Maybe for you there is a lot of untapped happiness - by all means, ride that wave if you've got it. I had to figure out that I don't have that, my ocean moves with different currents.
Suppressing, fighting, and avoiding feelings usually strengthens them. By contrast, calm compassionate and curious observation will often allow them to dissipate "on their own".
Deal with bad feelings like you deal with an angry person: listen seriously. Often they just want to be heard.
I too feel that there's another happy universe inside my head were I to distract myself to believe in another reality. But it's just biological facts that come to maul me and digesting uncomfortable thoughts by yourself is not very efficient way of solving the issue. I am not living up to my potential and the momentary voices, although painful, are a reminder to me that I have to change something to feel good about myself. I think in the heart of it is the need for a constant validation through something, other people's love and affection mostly, that you can feel that your life is worth living.
In the sense same thing (maybe) that you can do with meditation and keep those positive neural pathways from growing shut.
I suspect that some people get locked in a catch-22 like the following:
1) Because they feel down, they empathize with other people who feel down, and find it personally important to be just, helpful, extra considerate, and thoughtful toward others.
2) Because of this, any indication of injustice or discomfort feels like a personal affront to their values and identity.
3) Any anger or pain resulting from this causes a reaffirmation of #1, and the cycle is reinforced.
I realized that very often the charge we feel to dig in and solve someone else's issue is often linked to our own unhealed past.
Ironically, it's when we heal ourselves that we can actually be of the highest service to those who are hurting.
I think it's a two fold improvement, you stop being an emotional burden to others who worry about you and you are also more able to support them with their other worries.
And in many cases the relationships we co-create when wounded are co-dependent and so those "worriers" who view emotions as a burden ultimately can't help us anyway -- if they haven't made peace with their own despair, for example, they will never be able to make room for us and will only amplify the pain.
Once we take responsibility for our own pain, we are less drawn to hide out taking responsibility for others instead of dealing with our own. And that allows us to lovingly empower others to take responsibility for their pain as well.
Of course, we can model what that looks like, we can help them feel pain that they are afraid to touch, but once we show them it's safe to hold, they will reorient towards it quite organically in my experience.
Beautifully said. After creating my own healing, I feel compelled to give back in some way. Anytime I see a thread like this, it's a reminder how much work there is to do.
I don't know if you have a social anxiety but after an embarrassing social incident you ruminate on your behaviour right? Well take that to its ultimate level and you are constantly being possessed with thoughts about not thinking about a thought that is driving you insane.
Just a small idea of the feedback loop: think about a thought. Now try not to think about it. Well you probably can do it but think that you are so anxious that you actually cannot do it. And the act of thinking about it makes you anxious so there's really no way of exiting the loop. Anxiety makes you anxious so to say and you feel fear so terrible that it makes fear you even more. You wake up thinking about it and you fall asleep.
Yeah it might not sound relatable but were you to discover the feeling that I mean. Oh boy. There exists emotions inside of us so terrible that you'd wish no human would have to discover. What cured it or well stopped the loop was distracting myself long enough for the anxiety to dissipate and not to remember the feeling (and therefore not to reinforce it). If there was a similar way to do it but for a happy thought I'd be all for it.
I like to reframe this as gratitude for the opportunity to reflect on a situation and come up with ideas for what I could have done differently, and eager to find analogous opportunities to test these new ideas out. Get enough of these opportunities and do enough “social experiments” and you can become more socially gifted than most.
Generally I reframe everything in terms of its positive effects, and I’ve found that some people are disbelieving — “you can’t possibly really think that way.” But it’s fantastically effective for my happiness, and I’ve noticed that excessive irrational positivity is also quite socially magnetic.
It's was largely a psychosomatic thing for me. It started with an RSI that I'd had for years, then I read about people with horrible RSI problems which turned out to be psychosomatic (through Sarno et al). Unfortunately, because I was already in a fairly paranoid state at this time from various things like a recent Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis (and pushing myself to use computers even though it felt painful)—while I felt I had enough evidence to confirm that my problem was psychosomatic, learning this made things go very wrong.
It seemed to me like my mind/body were sort of attacking me and giving me the RSI, and if it's not strictly physical, why should it have to be limited to my wrists? Every semi-controllable aspect of my body started going out of whack if I were to think about it happening (e.g. blushing, sweating, etc.). The longest lasting of these was a very distinct squeezing sensation on my forehead—just like a hand were placed on top of it, in a specific position. The intensity varied with my concern about it. There were times where I noticed everything was fine for a few moments and the sensations were absent—but as soon as I'd check for them they'd immediately come back and my thoughts would be dominated about how the situation was evolving moment to moment.
