View Full Version : OT: feeling depressed or low: what do you do!
So the oil prices soaring, the interest rate rising, the stock market crashing, the trade and federal budgets ballooning, --
And the poor girl cannot keep other girls away from her boy friend on the webcam.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4262372597731133725
feeling so low.
what do you do to get over the low tides in our life?
:D
I was told a very good story back in high school. It always cheers me up.
There was a prince from Han dynasty. He was sent out of palace after birth so as not to be hurt by bad ministers and relatives. He was protected and raised by a monk. He sort of grew up on the streets. They had to move around so as not to be detected by bad people.
When he was 18, he was told of his true ID and his father the emperor passed away.
He only felt depressed. He was so far away from the palace and his rightful throne. He had nobody to help him except the ailing monk.
One day he was so drunk and passed out on the street. A beggar saved him and let him rest in his straw hut. The prince woke up and said why did you save me? Where is the wine?
The beggar said you are young and strong. You can work why ruin yourself with the wine? The beggar is crippled and can only beg for a meal.
The prince said I am the prince but I cannot make it back to the palace with all the bad people.
The beggar said do not dream anymore. Be realistic and go to work.
The beggar showed the prince his stash. It is a bag of small silver money or Sui Yin Zi.
The beggar said one day I will run a restaurant to make more money and help to feed all the other crippled people. With that little money, the beggar may beg for life and still not have enough money.
The prince then realized that it is the dream that kept the beggar wake up everything and go to "beg".
The beggar has so little but has a "big" dream to keep going.
eventually, the prince did make back to the palace with the help of a general and several good ministers and many other civillians.
And it all started with learning the story of the beggar.
--
so when you are so low. do not focus on what you have not. do focus on what you already have and go from there.
If you think you are so low, there are always people in a much lower status then you.
--
:D
Shellhammer
05-13-2006, 05:39 PM
SPJ,
It sounds as if you have a good handle on your emotions! Just being able to sit with your demons and realize what is real and what isn't is the beginning of real wisdom, and that wisdom is evidently within you.
Thank you for sharing a little piece of your path.
Mark
If you think you are so low, there are always people in a much lower status then you.
There's a flaw in that logic, because somebody has to be lowest, right? I mean, some person is occupying that position that everyone is supposed to use for their basis of comparison to make them feel better. I understand your logic, but I think using relative wealth/relative status/etc... as a source for alleviating the blues is only slightly less flawed than using an absolute standard.
Personally, what has worked best for me is to take in the reality of my situation and sit with it and be present. To get out of the past or the future or thoughts of what I have and what I lack. These are all illusions anyway. What I have today or this minute I may not have a minute from now. The past is out of my hands and the future is often more a distraction than anything else.
Crushing Fist
05-13-2006, 06:32 PM
He's feeling low! Quick, strap him down and give him the Thorizine!!!
:D
I think its safe to say that whoever is occupying the lowest position in human standards is not reading this... in fact he is probably pretty close to death.
Oh there he went, but now there is someone else at the bottom... oh he's gone now too...
hmmmmm
Actually I would think the lowest position is probably a really big tie between all those children who starve to death everyday.
isn't that cheerful?
:p
He's feeling low! Quick, strap him down and give him the Thorizine!!!
:D
I think its safe to say that whoever is occupying the lowest position in human standards is not reading this... in fact he is probably pretty close to death.
Oh there he went, but now there is someone else at the bottom... oh he's gone now too...
hmmmmm
Actually I would think the lowest position is probably a really big tie between all those children who starve to death everyday.
isn't that cheerful?
:p
Yeah, and according to Maslow, at that level you really aren't worried about feeling depressed, more about where your next meal is coming from, if at all, and where you can sleep.
I realized when I wrote it that it was a pretty academic argument.
Just trying to generate some healthy debate on a lazy Saturday morning.
Maybe I could use some of that thorazine :D
Crushing Fist
05-13-2006, 06:45 PM
I'm stuck here all day :(
perhaps healthy debate will keep me sane.
Check it:
The more a person has the less inclined they are to be "happy"
those with the least (but enough to survive) don't have time to be sad. for them life is a blessing.
with more luxury comes more sadness and depression.
My man Nietzsche called this living in a "miserable ease"
consider that we live in a society where obesity is labeled a "disease" :rolleyes:
of course the shameless invention of disease is a whole other topic...
The more a person has the less inclined they are to be "happy"
those with the least (but enough to survive) don't have time to be sad. for them life is a blessing.
with more luxury comes more sadness and depression.
I'll go even a step further. Even those with very little, but with plenty of time to be sad, as in some of the few remaining primitive tribal cultures that clearly don't spend every minute of every day subsisting but rather put in (for the sake of argument) closer to a 40 hour work week, they appear much happier than those with great affluence.
Maybe the things you own really do end up owning you.
Or maybe living in a culture of competition in which there appears to be no upper limit on what one can achieve breeds dissatisfaction in anyone living in that culture... a gnawing sort of dissatisfaction that only grows as one invests him or herself in the struggle for more.
Just for the sake of argument...
