yes, I think just knowing patterns that we feel and being able to mention them can be a help. And OK, I get a sense of what you are doing.
There is no viable me without āthe rest of the world.ā How you interact with such relationships as I-thou, I-him/her/they or I-it gives you a sense of personal identity. There is no isolate self. What you are learning is leading you into healthy relationships with what is Other. In short, there is no sense of personal identity without the experiences of relationships.
my main battleground is with myselfā¦how am i livingā¦what to doā¦am i happy with myselfā¦am i gaining pleasure and avoiding painā¦am i being rationalā¦how about guiltā¦i continue to check if i am hurting myselfā¦
Everyone who has a modicum of intelligenceās battlefield is themselves. I think ignorance is bliss is not a phrase thrown around, because it is specious, but a phrase that anyone with any intelligence understands only too well.
Human beings who have high intelligence tend to think too much, what stops them from throwing themselves under a train is realising all thought is valuable, no matter how negative. You learn eventually to evaluate the bad things and good things appropriately. Well you do if youāre going to live, although I do not begrudge anyone suicide the world is depressing place, and thereās only one way of dealing with it and that is your own.
There is no enemy that can harm me more than I can harm me. Enemies can curse me or beat me, but I have to agree that their hatred of me is justified.
The Wiccan curse is to wish someone on themselves.
In one of Faulknerās novels a woman laments, āWhy call it past when it has not even passed?ā The past is present in our lives. Itās only an interpretation of this past that can become toxic mentally. You are your history.
Iām currently reading Candice Pertās āMolecules of Emotionā (1997) while trying to locate her 2006 work. Will report back anything there about depression worth posting.
(Pert 1997), the key paragraph concerning her theories:
āIf we accept the idea that peptides and other informational substances are the biochemicals of emotion, their distribution in the bodyās nerves has all kinds of significance, which Sigmund Freud, were he alive today, would gleefully point out as the molecular confirmation of his theories. The body is the unconscious mind! Repressed traumas caused by overwhelming emotion can be stored in a body part, thereafter affecting our ability to feel that part or even move it. The new work suggests there are almost infinite pathways for the conscious mind to accessāand modifyāthe unconscious mind and the body, and also provides an explanation for a number of phenomena that emotional theorists have been considering.ā (P. 141).
at present i am not depressedā¦
i am sad and unhappy at what i see in the worldā¦
to me that is not human depressionā¦
Right. Thatās a positive sadness, not depression. So, are you puzzled about what can be done to make this a better world for all inhabitants? My generation, although plush with altruistic ideas, didnāt do it. It fell back into economic inequalities.
the only thing left for me is the golden rule and home defenseā¦
i would hope for a non-violent revolution and i mean non-violentā¦
I love this thread :group-hug:
I havenāt studied the physiology of the human brain extensively but from what Iāve seen most typical depression problems are not difficult to overcome. What is difficult is learning not to dwell in what a person thinks theyāve earned. People believe they deserve to feel bad about their circumstance so it is self-pity. Itās very crazy to believe people donnot comprehend thereās really nothing to be depressed aboutā¦ and so many seem to think thatās the root-cause of their or othersā depressions.
homoestasis=mamimum funtioning of internal systems
feedback loop=communications among internal systems and among internal and external systems
I was convinced before I read Dr. Pert that on a surface level depression amounts to anger or frustration turned inward and that on a visceral level it implies malfunction in some informational feedback loops in the mind/body interface. Like pain, depression indicates some informational confusion. In the genetic/epigenetic/somatic informational interchanges homeostasis gives one a range of feelings from that of well-being to that of ecstasy.
Medication therapy is limited to the somatic functions. Talk therapy is limited to āmentalā functions. IMHO a combination of both would be a reasonable antidote for depression. The combination cannot undo genetic flukes; but, it can work within epigenetic and neuroplastic informational routes to find alternatives paths to homeostasis.
Questions a depressed person might askā
- Am I satisfied with how my life is developing?
- Am I being fulfilled in what I think or do?
- Am I having unrealistic expectations of what my life āoughtā to be like?
How would you answer them?
- When you are depressed
- When you arenāt.
Yeah. To me these questions are perfectly normal. Then again, Iām depressed.
Make a sentence out of nail, the, on,hit, head, the, youāve, the.
Hence you have to understand the difference between being depressed and being ānormalā. Man thatās no easy task. 
One way to look at a portion of depression is that logic is meaningless by itself. One can logically take oneself down into hell on the same day - if you are cycling fast and are bipolar - that you can logically shoot yourself up into heaven. I see this kind of thing happening all over the forums here, where people string together stuff that seems logical and may even be logical, but is, to my best knowledge, wrong. Without a connected intuition logic is just math. Depressives have reasons for feeling bad, adn these often make perfect sense. But, at the same time, a more optimistic attitude, filled with energy and activity, would also make perfect sense. I think we all, not just depressives, need to really question how much logic is worth and how much guarantee if offer that the conclusions it leads are worth anything.
There are a lot of people, many who get interested in philosophy or science, who think that they are rational and that all beliefs and conclusions can be reached via logical means. Via reason. But if you actually look, phenomenologically, at reason, you will find all sorts of non-rational processes - determinations of the scope of words, applicability of certain assertions, accuracy of categories, applicability of deduction to the matter at hand, liklihood that one actually knows all the options, intuition that one has focused on the particular step sufficiently and on and on.
A depressed person can start a serious of assertions - I am still single, I am lonely, I should not have left college when I did - and use these assertions in a logical downward spiral set of thinking that totally guts them and leaves them lying on the bed paralyzed. And their thinking can in fact be absolutely rational. But it can also be wrong at the same time. Choosing another set of true assertions or adding a differently quite potentially true perspective another logical conclusion can be reached.
Cognitive therapies often go at depressed thinking, pointing out fallacies, etc. Adn this can be helpful. But it is also true that quite rational thinking can lead to depression. This does not mean it is right.
The depressed person may think in a depressed way and then try to replace this with ābetterā thinking. Fine if it works. But perhaps the depressed person is not noticed that they do not dare to be in the world - socially, physically, professionally, emotionally - the way they actually would be most themselves.
We will often come up with any reasoning, logical if possible, to prevent ourselves from being ourselves, because we are sure being who we are is evil, wrong, will lead to death - donāt assume this melodramatic fear isnāt in there somewhere - loss of love, loss of work and so on.
So the depressed person aims a lot of energy and judgement at themselves. They turn inward what, if turned outward, seems like it must lead to an even worse life than the depressed life.
I think logic is often much more of an enemy than is commonly thought, especially by people who see themselves as the torch bearers of reason, but also by depressed people.
Please stop this vagueness. Depression is not knowing or trusting your values, hence not being able to move toward them. Its caused by adopting āfalseā values, ideals alien to what you are, towards which you can not move, disabling you to ābe aliveā. All societies/families/moralities prescribing (narrow sets of) values are depression-machines.
As people become depressed they get accustomed to it and seem to begin to like it. Depressive people are often proud of their depression. Itās a reason for others to worry over (= care for = value) them.
It is wanting for what you canāt have
ā¦and realizing it.
It is embraced due to not wanting to give up on what you want.