Anyway, I started meditating about 2.5 years ago (spent about a year reading about it before starting a regular practice, mostly avoiding it initially because I'd tried a couple times and it would horribly exacerbate the forehead squeezing sensations), and it's helped me tremendously. It's kind of like it restored a balance in which parts of my mind activate under different conditions: ordinarily someone is anxious and perhaps even aware of it, but they don't try making it go away through thinking about it—they trust at least to a certain extent that their body/mind know what they're doing and the response there is correct, and the 'problem' resolves on its own. At that point in time I essentially never left the conscious thought mode.
I can see all those possibilities of acting in one way or the other now—not perfectly, but pretty well often times. And the more clearly I see it the more often I make the choices which make things better rather than worse—finally escaping the feedback loop (woo!).
I've got a lot of thoughts on meditation now, and they're mostly positive at this point, but I also don't think I'd have gone so far with it unless I had absolutely no other choice. And it does seem a bit scary at times (mostly just from hearing stories)—but I think people tend to be fine as like as they 'take it easy': avoid extremes. I went through an extended phase where that bothered me a lot, but I feel pretty good about it now.
Oh man, I love the delicious irony of this statement. I wonder if meditation actually helped with your ego problem or just made it stronger. Have you taken psychedelics or started a spiritual practice yet?
> I wonder if meditation actually helped with your ego problem or just made it stronger
Interestingly, I think it did get worse before it got better—but I'm confident saying it's significantly better now. Not every time, but also not infrequently, I can watch it get better over the course of a few minutes during a breath watching meditation session.
I think some about how there might be room in my worldview for something that could be called spiritual. The closest I get for now is having an appreciation for how little we really comprehend of what reality is, and I enjoy trying to get an understanding of its 'character' nonetheless (but more like in getting to know another person's—not something analyzed necessarily). I guess you could call it a reverence for the mystery we're a part of.
This. I have this terrible feeling that I cannot explain; It is so nebulous that trying to decipher it has taken lots of time, effort, intense/extreme emotional roller coasters, and I still don't know how to suppress it. I feel like I have literally lost several brain cells in the span of a year, lost several IQ points, lost my ability of sharp logical reasoning, analytical/critical thinking and also memory retaining power. All that I have now is emotional instability, irritability, impulsive anger. I'm sorry that I am pouring my symptoms here, which should definitely be dealt with a shrink. But whatever.
Edit: Find a CBT shrink if you can.
Just three years ago it was so easy to learn new things, to discover... now it feels like my brain is failing me. I have to say, I feel disabled. And I hope it will get better again. Because right now it sometimes feels hard to even hold a conversation and not forgetting what other people told me ten seconds ago. And my whole train of thought feels so... scatty, if that's the right word for it. Scatterbrained. There is a psychological term for it - thought disorder, and it's a symptom of depression, but I do not feel depressed in a clinical sense. Also my grades are still ok, at a US college it would be around an A- or B+.
I miss my "old" brain though. I'll definitely try meditation.
Oh my God! You just described me! I forget so many things that were told to me moments ago. It's getting harder by day because I have a job now, and it's getting tougher everyday. I have to keep in mind what the clients describe, and even if I'm jotting them down, I tend to forget what was said 5 seconds ago. For example, if I was told to do something in a sequence, I would totally mess it up. I can't perform a task in a sequence. Like for instance, if they ask me to perform a task in this particular order of A->B->C, I would do F->10->#.
I seem to have lost my resolute mannerism. I rage at everything. i rage quit, rage fight. I used to solve challenges that come to me logically, now I just approach in a violent way. Like, if someone is being a bully, kill him, if someone is doing a task ineffectively, shoot him. I have episodes of deep depression and in that time I get a lot of suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Sometimes I fear myself that, given a heated situation, if someone tells me I am wrong, old-me would have approached in a logical manner and solved it diplomatically, now I just fear myself that I would kill anybody who is confronting me. I feel like if I unleash my anger onto someone, I would go to pour all my bundled up anger of over 2 years on that person and maybe kill him; My anger is pressuring up day by day.
I feel like I have so many things to do to improve myself or come out of it, but I'm too tired, lazy and impatient. Just wanted to get these things off of my chest man. Maybe this is the first time I'm opening up to someone. I should see a shrink.
Are you saying that people choose to have mood disorders? It's kind of hard to escape that implication with how you've phrased this.
I don't believe those things are actually opposed in any meaningful way. Also, I think it's possible to take the principle of charity too far. At some point, it's just as much putting words in people's mouths as a knee-jerk misinterpretation.
