Another in my very occasional series of articles on depression – my depression. They are written from a very personal perspective; they are my views of how I see things working and what it feels like on the inside. Your views and experiences may be vastly different. My views and experiences are not necessarily backed by scientific evidence or current medical opinion. These articles are not medical advice or treatment pathways. If you think you have a problem then you should talk to your primary care physician.

I recently came across the following elsewhere on social media.

One of the worst things about depression is that it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. In many ways, a lot of the popular “mindfulness” or “yoga” or “touch grass” or “diet and exercise” things about recovering from depression is a correlation, not causation thing which is a reversal of cause and effect. When you’re depressed, you CAN’T do the things that help you not be depressed, or at least you can’t sustain doing them for long because they drain more energy than they’re returning.

It’s a lot of feel good “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” nonsense. When you’re depressed, even when you try to force yourself to do the endorphin generating activities, your brain is so full of depression juice that it sucks up all the endorphins you might have gotten otherwise. So now you’re just even more exhausted from trying to do the thing, and have even more depression juice in your brain because you tried to do the thing and didn’t feel any better, which must just be because you’re a broken failure.

[Jess, @JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange at https://infosec.exchange/@JessTheUnstill/111880212752583330]

I don’t really agree with the final phrase about being a “broken failure”. I’m a broken failure only in terms of getting rid of the depression and in consequence having fucked up too many things in my life. And who’s surprised after 50+ years experience – we’ve trained so long and hard that we’re now experts! Otherwise this is a pretty spot on summary of how my depression seems to work.

Medics please note that this is how depression works for many of us, so don’t be surprised when we tell you that all your suggested fixes don’t work for us.