Constantly too depressed to read books

Can you cool your autism? It's fine, m8.

t. not that guy, and a better writer than you.

>he hasn't felt the incapacity of getting hard for months
>he hasn't stayed in bed for hours, starring at the ceiling
>he hasn't backed away from an incoming subway during a panic attack, fearing that he would jump
>he hasn't gone inside it only to break down crying in a corner of the wagon
>he hasn't lost the will to eat, shit, or even move
>he hasn't sat down in the street while he was supposed to go somewhere
>he hasn't had depression
Truly a peasant demeanor.

There really isn't a point to reading, it's just escapism. You know what's right.

I will, thanks user.

does anyone else "zone" out when listening to audio books? Of course you do at times with books as well, but then you can stop and reread.

I just don't believe people listning to audio books catch the same percentage of the books as the ones reading.

How to meditate though?

I've done all that, I just don't call it depression because I'm not a child who can't take ownership of my own choices

Who gives a shit if its a choice between not reading at all

Why did you do those things?

>he fell for the free will meme
Funny how chemicals can alter your mind! It's almost like there's a connection between the phenomenon that is consciousness and the material reality of your brain.

Not saying that getting your shit together isn't a manifestation of will power, but I've seen enough people go down to know that under the umbrella of choice, there are very different situations and determinism.

If there is no word for the Sun, does it cease to radiate its warmth?
If there is no word for death, will you keep your loved one with you until forever?

Also, it's old stuff already, with melancholia and such.

But you said it yourself mate, escapism is the point of reading.
If you don't like escapism then you might as well kill yourself, since our modern world is heaven for escapism.

I knew the sort of replies this thread would get as soon as I saw it. What do you think the genesis of these attitudes their indulgent platitudes are? It is as if people resent the mentally ill.

Oddly enough it’s kind of an aggressive attempt to help. But it’s an impatient one. You are in a sore state and I’m sorry you’re in it, but can you please just snap out of it and get back to having some utility? It’s uncomfortable to see you like this.
Part of it probably comes from the fact that OP is posting here publicly as if to solicit either sympathy or advice or cathartic recognition. What else are some people meant to be able to provide except the attitudes that have helped them navigate life?

The idea of real inward affliction where concepts like responsibility begin to lose their clarity and applicability is necessarily frightening. At the same time, other people would find deliverance from these things a relief and a consolation, so there is a natural suspicion from people who value the moral utility of concepts like responsibility toward the idea that someone can truly be invisibly handicapped.

There are different narratives for different trials and dispositions - and sometimes they conflict irreconcilably.

Irrelevant to my point.
You may be determined to make a decision but its still you making the decision, don't act as if the composition of your brain is independent of your identity itself.

If you feel as though life is pointless and any action is not justified then that is what you believe, anything else is pure posturing and self denial.

>the idea that someone can truly be invisibly handicapped.

Literally impossible. There is nothing stopping a depressed person jumping up and being as active as an Olympic athlete and there have been plenty of depressed people who have done so

You don't think physical anomalies or diseases of the brain can have a real effect on emotion or thought processes?

Why do you believe in the duality of the mind and body? Are you dumb bro

Its the opposite way around my man, its you who are asserting a duality of mind and body when you suddenly disassociate from the chemicals and processes that compose your mind the minute they don't suit your idea of yourself

What if you develop a brain tumour which alters your personality and behaviour? We would say that their changed personality is not a result of personal choice. There is a problem that extends to other mental problems, and even general conscious phenomena... Consider that childhood OCD often develops after infection with strep throat. These are mental illnesses where people retain their sense of reality, but their behaviour, emotional control and perception of reality is still altered. The function of parts of the brain is inhibited or altered, producing different behavioural phenomena... different apprehension of threats to be avoided. We tend to blame the neurotic person for being unreasonable, but can they help it?
These are real moral questions, even if they are inconvenient to our sense of justice and social norm. The universe is ambivalent and doesn’t respect the basic assumptions of human social life - we shouldn’t expect neurology to conform to our expectations of moral culpability.

Jesus Christ. Only in the most literal sense are you right, and even then doubtfully.

>constantly too busy being retard with low attention span with TV and computer in close proximity.
I am that guy who has shelves worth of unread books.

>What if you develop a brain tumour which alters your personality and behaviour?