I fully recognize that when you're in a depressive state, things seem hopeless and that you feel unable to choose a different state.
My proposition is that in all but the most serious cases, you actually can choose, if you're given the right mental frameworks and sensory inputs.
Of course, the devil is in the details of identifying and providing those frameworks and inputs.
I like to use Calm most times but I started out by studying Mahayana Buddhism and some advaita. I practice meditation in accordance with those ideas.
It would probably be a lot healthier than substance abuse. Cheaper, too.
Can confirm: this is a very clearly written book. It reads like a reference manual for meditation.
The world is complete information overload for me. I currently urgently need to:
1) learn a new language
2) practice meditation
3) learn react / unit testing / ML / distributed systems stuff
4) learn basic social skills
5) actually live life a little
6) ...
I say "currently", but this has been true for years.
That combined with my general depression and lack of support pretty much takes all my energy. I have a little bit left here and there, but it's simply not enough to get far with anything. It's very discouraging to start anything because it instantly feels overwhelming and I know I have more must do queued up that I'm deprioritizing to get this technically optional thing done. How can I read for hours in a day if I need to do house keeping stuff, send bills to insurance for reimbursement that are a year old, get that health checkup done, ... and so on. So much stuff to do. I don't know why I experience life like this. Everyone seems to have so much discretionary time to spend, especially if they do as little as I do.
For me, it's often been a result of procrastination but, just in the past couple of years, have I began to understand the source of the procrastination. My issue was fear. Fear that I would fail learning [_whatever new thing_], or not reach a deep enough state of meditation. So, my fear was compounded with some judgement of my ability.
At the moment, I'm practicing what I call "lowering the barrier to entry" and shelving perfectionism. I used to dream of progress as the grandiose "a-ha" moments; however, the reality is that progress is made up of many small moments over time.
As much as it pains me to suggest "agile for your life," I have found some success in having a personal backlog and trying to determine what matters to me most. It's the kind of thing life coaches charge you a lot of money to tackle, but most engineers / tech workers are accustomed to:
- Decide the project's top 10 priorities
- Place a value on each
- Determine their effort
- Break each down into subtasks
- Plan a chunk of work
- Start
I would also ask yourself where your motivation lies. Is it extrinsic or intrinsic. What inspires you to learn ML or React? I struggled with learning music for a long time because it always felt like something I was "supposed" to do. I still want to, but I have to come to terms with the source of that motivation.
Living is as easy as being "here," yet that's paradoxically hard for our stimulus driven brains. I've found slowing down, tasting things, feeling textures, and listening more have made me more aware and present. If you ever feel dead inside, deploy on Friday at 5.
Finally, I'll add all of this is easier to type and intellectualize than it is to live. To me, it often feels like a constant fight of putting time into the things I value to grow as I envision myself X months / years into the future.
I'm already prioritizing / cutting things that aren't absolutely necessary. I have a long backlog and it's just discouraging to see how long the items have been on there. The truth is probably that I have largely given up on myself, gradually over many years, and it feels like it has reached a point of no return.
There's just too much negative and not enough positive. I have really fought my way through life, always with the vague hope that I could turn things around. Now that I'm getting old, things are getting even harder. Seeing more and more white hair in the mirror, skin starting to sag. And I'm still plagued by terrible anxiety and depression and an overwhelming lack of self confidence. The isolation is scaring the hell out of me. It's nothing new for me, but at my age it's just much more difficult to fix.
When I slow down, I notice how damaged I am and how little I pay attention to that and to getting better. Of course this happens because I don't believe I can fix it. I don't want to pay attention because that just hurts.
I actually started reading the book about meditation and meditated for a good bit. What I read also made perfect sense to me. My brain is super reactive and scattered all over the place, and I believe it's part of the reason why I don't manage to change. I just can't focus on anything long enough because there are burning fires everywhere, and my mind is pushed around and locks onto whatever is making the most noise.
I have random jolts of anxiety and adrenaline that get triggered by thoughts, many of them repetitive. I don't even notice usually because it's so normal and everything has been bad for so long. Many repetitive toxic memories / beliefs about myself. Basically all the bad stuff that in theory you can work on with CBT and all other approaches.
Anyway, on a positive note, I have also spent some time on pluralsight and enjoyed it. You're right about questioning the motivation - it's not really me. It's mostly fear. I'm worried what happens if I lose my current job. I feel insecure about my technical skills, and the idea about ML is mostly about proving something to myself, dispelling the self doubt. My interviewing skills are...well, abysmal. I'm basically not employable through a standard hiring process even though I think I'm one of the more valuable employees where I'm at now.
