Clinical Depression literature

Does anyone have some book recommendations for people who suffer from depression and/or anxiety?

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Have a look at some of pic related. I'm serious. When I suffered from depression a year ago I found reading these despairing books strangely cathartic. E.M. Cioran was a personal favourite at the time.

Feeling Good, by Dr. David Burns. It's sort of a classic of cognitive behavior therapy in book form. Not a substitute for therapy or medication, but it is very helpful in identifying and dealing with distorted and harmful thought patterns.

I've been looking for something equivalent in the area of dialectical behavioral therapy, in particular mindfulness, but haven't quite found the right thing yet. Maybe someone else has some insights.

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations tbqh family

The only correct answer is Robert Burns' The Anatomy of Melancholy.

That's the correct answer but only patricians will truly understand him digressing about the various properties of gemstones and shit like that.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, I'm going to start with Meditations, No longer Human and The Stranger.

I do want to give some context to the problems I'm currently having trouble coping with.

I fear having to interact with people (including people here on Veeky Forums) because I'm afraid of what those people think and could say to me and the chance that I'll fail at doing something because I see it as proof that I'm a failure.


It's so debilitating now that I don't want to do or try nearly everything anymore.

For example, I'm interested in talking about music but I feel sick when I think about what other people may say to me so I just don't talk about it and I don't want to do that anymore.

The same goes for debating, I just can't do it.

Normally I'd dismiss it as medieval alchemy (obviously that doesn't even hold historically, it just feels that way), but CBT psychotherapists these days have a lot in common with Burns' on the topic of depression/melancholy (the distinction didn't exist back then of course) and I know this because philosophers of mind who work with them actually hold conferences about that book.

I know this will sound like a form of "man up, faggot", but you should take steps towards fixing your problems rather than allowing them to lead you to depression.

So tl;dr guide:

> stop your negative thoughts as soon as you're aware of them and replace them with confident thoughts
> allow for your own alterity: just because you cannot see yourself calm, happy and confident right now doesn't mean that you can't create such a version of you, actual mental diseases (including chronic depression) are quite rare compared to the self-inflicted versions caused by feedback loops of negative thoughts and bad reinforcement
> work on it and don't distress if it doesn't feel good right away, these things take time and habit formation

I know this sounds like preachy self-help bullshit, but in my case it worked wonders as soon as I realized that I'm responsible for my own thoughts and their unconscious consequences (habit formation, "self" building, mental/physical health, etc.).

Then there's the obvious advise of "stop caring so much what others think", but I guess you know that one already. The difficult part is actually assuming it, not as pure indifference, but as a calm and balanced judgment, but, again, that takes time and positive reinforcement.

Stop eating any junk food. Cut down on carbs. Eat more vegetables. Drink only water. Get regular exercise. Have a regular nightly sleep schedule where you sleep for at least 7 hours a day. Stop taking any antidepressants or drugs in general.

Failing that, join the proles who refuse to blame their """"" depression """""" on any part of their lifestyles

Start working out so not only will you be more attractive but people won't be rude to you because they're afraid you'll beat them up

>prole

If anything, that sounds like a bourgeois problem.

Worked for DFW

I've been depressed for a long time and doing these things definitely helps, but part of the hard part of depression is the lack of will and desire to do things.

That said, the only way to do things is to begin to do them.

Small and simple is always easiest. I wanted to get a habit of working out. I started with 3 days a week of a simple lifting program called Starting Strength with just a few sets of 3 exercises taking about an hour. Before I knew it the interest of optimizing and working on these exercises was pulling me out of my depressed reverie somewhat. I've since added exercises and started doing other things on the other 4 days, but the first step was to begin simply.

A few weeks ago I went to see a therapist and it's been surprisingly helpful though quite expensive. The therapist will also help you be accountable since each week he'll ask you what you've been doing to work on your depression and it feels like shit to say, "nothing," so you'll inevitably do something.

Read anything you like. If you expect books to be a magic pill to cure your depression, you're an idiot. Live a healthier lifestyle and get professional help if you want to get better.

He was on antidepressants and probably had chronic issues though. It feels weird to think of him as someone who committed suicide after listening to his "This is Water" speech without considering chronic (biological) issues.

This will cheer you up!

Books are not going to help that much. Filling your day with things you're not/less ashamed of is really the way forward.

Imagine you were to spend every day lying in bed reading books for say 5 months or every day you wake up early, do some meditation, go to the gym, maybe do some quick yoga, eat well, socialise and maybe read for an hour in your spare time.

Regardless of whatever insights the books give I highly doubt you'd be in a better place mentally than the latter. I have experience with this. It's not rational at all, I have very similar sets of values when doing 'good' things during the day and when doing 'bad' but I just don't feel into my values or that it matters or that I care when I don't do much of anything.

