Self-harm

[Lindenbaum]

WHY DO PEOPLE CUT THEMSELVES?

Once, when I was in secondary school, there was a dyed haired feminist girl who sat next to me in one of my classes. She came in one day and sat beside me with her sleeves rolled all the way up, obviously trying to show off some cuts (more like little scratches) on her arm. I said nothing about it, and eventually she got tired of waiting for me to take the bait, so she thrust her arm in front of my face. "I GOT THESE CUTS BECAUSE MY RABBIT SCRATCHED ME"... I knew exactly what role I was supposed to play in this little theatre performance. I was supposed to say something like " No! You don't get cuts like these from a rabbit! You've been cutting yourself haven't you? Oh please, you must stop this!" but I refused to be a circus monkey and jump through her hoops, so I just pretended to actually believe her that these scratches came from her rabbit. This pissed her off and she let out an over the top and clearly annoyed laugh and said loudly "Oh my god you idiot! Did you ACTUALLY think you could get cuts like these from a rabbit? I've been cutting myself you idiot!" and then she went round the class telling people that Lindenbaum is so stupid that he ACTUALLY thought you could get cuts LIKE THESE (little scratches) from a rabbit, which I thought was strange because at first she was performing as a shy girl who didn't want to let anyone know that she has a DARK SECRET (she scratches herself), but now she seemed to drop the act because she couldn't resist telling everyone about how insensitive I was...

As far as I know, people didn't cut their wrists as a coping mechanism historically. It seems quite new. Maybe its partly because in the past, there wasn't really a morality that strongly praised brokenness. Now that we have such a morality, people will try to show off their brokenness to others in whatever way they can. Is transgenderism an evolution of this? I would bet that self harm in the form of cutting your wrists has become less popular recently and has been largely replaced by transgenderism as a signal of brokenness in the last 4-5 years.

All this is to say, we already know one of the most popular reasons for this kind of self harm: attention. But is there anything more to it? Is everyone who engages in this behaviour only doing it for attention?

One of the big reasons that you would often hear for why someone cuts their wrists is that they "just want to feel something - anything!". Back when I was in secondary school (probably the first time I heard about self harm) I didn't quite understand what was meant by this. After all, these people who cut themselves (the ones who do it genuinely and not as a public performance), they seem rather emotional, not like the type who "can't feel anything", they seem in fact to feel more than most people! So what's going on?

Well, now I think I know the answer: boredom. Boredom for most people is a minor inconvenience, it is the slightly unpleasant feeling they get when they can't find something to watch on Netflix for slightly longer than would be comfortable. I'm not talking about this kind of boredom.



The type of boredom I am talking about is a feeling that has certain requirements that must be met before it can be experienced. The requirements are: Intensely low energy, a generally unhappy state, probably a certain personality/disposition and finally, you must have nothing to do. The intensely low energy means that you won't have the willpower to engage with something that requires any amount of effort on your part, so reading a book is off the table and so is anything that requires basically any amount of actual engagement. In this state, the only thing the victim can do to occupy themselves is something like watching a Youtube video, because most Youtube videos don't require you to think, you basically sit there in a vegetated state only half paying attention. This is the true reason for those 3 hour video essays/ reviews/ recaps you see on Youtube, at least a good chunk of the audience is watching because of the reasons I just described. "I don't want to think, thinking is too hard, too painful, sedate me, give me your anaesthesia".

If you want to, you can skip to the 1:50 timestamp of this video, it seems to be showing exactly what I just talked about.

If while in this state the victim does not find SOMETHING to distract themselves, not even a Youtube video, then they will experience the the most intense, painful form of boredom. I've been in this state before a few times, and I felt like tearing my face off, it was physically painful, unbearable! I wanted to smash my head against a wall... and THIS is a very similar or maybe the exact same state as the person who cuts themselves. This is what they mean by "I am so numb", they mean " I am empty, there is nothing in this world that holds my attention, I have no goal or path, there is nothing animating me, I am BORED" and they cut themselves perhaps just to feel something, or perhaps they do it just because they're so intensely frustrated, yet they can't find anything to unleash their anger on, so they unleash it upon themselves.

