The Human Owners Manual

What Depression Really Is

I think when most people think of “depression,” they think of it as some synonym of or word related to “sad.” Even highly decorated, respected, published experts on the topic speak of and treat depression as if it is caused by bad things happening to us. And “something bad happening to us” is how we get sad. So by extension, one has to assume that they too believe depression is related to sadness.

This is wrong.

It is an understandable mistake, because depression often accompanies sadness. They are common bedfellows. And bad things happening to us can sometimes be the triggering event that sends off a bout of depression. But sadness and depression are not the same, and while they may often correlate, they are not even related concepts.

Depression happens, not when are sad, but when we lose hope for future happiness. Specifically, hope or rather the loss thereof is the trigger condition for depression, and consequently hope is also the cure. When you regain hope for your life, when you see a way out, depression dissolves like a summer fog in the noon sun. This, surprisingly, is true even for very small amounts of hope. Even if the way out is the slimmest possibility, if you believe that you at least have a chance, your hope will drive depression out of the brain.

Now, here is where, annoyingly, I have to make sure I point you to the caveats page and remind you that I am not a medical or psychiatric professional, and that this does not constitute medical advice. That’s not because I’m wrong, but mostly because throughout the psychiatric and psychological industries, the word “depression” has been applied over-broadly to a whole host of disorders and mental conditions, some of which should not be in the category. And undoubtedly someone will claim one of these off-brand variants[^1] of “depression” is not triggered by a lack of hope and suggest that I am giving (incorrect) medical diagnosis without a license. It is one of these peculiarities of a culture as large as the United States or western world at large that creates these obviously wrong restrictions that come about from confounding a hundred innocent mistakes or oversights. I’m right, but the government has not given me a permit to speak on this topic, so it’s illegal for me to say so with confidence unless I put this caveat here. So, I guess listen at your own risk. Now back to your regularly scheduled article…

Here, however is the insidious aspect of depression. Hope for your life is the immediate cure for depression. However, many of the physical symptoms of depression actually suppress our ability to think clearly, to formulate a plan, to predict the future with any reasonable accuracy thereby obscuring hope even when it is there. In other words, depression actively fights against its own cure. How shitty is that? And also, Why? Why does our body have a mechanism that actively shuts down its own ability to get better? Who - God or Mother Darwin - would consider that to be a design advantage?

The answer I think - and believe me, this is still highly conjectural at this point - lies in the knowledge that biologically, fear suppresses dopamine in the brain. This can somewhat make sense from a survival sense. Dopamine is the chemical in the brain that we get when we do something good like eat or have sex or stimulate learning. And of course it is released when accomplishing bigger rewards too like a promotion at work or winning over the affections of your crush. But it has also been discovered that dopamine is released in anticipation of these things. i.e., when we hope to get them. This hope to get something good is, at the chemical level, why we make the choices we make. So… within a certain primitive survival perspective, you can imagine why it would be beneficial. When you are running from the tiger, your body does not want you to get distracted by a strawberry. It makes sense biologically to suppress the reward/motivation system for anything other fight or flight when a threat is present.

The issue - the unnatural, un-designed-for scenario that creates depression as a persistent state - is one where you are living in a constant state of fear. Your body-mind is not designed to live in that state constantly. And lest you think “But I am not living in a constant state of fear, and I am definitely depressed,” let me remind you that ‘stress’ is just a specialized version of fear. It is low-level, living at the back of your mind, fear; not the existential, front of your mind fear. But it is a form of fear nonetheless, and your brain releases the exact same chemicals, only as a slow, perpetual drip rather than a single rushing torrent. So when we design our lives into one where we are constantly experiencing a constant state of stress/fear, we are creating a scenario where we unknowingly deprive ourselves of that anticipation/reward cycle, and over time we slowly devolve into a gray, meaningless existence.

