This is honestly disgusting and exactly the problem. You don’t know why they couldn’t get help. There are many possible reasons and instead they should be continued to be encouraged to find proper mental health counseling, not feed into a mental health crisis talking about suicide.
And it’s not your place to decide what is suffering or not for them. That is exactly the problem. The fact that you checked on this persons profile and decided based on that he’s continuing to suffer is exactly the issue. You are not a trained mental health provider I’m sure. Encouraging someone in that place to commit suicide is exactly the problem. You are not a soothsayer who can see into this persons future. What if in 10 years that person has a child and finds true joy and meaning, glad that they went through what they did in the previous years. There are many such cases.
It’s also not your job to somehow “ease suffering” for a person on the internet you don’t know, with some kind of self satisfaction and sense of control over another’s life that you took away an individual’s suffering by helping them kill themselves.
Instead the person needs to decide for themselves, by themselves, AND they need to be in a healthy mental state to make that decision. Depression is not a healthy mental state, it’s a period of delusion.
Your comment only proves exactly why sites such as this need massive regulation, and anyone who knows someone who contemplates suicide and came out the other side living a fulfilling life with joy and happiness would understand exactly why.
And I could agree that a site talking about assisted suicide is a net positive, but the burden is on that site to ensure it is not encouraging people in mental health crisis to suicide. In an open, mostly unmoderated forum that is a very high bar indeed, and it's even higher when the company hosting such a site has a profit motive. Trained mental health providers should be available and reviewing discussions in those situations, and such regulation requiring that is in my opinion not a hinderance on free speech.
And for anyone reading these comments and suffering with depression, if you’re unable to find good mental health care, first and the very least read the following book, and know that there are people who can help you find the light on the other side:
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVgQ_tgWMyU&t [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
If inner critic gives you real trouble, the best way, by far, is to start working on such problems with a licensed mental health specialist.
Second best way is to catch up on modern research in psychology and psychotherapy. (I'm generalising below with most important knowledge I have on the topic based on my replies to other comments.)
In modern therapy it is considered that at least some of the inner critic issues are responses to past traumatic events and emotional trauma. It tries to help you avoid doing something that hurt you in the past, like a legacy broken failsafe mechanism.
Possible root causes might include:
- Complex PTSD [0][1] - Childhood emotional neglect [2] - Traumatic stress [3] - Style of your upbringing and some other issues from the past, including learned responses to life stresses [4] This knowledge is in part a modern (last decade) evolution of older Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ideas[5] from the 1980s. OP article describes typical CBT strategy. CBT, while being helpful to manage critic-related problems, rarely addresses any of the underlying root causes.
If you don't want to dig deep into root causes, I want to explicitly highlight [4] as it does a great way of summarising core CBT and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) ideas, and helps to address the critic issue directly via many actionable strategies.
0 - http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm and similar research on CPTSD
1 - Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker https://www.amazon.com/Complex-PTSD-Surviving-RECOVERING-CHI...
2 - Running on Empty by Jonice Webb & Christine Musello https://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Overcome-Childhood-Emot...
3 - Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...
4 - Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay https://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Cognitive-Techniques-Asse...
5 - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
It describes how depression is often caused by cognitive distortions that somehow cause us to believe that our lives aren't worth living. As a simple example, a depressed person might call a friend, but the friend doesn't return the call immediately, and so the depression patient concludes that the friend doesn't actually care. This is a pure hallucination caused by depression; there are 1000s of reasons why the friend might not have responded immediately. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that the negative conclusion was true, and the friend doesn't care about the patient, that doesn't mean very much. Maybe the friend is actually pretentious, or is trying to climb the social ladder, or is a political zealot who can't tolerate people with different opinions - all reasons why the patient is better off looking for new friends anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Great-Revolutionary-Treatment...
The first one helped me understand how the mind influences the emotions, haven't read the second.
There is also a handy CBT app called Quirk that I'd also recommend checking out https://www.quirk.fyi/
I have given people many copies of it over the years, with no bad results and a few good to very good ones.