Also, I'm too tired to go into it right now, but I believe that boredom and depression are extremely similar emotional states and might even be the exact same thing, just at different levels of intensity. The level of boredom I've been talking about in this post might simply be called "depression" by most people.

So then, these are the only two reasons I see for people cutting themselves: most do it for attention, some do it out of intense boredom (or numbness, emptiness, it is all the same thing). I'd like to know what other people think, am I right? Is there something I'm missing? What do you think the psychological cause of self harm is?

[anthony]

Kind of relevant, I enjoy linking this piece.

https://www.thefp.com/p/hurts-so-good

Like all acting out behaviours self harm is a way of addressing something that's really wrong (or feels wrong, what's the difference?) that can't be dealt with directly. Nobody respects normal teenage problems, but people respect cuts to some extent. They respect suicide attempts. etc.

And with cuts specifically, I hear that there's something relieving about the sensation, in addition to the bare minimum of "I am taking a kind of action". Something about the way the body responds. But I don't know the subject super well. Just want to get us rolling. Thank you for the effort of another OP. Let's see if this one lasts.

[Guest]

For one, I believe normies put too much significance on the act. There's this air that if someone is engaging in it that something is horrifically wrong, which lends it a mystique that the attention seekers want, but it's not that big of a deal. Moreover, NPDEA, so the idea that someone self-harming is "disturbed" is kind of redundant when everyone around them is also just as messed up, albeit in more socially-acceptable ways.

I'm interested in how self-harm in this thread already contrasts the thread of suicide. Desire for suicide was getting lionized as being indicative of a deep inner world, dissatisfaction with the ugly state of life, done for personal reasons, etc; and desire for self-harm is painted as the opposite.

I engaged in it quite a few times, once as a teenager, again in recent times. The latter is more interesting, and I believe there should be another category, which I would describe as volatile self-hatred or self-immolative rage. Chronic stress had been building up from excessive and constant physical exertion, and the despicable zogged and humiliating circumstances I was in was in were creating an intense desire for violence and destruction... but I couldn't do it my local zoglings, the only way to expend the welling energy was on myself. Cuts, bruises, abrasions, burns; it was a way for me to blow off steam, I suppose. There was an attention seeking factor, but rather than wanting sympathy or consolation from those that saw them, I wanted them to see how much anger I was filled with.

Probably not that admirable or boast-worthy, rather it's somewhat embarrassing in hindsight. But I think others in some sense could relate to the sentiment of wanting to destroy everything around you in a blazing fury, I just expressed it in a different way.

[Guest]

And yes, there is a noticeable relieving of stress with bloodletting. There's proven health benefits to it, such as excreted excess iron and other toxins, and the self-destructive feelings (fortunately or unfortunately) fade as the blood pours out. There's probably some other tangible processes going on, but it's not like people do it *specifically* for that purpose, of course.

[Lindenbaum]

Just want to get us rolling. Thank you for the effort of another OP. Let's see if this one lasts.

Thank you for getting us rolling. Anyone who responds to this post can rest easy knowing that I will certainly not delete this one.


Oh and something I forgot to mention in my post so I'll mention it here: Mason Hall McCullough said in the suicide thread  that "you can simply choose to not be depressed". This is wrong, since depression isn't just whining and feeling sorry for yourself as Mr McCullough claimed. You can't switch off depression any more than you can decide to stop being bored. Depression is a low energy state where nothing animates the depressed person, there is nothing capturing his imagination. It is essentially an extreme form of boredom (that's my opinion anyway), maybe you could also say it is the exact opposite of inspiration. This is why there are very rich people who are still depressed despite their wealth, and it is why depression very likely doesn't exist amongst people who live in the wild foraging for food all day, constantly occupied. I'm not claiming that we should all aim to be forest-dwelling tribesmen by the way, they lose depression but they also lose its opposite.

