It’s commonly known that depression is often triggered (and maintained) by fundamentally irrational thoughts. Many thoughts associated with depression are simultaneously thoughts that are fundamentally irrational. Feelings of guilt, feelings of hopelessness, and feelings of worthlessness—many of those beliefs assume conceptions that do not correspond with the real world. And so a rational person may ostensibly be less prone to depression.
You sure about this? My psych classes taught about ‘depressive realism’, or “the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias.” This was of course no consolation to me at the time.
I think both can be going on—there’s both rationality about one’s skills relative to other people, and a strong emotional belief that one isn’t a worthwhile person.
Depression is caused by whatever, but once depression chemicals are in place you keep being depressed. Changing the situation can lift the depression if you can get out of the depression thoughts, i.e. the depression chemicals clear. This makes more sense if you keep in mind that there isn’t really a software/hardware divide in the brain, and thoughts are not independent of the (corrupt) hardware they’re running on.
Sure. I think some cognitive-behavioral therapy approaches also stress changing your situation alongside your thought processes.
Could you clarify? I realize what you mean by the software/hardware divide, but I find it hard to think that most depressed people have corrupt hardware in the sense there’s something actually wrong with the physical substrate rather than how it’s working or wired itself (of course there is a connection in terms of susceptibility).
Remember that the chemicals washing through the neural network and affecting its behaviour are an evolved-in part of the usual operations of the hardware. There is no firm hardware/software divide at all in the brain, everything interferes with everything else.
You sure about this? My psych classes taught about ‘depressive realism’, or “the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias.” This was of course no consolation to me at the time.
I think both can be going on—there’s both rationality about one’s skills relative to other people, and a strong emotional belief that one isn’t a worthwhile person.
Depression is caused by whatever, but once depression chemicals are in place you keep being depressed. Changing the situation can lift the depression if you can get out of the depression thoughts, i.e. the depression chemicals clear. This makes more sense if you keep in mind that there isn’t really a software/hardware divide in the brain, and thoughts are not independent of the (corrupt) hardware they’re running on.
Sure. I think some cognitive-behavioral therapy approaches also stress changing your situation alongside your thought processes.
Could you clarify? I realize what you mean by the software/hardware divide, but I find it hard to think that most depressed people have corrupt hardware in the sense there’s something actually wrong with the physical substrate rather than how it’s working or wired itself (of course there is a connection in terms of susceptibility).
I just meant “corrupt hardware” in the usual local jargon sense.
Remember that the chemicals washing through the neural network and affecting its behaviour are an evolved-in part of the usual operations of the hardware. There is no firm hardware/software divide at all in the brain, everything interferes with everything else.