I've listened to it 3 - 4 times, because he has a really interesting frame of mind that depression is an adaptation to trauma we've experienced at some point when emotions where too much to digest. The psychedelic bit is interesting, but I would say less say than the content before.
> I don't want to pay attention because that just hurts.
~5 years of cognitive behavioral therapy really helped me and I cannot say enough about it. It provided me with all the tools to make emotions and life manageable.
> I have random jolts of anxiety and adrenaline that get triggered by thoughts, many of them repetitive
I think a lot of people have these. It's even been linked to lack of sleep [2]. I think with mindfulness / meditation you begin to observe the thoughts and question where did they come from, and why here and now.
> I feel insecure about my technical skills, and the idea about ML is mostly about proving something to myself, dispelling the self doubt. My interviewing skills are...well, abysmal. I'm basically not employable through a standard hiring process ...
I have multiple friends who feel the same way. Of the past 7 or 8 interviews I've had for front-end and backend work, there's only been 2 or 3 where a difficult "Google style of problem" was involved. They're out there and solvable, but do take some practice. Before I 'studied' for interviews years ago, I thought the solutions people came up with were these magical, on-the-spot sort of things. Mostly, it's just practice and pattern recognition.
I began working my way through leetcode easy problems, and worked up to solving medium. I would solve the way I was acquainted with, and then go see if there was a solution with a better optimization. If there was -- I would re-do the problem and log everywhere to understand the better solution.
What I did to get better at interviews:
- Practiced my "2-3 minute spill" ... the intro where you tell the interviewer your entire career in not enough time
- Took interviews for jobs I had no interest in (Be careful though! I took one of those because I ended up liking the team / place)
- Worked on mastering the language / environment I work in
- Did 1 - 2 leetcode problems a day, often repeating one that I just barely grasped.
I hope this helps. I feel like I was in your exact shoes just a few years ago, and still don the same shoe strings and soles now.
1 - https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/
2 - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180104152947.h...
- Reading about meditation in general just to learn more about it out of curiosity, not necessarily looking for instructions. This helped create a mental model of what it entailed, what to expect, what to look for. I read different books over the years, but I really like how Sam Harris describes his experience with it in his podcast.
- This app: https://insighttimer.com/ I've tried multiple apps but this one really made the difference for me. There are thousands of meditations to choose from, you can filter by duration, and there's a bit of gamification too. Another important thing, there's no "meditation course" to follow - you just search a meditation session that looks right for your mood and the time you have and that's it. These features combined removed all the friction I always found as a beginner. At first I started with only 5 to 10 minutes every morning, guided meditation with breathing exercises. As time went by, I felt I was improving in gaining control of the experience and started doing longer sessions with just soft music as background. Make it a daily routine, start small, do your best but don't be too hard on yourself.
Fortunately for me, it sent me back into treatment with a psychiatrist that put me on the only class of antidepressants that actually works. (Recent studies in which they throw out everyone who does not respond to treatment, handily gaming the statistics in the process, notwithstanding.) I'm unlikely to ever see remission, but I'm definitely doing better now.
Before anyone suggests it, I'm experienced enough to know I wasn't 'doing it wrong'. Being 'stuck' in the present is how depressive anhedonia feels.
I had the best few weeks of my life when I started Parnate. Unfortunately the effect petered out, and upping the dosage wasn't an option.
The US is one of the few countries in the world where you can get adequate MAOI therapy, I think, which is unfortunate for the rest of the world. The only thing I can get where I am now is Selegiline, and even that made the doctor uncomfortable.
I tried all the MAOIs, and ended up on EMSAM - it's Selegilene in a patch form. The other (oral) MAOIs caused such profound drop in blood pressure and pulse pressure that I would frequently get the mid-low 'roaring' tinnitus that is evidence of an event causing permanent hearing damage. I also collapsed several times. I'm getting the roaring now from time to time with the EMSAM, but I really don't have any option but to suffer the hearing loss at this point.
(Fyi: doctors - even ENT specialists aren't aware that low blood pressure - even extremly short term, acute episodes - causes hearing damage, despite a significant body of academic literature on the matter.)
I have been taking it in combination with a modest amount of Provigil and caffeine, under my psychiatrists guidance. Caffeine is a much more powerful stimulant when combined with an MAOI. IMHO, it's the combination of the three that is helping me. If I stop taking either of the stimulants, I start feeling worse after a few days. I'm not cured by any means - yet, however I'm better than I have in memory. My SO concurs, too.