[cats]

I'm certain that the underlying feelings of alienation and anger that typically inspire these acts are absolutely real -- they are for everyone who isn't completely a born slave -- but I've always seen these acts as something of a performance. You're making a statement to the longhouse, the seething mass of normalfaggots, and other agents of your spiritual enslavement. Beyond that, I don't think it actually does much to relieve anything. It just feels good to say "fuck you" in your own way.

I imagine, like with everything else, that there would be significant differences in motives between the sexes for self-harm. I wonder if you could fruitfully link the phenomenon of pre-modern women "cheek rending" to display how sorrowful they are during funerals and female self-harm today.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

I agree that self-harm can provide a kind of physical relief, which I have even heard described as a physical addiction. I also think it's often performative and self-pitying.

There are communities for self-harm too, much like there are for anorexia. I think self-harm is still pretty common among teenagers, but it seems like most grow out of it by the time they reach adulthood, something that distinguishes it from troonery. There is a self-harm community on Twitter too that uses certain hashtags.

Self-harm is well-suited to create these kinds of communities, since the pain experienced is directly visible as a wound, meaning it's a perfect costly signal. It's an empty signal but it's enough, once cutting yourself becomes trendy by random chance it has the right nature to persist as the foundation for an online subculture.

Oh and something I forgot to mention in my post so I'll mention it here: Mason Hall McCullough said in the suicide thread  that "you can simply choose to not be depressed". This is wrong, since depression isn't just whining and feeling sorry for yourself as Mr McCullough claimed. You can't switch off depression any more than you can decide to stop being bored. Depression is a low energy state where nothing animates the depressed person, there is nothing capturing his imagination. It is essentially an extreme form of boredom (that's my opinion anyway), maybe you could also say it is the exact opposite of inspiration. This is why there are very rich people who are still depressed despite their wealth, and it is why depression very likely doesn't exist amongst people who live in the wild foraging for food all day, constantly occupied. I'm not claiming that we should all aim to be forest-dwelling tribesmen by the way, they lose depression but they also lose its opposite.

I do think depression and self-harm are mostly whining and feeling sorry for yourself. I'll try to argue this but it's possible we just disagree and there's no way to prove either claim. Anhedonia is a fake symptom similar to dysphoria, in that it measures a person's belief that they experience sustained low mood, not actual sustained low mood. People who claim to be depressed still laugh and have fun, but for whatever reason they believe that they're not enjoying life enough, thus they are "depressed". Following this realization, they will say words to their doctor that translate to mean "anhedonia", and the doctor takes this at face value and hands out SSRIs. If you understand this, you can simply choose not to narrativize your own mood and you will not "have depression".

Your boredom theory doesn't explain why contentedness is not depressive. Both are lazy low energy states, but boredom is dissatisfied while contentedness is the opposite. I think it's more appropriate to link depression to this dissatisfaction, and the low energy observed in depression is less significant. But unlike the mysterious specter of low energy, dissatisfaction is mostly driven by cognitive beliefs about one's own inadequacy. You can choose not to be passively dissatisfied throughout your daily life, just satisfy yourself or if that's not possible stop thinking about it. You could also choose to be dissatisfied by sabotaging yourself and constantly thinking negative thoughts, if for whatever reason that advantaged you, but that's ridiculous, what kind of society would incentivize people to convince themselves that they're miserable by, say, giving them a special medical excuse to get out of things they don't like? Do you naruhodo yet? If not you could also read the depression section of the costly signaling page...

Similar to gender dysphoria, if you create a diagnostic category based around a symptom a person can feel or believe, many people will be subconsciously induced to ruminate on their own thoughts and end up feeling or believing that they possess this symptom (indistinguishable from "actually having" the symptom), so that they can feel special and hand in assignments late and get a psychiatrist friend or whatever else. Jungle creatures don't develop depression because they do not benefit from doing so. Rich people sometimes meet the diagnostic criteria for depression because they can be hardworking people predisposed towards dissatisfaction, and they can also be highly sensitive to social pressures.

I additionally find it hard to see how anyone with internet access could be bored to begin with, let alone at historically unprecedented rates (if we conclude that modern depression rates reflect the boredom of society).

