> Everyone who is a human being, who has gone through grief, may entertain the idea they've had depression, and may follow this thread, but very few both to pay attention to the state of the art. Instead people fall back to high school level psychology. Amazing how psychologists, too, are somehow exempt from paying attention to the state of neuroscience.
I realize there are different levels of grief and depression.
I'm saying, there are people in this thread who were clinically diagnosed, dealt with depression for years, and have stories about that. Some had bad experiences with meds. We should not discard the experiences of these people simply because there are some people out there who mistakenly think they've experienced depression. The fact is, many of the people in this thread have. Patients don't need to understand all of neuroscience. They can still share their experiences.
> Meanwhile they wine and rage and refuse to go back to university, and instead take to the blogs and snake oil. It makes me sick.
There is recent research that suggests some meds can cause harmful manic behavior. This is not to be ignored either.
Other people have a right to share their opinion. You have the right to feel sick about it. One of these is under your control, perhaps with the help of a friend or therapist. The other is definitely out of your control.
Unfortunately the diagnosis of depression has been down to opinion also. Not an opinion informed by understanding, but by criteria of a disease no one yet fully understands, concocted by a bunch of cocaine snorting pompous bullshit artists (too far?).
Being diagnosed means a doctor listened to you describing a bunch of feelings and looked up a checklist, and matched some of those words you said to the checklist, and presto! Depression! Have a pill, be on your way.
And if you speak out against psychology then it's all explained by anti authoritarianism, and they put you in with the jews, and the gays, and the anarchists. Yes, homosexuality, and anti-authoritarianism were once recently on the checklist. You can't win. Complete gaslight tactics.
Please understand, I'm not having an argument here, I'm venting some rage, big time. Nothing personal. Some of us have been through the ringer by bastards like the writer of that article. Well meaning bastards. True nurse ratchett evil bastard ..... has aneurysm
> Please understand, I'm not having an argument here, I'm venting some rage, big time. Nothing personal.
Got it, no sweat.
> Some of us have been through the ringer by bastards like the writer of that article. Well meaning bastards. True nurse ratchett evil bastard ..... has aneurysm
I can understand if you've been mistreated by people who work in health. I don't see how the author is to blame or how you have come to feel he would treat you the same way. That's a mistake people commonly make, putting labels on people. All of our brains try to find patterns, so it's normal, but individual people are incredibly unique, and much more so than snowflakes. We may not all be good but we are all equally deserving of each other's respect.
That said, vent on! And feel free to lob any complaints my way about anything I've said. I'm not easily offended.
Gregg is in the business of classifying and tinkering with the way seriously mentally ill people are treated and pigeonholed. Advice being given by people who don't know the answers, especially when it comes to the suicidal, is incredibly irresponsible.
You know that feeling you get when something is broken and you see someone trying to fix it, and you know you can do better, and you want to push them out of the way and give your own advice, because you're sure yours is the best way? You just know it? That has been the MO of psychology. A long line of men and woman pricking up their fingers and saying, I've an idea, try this. On live, human subjects. Think I'm being overly dramatic? Look at his frikken tree of knowledge model. It's like this giant pantomime admission of this failure, but then goes on to say that his model -- unification of all the nonsense -- is the light in the darkness. His model is like the epitome of what all pseudo sciences attempt -- to first suspend disbelief and criticism with a cheeky wink towards an indirect admission of nonsense, then to about turn and pile themselves upon genuine physical sciences and claim, not only to be a part, but to be a vital piece of the puzzle. It's like some L. Ron Hubbard type shit. It's incredible really. The realm of psychology is full of people like him. It is theoretical anthropology at best. At worst it is malpractice.
I know you're venting but you're a little off topic and hard to follow. It sounds like you have a bone to pick with this author. This sub-thread began with "warmfuzzykitten" lamenting the HN comments and now you're discussing other work by the author.
Venting is totally fine and useful. There are some other techniques for releasing frustration that are more effective. Meditation, for example, can teach you to cast aside thoughts on which you do not wish to dwell. The book Mindfulness in Plain English is a good introduction. I'm not telling you what to do, because it would be a waste of my energy. You'll make up your own mind regardless. I'm just sharing a strategy that's worked for me, alongside other things. That's what people do. We share stories, whether about good times or bad.
I know you're acting out your therapist fantasy, but you're being a little passive aggressive.
Meditation has been debunked. CBT has been debunked, Mindfulness has been debunked. Not only that, but meditation has been shown to be counterproductive and even dangerous. CBT is no better. It has become an industry of exploitation and snake oil. Recently two meta studies came out debunking the original CBT studies. Surprise surprise.
Yet psychologists keep going on and on about how it helps some people. Listen. If you are going through a rough patch and you try a bunch of things, the last fad you tried is always going to seem like it might have helped. If a million people are giving anal breathing a go, and half of them come out of their "episode" while practicing, they're all going to proclaim a cure. It's like this never ending loop, over and over of bullshit.
This is basic stuff. I can see you're feeding off my distress, so this is the last I'll say on the matter. Some people really are sick.
cue passive aggressive "I know you're"... "totally fine, and useful" creeping Jesus response
> This is basic stuff. I can see you're feeding off my distress, so this is the last I'll say on the matter. Some people really are sick.
> cue passive aggressive "I know you're"... "totally fine, and useful" creeping Jesus response
Here are the facts. You choose to only believe certain research, and you won't take the effort to spend 30 minutes sincerely trying something which is not dangerous or risky for you.
