
Two Root Causes Of My Recent Depression - mindcrime
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/08/two-root-causes-of-my-recent-depression.html
======
nether
Given the causes are myriad and well-defined (as he lists them), it sounds
like this was normal exhaustion, not depression which is generally sadness
_without_ cause. Depression calls for therapy and sometimes antidepressant
drugs, healthy sadness just requires removing the cause of sadness and doesn't
constitute mental illness. We need to distinguish between negative feelings
that are a part of mental illness, versus those warranted by an unhappy life.

~~~
benched
This view, this dichotomy, is popular, insidious, infuriating to me as a
sufferer, and very overgeneralized as far as I can tell. I guarantee you I
have suffered very 'real' depression, even been diagnosed several times if
you're into that, and it just so happens that I have always been able to
articulate the causes. There may be people who are not able to articulate
causes at a given time, for whatever reason - but even that does not mean
causes aren't there.

The way I see it is this. Life as a biological organism _is_ a two-way
interaction between your biological systems, and the putative 'outside world'.
And most of what you experience as your life occurs within your brain. There
is lots of feedback between your brain and the outside world, notably between
your brain and the brains of others. And there is lots of feedback within your
own brain, with itself. This is all true for every person, whether or not you
happen to have had a run-in with the first-world, western mental health
system, and received a 'diagnosis' based on someone's observation of a small
part of your process that is deemed dysfunctional.

What we call depression is extremely common, but we don't like it and we wish
we didn't have to experience it, so we call it an illness. But it is a very
common reaction to certain types of adversity: abuse, failures,
disappointments, dissolution of important relationships. Such patterns are
well-known even to clinicians. The view of depression as just a 'disease' that
afflicts the brain for no reason... I can't imagine where this originated.
I've experienced deep depression, numerous times, and I've known people who
did as well. I could tell you all the reasons. Maybe they make happy people
uncomfortable. I know that when I've been happy, it has been tempting to
believe that I earned it, chose it, made it for myself - something self-
empowering.

The reasons for depression usually boil down to prolonged alienation and
frustration. Being in a place in life that is maladaptive, and not being able
to find a way out in a short amount of time. Not being able to find a job, not
being able to make friends or find love, or being in a relationship that is
very unhappy and not being able to get out. Being in some life situation that
can't be willed out of, like having a felony record, or an incurable disease.
Not having completed enough education. Having low self-esteem or perceiving
oneself to be a failure, for subjective but still real reasons like being
ugly, overweight, or socially awkward.

I feel like one of the causes of the persistent misunderstanding of this
condition is that most people seem to want to believe happy people are in
control of their happiness (whether that means being in control of their
external conditions, or control of their attitude), and also want to excuse
depressed people from having to be in control of their depression. This is
partly sensible, and perhaps rightly motivated, because happiness is
characterized by feeling in sufficient control of ones state of being, and
depression is a state of prolonged lack of control. But this does not in any
way suggest that the depression was random. Look behind that defeated,
disconnected state of mind, turn back the clock, and you will find events that
led the person into that horrible state.

~~~
KirinDave
> and it just so happens that I have always been able to articulate the
> causes.

You mean "rationalize." Humans are really good at finding causal relationships
between things, even when they aren't there. I'm not saying you can't or
shouldn't feel a certain way, but diagnosable depressing is often more complex
than "I over-exerted myself".

Personally, I found the article vacuous because it presumes that you can
figure out what's going on in your head. It's pretty well established at this
point that we cannot reliably do this.

~~~
benched
The inability of human beings to agree on the causes of brain states, does not
mean that there are not causes, or that they are unknowable.

~~~
KirinDave
> does not mean that there are not causes, or that they are unknowable.

Indeed, but it surely means that uninformed self-assessments are nearly
worthless, wrong, and even a little pretentious. I am of the opinion from my
read of the current literature that it's all but impossible for you to
accurately self-assess this.

I'd love for an expert in neurology to correct me on this because it'd be more
optimistic to believe otherwise.