[MassGraveGroyper88]

Your boredom theory doesn't explain why contentedness is not depressive. Both are lazy low energy states, but boredom is dissatisfied while contentedness is the opposite. I think it's more appropriate to link depression to this dissatisfaction, and the low energy observed in depression is less significant. But unlike the mysterious specter of low energy, dissatisfaction is mostly driven by cognitive beliefs about one's own inadequacy.

I generally agree, but it's best not to discount the "low energy" aspect either. Consider how dissatisfaction manifests in "high energy" virile men. While it can range from war to asceticism, it certainly doesn't manifest as depression, but you're right that dissatisfaction is the root cause.

As for costly signaling and choosing not to be depressed, I think you greatly overestimate the degree of control normies have over their own thoughts. You also seem to imply that the calculation of whether to be depressed occurs in the individual, which isn't necessary. Evolution could just as well cause humans to have entirely genuine, uncontrolled emotional responses to certain situations such as to produce a desirable result, in which case no choice is made. It's true that without excessive useless though about your mood, you wouldn't be "depressed," which is to say the symtoms, which would at least partially remain present, wouldn't be conceptualized and medicalized. Society would be better off if the "depressed" didn't label themselves as such.

[Lindenbaum]

Your boredom theory doesn't explain why contentedness is not depressive. Both are lazy low energy states, but boredom is dissatisfied while contentedness is the opposite. 

I'm not sure I follow, how doesn't my boredom theory explain contentedness? If someone feels contented then they aren't bored, and that's why they aren't depressed. The contented person is either a simpleton and doesn't even have the brain activity required to feel intense boredom, or they regularly engage in interesting activities that satisfy their brain's desire for stimulation, granting them periods of temporary contentedness. 

I think it's more appropriate to link depression to this dissatisfaction

The boredom IS the dissatisfaction. You are basically agreeing with me but altering the sentence in a strange way. Boredom is a state of weariness/dissatisfaction that arises due to a lack of interesting, stimulating things for the brain to feed on, so yes, we are in agreement that this dissatisfaction (called boredom) is what causes depression.

and the low energy observed in depression is less significant.

As for the low energy, I am not sure if the depression causes the low energy or if the low energy causes the depression, that's something I'd have to think about. I think it probably goes both ways, but I do lean towards thinking that the low energy causes the depression, so I don't agree that the low energy observed in depression is insignificant. It might even be the main cause of it.

But unlike the mysterious specter of low energy, dissatisfaction is mostly driven by cognitive beliefs about one's own inadequacy.

The dissatisfaction isn't caused by the person's beliefs, it is caused by lack of stimulating, interesting activity for the brain. If we locked you in a solitary confinement cell for months with nothing to do and you became bored/depressed, is that because you are afflicted by beliefs about your own inadequacy? I don't think so. Boredom is the hunger of the mind, if we put you in a cell for months your mind would begin to starve, hungry for stimulation. This is the state we call boredom.

You can choose not to be passively dissatisfied throughout your daily life, just satisfy yourself or if that's not possible stop thinking about it.

"You can choose to stop feeling the hunger pains caused by starvation. Simply stop thinking about it."

I additionally find it hard to see how anyone with internet access could be bored to begin with, let alone at historically unprecedented rates (if we conclude that modern depression rates reflect the boredom of society).

There are lots of reasons why someone might be bored even in the age of the internet. The bored person is likely too low-energy to properly engage with many of the things the internet has to offer, they probably can't even think clearly. As I said earlier, in the extremely low energy state, the only thing the person can do is something like put on a Youtube video to sedate themselves. If someone told me they were depressed I'd probably advise them to drink Coffee, since in my experience it drastically increases energy levels and willpower, and therefore increases your willingness to engage with things.

