I started a thread about identifying too closely with depression. I find it helpful to dissociate myself from that identity from time to time when things go my way. You can give it a try too if that helps set the stage for reorganizing your self esteem/perception.

I'll check out your thread! I think you're right that a change in self-image is necessary, and also that apo is right in that this also requires a change in habits.

I just know that I dont get any enjoyment from philosophy anymore. It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments. — csalisbury

Hey csal. I may be wrong here, but could it just be the case that you've been faced with a reality check, so to speak? I mean, it sounds like you may just be experiencing what it's like to be suddenly overcome by the fact that you hold false belief somewhere along the line.

Is the imperative to root these out?

But anyway, after a while the fun stopped . Its an addiction. The world got fuzzier and fuzzier and reduced to what I could make of it philosophically. To the point where major life events would be happening and I'd be only half-there, thinking about how I could analyze this and fit it into my philosophical preoccupations, or weaponize it argumentatively. Its not a good thing — csalisbury

OK. I'm no therapist. But let's take this as the core complaint you are presenting with. And it is certainly a recognisable condition.

Some of us are good at these kinds of argumentative skills. They come naturally. But they can put us at a distance from our own lives and societies. And maybe also we need a well defined subject matter to apply them to. Inquiry has to have some point so that it can move towards a definite end. All that energy ought to have a purpose so that it feels well connected to a goal of value.

But before even worrying about that, an actual therapist would say check your mental health foundations. Maybe this rather intellectualised complaint - feeling troubled by a habit of being argumentative - will disappear as an issue if you first focus on getting the basics sorted.

What does that mean? It starts with the body and physical condition. Strength training, good diet and sufficient sleep. If you are going to turn a new leaf by constructing a better set of habits, then hit the gym, understand nutrition and don't compromise on shut eye. These are all routines to build.

There is a lot of new research to confirm this. Modern life is dreadful on these three scores. Your diet, for instance, affects your gut bacteria and that links straight to your brain and moods. Start feeling physically terrific and the other stuff starts to recede as anything to worry about.

Then of course, after physical health comes the quality of your social relationships. Again, fixing these might require the building of new sets of habits. It might or might not be an issue for you. However again, I think it is true that you want to build from the ground up. If you are going to make a difference in terms of changing habits, fixing the basics could be 80 percent of the answer.

After that would come what you do with your argumentative skills. Do you lock them away in the cupboard? Do you find them something useful to do?

I agree. There is the problem of over-analysing life. It has its destructive possibilities. But also, for some of us it is what we are good at. Would we really want to give it away?

I think the answers here would be highly individual. It would be more something for you to discover. Which is unlike the general therapeutic advice - the promise that you will get big and immediate returns from focusing on developing the routines for a healthy body and satisfying social engagement.

Its a fucked up logic: I project onto other people the negative self-image I have of myself, I imagine them seeing me like that, so then I feel humiliated, and humiliate myself, then blame them for feeling the way I do. — csalisbury

Here this touches on how we understand the facts of the human condition. My argument is the familiar one from symbolic interactionism and positive psychology.

You look to be talking about the mask we have to present to society so that we become predictable and interpretable beings within that society. We are actors in a running social drama. And so we must present the self that speaks to some intelligible role. Others read that mask and act according to its "truth". Both sides have to do the work that makes the mediating sign a correct framing of the self~other relation.

Looking at it in this fashion should create a distanced third person view of what you are doing. You are describing the situation very personally. The mask you employ is a tactic to deal with an unease in social relations but then it traps you in the restricted space of actions it legitimates.

Everyone struggles with this to some degree or other. My daughter sounds very similar in that she is super-empathetic and socially aware, which then rebounds on her because she judges herself the way everyone else in public ought to be judging her, when in reality most people barely even notice what you are doing except to the degree it might trouble their ability to predict your impact on their personal sphere of concern.

I think it is striking how much people don't actually notice the elaborate "you" that you mean to project to the world. And if you are in fact operating from a sophisticated self-image, this is a good reason for feeling no one really gets you.

One example from my own voyage of discovery. When I was 14, I got it into my head not to wear my school jersey because my mum didn't want to splash out on buying the "cool" school blazer. I also thought the rough wool was too scratchy.

