I've just finished a major cycle of analysis and meta-analysis of my cognition in preparation for a proposed series on self-hacking in the face of mental illness, and I have reason to believe that the primary proximal cause for my depression is that I no longer want to become stronger - I only want to want to become stronger.
The reasons for this are many. Agency is hard. But, the actual process, at its proximal end, is rather easy to map: I want to want to become stronger. Becoming stronger is hard. I therefore want to believe that I'm doing something hard. Hard things hurt. I therefore focus on the pain in my life, in order to convince myself that I'm experiencing adequate levels of suffering to prove to myself that I'm actually trying. When that proves inadequate (due to insufficient evidence that I'm actually succeeding), I seek out social partners to play "why don't you/yes but", until that process produces sufficient suffering and embarrassment to remind me that it's unfairly hard, and to provide my narrative-constructing submodule with fodder for the story that people are out to get me. That provides justification to give up and die, because why play a "rigged game"?
Given that most people run on similar hardware, and are programmed by similar experiences, I'm wondering how to determine whether this is a common reason why people get caught into akrasic loops.
All of this is to prevent myself from staring down the fundamental truth, that I'm terrified of embarrassment. I am terrified of the truth: that as a child, I was a medium-sized fish in a very, very small and backwards pond, and that all my grand plans of showing the world my genius were a grave mistake. That I am, in fact, ordinary, and have no special potential. That worse, I have squandered my merely-ordinary potential, out of bitterness that I was not the kind of high-level genius that effortlessly changes the world merely by Thinking Big Thoughts.
Rather than face that thought, and learn the kind of conscientiousness that would allow me to rebuild my life, I coast along on the few superior talents I do possess - rapid modeling, rapid production and testing of schemas, rapid integration of new knowledge with pre-existing schemas, and a certain unbounded creativity. I use these things to learn "just enough to get by", and praise myself for my cleverness, rather than buckling down and getting to work - because winning is hard, and losing is embarrassing.
The problem is, I know from previous experience that this knowledge - the firm understanding that I don't actually want to become stronger - isn't enough to motivate me. I've already built patterns where I'm comfortable beating myself up for my failings, rather than working to fix them. I learned as a child that weakness deserves to be humiliated, tortured, and dominated, rather than repaired. I've been working on that all my life without much success, either.
The problem there is a fundamental disconnect between my morality ( all goals are instrumental to Love ), and my social model of human beings ( RAPE! KILL! DESTROY! HAHAHAHA! CRY SOME MORE! HAHAHAHA! ). When I see other human beings with problems, Love takes over, and I do everything I can to help - unless they make the mistake of empathizing with me, in which case I CRUSH the little maggots for CHOOSING THE WRONG TEAM. When I see my own problems, I try to stake myself out for the wolves, to teach myself a lesson about the audacity of thinking that the weak deserve to survive and recover.
So, my question for the community is: which direction should I work on first, and where do I get the effort to do so? Which of these processes is more likely to switch to a less destructive attractor with sufficient initial effort? Assume zero community or healthcare support, and zero financial resources (like, seriously: I mooch of people for room and board; when that fails, it's boxes-in-alleys time). Some good support from research psychology would be appreciated - it's the only kind of argument that I can't adequately "yes, but".
I've got some ideas what you could work on first, but my knowledge might or might not be applicable (my problems are similar but less severe, they don't have a religious background, I've had more support, my degree of psychological improvement is real but small), so I'll start by recommending another online community: the Dysfunctional Family* comment threads at Making Light. The people there are intelligent and kind, have had a variety of abuse backgrounds, and know about practical details of getting out of bad situations.
I suggest working on kindness to ...
I wrote this for the Positive Vector website awhile back and lots of people have found it valuable, so I want to share it with the Less Wrong community as well. I think this applies to most people - meta suffering thing is something I see everywhere, even though it is most prominent with people who have depression. This is based on my experience with working with depressed people and with studying Buddhism, especially Big Mind. Enjoy!
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The roots of suffering are often deep. But not all of the suffering happens at the root. A lot of the suffering that people experience is “meta” suffering. Meta suffering is when you suffer because you are distressed that you are suffering. You are feeling depressed and hopeless, and there is a part of you that genuinely fears that it will never end. That you will feel this way forever. This fear of the suffering persisting can cause you much more suffering than whatever started your suffering. And it can last much longer. At some point days later, you might think to yourself about how terrible that initial suffering was, and feel fear and suffering about the possibility of it coming back.
Many people suffer as much or more from meta-suffering than suffering that comes from physical or situational sources!
The good news is that meta suffering is much easier to fix than deeper forms of suffering.
One thing you can do is to collect data* in order to develop an accurate model of how often you actually feel bad. Try monitoring your moods for awhile and get a baseline for what your moods actually are. At least half of the people who have suffered from major depression who have done this and spoken with me about it have been surprised to find that they often feel better than their self-perception when they assess their mood at random points throughout the day.
Regardless of what your default mood state or range is, once you know what it is, you are likely to feel less fear. You can look at what your mood historically does over time, and feel more confidence that this is what it will do in the future. When you are in the state of despair and wondering if it will last forever, odds are that it won’t.
Another extremely powerful technique for dealing with meta-suffering is accepting that you are suffering. The meta suffering is suffering because you really want to change your state and are not successful. If you can just be with the state and not making yourself bad or wrong for being in that state, then all you have to deal with is the base state of suffering, which will be less intense and last less long than if you tack on that extra meta layer.
The ironic thing is that just by thinking that thought, if you are prone to depression, you will probably notice yourself meta suffering and then feel guilt or shame about it. If this happens, my advice is to take it to the next level – feel compassion and acceptance for your meta-meta-suffering.
As you make this a practice, and feel acceptance and compassion for your suffering, you will feel more freedom from the meta level, and have more resources to work with the underlying suffering or depression.
Another common way in which meta suffering sabotages people with depression is for them to feel depression as soon as they start feeling good. The story that some people have is that it is futile to think that they might feel so good in the future, and it is better not to get their hopes up and have them crushed. I encourage the person with this meta suffering story to assure the meta suffering part that they do not have obligation to feel good in the future. Feeling good in the present is of value, for however long it lasts, and that is worth appreciating and a good thing.
Desiring more pleasant states is great. Working to create those states is fabulous.
Feeling guilt, shame, depression, or other suffering because of not liking your current state or projected future state does not contribute to your feeling better, and is something that is pretty purely good to release.
* Example of a site to track depression levels over time.