The good news is that it is completely reversible.[^2] All you need to do to cure depression is to regain and sustain hope for a better life. “Better” in this case is purely subjective according to your own definition of what you consider to be better. More money? Better friends? More leisure time to spend with family? However you define a “better life” for yourself, you need to find a way to truly believe that you can move in that direction. Aaaand we can know objectively that that is literally always true, in every situation, including yours. It is always possible to improve your life, because there is no such thing as an impossible problem. In one way or another, unless you are literally facing imminent death,[^3] there is always a way to move yourself toward your highest priority (even if that means sacrificing a lesser priority).

And to be perfectly clear, “unsolvable problems” and “a lack of hope” are the same thing. If you lack hope for your life, then you necessarily believe that you have problems that are unsolvable. Otherwise, you would just solve them and your life would get better, by definition. Depression comes when we believe, falsely, that our problems are insurmountable. Yes, depression is also often characterized by a sense of worthlessness, loss of appetite, suicidality, unwarranted sleepiness and others. But these are the symptoms, not the cause, and trying to treat any of these symptoms individually without treating the root cause of hopelessness will always be a losing battle or at best a temporary win. Figuring out how to solve your problems is how you achieve hope, and believing that they must necessarily be solvable is the first step toward finding a solution.

But, remember when we talked about how depression prevents you from seeing the hope that would resolve the depression? How do we handle that? What good is “keep your chin up and believe in a brighter tomorrow” when you cannot see the brighter tomorrow due to your depression? Seems like an endless loop with no escape.

This is where modern-day therapies like Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT) can have a huge impact. These therapies (if performed by a competent therapist) can help you gradually and gently prove to your own mind that your problems are solvable afterall, even when you already believe that they are not. They work (in a very generalized, oversimplified way) by starting with small variations of the problem that don’t cost much energy to try to solve. You still may feel like it is a futile effort, but because the effort is so minimal, you’re usually willing to “give it a try” anyway. Then, when it works, you get a tiny little shot of dopamine in response, which then motivates you to try something a little harder. Little by little, you work your way up into solving your own big problems toward a better life.

But what about if you can’t afford or can’t find a competent therapist? That’s ok, you are not lost. You can perform these same steps yourself without help if you have to, or with a loved one if you have someone who is of the right mindset to help without getting in the way. Don’t get me wrong, if you have access to a competent therapist, that will make things easier and faster. They will be better at keeping you on track and forcing you past your uncomfortabilities. But if you have no other option and you have to do it alone, you absolutely can still do this with the same success. It may just take you longer to get there, and you may have to double back on some wrong turns. But it is always possible.

Whether you are doing this on your own or with help, the most important thing is to try to force yourself to try to think rationally.
Try asking yourself:

Focus on trying to find the off-white lies that The Deceiver has custom-engineered for you specifically to make your situation look hopeless. What are the things that you believe that maybe smell a bit “off”, like they might not actually be true even if you can’t logically disprove them? Start digging into those and pull apart the Christmas lights to figure out why you believe them.

I have personally been under the effects of depression for several months at a time at two different points in my life and in both cases I was able to work my way out of them without drugs by following these steps and focusing on finding the hope for how I wanted my life to be. Is that a guarantee that it will work for you? Certainly not. Two cases in one individual is hardly a rigorous scientific study. I acknowledge that. But I have also coached many other people through this process with similar results, so at the very least, I can guarantee that it is worth a try.

[1] Let me be clear here. By referring to “off-brand” depression, I am not in any way suggesting that people who suffer from one of these conditions is in any way suffering less or that their condition is not real or not worthy of our attention or efforts to cure. I speak only that these other disorders/conditions should not be called “depression” specifically because the only legitimate definition for depression is one caused by a loss of hope. So anything that is not triggered by a loss of hope is mislabeled as depression in the first place.

[2] It is possible that someone who has experienced depression for years or decades may actually alter the physiology of the brain in a way that is not completely reversible. I don’t know that that’s true, but I don’t know that it’s not true either. What I mean here is that under normal, non-extreme-outlier conditions, it is completely reversible.

[3] And if you are, congratulations, your depression is about to be cured.