I never said neuroscience was unfounded. My point is, neuroscientists are not the only scientists capable of doing research and running through the scientific method. We should be praising whatever work follows that technique, not just neuroscience because it appears to be cutting edge. The scientific method has guided and helped judge aspects of all sciences for hundreds of years.
I try everything. No matter how stupid it seems, or what I think of it, because I'm desperate.
Lots of people out there feed of it and I have no choice but to try it because I'm a stuffed unit (presently I've been reduced to Ketamine. It is the only thing that has remotely come close to giving me temporary relief, and I must be reduced to criminality to use it -- because of some quacks who started selling shots (exploitation, again, sigh) genuine doctors can no longer use it off label, in my country). I would never recommend this to anyone because I'M NOT A FRIKKEN DOCTOR, YEAH? And neither are you, so stop with the irresponsible suggestions, because again, I will try anything.
Over the many years I've learned a few things about the people that feed off people like me, and people who feed off the dabblers and the grief stricken, the ashamed, all lumping us in together. All the above move on and the rest of us who can never recover get blamed for not having our lives in order. I've been very lucky with my life. If I didn't have certain privileges/luck I'd be dead like the rest of them, you don't have to contend with.
Neuroscience comes from a grounding in the physical sciences. Psychology abstracts from the top down. Psychology uses the scientific technique, but without the basic understanding required by all the other sciences. It is a culture of delusion and megalomania, a circle jerk of dunces, with the occasional valid observation, but never understanding. The hard sciences are taking those brave steps for one simple reason. They are grounded on small, proven facts. Psychology is grounded upon a quagmire of bullshit.
As psychology slowly loses its parasitic grip upon depression, I'm sure we'll see more of these death-knell articles, written by people for whom a career change is no longer practical. Soon, like Jung, all they'll have is their dreams and coloring books to remember them by. Sad relics of a backward era. Get out of it while you still can.
I'm not a psychologist, I'm a programmer. You can see it in my profile. I'm not making any prescriptions that require an MD. You're not paying me and I'm not claiming to dispense professional advice. I'm just sharing part of what worked for me. You're not required to read this or try meditation but it would only take you 30 minutes to try to sit in a quiet space and think about nothing, focusing on breathing. I do it every day now and it works great along with the understanding that we are all equally valuable. Nobody is more important than anyone else. What I write isn't more important than what you write. You're just as valuable as anyone else.
Meditation can be catastrophic for people with depression.
There is a reason any meditation retreat will reject you if you answer 'yes' to currently going through depression.
Empty your mind, empty your feelings? Ummm.... Well, a depressed person has most of their feelings wiped to begin with, except for a heavy, sick, sinking, feeling.
A depressed person cannot think. You catch yourself just standing and sitting, hunched in one place and the whole day has passed.
Meditation is redundant for a depressed person. On top of that, there's so much stress hormones in the system just crossing the legs, and focusing on your breathing get become a source of distress.
People really have no idea what they're dealing with in depression because everyone assumes they've been through it, because that's what psychologists have always assumed. Then a real depressed person comes their way and they have to come up with a different name for it. Add a chronic, or a clinical, or some such bullshit -- it's the difference between alternative medicine and medicine. One is real, the other fake. One requires an MD, the other does not.
I have been going back to meditation my entire life to see if it will help, and it never does. It's good if you're feeling stable to begin with, but can really loop you out if you're depressed.
You don't get how serious it is. SUICIDE is a constant demon. You get that? Kill yourself kill yourself, evolution's kill switch, for the good of mankind, constantly going through your head is not some to be dismissed. If you say, meh, I can tell a depressed person what I want about what they should try and what might work, you are playing with nuclear fire.
> If you say, meh, I can tell a depressed person what I want about what they should try and what might work, you are playing with nuclear fire.
I'm not dispensing professional medical advice, I'm relating an experience I had. You're free to make up your own mind. I thought I already made that clear.
Anyway, I'm not talking about a meditation retreat. I've never done that and hear it is rather intense. I wouldn't recommend it to someone diagnosed with depression in any form. What I'm talking about can be done in the comfort of your own home. If you've tried that yourself and it hasn't worked then you need only say so and I'd see no reason for me to comment further. From your last comment, it sounds like you have tried that and it didn't help. For me, it did. It wasn't the full solution for me but it was a piece.
I'll just add that you don't need to sit cross legged to meditate. You can sit comfortably upright in a chair or lying down on a bed. This is all discussed in the book I recommended. It sounds like your experience with meditation was more strict than what I've experienced. There is more than one form of meditation. Discarding the whole practice as unworkable for anyone who has depression after only knowing directly about your own reaction to one form of meditation is as unscientific as anything I can imagine.
Best of luck to you. I hope you keep finding things that work for you.
I realize there are different levels of grief and depression.
I'm saying, there are people in this thread who were clinically diagnosed, dealt with depression for years, and have stories about that. Some had bad experiences with meds. We should not discard the experiences of these people simply because there are some people out there who mistakenly think they've experienced depression. The fact is, many of the people in this thread have. Patients don't need to understand all of neuroscience. They can still share their experiences.
> Meanwhile they wine and rage and refuse to go back to university, and instead take to the blogs and snake oil. It makes me sick.
There is recent research that suggests some meds can cause harmful manic behavior. This is not to be ignored either.
Other people have a right to share their opinion. You have the right to feel sick about it. One of these is under your control, perhaps with the help of a friend or therapist. The other is definitely out of your control.