Depression was useful?
2022. I was depressed. There’s five months where I couldn’t tell you what I did.
I remember wondering during that time, “Why am I so depressed? Why are my emotions so irrational? Why is my brain so dumb?”
At the same time, my social interactions were not going as I wanted:
I was having trouble making close friends.
I would like a woman and then never hear from her again. This happened a few times.
Whenever I expressed any kind of disapproval, those around me seemed to get mad at me.
And I didn’t realize it consciously, but interacting with others felt emotionally unsafe.
Separately, something about me is that when I’m depressed and low energy, I don’t want to interact with other people.
So, if interacting with other people was unsafe, then one way for me to be safe was to be depressed.
Maybe I didn’t have a ‘dumb brain’ after all…
What if my depression wasn’t a problem? What if it was actually a solution to a different problem?
In which case, my problem wasn’t “being depressed” as I had thought. Instead, it was not knowing how to interact with other people in a way that felt emotionally safe.
I was working with a great counselor at the time, and once we found this, we worked on making social interactions safe. Within a few weeks/sessions my fears were handled and I didn’t need to be depressed anymore.
Also, while I was depressed I had moved to the middle of nowhere — conveniently far from almost anyone I might have wanted to talk to. But within three weeks of this shift I moved to a big city and had ten times as much social interaction. I have not needed to be depressed again in more than 1.5 years since.
Seeing my depression as potentially part of a helpful strategy in the present helped me grow.
Generalizing this idea:
It can be extremely valuable to view emotional issues as having an immediate payoff. For example, depression, anxiety, insecurity, failure at work, failure in romance, muscle tension, chronic pain, etc. can help one avoid fears or achieve unconscious goals. (Growth principles, #1)