Also, a lot of people don't necessarily find it easy to find things to do on the internet. I think I remember Anthony saying something like this about DBDR, he doesn't use the internet to its full potential and a lot of people are probably the same. What if the depressed person is a NEET who browses the internet 24/7 and is somewhat bored of it / burnt out? There are lots of reasons I can think of for why someone would still be bored despite the existence of the internet.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

As for costly signaling and choosing not to be depressed, I think you greatly overestimate the degree of control normies have over their own thoughts. You also seem to imply that the calculation of whether to be depressed occurs in the individual, which isn't necessary. Evolution could just as well cause humans to have entirely genuine, uncontrolled emotional responses to certain situations such as to produce a desirable result, in which case no choice is made. It's true that without excessive useless though about your mood, you wouldn't be "depressed," which is to say the symtoms, which would at least partially remain present, wouldn't be conceptualized and medicalized. Society would be better off if the "depressed" didn't label themselves as such.

Signaling can be unconscious, I agree with this. Labeling oneself with "depression", or self-harming, or trooning out, are subconscious behaviors to varying degrees. They usually aren't calculated attempts to take advantage of social incentives, but they're still driven in large part by these incentives. While it may not be an option for the masses who do not comprehend the nature of the choice, someone like (You) can choose not to be depressed.

---

But unlike the mysterious specter of low energy, dissatisfaction is mostly driven by cognitive beliefs about one's own inadequacy.

The dissatisfaction isn't caused by the person's beliefs, it is caused by lack of stimulating, interesting activity for the brain. If we locked you in a solitary confinement cell for months with nothing to do and you became bored/depressed, is that because you are afflicted by beliefs about your own inadequacy? I don't think so. Boredom is the hunger of the mind, if we put you in a cell for months your mind would begin to starve, hungry for stimulation. This is the state we call boredom.

No one is being locked in solitary confinement, stimulation is more available than ever before as any zoomer will tell you. One commonality between social confinement and the modern lifestyle is that they are both socially isolating. But it's still not the direct cause of depression, it's only a motivating incentive.

There are different ways a person might deal with social isolation, they could redouble their efforts to seek connection, go their own way, or use a medical diagnosis as an excuse. Whether or not someone acquires the label of depression after encountering a struggle depends on which coping behavior they respond with. Depression only comes into effect cognitively after the emotion has been experienced, impacting how it is rationalized.

"You can choose to stop feeling the hunger pains caused by starvation. Simply stop thinking about it."

A more accurate analogy to depression would be seeking a diagnosis of "Major Appetite Disorder" after not being able to find enough food for a while. Boredom, loneliness, anxiety are experiences that you have in the present moment for a brief time, similar to how hunger is temporary until you eat. "Depression" is a self-fulfilling psychological narrative that claims to explain why these negative emotional experiences occur. In reality, you can feel sad or bored for any everyday reason and there isn't necessarily a nice psychological explanation.

Emotions are easier to deal with than hunger too: you don't actually need to indulge them, they'll just disappear if you ignore them instead of neurotically ruminating. You can also ignore hunger and it will vanish, though that's not always advisable. Letting your experiences of loneliness and sadness be forgotten after experiencing them is advisable.

Also, a lot of people don't necessarily find it easy to find things to do on the internet. I think I remember Anthony saying something like this about DBDR, he doesn't use the internet to its full potential and a lot of people are probably the same. What if the depressed person is a NEET who browses the internet 24/7 and is somewhat bored of it / burnt out? There are lots of reasons I can think of for why someone would still be bored despite the existence of the internet.

People play Runescape for 10,000 hours, it's not that the internet becomes boring after too long, it's that people often start to become dissatisfied and ruminate on how spending so much time online won't solve their other problems. DBDR and the incel community in general are self-pitying like the depressed are, and similarly react to their difficulties by developing a fixation on a magical word that explains it away. The two concepts work quite similarly aside from depression being medically endorsed.

[chevauchee]

Women cut their wrists because it approximates the pain-catharsis of being sexually penetrated and men cut themselves because they are imitating the cute emo girls who cut themselves in an attempt to "fit in" to the culture.

[Guest]

Women cut their wrists because it approximates the pain-catharsis of being sexually penetrated and men cut themselves because they are imitating the cute emo girls who cut themselves in an attempt to "fit in" to the culture.

Men generally prefer to bludgeon themselves.

