Judy2

yes, i am glad you see it that way. i explored the example of childhood emotional development in response to something Leo said. children are still people, though. some key aspects of dealing with children's emotions are the same for dealing with adults (male or female) while others are not (since kids are still developing and dependent on their caregivers for survival).

Yes. Not ignoring someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You can take the emotion seriously and still tell them "no more ice cream today" or "please give that toy back to your friend".

yes, sorry.

okay I think we do have to take children at least a little seriously, though. Even if we think their reasons for crying are silly. Otherwise, that's gonna mess with their emotional development. Imagine ignoring your 10-year-old daughter when she cries, or even your five-year-old daughter. Or telling them "ha, you're just being silly!" That's how you raise someone with serious attachment trauma. Of course, there are differences between children and adults. That is why i chose not to bring this up as an example. I thought it was obvious that there are good reasons to be sympathetic with children.

Who is the judge of what is silly vs serious? If I am crying about something, it's likely to be serious to me.

@Salvijusokay:)

okay, but when we are born, we are also born into ignorance, and depending on the environment we grow up in, certain stress responses can become someone's second nature. to a certain extent, they are natural survival mechanisms. this is not a choice per se....it's what a human body does instinctually, even before they are old enough to think, let alone speak.

yes:)

but the brain does exist? anyone who has ever experienced depression can probably attest to the fact that it is more real than "serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain".

yes, precisely. it might also be a matter of genetic predisposition to experiencing more negative affect in general. ane differences in neuroanatomy and neurochemistry as well. with bipolar disorder, for example, the brain goes through cycles of increased flexibility vs increased rigidity, which corresponds to manic and depressed phases.

for some reason, frozen berries also got a lot more expensive, though...

i think this is a tricky one. in a way, mental illness (or, at the very least, recovery) is a choice, but in a way it also isn't. that's something that needs to be experienced for someone to even begin to grasp the depth of that.

yes:) i think it's worth contemplating depression as its own phenomenon (which is the goal of this thread), but it's also true that for the individual, depression can be embedded in a network of other factors and diagnoses (as i'm aware it is for me).

berries also used to be much cheaper, but in terms of veggies, (cherry) tomatoes feel like the worst rip-off.

@Natasha Tori Maru yes, maybe what i have described is a maintaining factor rather than depression itself.

i don't know if this answers your question, but for me, depression is usually a reaction to how i implicitly (or explicitly) make sense of the world, and, in extension, myself. basically, it's like asking myself "is this world/life/experience a good enough place to live in? maybe not..." and it makes assumptions about the permanence and impermanence of pleasant/unpleasant experiences. although this isn't always "no feelings" - it could also just be an unpleasant mix of emotions. for me, one of the most depressing things is when "the good" and "the bad" seem so intertwined that i cannot, for the love of God, separate them neatly, and this stops me from being able to make sense of myself as 'good' (which is a core psychological need). so depression isn't the absence of good experiences, but the fact that they seem fundamentally "spoiled". but my head is also a little weird sometimes, so maybe this is just how it works for me.

you can try to deconstruct perception. this works well with mild visual hallucinations (on lsd) when you intellectually know that you took something and everything around you looks a bit different than it "should". if you stay focussed on this subject for about 45 minutes and get genuinely interested in it, you can have the "i can't see! i have never seen anything in my life!" breakthrough fairly quickly. it felt so oddly familiar when i had it....don't know if anyone knows what i mean, but some people told me they do. other than that, how about....who am i?

that sounds really nice:) i hate how expensive tomatoes are at the store, so getting some homegrown ones is great.

...................................................................................

....stressed again...or maybe still, but i can't tell the difference at this point. i have to mark 35 exams and the correction guidelines only came in after i'd already finished grading 10 of them. then there are also a few other things i need to organise as well...and i feel unsafe in my apartment due to outside noises (nothing new there, but it seems more acute again at the moment). one thing that went well today, though, and that i wish to acknowledge, is that i've finally finished my embroidery. i'd had a bit of a break since last year, and this was much harder and more bothersome than anticipated... but i tied up all the loose threads this morning, washed it and i'm very relieved that it came out clean. i was a bit worried that the outline would stay on the fabric, but luckily i managed to remove it entirely.

@Natasha Tori Maruokay:) thanks for sharing

i used to watch them to distract me from difficult situations and emotions. but my mind remembers these images and still has the most vivid horror fantasies in very inconvenient situations... and it's worse than being scared of being attacked by another person, because my brain thinks some supernatural monsters could just materialise out of thin air. the last one i watched was Smile...that was quite horrible. when i was a teenager i watched one of the Conjuring movies (the one with the Nun.....aaaah!) and i still wonder how i sat through that on my own... i wouldn't dare watch that now.

on most days, i reach a point at least once or twice when i wish i could simply opt out of my life... because there's always something that seems too messy, ugly, complicated. but since i can't opt out of my life, this keeps the pressure up - at least i think it does... i haven't really explored many other alternatives (other than that year when i decided it was all hopeless and stopped doing anything at all - but that didn't leave me feeling any better, either).