------
mef
Text-only cache
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/08/two-
root-causes-of-my-recent-depression.html&strip=1)

~~~
xSwag
More readable version:

[http://www.readability.com/articles/1tg24uxp](http://www.readability.com/articles/1tg24uxp)

------
cpncrunch
Thanks for sharing. Something similar happened to me about 13 years ago.
Basically I was burned out from working in a job I wasn't really interested
in, and living with someone I didn't like. This resulted in chronic fatigue
syndrome, suicidal depression, and my body basically shut down. At the time I
didn't understand what was happening, as my work wasn't terribly stressful,
and the other stresses seemed minor.

I now realise that [1] all the stressors add up, [2] it's very important to
enjoy what you're working on and [3] you need to craft your lifestyle to be
fulfilling.

Anyway, I made serious changes to my lifestyle (including working full-time on
my startup), and things have worked out beautifully.

------
Balgair
Having gone to the monthly Start-up meetings at CU and talked with Brad in
person (great guy, only VC in Colorado really) I can sympathize. Boulder is a
great place to recoup and also a great place to go to the max. Especially in
the winter months, you don't get out a lot, it is pretty cold at a mile high,
and the mountains cause pretty early sunsets. You gotta go skiing just to get
out and about in Boulder in the winter.

Its very healthy that a high up guy like this is open and talking about mental
health issues. It leads us all to talking about them. In fact I realize I need
a break now too. Thank you Brad, for checking yourself before wrecking
yourself, and making me think about it too.

------
beat
Thanks to Brad Feld for sharing. As we work passionately on doing something we
feel is important, we need to be sure to protect our mental health in the
process.

tl;dr for Brad's post: Depression was caused by physical exhaustion/injuries
and lack of work stimulation.

Not willing to say no to existing plans when they are no longer viable, and
not keeping an eye on the internal balances of the work itself, can lead to a
bad situation. Be mindful in your own life.

~~~
gshubert17
I thought the second insight was the teaching/learning dichotomy:

 _I had an intense insight a few weeks ago when a friend told me that as one
gets older, the line between learning and teaching blurs. This is consistent
with how I think about mentoring, where the greatest mentor – mentee
relationship is a peer relationship, where both the mentor and mentee learn
from and teach each other. With this insight, I realized I needed to stop
separating learning from teaching in my motivational construct – that they
were inextricably linked._

~~~
beat
I think that's tied to the lack of stimulation. He wasn't letting the teaching
stimulate him. I'm sure he would have his own interpretation of my
interpretation. :)

------
joonix
Reading about the triggers made me think about depression as something that
may have evolved as a defense/protection mechanism. It's clear he pursued far
too much, especially physically, that year. Perhaps humans evolved to become
depressed after long rough period in order to make us slow down a bit, allow
our bodies to repair and our minds to reflect?

~~~
npsimons
If that's the case, then depression is (yet another) broken adaptation. If
you've ever been depressed, you'd realize it doesn't rejuvenate - much the
opposite, in fact.

~~~
cpncrunch
I wouldn't say that. It seems that this type of depression is the brain's way
of telling you that you need to make changes in your lifestyle to avoid
stressors that are perceived as unnecessary. Once you make these changes you
definitely do feel rejuvinated.

I think most cases of depression have obvious causes if you care to look.

~~~
benched
I agree with you. The problem with depression, though, is that it does not
make idle threats. In my experience, you get a window in which to make those
changes, after which depression can stomp you into a hole so deep you can only
get out with a lot of help, and tremendous effort. If you're lucky enough to
find a way out at all. Many don't.

~~~
cpncrunch
Yes, I completely agree with you. Many (most?) times it's not obvious why the
depression is happening. You really need to make significant lifestyle changes
in the early stages of depression.

------
npsimons
I find it fascinating that the (over)exercise is part of what felled him; for
me at least, exercise tends to have a rejuvenating effect. Then again, I
haven't run a 50 miler (yet), so maybe I'm just not hitting my limits. Many
studies also back that exercise can be an effective treatment for depression.
Of course, if you're used to the runner's high and stop getting it because of
injuries, that could be a downer.

------
frank_boyd
If I had a depression, the cause would probably be Snowden's revelations and
all that goes with it.