Crushing Fist
05-13-2006, 07:13 PM
or
perhaps the more ones life becomes disconnected from the natural world the more one will feel "sad"
regardless of free time versus leizure time (plenty of really busy people are depressed, and as you point out many jungle tribes have loads of free time and are quite content)
perhaps this has to do more with the "Crazy Life" (koyaanisqatsi) than anything else.
When life becomes fake, artificial, cage-like perhaps this is the underlying reason for all our troubles.
Ok, sad guy.... go camping
we have to test this hypothesis :cool:
I know being out in nature makes me feel waaaaaay better.
People seem to forget (or be in acute denial) that we are still just animals.
Kymus
05-13-2006, 07:21 PM
1) Lazy *******/sneaky doctor way - eat refined sugars. It will naturally boost your seratonin levels. Of course, it'll also make you fat if you don't work it off ;)
2) St. John's Wort and or Omega 3 Fatty Acids; both shown to be as good if not better than SSRI Rx medication and you're not gonna have severe depression if you stop taking them
3) Laugh! Find something to make your mopey a$$ laugh
4) Read the 4 Noble Truths
the end.
or
perhaps the more ones life becomes disconnected from the natural world the more one will feel "sad"
regardless of free time versus leizure time (plenty of really busy people are depressed, and as you point out many jungle tribes have loads of free time and are quite content)
perhaps this has to do more with the "Crazy Life" (koyaanisqatsi) than anything else.
When life becomes fake, artificial, cage-like perhaps this is the underlying reason for all our troubles.
Ok, sad guy.... go camping
we have to test this hypothesis :cool:
I know being out in nature makes me feel waaaaaay better.
People seem to forget (or be in acute denial) that we are still just animals.
I think wer're definitely on the same page here, particularly about us still being animals. Man, I haven't been camping for a really long time.
1) Lazy *******/sneaky doctor way - eat refined sugars. It will naturally boost your seratonin levels. Of course, it'll also make you fat if you don't work it off ;)
2) St. John's Wort and or Omega 3 Fatty Acids; both shown to be as good if not better than SSRI Rx medication and you're not gonna have severe depression if you stop taking them
3) Laugh! Find something to make your mopey a$$ laugh
4) Read the 4 Noble Truths
the end.
Points 3 and 4 sound good. I don't know about 1. I'd like to see your source material on #2, because I don't know of any controlled studies suggesting that St. John's Wort or Omega 3 is as effective as SSRI's in reducing symptoms of depression. The herbal stuff would probably be effective for a lot of the people who get put on SSRI's, because they don't need meds in the first place. However, for people with severe depression related to neurochemical problems, your St. John's or Omega 3 are not real likely to do much good.
Crushing Fist
05-13-2006, 08:08 PM
are there any studies on major depressive disorder or the like in third world countries/ tribal peoples?
This would be interesting
are chemical imbalances something that only affect first world countries?
or is there just no information on this?
what about suicide rates in the same groups?
or psychosis etc?
any numbers on this stuff?
to be the devil's advocate (hail satan) I will suggest that perhaps the chemical imbalances are the effect and not the cause of depression. so by giving "zombie meds" (sorry I like the term) are they perhaps merely treating the symptom while leaving the root cause?
I mean how can causation be ascertained in this relationship?
doesn't depression suppress the immune system?
why can't being sad make your brain chemistry off balance instead of having a brain chemistry imbalance making you sad?
Crushing Fist
05-13-2006, 08:52 PM
this just in...
from The New York Times
"Zombie Meds make you kill yourself!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/health/12depress.html?hp&ex=1147406400&en=e309d24b4d8d8167&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
After analyzing data from clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline has sent letters to doctors warning that its antidepressant drug Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults.
The company said it had changed the labeling on the drug to reflect the finding of the study, which analyzed clinical trial data involving some 15,000 people. The study found that reported suicide attempts were rare but significantly more common in adults who took the drug for depression than in those who received placebo pills.
maybe they should just go back to giving people heroin...
(hail satan)
:p
_William_
05-13-2006, 09:33 PM
I literally "count my blessings", and by the end of that I realize that I really don't have much to complain about...
:)
FuXnDajenariht
05-13-2006, 11:34 PM
hail! hail! lol
are there any studies on major depressive disorder or the like in third world countries/ tribal peoples?
This would be interesting
are chemical imbalances something that only affect first world countries?
or is there just no information on this?
what about suicide rates in the same groups?
or psychosis etc?
any numbers on this stuff?
to be the devil's advocate (hail satan) I will suggest that perhaps the chemical imbalances are the effect and not the cause of depression. so by giving "zombie meds" (sorry I like the term) are they perhaps merely treating the symptom while leaving the root cause?
I mean how can causation be ascertained in this relationship?
doesn't depression suppress the immune system?
why can't being sad make your brain chemistry off balance instead of having a brain chemistry imbalance making you sad?
Well, first off, I'm not up on all the cross-cultural research out there, but for many types of psychiatric illness (especially schizophrenia), there is at least some research supporting similar prevalence across cultures.
