I've had depression for most of my life, whether it was learned or biological is beyond me, I think a case could be made for both, but the origin is beside the point for the sake of this post; where we started is less important than where we are, and in the absence of a time machine there's not much I could do about it anyway.
Biology can make a person depressed, as can neurology, and circumstances, heck, vitamin deficiencies can masquerade as depression, but there's one more horseman in there, and that's cognition.
How we talk about a thing and think about a thing influences our feelings and opinions about it, as John Milton once said:
“The mind is its own place, it can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven.”
This is strongly in line with Taoism, I believe, insofar as the Tao Te Ching implies that the world is neither a good place nor a bad one, it is just a place and we are in it, any judgements we form or values we measure by are ours and ours alone. If we the world as it is we are able to enjoy it, when we wish the world was other than it is we experience suffering.
And here is where depression comes into play. I may be speaking only for myself in this, but I have found that a great deal of my depressive thinking amounts to comparing myself as I am to how I think I should be.
"I should be more ambitious, I should work harder, I should be a better son, I hate that I'm not those things, I wish I was a good person."
Depression is, to some degree, a rejection of the self, it is a chronic notion of one's self as insufficient, not good enough, not worthy. We make a value judgement about ourselves and find ourselves wanting, we then go on to list all the things that a good and lovable person would do that we're not doing. And what's worse, when we do do something good our depression rushes to dismiss it, or contextualize it into nothingness, or calously informs us that we should have done it better, or sooner, or more quickly; even when we do good we compare ourselves to what we didn't do, what we should have done.
But should is a slippery thing, when you think about it. Should is strongly influenced by culture, thirty years ago it went without saying that women should be skinny if they want to be found attractive and so a lot of women starved and punished themselves for not living up to unrealistic beauty standards, some men today feel great insecurity at the idea of being stay at home dads because men are supposed to bring home the bacon, for millennia men and women told themselves that they should be attracted to the opposite gender and that they were somehow wrong or deficient for not feeling that, our cultures create a lot of shoulds for us to navigate, social media does it in spades these days...
...but shoulds aren't naturally occurring, they're man made the whole lot of them, it's not so much that they don't matter as to say they're not necessarily something to get hung up on. Back to the women starving themselves in the 1990's, think how much pain people experienced over the shoulds of those beauty standards, now think about the fact that today it's in style for women to be thick and curvy; if those women doing thousand mile marathons on stair steppers had been magically transported thirty years into the future they'd have been told they were hotties. (I'm not trying to single out the ladies, it's just that I think that's an example everyone can relate to and it's an example we've all seen the damaging effects of.)
So we beat ourselves up because we think we should be something we're not, maybe even because of something we can't ever be, and we go through life suffering not because of something we are but because of something we aren't.
We aren't skinny enough, or wealthy enough, or kind enough, or attractive enough, or we're not well hung enough, or we don't have enough hair, or we stole a pencil from Karen Loftus in 3rd grade and you knew it was wrong and you shouldn't have done that and you just can't forgive yourself for it, those are the sorts of things we tell ourselves, and while that may not be enough to cause depression, it sure as shit doesn't help, either.
The Tao Te Ching doesn't talk about shoulds, it talks about is. "This is the world," the Tao says, "think of it what you will."
How is it less absurd to think ill of ourselves for being who we are than to think ill of the weather for being rainy? Being angry at the weather won't change it, spending your work day lamenting about your wet pant bottoms won't dry them out, why is beating yourself up any less absurd shaking your fists at the clouds? Because you have agency? Prove it. Change the current moment to be something other than it is, you can't. Beating yourself up does as much practical good as shaking your fist at the clouds, beating yourself up doesn't change who you are, it just makes you sad about it and you don't need to be sad about it.
Taoism, I think, teaches that all things have their place, every iota of the universe is a reflection of the whole, if you say that you should be different you're saying that the universe should be different, after all you are an integral and indivisible part of that universe, your identity is what gives the universe its identity, you are essential to it, to say you are imperfect as you are is to say that the universe is imperfect as it is, and that does not align with my understanding of the Tao.
One last thing before you go, a moment of hypocrisy on my part: Depression is a complex interplay of cognition, biology, neurology, hormonal balance, circumstances, and lived experiences. If you have depression you probably have bad thinking, but you might also have a vitamin D deficiency, or a neurotransmitter imbalance, or a shitty job, or past trauma, and changing your thinking will only do so much to address those problems. This is all just to say that if you're depressed you should consider talking to your doctor about your symptoms and talking to a therapist about your circumstances, those can be spooky things to do (anxiety and depression go hand in hand, if you didn't know, it's normal to feel anxious about the idea of talking to someone) but the good that can be accomplished is immense. Improving your thinking and cognition, ending the habit of comparing yourself to others, is a hell of a lot easier if you're not scraping dopamine and serotonin from the bottom of a peanut butter jar.
