Depression and Rationality

There was a thread on a related topic a bit ago. I didn't read it in detail, but it might be useful: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2um/strategies_for_dealing_with_emotional_nihilism/

Before going to a psychologist or taking more drugs, try running.

Note: Progress slowly, so as to avoid injury. I made the mistake of increasing speed and distance at too high a rate and ended up getting injured.

This is tentatively offered, but it seems to me that you're suffering from either the lack of novelty or the lack of perception of novelty.

Is there anything new you could add to your life? New activities (preferably as different as possible from what you usually do) and/or new surroundings?

You could be up against something physiological, in which case self-experimentation might be your best bet.

However, I'm also wondering whether you're doing some sort of fast mental checking to see whether experiences are good enough to enjoy, and the experiences mostly fall short. In that case, it might also help to deliberately pay more attention to current experience.

First of all - I'm not a psychiatrist. This comment is just my personal view.

"Capacity to enjoy things" and depression are quite different. If you enjoy X, and you are attached to/addicted to/obsessed with X, then when you lose X, you are likely to feel depressed.

Maybe you should not get exposed to X (e.g. drugs) or not get addicted to X (e.g. gambling).

Maybe you should start with changing your attitude and/or preferences. Believing that you've lost capacity to enjoy things probably lead you to make confirmation bias. Also, the past is sunk cost, man. You can learn from it, but you can't recover it. Sometimes people hang happiness with expectations they set, so when they don't meet their goals, they are sad. This is not gonna help them with their future plans. The trick here is you should learn to lose. Losing is ok - be it relationship, competition, wealth, reputation, etc - as long as you have a will to go on. There's nothing to irritate about, man. With bounded rationality, we make mistakes sometimes, and this is a natural part of life.

Some saints and volunteer workers live in horrible conditions but they find happiness in helping other people. On the other hand, some investors commit suicide after a stock market crashes and they learn their portfolios are worthless. It's amazing, yet sad, to think about how people set preferences, attitudes and relate results to happiness. sighs

It's commonly known that depression is often triggered (and maintained) by fundamentally irrational thoughts. Many thoughts associated with depression are simultaneously thoughts that are fundamentally irrational. Feelings of guilt, feelings of hopelessness, and feelings of worthlessness - many of those beliefs assume conceptions that do not correspond with the real world. And so a rational person may ostensibly be less prone to depression.

You sure about this? My psych classes taught about 'depressive realism', or "the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias." This was of course no consolation to me at the time.

It sounds like what you're going through is temporary, and still related to the relationship that ended 7 months ago. You've partially recovered, but you still have a ways to go and it'll take time. For now you aren't able to enjoy things, but at some point that will change. Some things that might help (in no particular order):

• cognitive behavioral therapy
• SSRIs
• meditation
• reading books about happiness (like this one)
• falling in love with someone else
• talking regularly with a close friend about what you're going through
• getting involved with a project that you really care about

You sound a lot like me, actually.

My problem is, that I think I've lost my capacity to enjoy things. I simply don't enjoy anything anymore.

"Loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities" is a textbook depression symptom.

I have some problems with energy/concentration, but my Adderall for ADD helps with them. But it's still difficult for me to maintain the attention span to do most other things.

And that's another textbook symptom.

So yeah, you might want professional help.

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Semi-random thought: How do you feel about pets? If people aren't relieving your loneliness any more, maybe a dog or cat will.

The two non-drug interventions I know of that have good evidence to show them making a real difference are cognitive behavioural therapy, and exercise.

therapy might not even work because i've corrected my thinking (and even convinced myself that i probably will eventually land someone, simply because i'm super-exceptional at advertising myself online and that the chances will improve as I get older). but it's not helping me feel any better.

It's possible to believe that at a conscious level but still have a contradictory lower level 'belief' that makes you feel bad.

Does it feel like someone is trying to convince you of something that doesn't feel true, but you accept it because you can't poke holes in their logic? Or does it feel like something that is just obviously true? If it's the former, there might be more room for improvement by manually correcting your thinking patterns.

If you think you've run out of improvements at that level, you can get tricky and dig deeper- doing stuff like forcing yourself to smile and watching bloggingheads in the morning

I have no sources for weed or other psychedelics

That's not true. Even Walmart sells more than one kind (seriously). Psychedelics could be a pretty powerful tool, but I'm not sure that it's all that biased towards happy places- If you go this route, you'd want to make sure you knew what you were doing.

Oh, and exercise