Starting to understand
Article in Psych Today is at least starting to understand depression, but still missing the solution.

Now, models like the Polyvagal Theory suggest that we’ve got it backward. It’s the body that detects danger and initiates a defense strategy meant to help us survive. That biological strategy is called immobilization, and it manifests in the mind and the body with a set of symptoms we call depression.

When we think of depression as irrational and unnecessary suffering, we stigmatize people and rob them of hope. But when we begin to understand that depression, at least initially, happens for a good reason we lift the shame. People with depression are courageous survivors, not damaged invalids.

Well, you don't need any theories. You just need to observe reality without preconceptions.

Depression comes from misplaced expectations. You try everything available and everything advised, and nothing achieves your expected and predicted goal.

The solution is to alter the expectation so it conforms to reality.

In modern Western "culture", ever since the Endarkenment of the 1700s but worst since 1960, genes are heresy. Everyone can be popular and successful if they TRY hard enough and use the right PRODUCTS and follow the right ADVICE.

All of the available ADVICE is based on the completely destructive lies about "rights" and "meritocracy". Genes don't exist. Everyone is identical and everyone must seek identical goals, as defined by attractive and popular and rich and powerful people.

In fact genes exist. People are different. Your innate tendencies are unique. The situation you're in may be utterly insane because DEMONIC people are in charge everywhere except Tanzania.

Aside from the current universal insanity, there have always been inescapable situations in some places. Bad parents, bad schools, bad workplaces, neighborhoods controlled by gangs.

The solution starts by aligning your expectations with HARDASS REALITY. If you're not likable now, you will never be likable. If you're not smart now, you will never be smart. If you're not rich now, you will never be rich.

You have to find ways of gaining satisfaction within the boundaries of reality. Sometimes the satisfaction is solely intrinsic, the pleasure of completing hard tasks or creating beautiful things. Sometimes you can get approval for your products and services, even though you'll never get approval for your appearance and personality. There's always a path, and it's always unique to your genes and situation.

The cited article has a healthy attitude but doesn't start to touch the solutions:

One of the symptoms of depression is shame, a sense of having let other people down or being unworthy to be with them. When people are told that depression is an aberration, we are telling them that they are not part of the tribe. They are not right, they don’t belong. That’s when their shame deepens and they avoid social connection. We have cut them off from the path that leads them out of depression.

It is time that we start honoring the courage and strength of depressed people. It is time we start valuing the incredible capacity of our biology to find a way in hard times.

Sounds good, can't happen. "Therapists" will certainly never do it, and Zuckerberg and Bezos won't let it happen in the broader range of social outputs. Seeking social contact is GUARANTEED to make things worse. It's also strictly illegal now everywhere except Tanzania.

As I've noted repeatedly, media in previous eras was more empathetic and less meritocratic, leaving more room for DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Marriage and popularity and success were not enforced as automatic and universal goals.

There's no way to get back to those empathetic attitudes.

Labels: endless hell, From rights to duties

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