I think one such meme is around agency, with the underlying meme being that humans have no control over their circumstances or mental state. They have anxiety or they have depression. It's part of their identity, and these seem to be thought of as immutable diseases.

And it's a social faux pas to suggest to someone with anxiety (particularly someone you are not super close with) that if they altered their behavior and consciously tried to work on their thought patterns, that they could get better. In our culture now, that gets translated as 'blaming the victim', because with a victim mindset, such a suggestion implies that it's the fault of the person.

It's an unfortunate state of affairs. It feels like we are increasingly leaning into concepts such as an 'external locus of control' and 'learned helplessness' as a society. I don't know how we can push back on these ideas at scale, but if we don't, it's hard not seeing mental health issues and the externalities of the easy pharmacological solutions expand.

The things that give me anxiety are largely social. How people think of me at work, my appearance, what women think of me, and how they perceive how I act. The only thing that helps is shutting these thoughts down with CBT. I've dubbed this my, "Nobody cares Mother Fucker™" routine.

I've noticed relying on my friends to vent just sours relationships. As much as people gloat about support systems, it's mainly a farce. People will only tolerate hearing so much of your internal dissonance, concerns, and stressors. People want to enjoy you, for the most part. Maybe a partner will be there for you, but not likely in my experience (though, I'm unmarried, so take what I say with a grain of salt.)

You may want to try a primarily anaerobic exercise like lifting weights to supplement your cardio. Your mileage may vary, but I personally get a huge endorphin rush from a heavy[1] deadlift. It's so powerful that it takes an effort to not start hugging other people at the gym.

> I've noticed relying on my friends to vent just sours relationships. As much as people gloat about support systems, it's mainly a farce. People will only tolerate hearing so much of your internal dissonance, concerns, and stressors. People want to enjoy you, for the most part. Maybe a partner will be there for you, but not likely in my experience (though, I'm unmarried, so take what I say with a grain of salt.)

More than anything else, people remember how you make them feel. If you're always dumping your negative issues on them, even if they like you, subconsciously they'll learn to associate you with feeling bad and avoid you.

A much better approach is to show an interest in your friends and try to sympathize with what's going well in their lives. And I mean really sympathize. Let yourself feel happiness on their behalf. Encourage them to keep it up. Then they will learn that being around you makes them feel good. Once you build up a good feelings battery in the relationship, you can draw down from it a bit when you're feeling down.

Dating is a different ball of wax. If you're having trouble with basic friendships then it's probably best to establish some healthy habits there first.

[1] https://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards. Bear in mind these are single rep maximum effort, which an untrained person isn't likely to properly do.

Traffic and the dispersion of people across a wide area, driven by rent and jobs and just it being a huge metro region with some of the worst traffic in the country. The transactional costs in even the effort required to be there; let alone having time to make that effort.

> I've noticed relying on my friends to vent just sours relationships. As much as people gloat about support systems, it's mainly a farce. People will only tolerate hearing so much of your internal dissonance, concerns, and stressors.

i resonate with this a lot. have you heard of the author Francis Weller?

“At the core of this grief is our longing to belong. This longing is wired into us by necessity. It assures our safety and our ability to extend out into the world with confidence. This feeling of belonging is rooted in the village and, at times, in extended families. It was in this setting that we emerged as a species. It was in this setting that what we require to become fully human was established. Jean Liedloff writes, "the design of each individual was a reflection of the experience it expected to encounter." We are designed to receive touch, to hear sounds and words entering our ears that soothe and comfort. We are shaped for closeness and for intimacy with our surroundings. Our profound feelings of lacking something are not reflection of personal failure, but the reflection of a society that has failed to offer us what we were designed to expect. Liedloff concludes, "what was once man's confident expectations for suitable treatment and surroundings is now so frustrated that a person often thinks himself lucky if he is not actually homeless or in pain. But even as he is saying, 'I am all right,' there is in him a sense of loss, a longing for something he cannot name, a feeling of being off-center, of missing something. Asked point blank, he will seldom deny it.”

― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

this a great conversation with Weller that i seem to return to about once a year: https://charleseisenstein.org/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story...

I don't think I've ever seen someone so eloquently paint the picture of the world I see.