[calico]

It's a secular continuation of the western tradition of stigmata. The girl craves spiritual sustenance that decadent neo-liberal society can no longer provide.

No I'm just kidding (epic Millennial style).

These things come and go and spread mimetically. Fasting appears broadly across cultures in different contexts, but anorexia nervosa is basically one-to-one correlated with exposure to Western media. These things spread amongst teenage girls in particular because puberty damages young women's self-perception and self-mutilation gives them a sense of control. It also reinforces social support networks and gets them attention. These sound like dumb reasons to scar yourself because they are. Teenagers are really dumb.

Here's the important part:

If she's willing to traumatize her parents for attention she's probably willing to paint you as some sort of creep to her friends if she gets bored. Double points if you're actually a jerk to women, which you just might be posting on a board with Sonnenrands everywhere. "Emotional abuse" is so fetch right now. Stay away.

[Ricky23]

Signaling can be unconscious, I agree with this. Labeling oneself with "depression", or self-harming, or trooning out, are subconscious behaviors to varying degrees. They usually aren't calculated attempts to take advantage of social incentives, but they're still driven in large part by these incentives. While it may not be an option for the masses who do not comprehend the nature of the choice, someone like (You) can choose not to be depressed.

 

“Choose not to be depressed by imagining really hard you aren’t”. You are aware Anhedonia existed prior to social capital being assigned to it. Because you’re argument seems to rely on someone imagining they don’t enjoy things causing themselves to not enjoy things. This is obviously tautological, where does this originate from? Why would someone (keep in mind people haven’t always romanticised Anhedonia and yet it has always existed) choose that circumstance? This also really doesn’t address the problem of boredom. If people are only convincing themselves of their own boredom why would they seek out entertainment in the first place?

No one is being locked in solitary confinement.

You are dodging the argument here.

stimulation is more available than ever before as any zoomer will tell you. One commonality between social confinement and the modern lifestyle is that they are both socially isolating. But it's still not the direct cause of depression, it's only a motivating incentive.

Why? Because you say so? You say later that incels have invented their own form of depression which is functionally the as the medical term. Wouldn’t that be an instance of social isolation being a direct cause?

There are different ways a person might deal with social isolation, they could redouble their efforts to seek connection,

Nobody choses to be lonely, it’s specifically due to it being involuntary that it causes pain.

go their own way,

“You’re sad because you don’t have friends? Just pretend you don’t need them that’ll make you feel better.” I can’t believe every lonely miserable person in history hasn’t thought of this. Clearly they must be lacking in intellect and are just sheep being swayed by the caprices of a stupid convulsive public.

or use a medical diagnosis as an excuse.

Excuse? Excuse to who? To themselves? Maybe, but you said before that signalling was a huge part of why someone gives themselves the label of depressed. If that’s the case shouldn’t lonely people be less likely to experience depression? Besides you're the one advocating for ignoring your emotions to make them go away, in both cases you are lying to yourself to explain your misery. 

Whether or not someone acquires the label of depression after encountering a struggle depends on which coping behavior they respond with. Depression only comes into effect cognitively after the emotion has been experienced, impacting how it is rationalized.

All of these responses lead to the same place, a further re-entrenchment of misery and loneliness, If these are the only responses available to an isolated person how could they not end up in a state of pure suffering.

A more accurate analogy to depression would be seeking a diagnosis of "Major Appetite Disorder" after not being able to find enough food for a while. Boredom, loneliness, anxiety are experiences that you have in the present moment for a brief time, similar to how hunger is temporary until you eat.

It could very well be an endocrine response to your environment. Then depression could be a physiological response to an extended period of stress or misery. There’s no reason to believe that someone would decide (even if unconsciously) to be miserable to appear more ‘cool’ or whatever, that seems more unlikely than a physiological explanation. Or it could be that someone in this low-energy state is more attracted to certain superficial and aesthetic choices which that resolve in more negative thoughts. Even then that only explains the actions of some teenage girls. 27 year old warehouse guys don’t have any of these proclivities nor do most of them call themselves depressed and yet clearly, from having interacted with these people, they are. In as far as they are miserable, and can't stop being miserable, even though they try to improve their mood.