I'd recommend seeing a therapist and developing a treatment plan together. It's a practical way to identify what you are worrying about, why and how to overcome it. Then, I'd encourage you to learn more about personalities and your personality type. There are a bunch of 'personality type' systems out there, but the Enneagram is one of the least specific in its 'typing' and most useful in its insights.
- The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Enneagram-Paths-Greater-Self...) - Feeling Good (https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...)
Feeling Good is by David Burns, a Stanford professor who developed Cognitive Behavior Therapy. CBT is a way to identify and manage your thoughts. It sounds like you are a 'fortune telling' type of person and you try to read your crystal ball and then act on those assumptions rather than what you know. Burns goes into how to identify those types of thoughts, how to refute them and how to mitigate their effects.
This sounds all wrong to me, and obviously will be very stressful for you. You need to find a good hospital / doctor and get yourself diagnosed right. And only then can you consider the right treatment for what ails you (I know this must be obvious to you, but I want to emphasise it).
Depending on what you suffer from, life long medications might not even be required (though will be helpful during therapy). For example, depression and OCD can be successfully treated with therapy.
While I am averse to recommending self-help without knowing what you suffer from, I highly recommend that you read "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by Dr. David Burns ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380810336/ref=dbs_a_def_r... ). The author is a real doctor and a trained Psychiatrist and explains how cognitive therapy can be effectively used to treat depressions and anxiety. And he also explains how anti-depressants works technically (you can skip that chapter if you find it too technical). It is well written and everything is explained in an easy to understand manner.
I wouldn't classify 12 Rules of life as a typical 'self-help' book because Peterson is not a self-proclaimed self-help guru without any substance.
If you check his career section on Wikipedia you'll find out that "Peterson's areas of study and research are in the fields of psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational, religious, ideological, political, and creativity psychology. Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers. Peterson has over 20 years of clinical practice, seeing 20 people a week, but in 2017, he decided to put the practice on hold because of new projects."
And he doesn't try to sell you the idea that life is beautiful and amazing, he actually agrees that life is tragic and brutal.
> I always have a feeling that you just cannot sum up all the things to be "happy" or "content" or whatever in one book
I agree to that. You cannot sum up all the things which make you happy or more content, but you can follow principles which increase the probability of success in what you want to do, such as "be a bit better tomorrow in some minor way"[1]
> I am interested to know, how often when you face a situation, you stop and think, oh I read this and that in a book, I should act this way instead of my natural intuition to do the other way.
Not every time, but more often than before reading that book. For example, I've read Feeling Good: The new mood therapy(another great book with a self-helpish title) and after reading that book I really started to put in practice some exercises in that book which by now they became almost automatic. For so much time I was a victim of cognitive distortions and now I finally found a way to beat them. And not only me. [3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz2tYGt0_As
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
Here's [1] a kind of silly example of it in action over on the Overwatch subreddit.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/85qmul/my_wife_i...
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
As for what how my doctor and I have "hacked" anxiety, and the last one is most certainly a hack done in desperation:
A long time ago ('80s) I learned Cognitive Therapy, which is now Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with some additional stuff added to cognitive psychology (in simplest terms, you feel bad because you tell yourself bad things, view the world through dark glasses, etc., cognitive distortions of reality). I cannot speak highly enough of this; for example, many many years later I realized that thoroughly applying it to myself pretty much ended the usefulness of talking therapy. Start with this book and see what it and you can do: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808... (so good I keep an extra copy or two handy to give to people).
A laser specific SSRI, trade name Lexapro, generic escitalopram. Probably helps, not entirely sure; mixed with this is what my doctors and I suspect is depression of a bipolar nature (not like normal depression, but I only go manic if prescribed the wrong drug, like Paxil; this has been troublesome for a very long time, but not disabling by iself).
Critically, given what could otherwise be life threatening insomnia etc., a low dose of an "atypical" antipsychotic that has a useful sedating side effect (an antihistamine, so also good for your allergies :-), trade name Seroquel, generic quetiapine fumarate.