As far as the brain chemistry stuff goes, it's very complicated and almost certainly not a simple linear relationship. Some of the results of being depressed almost certainly contribute to continued symptoms in a kind of circular/feeding on itself sort of way. In one example of something that's only been uncovered in the last several years of neuroscience research, it has been suggested that the neurochemical changes that happen in the brain of someone suffering from major depression are actually the result of structural changes in the brain itself, where the development of neuronal tissue slows or practically stops, and the existing cells are unhealthy. It used to be believed that new neurons were not developed past adulthood, but we now know that a healthy brain is constantly replenishing its cells. In light of all this, some of the current theory on SSRIs says that the reason it takes 4 to 6 weeks to achieve therapeutic effects after starting on a drug is because that's how long it takes for a new generation of cells to develop. It's not so simple as increasing Serotonin, because if you look at a brain of a person on an SSRI, they are swimming in Serotonin within hours of the first dose.
some would sing at karaoke bar.
some would just cook a big meal and then throw the food out.
some would clean the kitchen over and over, even though it is clean already.
some would shop and spend till cards max'ed out.
some would--
:D
Royal Dragon
05-15-2006, 03:56 AM
- Sit on Kung Fu message boards?
the happy or joyful hours or events seem to be short.
the rest of time is just daily routine or on the way to something.
the monks and diligent workers will find "pleasure" or contentments in daily routines.
clean a bird cage, sweep the yard, feeding the chicken and pigs--
if we know we are part of the universe, and we are in keeping with the harmony of things around us,
if we have compassions,
--
we may not feel alone or low.
--
end of taoist/buddhist rant.
:D
the happy or joyful hours or events seem to be short.
the rest of time is just daily routine or on the way to something.
the monks and diligent workers will find "pleasure" or contentments in daily routines.
clean a bird cage, sweep the yard, feeding the chicken and pigs--
if we know we are part of the universe, and we are in keeping with the harmony of things around us,
if we have compassions,
--
we may not feel alone or low.
--
end of taoist/buddhist rant.
:D
Good post. Very nice. I wrote a poem once about this very thing.
Beware, my weak attempt at verse follows...
I watched the sunset’s beauteous dance,
The clouds were gilded with fading light,
And passed through red and purple to gray,
As day passed into moonlit night.
And time, thought I, reflected here
Stakes each part to its proper place.
We cannot trust, and so we fear,
And try like mad to beat time’s pace.
But we, as motes caught in the wind
Can flail and struggle all our days,
And all we gain is what we lose,
For time is measured many ways.
So often have I sighed aloud,
Embittered by my soul’s decay,
As life stands still, a rancid pool,
And day fades into numbing day.
If I could just awaken then –
Tear through this “dream within a dream,” –
And see with eyes fixed here and now,
It might not so unseemly seem.
Why must we all sleepwalk so,
And only wake for glances?
Illuminations just a glow,
Whose rarity romances.
I watched the sunset’s beauteous dance,
It fades like my convictions.
And time shines through this joke on me,
Reveals my truths as fictions.
PangQuan
05-15-2006, 09:15 PM
i always return to the thought of nothing and no one.
the equality of all from a blade of grass to the cosmic workings...all so fleeting in the vastness of time immortal.
when i realize that my petty workings of emotion and ego amount to nothing of true importance. why should i waste time on the negative when the positive is so much more constructive.
it is my insignificance that returns me to understanding.
sometimes when one feels a bit of depression, the cure will often shed light upon somthing perhaps not yet awakened in the individual.
with this process, depression can actually be a powerful tool of self realization and a healthy addition to the continuation of your positive life.
brothernumber9
05-15-2006, 09:36 PM
When witness to someone with occasionally severe depression, it is a helpless experience. There is very little you can do, and very little the depressed person does. All these pep talks are great, but futile for some when sunken into their depression. There are different meds and therapies based on what is the most probable cause of the depression ex: thyroid, seratonin (sp?), etc. But it seems for sufferers of severe depression therapies are often focused in a preventative nature. That is engaging in activities that bring more enjoyment and for lack of a better way to put it act as a distraction from becoming depressed, until it becomes more habitual and perhaps motivational.
PangQuan
05-15-2006, 09:44 PM
with this degree of depression it is sad.
i feel bad for these people, but it is how they are i guess.
it must certainly be a tough weakness to deal with.
When witness to someone with occasionally severe depression, it is a helpless experience. There is very little you can do, and very little the depressed person does. All these pep talks are great, but futile for some when sunken into their depression. There are different meds and therapies based on what is the most probable cause of the depression ex: thyroid, seratonin (sp?), etc. But it seems for sufferers of severe depression therapies are often focused in a preventative nature. That is engaging in activities that bring more enjoyment and for lack of a better way to put it act as a distraction from becoming depressed, until it becomes more habitual and perhaps motivational.
You're right about that. It's **** frustrating to try to treat as well. I've worked with one patient who was relatively unresponsive to almost every treatment method until he finally found some limited relief of symptoms with electroconvulsive therapy. That's some weird stuff, especially given its history, but for some severely depressed people its the only thing that seems to work.
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