"Depression" is a self-fulfilling psychological narrative that claims to explain why these negative emotional experiences occur. In reality, you can feel sad or bored for any everyday reason and there isn't necessarily a nice psychological explanation.

 
“You’re continued and relentless misery has nothing to do with the circumstances of your life, it’s just that you coincidentally were sad 734 days in a row and coincidentally while being sad you also thought about your social isolation and the conditions of your life”.

Emotions are easier to deal with than hunger too: you don't actually need to indulge them, they'll just disappear if you ignore them instead of neurotically ruminating. You can also ignore hunger and it will vanish, though that's not always advisable. Letting your experiences of loneliness and sadness be forgotten after experiencing them is advisable.

The white room scenario perfectly explains why this is wrong, too bad you didn’t answer it. If you were able to truly control your thoughts you would be able to stop thinking, but you aren’t.

People play Runescape for 10,000 hours, it's not that the internet becomes boring after too long, it's that people often start to become dissatisfied and ruminate on how spending so much time online won't solve their other problems.

So I suppose if you listen to the same song 200 times in a row you’ll enjoy it as much by the end as you did at the start? There are obviously other reasons why you could get bored of something. For instance the vast majority of content on the internet is extremely repetitive and substanceless.

 DBDR and the incel community in general are self-pitying

 
That seems to be what you’re really attempting here. To tell people who call themselves depressed that they are “self-pitying” and “imagining it”. Why you feel the need to do this I don’t understand. Maybe you hate people who try to oblige you to pity them, that’s understandable, but if that is the case why not be more honest. Why lie and say the internet is endlessly entertaining when it just blatantly isn’t, or try and give this retarded stoic line of “just control your thoughts bro”, when life is about emotion and passion and the suppression of those things is the suppression of life, especially when doing so doesn’t change the circumstances. If it is “self-pitying” to observe your circumstances and respond with a feeling of despair even if the circumstances are desperate, then you are advocating people lie to themselves to feel better. Most people won’t do this, and it’s condescending to tell them to do it.

 like the depressed are, and similarly react to their difficulties by developing a fixation on a magical word that explains it away. The two concepts work quite similarly aside from depression being medically endorsed.

Yes two groups who started from different positions and different values came to the same conclusion independently.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

Signaling can be unconscious, I agree with this. Labeling oneself with "depression", or self-harming, or trooning out, are subconscious behaviors to varying degrees. They usually aren't calculated attempts to take advantage of social incentives, but they're still driven in large part by these incentives. While it may not be an option for the masses who do not comprehend the nature of the choice, someone like (You) can choose not to be depressed.

 

“Choose not to be depressed by imagining really hard you aren’t”. You are aware Anhedonia existed prior to social capital being assigned to it. Because you’re argument seems to rely on someone imagining they don’t enjoy things causing themselves to not enjoy things. This is obviously tautological, where does this originate from? Why would someone (keep in mind people haven’t always romanticised Anhedonia and yet it has always existed) choose that circumstance? This also really doesn’t address the problem of boredom. If people are only convincing themselves of their own boredom why would they seek out entertainment in the first place?

"I didn't say that." Choose not to be depressed by not neurotically ruminating on your misery to perform sadness.

*your

A tautology is a redundant statement that's obviously true, but you disagreed with the statement.

Here's why someone might display melancholic symptoms prior to the invention of clinical depression. Again, you can simply not do this if you understand why it exists and find it unpleasant:

Show Content

Spoiler

Due in part to its costs, prevalence, and apparent ability for anyone to develop it, major depression has been hypothesized to often serve as a credible signal need. The bargaining model of depression suggests that throughout our evolutionary history individuals would have often faced instances of social adversity (e.g., abuse, the death of an important figure in one’s life, or the end of a romantic relationship) in which their fitness prospects depended primarily on responses from others. In these situations, providing social support could result in benefits for individuals who gain from cooperating with the depressed individual or otherwise benefit from their success. However, the costs involved with providing help and the threat of manipulation require reliable information before sufficient help is likely to be provided.