I've had depression for most of my life, whether it was learned or biological is beyond me, I think a case could be made for both, but the origin is beside the point for the sake of this post; where we started is less important than where we are, and in the absence of a time machine there's not much I could do about it anyway.Biology can make a person depressed, as can neurology, and circumstances, heck, vitamin deficiencies can masquerade as depression, but there's one more horseman in there, and that's cognition.How we talk about a thing and think about a thing influences our feelings and opinions about it, as John Milton once said:“The mind is its own place, it can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven.”This is strongly in line with Taoism, I believe, insofar as the Tao Te Ching implies that the world is neither a good place nor a bad one, it is just a place and we are in it, any judgements we form or values we measure by are ours and ours alone. If we the world as it is we are able to enjoy it, when we wish the world was other than it is we experience suffering.And here is where depression comes into play. I may be speaking only for myself in this, but I have found that a great deal of my depressive thinking amounts to comparing myself as I am to how I think I should be."I should be more ambitious, I should work harder, I should be a better son, I hate that I'm not those things, I wish I was a good person."Depression is, to some degree, a rejection of the self, it is a chronic notion of one's self as insufficient, not good enough, not worthy. We make a value judgement about ourselves and find ourselves wanting, we then go on to list all the things that a good and lovable person would do that we're not doing. And what's worse, when we do do something good our depression rushes to dismiss it, or contextualize it into nothingness, or calously informs us that we should have done it better, or sooner, or more quickly; even when we do good we compare ourselves to what we didn't do, what we should have done.But should is a slippery thing, when you think about it. Should is strongly influenced by culture, thirty years ago it went without saying that women should be skinny if they want to be found attractive and so a lot of women starved and punished themselves for not living up to unrealistic beauty standards, some men today feel great insecurity at the idea of being stay at home dads because men are supposed to bring home the bacon, for millennia men and women told themselves that they should be attracted to the opposite gender and that they were somehow wrong or deficient for not feeling that, our cultures create a lot of shoulds for us to navigate, social media does it in spades these days......but shoulds aren't naturally occurring, they're man made the whole lot of them, it's not so much that they don't matter as to say they're not necessarily something to get hung up on. Back to the women starving themselves in the 1990's, think how much pain people experienced over the shoulds of those beauty standards, now think about the fact that today it's in style for women to be thick and curvy; if those women doing thousand mile marathons on stair steppers had been magically transported thirty years into the future they'd have been told they were hotties. (I'm not trying to single out the ladies, it's just that I think that's an example everyone can relate to and it's an example we've all seen the damaging effects of.)So we beat ourselves up because we think we should be something we're not, maybe even because of something we can't ever be, and we go through life suffering not because of something we are but because of something we aren't.We aren't skinny enough, or wealthy enough, or kind enough, or attractive enough, or we're not well hung enough, or we don't have enough hair, or we stole a pencil from Karen Loftus in 3rd grade and you knew it was wrong and you shouldn't have done that and you just can't forgive yourself for it, those are the sorts of things we tell ourselves, and while that may not be enough to cause depression, it sure as shit doesn't help, either.The Tao Te Ching doesn't talk about shoulds, it talks about is. "This is the world," the Tao says, "think of it what you will."How is it less absurd to think ill of ourselves for being who we are than to think ill of the weather for being rainy? Being angry at the weather won't change it, spending your work day lamenting about your wet pant bottoms won't dry them out, why is beating yourself up any less absurd shaking your fists at the clouds? Because you have agency? Prove it. Change the current moment to be something other than it is, you can't. Beating yourself up does as much practical good as shaking your fist at the clouds, beating yourself up doesn't change who you are, it just makes you sad about it and you don't need to be sad about it.Taoism, I think, teaches that all things have their place, every iota of the universe is a reflection of the whole, if you say that you should be different you're saying that the universe should be different, after all you are an integral and indivisible part of that universe, your identity is what gives the universe its identity, you are essential to it, to say you are imperfect as you are is to say that the universe is imperfect as it is, and that does not align with my understanding of the Tao.One last thing before you go, a moment of hypocrisy on my part: Depression is a complex interplay of cognition, biology, neurology, hormonal balance, circumstances, and lived experiences. If you have depression you probably have bad thinking, but you might also have a vitamin D deficiency, or a neurotransmitter imbalance, or a shitty job, or past trauma, and changing your thinking will only do so much to address those problems. This is all just to say that if you're depressed you should consider talking to your doctor about your symptoms and talking to a therapist about your circumstances, those can be spooky things to do (anxiety and depression go hand in hand, if you didn't know, it's normal to feel anxious about the idea of talking to someone) but the good that can be accomplished is immense. Improving your thinking and cognition, ending the habit of comparing yourself to others, is a hell of a lot easier if you're not scraping dopamine and serotonin from the bottom of a peanut butter jar. https://ift.tt/uOiqhsY https://ift.tt/8upHfny
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