[1]http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
One thing to emphasize from our disparate experiences is that in this arena there aren't "one size fits all" solutions. There are common symptoms which respond to common solutions, sometimes after a search for a particular drug that works with acceptable side effects, then there are people like me where doctors and myself struggle for years to find a set of drugs that provide the best solution (for now) that control but by no means cure my symptoms (like my uncle, this eventually disabled me).
Getting back to the original basis of this discussion, I'm absolutely sure that Amblify when used as an adjunct for current generation antidepressants works from some people with refractory depression, which I can attest is no fun at all, since mine is only partially alleviated, and I have friends who spent years before they found at minimum partial solutions for their more standard unipolar depression. Is it seriously over-prescribed? Who knows? In my experience, there are enough people out there with refractory depression that it might well not be. And I'd certainly try it before e.g. electroshock therapy, which is one of the alternatives if you're desperate enough.
As a side note, I learned cognitive psychology in the '80s (now cognitive behavioral psychology, http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808... is the classic and highly recommended layman's introduction), and it's tremendously useful, and in retrospect ended any benefits from talking therapy, but it's pretty clear that like the 3 particular antidepressants I've tried from two generations of them, only a partial solution for me.
1) There is hope! Don't give up.
2) Many people will not understand. That's okay.
3) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) works. It's hard work, but it's easier than having depression and anxiety. It's really about renewing your mind. Best book on the subject is an old one: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
4) You have to find help from others. You will likely run into quacks, and well-meaning but unhelpful advisers. Don't give up.
And on top of that you isolate yourself. I know how hard it was to ask for help therefore I want to show you some things which helped me:
- Realize that your depression is lying to you. It doesn't tell the truth. It makes you believe that something is logical even if it isn't.
- Read 'Feeling Good' - terrible title, great book. It will probably work better than average on the average HN reader because it takes a 'rational' approach to depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy). It helps you to recognize destructive thought patterns and how to deal with them.
- Garbage in, garbage out. What works for computers also works for your body. Yeah, you're a geek but you can eat some vegs instead of the 500th pizza. Also working out (or other sports) are pretty great.
- Long term: Therapy which tries to work on the root cause and not just at symptoms.
Finally, here's a rather extensive list with lectures, books, exercises, etc. which help dealing with depression [1]. Back when I was fed up with feeling crap I created a spreadsheet with the 8 activities and tracked those every day.
Note: Every person seem to react to differently. I read about people who improved a lot by meditating - on the other hand, it didn't work for me.
So, try some things out and don't give up. You can beat that liar in your head.
[0]: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_...
PS: If you have any questions feel free to ask - if you want to send me a private one write at
I read and used the early '80s edition, before the "behavioral" was added to it, and around a decade or so ago realized that learning and following it made further talking therapy essentially useless.
The theory behind the "cognitive" part of it, simply put, is that thinking bad, not to mention incorrect, thoughts about yourself makes you feel bad. Adjusting your mental filters and the like to reality can then make a very big difference.
(Not, in my case, a complete cure, I've got an inherited refractory depression that my doctors and I supposize is bipolar in nature, I just never go manic nor cycle all that much. Adding a SSRI to the mix significantly improves it.)
I've been there a couple of times, I've even had a suicide attempt at 17 and ended up spending 2 months in the hospital with kidney failure. But each time depression crept it on me again, I was better and better equipped to deal with it. The last time I was depressed towards suicidal (about 2 years ago), two things helped me: This book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808... And a low-dose hit of LSD, which practically sucked me out of depression in one night (for the reasons outlined below). This was my way, you might need to take a different path, but speaking from experience, it is possible to get yourself out of this and then good things start to happen.
It will get better, just hold on.
The reason you're feeling like nothing works, is because you've forgotten what you've came here for. What this life is about. It's not about how well you write code, it's not about how many friends you have or how much money you make or what car/phone you have. What is it about then ?
That's for you to find out. That's how the hit of LSD or psilocybin (mushrooms) might help, but you need to know what and how you're doing it.
The other reason is the way you interpret reality and what you say to yourself every day. Details about this are in the book.
