost

It does then. Thank you.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I've never heard it put like that before but that's exactly what happened to me.

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

Yes. To. Everything.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

It's not just the neurotransmitters either. You look in the amygdala and the cells are all fucked up - stripped and worn. There's some evidence that bathing in excess neurotransmitters helps them heal - maybe even bathing in the antidepressants themselves. This may be why there is a delay between the uptake of the antidepressants - almost immediate - and the relief of symptoms, which can take weeks.

I'm a skeptic of cognitive therapy because I think it rests on a false premise - that the key is to relieve cognitive distortions. I haven't found this to be so, because I find that the world seen without cognitive distortion is even worse. Freud thought that a healthy ignorance of the true nature of the world, or a healthy illusion, was the key to what he called 'common everyday unhappiness,' which he saw as the goal of treatment - the relief of hysterical fulminant misery.

[ironed_orchid]

Good article. Thanks for linking.