A paradigm shift
There was a point in my life where I was severely depressed. For over 8 years, I struggled to find the motivation to live—I could not want to live, and the negative feedback loop it ended up creating where my environment—and the way people treated me—slowly became worse only exacerbated the problem further.
Despite that, being naturally interested in philosophy and psychology, I still found myself to reading as much as I could—as much as my motivation would allow. Nietzsche’s works stood out the most back then (which I believe contributed the most to my eventual recovery), but the other half—psychology, specifically therapy techniques—was what inspired this post.
Looking into therapy
The problem with conventional therapeutic methods, such as CBT, was that, once you’ve exhausted the logical fallacies and biases that they aim to correct, you’re not left with much. That was how it went for me: my depression was largely existential in nature, and educating me on logical fallacies and biases—things I’ve already thoroughly familiarised myself with—hardly addressed any of my concerns.
Not to mention, the CBT practitioners (or even Schema therapy practitioners) I’ve met were largely inflexible and ended up bewildered by any mention of philosophy as if I’ve just informed them that E = mc2 was actually E = 1/22mc2 (it’s not, but you get what I mean). As if following a route on Google maps and having the little icon that shows their position drive off a cliff, their reaction could not have been more confused and lost. These were people with PhDs.
The closest relevant discussion I had was with a PhD who allegedly double majored in psychology and philosophy. Although he quickly understood the gist of what I was saying, he quickly dismissed my concerns as “reinventing the wheel” before trying to move on with his CBT. He even gave me a pamphlet with little icons depicting basic logical fallacies that I was long familiar with.
This was before I realised what CBT was actually trying to do, eventually using its actual benefits to force myself out of depression. Yes, indeed, by primarily—arguably exclusively—addressing the symptoms (compared to psychodynamic therapy), CBT is a method that utilises brute force to cure mental illnesses such as depression, though their advocates are usually reluctant to address it as such.
Yes, with enough knowledge—both about psychology in general and my current mental state, identifying the different cause-and-effect relations between what exacerbates and what alleviates my depression—I was able to brute-force my way out of depression.
Empathy
That’s what I chose to tell myself, but in reality, it took many attempts, and I’m not sure if any of them worked.
The truth is, I just woke up one day and knew that my brain wasn’t the same anymore—that I was no longer depressed. It was a complete paradigm shift and I started seeing the world very differently. Over the years, there have been periods where I felt better only to relapse a few weeks later, but this time was different.
I knew it was different, because something was missing (I just didn’t know what yet).
Contrary to CBT—a method I still do not endorse as a panacea—I was looking into inventing my own method that focused exclusively on empathising with the depressed individual as opposed to the over-eager CBT that’s always ready to try and throw solutions or insist that they’re wrong by showing them cute graphics of logical fallacies.
As I believed the problem was not a lack of knowledge but rather purely emotional (or the result of imbalances in their neurochemistry), I wanted to try making the patient feel better and nothing else. At the time, perhaps this was what I needed the most—I needed someone who would be willing to really listen to me and understand me instead of having more PhDs tell me how “God” would be the answer to all my problems.
Perhaps, in hindsight, it was loneliness that was weighing me down the most. Ever since I was young, it was difficult to find people who could understand me. Instead, I always found myself more comfortable with older children. But, by the time I was in my teens, even the adults in school couldn’t understand me anymore.
Loneliness wasn’t obvious then, perhaps because I wasn’t physically isolated from everyone else. I talked to classmates, I wasn’t ostracised to the point I would struggle to find anyone to do group projects with, nor was I even physically bullied in school.
But there wasn’t anyone with whom I would feel like I could communicate with. Everyone else—even the adults—couldn’t be less interested in philosophical topics that I was always extremely eager to discuss. Perhaps, then, the loneliness was largely intellectual in nature; the physical presence of others did little to alleviate the overwhelming feelings of loneliness that eventually declined into existential depression, which eventually led to failing grades, poor attendance, and dropping out of school.