So then the winter term comes on. Ice on the puddles. Cold wind at the bus stop. But I'm still not bending and wearing that jersey. It is not that I've said any of this to anyone, let alone my mother. Outwardly, I am just a hardy kid not feeling the cold. But I've constructed a silent act of rebellion with no graceful exit to it - even if any morning I could have simply pulled on the jersey.

So I go the whole winter like that. I'm talking an Auckland winter where its mild. A jersey would be enough. But still, I'm the only person in the entire school. Yet no one appears to notice the fact. Not even my group of friends. There is a comment or two - especially because on the worst days I have to actively demonstrate I'm not cold by standing out in the wind at the bus stop, not huddling by the wall with the rest. However it is a fact attracting no interest or concern. It only when the annual class photo has to be taken, and someone has to go borrow a jersey for me so I don't spoil the symmetry of the picture, that it finally gets any kind of official attention among my peers. Along the lines, "now you mention it, that was a bit odd."

So it is an example of how most stuff washes over people. They are on the lookout for the easy to read signs with everyday meanings. I learnt that on the whole, you remain invisible when you think your weirdness is in plain sight. Most people have no need to analyse other people too closely. As a rule, nothing is ever a big a deal as you are going to think it would have to be.

In all three scenarios tho I'm shutting off any form of actual emotion connection. I'm bracketting my emotional needs. — csalisbury

The three options would all have reasonably naturalistic explanations.

1) Being weird and self-deprecating is to choose the social route of submitting. Abase before the group so as to be accepted on that score. And that is just evolutionary biology. Social species use signals of submission to allow them to fit into hierarchical social structures. So while you might see the strategy as some horrible personal mistake, it is also pretty natural in its logic. There is less reason to beat yourself up about it on that score.

2) Being mocking and cynical is to display a more dominating posture. Again, the natural dynamic of hierarchical organisation demands this polarisation of roles. One must gracefully dominate, the other gracefully submit, so relations run smooth.

Again it is deeply natural behaviour - logical in a systems sense. It is only with self-conscious humans that we would note ourselves falling into those contrasting roles and so ask the question of which one we truly are.

3) Withdrawal is also a natural response. It is fairly hardwired and so not some weird choice you made.

So you are accusing yourself of shutting off from emotional connection as if that were letting your better self down. But I think it is just social reality. We are tied to interacting through a system of social masks. That is just the way the game has to work - semiotically. There has to be some face we present that makes us part of a predictable and interpretable social environment. And then that has to continue the good old games of dominance and submission on which social organisation depends.

So the conflict is between a romantic cultural ideal of how we should be - honest, true and naked in our interactions with each other - versus the evolutionary reality that we are creatures formed within semiotic systems that demand a natural hierarchical organisation.

We can kick against this evolutionary determinism. But don't expect to defeat it. It exists for good natural reason.

Depression, for me, is tightly wrapped up with a broader shame issue. — csalisbury

This is what good therapy could tackle. No doubt your life story could explain why shame would be a central issue. There would talk in your past that framed things for you in this way. And it would take talk to get that out in the open, examine it rationally, start to put in place the habits of counter-talk that you would employ to talk it back down whenever it arises.

As long as we identify with anything as part of our "self", it is not going to change. If we can "other" it, then we can replace it as a set of framing habits.

But again, this bit would be very particular to your personal story. And starting with exercise, diet, sleep and relationships is likely to be the most general answer to fixing depression.

What apokrisis said... better than I could have said it.

I'd like to add though that I think emotional connection is probably very important in any therapeutic proces. Usually these kind of things are not something you can only reason yourself out of.

The emotional connection between mother and baby for instance has been shown to be an important factor in how mentally stable a person is later in life. A mother apparently can attune to a babies emotions by making faces, holding the baby... and thereby sort of prerationally learn a baby to regulate his or her emotions.

A lot of therapist will probably also begrudgingly admit that the most important factor in therapy is just letting the patient talk and relating, giving emotional feedback etc...

So what I'm suggesting is that rational understanding, a healthy diet and sport will all no doubt help, but that will possibly not be enough. Develloping intimate friendships and relations where you feel you let your social guard down and open up emotionally, would seem to be a key ingredient.

This would need to be face to face interactions too, since emotions are not or not easily communicated over text, which is interesting and also a bit sad in times where more and more is happing at a distance over the net.