Irrelevant, they may not in their previous mind have chosen to make the decisions they make now but regardless they are now making them.
What separates a person with OCD from someone with depression is that there is no reason behind their actions, they appear to have some twisted up circuitry going on which causes them to make breaks of logic in their motivations. Its still of course them making the decisions but they can at least claim to have an inhibited capability to reason which is a legitimate claim to disability

There is however no such lapse of reason in a depressed person's mind. They are perfectly able to perceive the world and logically think about it. Its just that their conclusion is that its awful and pointless and who are we to argue against that

Are you Christian user? Perhaps you want the moral culpability of the moment of decision to remain unmolested to retain the sensibility of Christian moral evaluation. Temptation vs the assent to sin. That ultimately we must take responsibility for our moral choices regardless of our fallen nature.

If I am or not, I'm not sure, I am influenced by Christian thought here and its important even in a secular understanding because the moment we cease to have this unrelenting ownership of mind is the moment our actions lost all meaning. We become an arbitrary happenstance, mere sensation

The problem with depression is that it ascribes negative thoughts and feelings to chemical imbalance when that imbalance is precisely caused by those same negative thought loops. If you start thinking differently the brain chemistry will change.

Perhaps. I doubt it's so monocausal. Obviously thoughts play a big part, neuroplasticity and all that, hence the existence of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. But it's certainly not the whole picture, and depression is a pretty extensive and diverse syndrome. We shouldn't ascribe everything to either external or internal causes, since by the nature of the beast there's going to be a complex interplay. The focus on the brain chemistry narrative is probably rhetorically useful to demonstrate the physicality of the condition, as well as treatment with medication.

This is why I claim its not that all things described under the title of depression are inexistent and not potentially debilitating but simply that the term depression itself is an illegitimate category in describing them.
Brainfog in certain circumstances is a legitimate disability, as is experience of fatigue. Simply being extremely pessimistic or melancholic (as is totally sufficient criteria to be described as depressed) is not a disability
These things need to be firmly seperated

You seem to think depression is really just a particular worldview and therefore not a disability. There's a lot of assumptions and leaps there.
Are there no distinctions we can make between a pessimistic understanding of/attitude toward the world/life and the definition of clinical depression?
Can we not say that certain illnesses or conditions affect the way our brain relates to and processes the world we live in both experientially and in abstract?

Obviously mental illness is a social construct, its imbued with all sorts of value judgements and shit. We look at certain neurological and mental phenomena and consider them undesirable because of their effect on our 'quality of life' and so on and 'treat' them. In this sense all such categories are fictional.
But the things we label as depression are debilitating, and do in fact have definitive behavioural and physical correlates. Why is this not disability?

Should clarify:
*debilitating in relation to the assumptions of what is considered proper functionality and good quality of life and so on that underly our value system and our attitude toward mental health

>But the things we label as depression are debilitating

Some of them are, some of them are not. Why cover them all with the same term when any particular set of symptoms are mutually excludable and not necessarily causally related whatsoever.

Not necessarily perhaps, but evidentially.

I see no such evidence. There are happy lazy people and there are melancholic active people. Only when the two traits are put together do we say they "have" depression.

>constant unstoppable headache on 22 and constantly too depressed to read books
I just want to know that there's someone like me out there.

>not him, but if 'depression' had never been invented, nobody could be 'depressed'

obviously, since there word "depressed" wouldn't exist

people would still have the symptoms of depression and people would still an hero, whether you call it depression or some other word or you don't have a word for it at all doesn't change a thing.

>>he hasn't backed away from an incoming subway during a panic attack, fearing that he would jump

too relatable

>they appear to have some twisted up circuitry going on which causes them to make breaks of logic in their motivations.

there is no reason whatsoever why this wouldn't apply to depression the same way as it does to ocd.

For something to have symptoms it actually has to have an underlying cause. No one talks about the "symptoms of anger", because an emotion should be synonymous with its symptoms. Only in the case of depression is there such an implied background universally.

This is what user is getting at, its a fictitious illness. Nothing but a mechanism to control how people think and behave.

There's no reason whatsoever why depression may not be a RESULT of a brain set to rational thinking as opposed to a "normal" state of constant delusion.
OCD is inherently irrational, depression has to be proven to be as such