I'm really impressed by how well this conveyed such a difficult concept. Depression can be so foreign to those that have not experienced it, and the first step to helping people is understanding them.
From experience - A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates.
You can try explaining or providing aids for people to understand depression, but unless they have an urge to get it and an open mind, they wont.
Or worse, they don't want to understand that YOU have it. "Well depression could exist, but YOU don't have it."
> A lot of people are vested in NOT understanding depression, it clashes with their fundamental atomic level beliefs of how the world operates.
Definitely. I once had a discussion on HN with a guy who insisted on seeing depression as an expression of individuality and any attempts of treatment as Brave New Word-ish, evil oppressive society enforcing conformism via happy pills.
The comment threads about this post are definitely an exercise in irony.
She touches on, but doesn't get into the fact that she can still pick up on all social cues, and still feels obligated to respond to the imposition that others put on her to feel better and be happy despite the fact that she's unable.
And it's the fact that it's not possible for the depressed person to fulfill the social interaction that non-depressed people want (e.g. non-depressed person wants depressed person to cheer up, depressed person knows they can't cheer up) that causes the depressed person to avoid the non-depressed person and their unfeasible demands.
This sounds consistent with what I am understanding so far.
To my current understanding, it is necessary to distinguish between a state of mind and a current mood. Certain states of mind just don't support certain moods. Furthermore, for certain states of mind it's hard to get into and hard to get out of.
As a silly example, note my daily life. If I sleep in hard, I'm just not in a productive state of mind and I don't get out of that state of mind all day. The result is that I just don't do much that entire day. On the other hand, if I set my alarm clock to 6 in the morning, I get all my chores done to 10 and pull a full workday on hobby projects without breaking a sweat. The "zone" of programmers also appears to be such a state of mind which just doesn't support social interactions well.
Depression appears to be similar to this. It's a state of mind that's hard to get out of (or hard to cover up even) and that just doesn't support cheerful and happy moods. From there, our usual stress avoidance mechanisms kick in, for example by avoiding overly cheerful or happy people and things don't improve much.
I've suspected for a while now that social interaction is sometimes dangerous to a depressed person, and that finding their own path to happiness (along with the guidance of a professional) can be more rewarding.
It is a barbed concept, and this article does well in articulating "the fog" and the way in which it refuses to evaporate in the sickly glow of Oprah-tudes our culture projects at the sufferer.