As with the other proposed costly signals, depression is proposed to achieve this due to the costs involved making the signal prohibitively costly to fake for those who are not in severe enough need. The costs of major depression primarily come through the reduction of interest and investment in one’s normal pattern of behavior. Although highly costly to those who are not in need, this does not require substantial costs on the part of an honest signaler. Instead, instances of severe enough adversity can result in a situation in which there is no difference in one’s fitness prospects in being depressed or not, with the costs still being substantial for those not actually in enough need.

In addition to serving as an honest signal of need, the bargaining model also emphasizes depression’s potential role as a bargaining tool. This is possible due to the reduction in behavior that often accompanies depression reducing the benefits the depressed individual provides to others. For this reason, many instances of depression are predicted to be analogous to a labor strike in that individuals who previously benefited from the depressed individual receive the message that they need to upregulate their support to once again gain from his or her cooperation.

No one is being locked in solitary confinement.

You are dodging the argument here.

The analogy doesn't work. If you have your phone on you at all times while locked in solitary confinement, it's not going to be very boring. I notice you're using iPhone apostrophes and quote marks. Are you posting from the psych ward by any chance?

There are different ways a person might deal with social isolation, they could redouble their efforts to seek connection,

Nobody choses to be lonely, it’s specifically due to it being involuntary that it causes pain.

*chooses

You can't choose to be lonely, but you can choose how you deal with loneliness. The quote you're responding to says this this plainly. You're a moron so I'm not responding to the rest of this.

Your therapist probably introduced you to cognitive behavioral therapy, which is believed to be one of the most effective treatments for your depression diagnosis. It involves training the patient to separate their thoughts from their feelings, so they can have greater control over how they react to stimuli. Have you ever wondered whether this approach might have some merit, or do you stonewall your therapist like DBDR does? I am claiming the same thing, but extending it further to identify that believing oneself to be depressed is also a "cognitive distortion" by CBT's own definition. Psychiatrists won't do this because it's "invalidating", but it's true.

[Ricky23]

The analogy doesn't work. If you have your phone on you at all times while locked in solitary confinement, it's not going to be very boring. I notice you're using iPhone apostrophes and quote marks. Are you posting from the psych ward by any chance?

Initially, you said:

dissatisfaction is mostly driven by cognitive beliefs about one's own inadequacy

So if someone who had no feelings of inadequacy were trapped in a room they wouldn't become dissatisfied. Saying the analogy is inapplicable is just missing the point of the analogy.

"I didn't say that." Choose not to be depressed by not neurotically ruminating on your misery to perform sadness.

You also said later that depression is a narrativisation of your suffering, these two definitions are different. The first is a compulsion hence the word "neurotic" (which by the way just means having a depressive disposition), and the second is something you've assigned to yourself consciously (if for unconscious reasons).

You can't choose to be lonely, but you can choose how you deal with loneliness. The quote you're responding to says this this* plainly. You're a moron so I'm not responding to the rest of this.

*you used the word 'this' twice here. 
My point was that the apparent responses to loneliness you gave are things that a lonely person will have either tried and haven't worked, or just don't solve the problem at all.

Your therapist probably introduced you to cognitive behavioral therapy, which is believed to be one of the most effective treatments for your depression diagnosis. It involves training the patient to separate their thoughts from their feelings, so they can have greater control over how they react to stimuli. Have you ever wondered whether this approach might have some merit, or do you stonewall your therapist like DBDR does? I am claiming the same thing, but extending it further to identify that believing oneself to be depressed is also a "cognitive distortion" by CBT's own definition. Psychiatrists won't do this because it's "invalidating", but it's true.

I have never been to therapy, I am not depressed and I don't even believe depression is something that could be diagnosed by an entirely mental survey of an individual for the reasons I assume you were implying by posting that wiki link. I believe that people don't choose to be dissatisfied, and if they determine that they are depressed it is because they have experienced some kind of prolonged misery which likely doesn't have a source that can easily be resolved.