(I've been on EMSAM since ~September. I spent the rest of last year going on and off all the others)
IMHO, you may want to try it in combination with other drugs. Stimulants worked for me, but I'm on the ADHD spectrum, which may have something to do with it.
I also seem to respond to stimulants only. I have tried to get provigil but that's also impossible without a sleep study and a diagnosis for narcolepsy. I have access to Ritalin but it's a bit too intense when I use it occasionally, and I'm scared of long term side effects for dopamine receptors.
I'm currently taking Wellbutrin, which works (I know because I tried to stop a few months ago and I went from depressed to suicidal), but it's clearly not enough. I could take Selegiline intermittently on top of that, but it's a dangerous game to combine these. I also take a ton of supplements which seem to do something, but the problem is a lack of consistency. I think the consistency is probably the big theme overall - I also have positive effects from caffeine if I go over my standard daily dose, but I don't see anything that requires dosage escalation as a long term solution.
Are you taking Selegiline at standard doses? I've thought about trying it again with a higher dosage into a range where it stops being selective.
Fwiw, you may want to try it with 1-3 cups of coffee next time - it may make the difference for you. Ritalin is, well, crunchy. I don't like it either. It's less unpleasant than adderral, I suppose.
The downside of the patch? The US is the only country where a drug invented in the 60s, and a delivery system invented in the 90s, that would have cost $250/month out-of-pocket in 2014, costs $250/month after insurance. The out-of-pocket would be $2300/month. Obscene.
Anyway, thanks for the info.
Meditation may unlock or bring you closer to the bad stuff you've been avoiding dealing with that has been making you depressed or feel bad. You need to put in a lot of work and plow through it with persistence, even if in that moment you don't feel like it. It may be difficult if you feel like you're covered in mud and darkness but there is light at the end of the tunnel even if you can't see it at the moment.
I didn't need psychotherapy, and there was nothing it brought me closer too. I need help with organic depression.
I grant there may be some mechanism that can be fixed alleviated by chemicals acting on the body but everything is connected, body-mind-soul. As far as I can tell, depression is in essence a negative feedback loop of bad thoughts that flood your brain and body incessantly creating negativity and sluggishness that further shape your thoughts and behaviour.
A depressed person may not even realize their mind may be constantly telling them they suck or they're not worthy or whatever, but that is, as all thoughts and emotions are, illusionary in the sense that you don't have to take that as your own. You don't have to associate your being or identify as that chatter or the phenomenon passing through that body. You're purer and more beautiful and more deserving of love than that.
Thoughts can have tremendous energy especially if you get provoked by or stuck to them. What prolonged persistent meditation practice (say at least 2x30 min per day) may help one achieve is a sort of mental clarity or non separateness from/non attachment to thoughts, seeing how the mind really works.
Science have a thoroughly incomplete and yet much more detailed and nuanced understanding of depression. I suggest you look into it, if you are interested enough to have an opinion on the matter.
I meditated for over an hour a day for several years - I had long term injuries that needed me to sit motionless several times a day while I treated them, so I would get myself set up, and the meditate through the session. (It wasn't a painful or otherwise sensate process.) I'd had started meditation earlier than that, with some classes and literature in college.
I'm actually up in arms now against people who insist that mediation/yoga/SSRIs/most therapists can make a damn bit of difference in the case of actual depression. I wasted 20 years of my life listening to them, when the people those things are going to help aren't actually depressed to begin with.
Woah, "actual depression"... hardcore!
The problem isn't other people. You are the problem. Your ego is so big that it bleeds through your posts, as if it's crying out for someone to stop it.
I'm glad you found a medication which works for you. And I hope people who are suffering ignore the crackpots and go see their doctor.
Neither CBT nor Prozac are effective treatments for actual depression. And CBT can be very counterproductive if the underlying depression hasn't been successfully treated. If this is the case, the depressed person is being set up for failure. Prozac, on the other hand, is snake oil.
People who respond to CBT alone aren't depressed. They are suffering situational stressors and a lack of cognitive behavioural skills. People helped by SSRIs are by and large simply regressing to the mean.
This isn't to say that CBT therapy doesn't have benefit to someone recovering from depression - but that it's not a cure, it's not a resolution, it's a hand helping you back up once you are well - but not until the depression is treated first.
Hello, Walter's ego!
You were meditating incorrectly because everyone does in the west. It's not a mindfulness life hack, and there are millennia of spiritual and philosophical background that are ignored when people claim it's simple. And as I'm sure you know, the Buddha taught that ignorance causes suffering.