The unfortunate truth is that depression, to me, seems not to have anything at all to do with deeper and deeper revelations and rational understanding but the legacy of your actions and psyche in relation to those past actions which decided in great part how you feel (and which have a huge impact on your feeling about the future, which is a big deal in depression)

It's more of a chipping away at bs until you're OK with what you do which means an ongoing and particularly at first, quite painful process which takes repetition and time and effort and that's all there is to it.


I'm also a big advocate of meditation with very specific personal goals. I meditate with very little regard to buddhist teachings. In fact, one of the big reasons I meditate is to become more in tune with my sense of self which I'd very much repudiated by ignoring what was going on in my life.

Also, when meditating well and consistently you find that these layers of imperceptible, inarticulable anxiety/pain/uneasiness/whatever fade and disappear.

One last thing which helped for me was to stop getting muddled up by philosophy particularly when low and vulnerable. I found myself feeling that my feelings/thoughts were 'wrong' because I'm an inferior thinker to them and so my own thinking is next to pointless in regards with coming to the truth about anything.

I find Carl Roger's conception of a mental health and the kind of directions and dispositions for a person to have are far superior to Neechu and Camus and others who, in what is probably not a very popular view, I think got muddled up and were so tortured because there were fundamental feelings/thoughts and parts of themselves which they vehemently rejected and resisted against.

Carl Roger's quote 'The interesting paradox is that only when I accept myself as I am can I change' I think is absolutely true. And to make that transition from loving 'the heroic resistance' to this kind of view was hard because it wasn't my nature really, but I'm more and more certain each day it is a better path and would be for many here.

Read Carl Roger's essays compiled in the book 'On Becoming a Person' if you're interested. For me it was more useful for insight than any philosopher and I've read a fair few.

Hey op, while you should improve your diet I'd you can afford to and exercise, I wouldn't get your hopes up about dog so improving your life. I was extremely depressed for several years, and what fucked me up personally was feeling as if I had be wronged by being depressed or that I didn't deserve to be depressed, etc. What helped me was giving up on the idea that if I tried the right therapy or the right diet or read the right book I would stop being depressed. I needed to learn to live with myself as a depressed person. Also I'm medicated af now ;^)

I'd second Feeling Good and Meditations are good books but I'd second Cioran too.

youtube.com/watch?v=1L8GbiGtt7s
Along with this, this video, particularly Jordan Peterson's input helped me with fundamental motivation and with a nice concrete answer to myself when I would be tempted by the mood of 'I don't have to do it, I can't be bothered, life is pointless, so I'm not going to do it'

Before watching this video and taking the advice seriously I really hadn't any answer I found good enough as a response.

What hit you lickin famm?

SSRI's?

lol

tsu

Meditations is more of a preventative book. If you're already in the depths of a depression stoic philosophy is entirely useless.

Don't read depressing literature when you are depressed. That's like masturbating to find a gf.

Read the The Ego and Its Own. I'm not even memeing. People who think it is anarchist or even nazi shit have definitely not read it.

Its meme status is just a spook that the book itself transcends.

>>>r9k

this thread is annoying as fuck. So little book recommendation and so much advice that was not asked for

insightfull

This. Don't be put off by the fact that the cover makes it look like a shitty self-help book, Alan Watts is my favorite philosopher, partly because he actually got me to change my own views on a lot of things.

I count over 60 recommended books fagotron

any serious reading is for people who 'suffer from depression' and we have a sticky for reccomendations. shiny happy people do not read

>itt; new age bullshit

...

Just for the record, it did the opposite for me. I am now acutely aware that the minor problems I face now are similar to the ones that will end my life and I'm OK with that.

im not the op but thank you for recomending this, i was dubious about getting his books as there titles put me off although i love is talks and lectures and have wanted to read his writing for myself i shall get this from your reccomendation, thank you

>book recommendations
Prometheus Rising by R.A. Wilson
Oblivion, by David Foster Wallace as well as his essay, "The Depressed Person"
A lot of DFW's work, including IJ, touches on themes that anyone who's experienced clinical depression will identify with.

As far as what actions may help you: work out every day, ideally with other people. Eat more fat, eat more spinach/kale other greens.

I wholly recommend this

not sure i understand, hope it's a useful awareness

If youre clinically depressed, you should write. Just not for an audience, but for yoyrself--to yoursslf. A philosophy can only achieve you so much happiness when taught from someone else. But fitting together the pieces on why your depressed, yourself, offers happiness best moulded in relation to your experience in life. No matter how symmetrical human nature and condition is, it's still a nodal experience-- just as a cloud is a cloud but no two are the same, and one always fractal apart into many, or together as a new whole.

And if you've tried and this hasn't worked, then by all means please study into the writings of others who are or were depressed. A broken mirror still gives a reflection, though not exact, which one can study to form a warped idea of themselves.

>but for yoyrself--to yoursslf.

wew


i agree though. Journalling is useful too

lol

This is Water is completely ironic user.

this subtle sabotaging of butterfly's peaceable image has been going well so far, user. keep it up.