The cause and solution to depression
Andrew Johns
Guiding others as they free their minds and find their way back home to who they are
Depression is best understood through the basic definition of the word.
To depress something means to push down, weaken, and devitalize. If we are feeling depressed, it begs the question, "What are we pushing down?" and how is that contributing to our devitalized feelings?
There are a few things that we push down that manifest itself as what we would call depression.
(1) We are pushing down emotional pain and trauma that needs to be released.
(2) We are pushing down our authentic selves, desires, and needs, which must be fulfilled.
The symptoms we know as depression are the body and mind's way of expressing that it can no longer push down what it has been holding below the surface.
Understanding this further disarms the medicalized definition of depression as a neurochemical imbalance. It is not.
So, to free ourselves of our depression, we must do two things:
领英推荐
(1) Find a way to release the emotional pain and trauma we've tamped down under years of coping mechanisms and protective adaptations.
(2) Find a way to reconnect with who we are and live authentically.
Often, the two go hand in hand. Trauma or persistent conditioning will remove us from ourselves, and lead to adaptations that bury the pain under various forms of coping and numbing. To heal one often leads to the healing of both simultaneously.
And this explains why depression becomes more common in highly industrialized countries where we sacrifice our individuality to be accepted and woven into the cogs of the greater societal machine. Our needs at the level of the individual are unmet.
It's not that industrial societies are fundamentally evil and we should eliminate it. That is an unwise overreaction. Instead, our next leap in awareness is to find a way to realize the benefits of industrialization without sacrificing our individuality along with it.
That's the path toward minimized suffering through the riches that industrialization can provide (food, medicine, shelter) and minimizing suffering through the subjugation of our individual expression at the hands of broad-scale conformity.
Your depression is not a life sentence. It is a response to you pushing things down for too long. An SSRI may bridge the gap during acute periods of suffering. But the solution is not a pill. It is to release your pain and release yourself to be who you truly are.
We create diseases and reasons out of ephemeral measurements to obscure the fact that, as I've often put it—most of all and most often—depression is a symptom of not living well.
Guiding clients toward maximizing lifelong and intergenerational wealth...
1 年... "our next leap in awareness..." ??
Creating Categories | Building Brands
1 年Appreciate all your doing here. Thank you for shining a light on these topics, especially on this platform.
Founder @hpy | ex-Uber
1 年I imagine in our tribal communities of the past, if someone experienced deep levels of anhedonia the tribe would gather and likely take you on a sort of journey of sorts to rediscover your true self. Perhaps it might be rotating responaibilties or maybe venturing on a journey to find medicinal healing. I think it’s also why perhaps spirituality emerged as not just a way to answer the big questions but also at least in the East as a way to apply meaning to daily things. My father Gokul Agarwalla said one of the most impactful things to me the other day - anxiety occurs only when your belief in the divine (you can add whatever scientific flavor of optimism you like here) is not complete. Love all your posts Andy Johns - please keep them coming!
Bridging AI founders to corporate buyers, CXOs, and VCs
1 年I like to think of depression as an evolutionary response to something gone wrong for far too long in life so you withdraw from your community as a way to signal help. It's your body and mind going into self-preservation mode. You really can analyze this from both the scientific angle as well as the sociological angle too. The fact that we're not living as close knit communities and tribes means you can withdraw for far too long in depression without a social response from your community.