Going back to wanting to develop an empathy-focused therapy for depressed individuals, back then, I was extremely sympathetic towards those with depression, being able to very easily understand what it must feel like for them as well.
It wasn’t about rationality or ignorance. It was a problem that was largely emotional in nature: “I know what to do, but I just… can’t…”
I speculated that this was why so many depressed individuals believe that finding a romantic partner or a loving pet would cure them. Looking back, and after more thoroughly exploring the many attempts at psychotherapy—including the much less-successful ones—this method was at worst naïve, and at best “reinventing the wheel”. It wasn’t going to be effective due to the large omission of factors that actually contributed to depression; people who feel better and think more clearly don’t necessarily think better. For many people, CBT actually works, because they genuinely think in fallacious patterns. A therapy that just reaffirms their fallacies ostensibly does very little.
And a lack of empathy
The key takeaway from that recount was that, back then, I was genuinely able to empathise with depressed individuals, even feeling the same desire for comfort and relief from the constant, unabating feelings of depression.
It was extremely easy for me to imagine how they would feel—all they needed to do was describe their feelings or their concerns and I was immediately able to feel it myself. I felt like I really understood them.
But, when I recovered from depression, all of it was gone. Sympathy turned into spite. Understanding turned into impatience. When hearing the same stories from depressed individuals, I could feel nothing but contempt; as if they brought it upon themselves; as if they have to be intellectually disabled in some way to not be able to see the obvious solution in front of them.
I started feeling the same way as everyone else. I became one of the many people who used to tell me to “get over it”, or “have more courage”, or “snap out of it”.
It was baffling. Just yesterday, I was perfectly capable of understanding what depression was like. I wanted to help them. But, the moment I recovered, I suddenly lost all compassion for them. I immediately understood why so many people who have recovered from depression postulate the most useless advice: they can’t feel it anymore. They end up parroting the same things they used to hate, as if they’ve completely forgotten themselves.
To this day, I still can’t feel the same way again. No matter how depressed I would feel, I always end up “bouncing back” and recovering within a few hours with no explicable reason. I don’t even have to do anything. There was no therapy within the few hours that I was depressed, nor did I try to comfort myself. As if by magic, I just recover a few hours later.
just like everyone else.
When people tell depressed individuals to “get over it”, it’s not because they don’t understand what it means to feel depressed—rather, they understand what it’s like to feel depressed, but they don’t understand what it means to not magically recover on their own.
Conclusion
The issue of depression is far more complex than what I’ve depicted here. Though I can no longer feel the same way, let alone feel the same empathy for them I used to, I still remember, on the cognitive level, what was helpful, and what wasn’t.
I know that I’m no longer capable of giving helpful advice right now. Until I can feel the same way again—until I can break my own psychological defence and force myself to become truly depressed again—I don’t believe I will ever be qualified to genuinely empathise with depressed individuals again.
As much as I try, I cannot shake off feelings of spite or disgust—the same feelings that lead people to brusquely “advise” those depressed to “get over it”.
The point of this post was just to highlight this possibility, and draw attention to the possibility that those who have recovered from depression need not be the best people to seek advice from. Or, at least, to not take their hurtful and unhelpful advice as any more valuable or insightful than the layperson just because they’ve been through depression in the past.
To have recovered from depression in and of itself is hardly enough to establish oneself as an authority of any calibre. One needs to demonstrate that they’re still capable of feeling the same things before they can claim to understand the problem and thus offer useful solutions.
Another way to interpret this is perhaps that we should give depressed individuals more credence, as only presently-depressed individuals can truly understand depression. If not for the fact depression is crippling and anathema to any semblance of productivity, of course.
There is also the possibility that this is an isolated—if not unique—case, and that the majority of those who have recovered from depression can still feel depressed…. something doesn’t make sense there, but let’s just assume it does. In which case, still, the main message of this post still stands:
Do not give those who have recovered from depression too much credit; not all of them can still empathise with you. If they start parroting unhelpful advice, do not lend them any credence; do not feel guilty if their advice doesn’t work.