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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

My "road out" was having kids and taking on a lot of responsibility (both family and business). It's worked for 7 years now and I've never felt happier and mentally healthy, even if I am super busy and under a lot of pressure :-) I never thought I'd be the sort of person to thrive on pressure but it turns out I am.

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I think many people do who don't realize it. There's a balance, certainly, and having a cause that you care about helps a great deal.

Pressure from a job that just feels like a grind can leave you feeling stressed and unessential (why do we need yet another widget?!?).

Pressure in supporting people you care about (family, friends), a country, a cause (ending hunger, eliminating a disease, etc.), and so on can leave you feeling stress, certainly, but also a sense of having a purpose.

I believe the switch from half excitement born and half imposed-but-accepted pressure from childhood regime toward the adult kind of pressure is hard to feel, understand and accept at first. The universe seems to be about pressures and waves, I wouldn't be surprised if our minds needs it too.

Pressure is a fine motivator (we all know people who do their best work when under a tight deadline), but only if you are capable of being realistic about the consequences of failure (and attribution of blame).

If you raise the stakes enough for almost anyone (or they are of a mindset to ratchet those stakes up for themselves) it can be paralyzing, unless the consequences of not making a decision are somehow worse.

In some ways, SV-style celebration of failure is great, but if you're fixated on a "Unicorn or Bust" (or even an "FU money or Bust") career path, well, having a few "busts" in a row (which is a fairly likely outcome, even if you have both a good idea and execution) might just kill you.

In this sense, choosing a cause to have a sense of purpose may be a terrible option for some folks to pursue, since the consequences of not solving it completely are still dire - eg. don't choose to work on solving the World Hunger Problem if, having eliminated 90% of the problem in five years, you are going to blame yourself for the less tractable remaining 10% that still die of malnutrition and hunger.

I've taken this path of distraction for most of my life... It's presently as bad as it's ever been...

I'm currently of the mind that the only way to cure it is to stop running and face it head on. Rip out everything that triggers it, rip out every source that adds to it. I understand that there is an element of brain chemistry that is presently considered the root cause of depression. I'm of the mind that this chemical imbalance has an underlying cause and that medicating is only treating the symptom. I've taken the medication route, and it was ineffective for me. I think the brain chemistry is a symptom of an even deeper problem. Our bodies want to be healthy and want to function properly and given the right inputs, they will.

I don't have the answers, I've struggled with this for the past 40 years. I've read about symptoms, treatments, I've read the science, the psuedo-science and the quackery. I'm still of the opinion that there is an underlying cause that isn't presently being considered - depression is on the rise. I'm aware this is just my opinion and that my opinion isn't rooted scientifically. But nobody, so far, knows me better than me - science and doctors included.

I can tell you this without any shred of doubt - if you continue to ignore it, continue to run from it, eventually you will have a weak moment and it will get you. Hopefully it doesn't threaten to rip your life apart as it has threatened to do to me at various points in my life.

I'm currently of the mind that the only way to cure it is to stop running and face it head on. Rip out everything that triggers it, rip out every source that adds to it.

I agree. But I think that's a lot easier to do when you're happy and in a good mental state than when you're not.

I didn't mean to imply that busyness is a mere distraction strategy - it's more a way to bootstrap a life-long process.

Try starting with something simple, like 15 pushups a day.

On days when it literally takes everything you can muster to drag yourself out of bed and into the shower, 15 pushups just aren't happening.

On other days it seems like a walk in the park to blast through 100... so I hear what you're saying. It's just that it's not always just as easy as getting through 15 pushups a day.

I've been in that same boat, being blessed with both bipolar and depression, and although just saying "hey some push-ups will do the trick" is perhaps a bit trivial I will add that even a tiny bit of exercise will help as it releases endorphins that are rather pleasant. Even on really fucking shitty days, I've tried to do a little work out. It's not a work out that will get me buff or anything but that's not the point. It honestly started as a healthy form of masochism for me...I loved the pain and it took my mind off everything else for a minute so I could focus on breathing and form. Even one or two push-ups, a long run...anything really...can help. It isn't a solution, but it's a relief and in the world of depression sometimes that's the difference between waking up tomorrow or punctuating a very short life.

I cycle for the same reason - forget the endorphins, they never really did anything for me. When it's just you and the road and the pain, you're free of all of it for as long as you can make your legs keep going. I imagine drugs do the same for some people, make them feel invincible or whatever, I don't know, I've never tried them and I have no wish for that kind of destruction in my life. The depression is threat enough to my way of life without compounding the issue.

But the bike, the wind in your face and the physical pain of the endurance is an escape from it all for as long as you can keep going.

If you keep ignoring it for another 7 years by just burying yourself in work it'll certainly continue to be OK.

No way one day it's going come back with a vengeance

If you're obese and go on an exercise regime, you might think you'll just get fat again when you stop the exercise regime.

In the short term, that's probably true. But if you do it long enough, you'd expect someone who has exercised for many years to eventually develop better eating habits :-) And so it goes.

To a first approximation, nobody recovers from obesity. Less than 1% of obese people regain a normal weight through any kind of lifestyle change. What works, kind of, is bariatric surgery.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/kcl-lco07141...

This might be correct for now but it doesn't need to be so.

A good number of people do regain normal weight only by eating healthier and wait.

I think more people could if we stopped scaring them away from trying really hard by talking about how hard is it etc.

Putting the well-being of others first also helped me. In your case, look at all the people who have benefited. Everyone who has listened to your shows and consumed your content is somehow better in some way. Good job! :)

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