There's a place similar to 'college' but focused on adults. Admittance to that college is free. Anyone can attend. Room, board, meal plan. At least some classes must be attended; though the term 'class' is vague. For some a class might just be seeing a councilor to talk things over, or some other doctor prescribed treatment routine.

Some of the classes should be group activities that are cooperation based rather than rivalry based. The focus should be on establishing the expectation of positive interactions and experiences. Also about helping to train people to respond to others in the same way.

Suddenly, I think I'm describing kindergarten for adults from an amateur psychological perspective.

> Many psychiatrists, by virtue of their education, are part of a class of people who are themselves more prone to depression and anxiety

Yikes, now we're just on to blind speculation.

Not at all. More educated people tend to be more anxious and more depressed.

https://www.originsrecovery.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/H...

The fact that we trust those more prone to depression to solve depression should not be discounted.

When it comes to 'dysthymia'. The only reason we find it to be a disease is that we expect people to be happy all the time. We've labeled anything other than that as diseased. As I stated elsewhere, I do not believe in happiness. Most of my day is spent neither sad nor happy. Were I to be sad all the time, I don't think that's particularly interesting either. Our society is not set up with space for people to not be happy. Society is ill, not the people.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's particularly important not to be an asshole when you're arguing for a position which is actually true. Doing that discredits the truth, and that hurts everyone.

(I don't know if what you're arguing here is true, but since you seem to be sure that it is, you should be treating it more carefully.)

Their original comment was flagged and removed. Sorry, who's the "asshole" again?

And yeah, for sure exercise. Just remember the practice of training your body is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistent effort over years is what you're going for rather than trying to go hard at the beginning. It's a lifestyle change.

I think depression is an evolutionary response to situations which demand too much of us. It sends us into a state where we must take an extended rest to recharge and rebuild ourselves internally: physically, mentally, emotionally.

I think not allowing for this is a huge shortcoming of our society, which considers continuous and stable productivity not only the norm, but a requirement.

Because there's no such thing as 'depressive disorder'. We expect people to be happy, and when they're not, we call them diseased. Nothing is wrong with them.

Also, Ethiopia is in the midst of a civil war isn't it?

Depression has been a problem in Ethiopia for much longer than the conflict in Tigray, despite the abundance of "community, shared culture, shared religion." Looks like it takes more than that...

I don't pretend to be an expert on Ethiopia, but I was under the impression that it's a multi-ethnic state of different tribes who don't necessarily share those things with each other.

We seem more attuned to emotional distress. And illnesses like anxiety present as acute distress, usually. We naturally want to assuage the person. And a person with anxiety naturally learns all sorts of avoidant coping mechanisms.

We seem to have entered some sort of negative feedback cycle there. Medications do help some, but it goes best with therapy, and the mainstay is basically exposure therapy. Face your fears, and struggle through something uncomfortable, until you learn to tolerate it. People should be gently nudged in that direction, not encouraged to lean into their withdrawal from the negative triggers.

Sort of. As I understand it, SSRIs have poor efficacy for mild depression, but have better efficacy against severe depression.

> CBT are useful interventions that can be easily monitored by physicians with modern technology.

The 'difficulty' with CBT, or indeed any other therapy, is it's expensive. And our health care system (at least in the UK) is quite underfunded.

This problem isn’t just related to mental disorders. I think you are also undermining how difficult changing human behavior is, especially in relation to mental disorders and addictions. Ideally, SSRI’s are used to make behavioral changes easier.

You really don’t have a clue why people reach for these drugs.

> Recently met an older (early 30s guy) and it was seriously cool having a sexual experience that didn’t end with “don’t bother I’m just not going to finish no matter how long we go.”

Reading that was like reading that your worst nightmare is actually true. nervous laugh

As a guy in their 30s, on multiple occasions I've comforted myself with "self, it doesn't matter to them if we finish, they're probably so appreciative that we're more focused on them than ourselves. you're doing great, self." And your comment is just NOPE and slashes my self esteem to shreds!

And this too!: > by e.g. not smoking so much weed...

CUTS DOWN MY MENTAL SUPPORT FRAMEWORK LIKE A SCYTHE. :) <3

I needed that solid slap across the face, I was in danger of becoming too comfortable with my sexuality, now I have the ammo to fuel my insecurity and shame, and push it back down where it belongs. A million thanks.