And some other ideas:
Stop everything, take a vacation and go on a trip. It's summer, go to a festival in the mountains or south to the sea, visit Paris or Barcelona or go to India. Do something you've always wanted to, but never had the time or resources to accomplish.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0380810336?pc_redir=1402628516...
The #1 thing you can do to at least not help drive yourself deeper into depression is to learn cognitive therapy, which nowadays has a "behavioral" aspect added to it that I'm not familiar with (this is the CBT Michael refers to in his message composed at the same time as mine). Buy this book; I keep extra copies to give to people: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
If you're truly bipolar, there's no substitute for a doctor's care as well, you'll probably need a mood stabilizer, of which there are many varieties from the "gold standard" of lithium to modern atypical anti-psychotics.
I'd add that I'll bet anyone can benefit from going through their thought patterns applying the insights of congnitive psychology, the therapy side of which says, very roughly, one way to make yourself depressed is to think incorrect bad thoughts about yourself (which includes how you view other people viewing you, etc.).
(Which is not to say there aren't also pure biological causes (see tokenadult's excellent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7530847), family history eventually revealed that's a factor in my particular type of depression, but it's certain that self-applied cognitive therapy from an earlier edition of this book made a big difference for me, it's just not enough.)
The book "Feeling Good"[0] by Dr. David Burns might help you with your depression.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
I can only directly recommend the '80s version, before the "Behavioral" bit was added, but I found it to be very very powerful. In 20/20 hindsight, so good that talk therapy afterwords hasn't been useful (there's no doubt a bit of Psychologist Roulette as grivo puts it involved, maybe there's a better therapist out there that I haven't found, but...).
Depression, for example, in my experience, and from what I've seen -- often has a cause; a rational, explainable cause (that the sufferer often isn't aware of). When you treat someone's depression as a "medical disease" like the cold or the flu, you are completely ignoring the human factor.
Many cases of depression can actually be solved without drugs -- by addressing the problem at the root of it. "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns, goes into this. (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...)
I don't know why people ignore the real human factor when it comes to depression. Instead they resort to a bunch of drugs that do not address the root (psychological) cause of the depression, but rather just give some temporary fleeting relief.
Guys, if you're suffering from depression or anxiety, this is the be all and end all of lasting treatments that works. I actually Ctrl-F'ed for it when I opened this thread.
Doing no harm is a high bar, and that bar requires commitment that online communities and the companies that run them almost certainly cant provide without a lot of effort. The disregard for the possibility that those communities may have caused harm (even if you believe they helped you) is alarming.
> This search for "joy and happiness" is absurd
This is the problem when people with this viewpoint get together in forums, it can create a vicious feedback cycle that are not healthy for anyone.
I'm sorry you are suffering or have suffered. But searching and finding joy and happiness is not absurd. We only have one life to live, and it definitely doesn't need to be suffering. Every one of us has the power to change that (believing you cant is a thought trap, a type of delusion.)
> Nothing bad would happen to that person should they not be interrupted
This speaks volumes. You are saying that the death of a person is nothing bad. A life.. a loved one. A child going through a momentary suffering. That death is BAD. Not understanding that is delusional thinking.
> It doesn't delete these 10 years of suffering which you apparently see no problem subjecting people to
I'm not subjecting them to anything, nor are you by not talking or telling a person how to commit suicide. That persons suffering is not your or my responsibility. But the moment you do talk to that person about how they could commit suicide, then you have taken on a responsibility. And it is an immense one, not to be taken lightly.
Finally I'll say this, all your comments indicate to me someone who is suffering from depression. If you truly believe that not to be the case, I challenge you to read the following book cover to cover, do all the exercises, and once you have finished, look back on your words and ideas and see if you may have been stuck in some delusional thinking:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0380731762?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_u...
And finally, if you ever actually consider suicide, I urge you to question your thinking and consider the possibility you could make a choice that in another mindset you would regret. Imagine getting high on shrooms or LSD and jumping off a roof. Depression is like that... when you come to, you realize you were just on a bad trip.
And as my favorite Starship captain says... "Never give up. Never surrender!"