how do we get depressed?

Post Reply New Topic

I dont think depression is an intrinsic part of being an aspie. But how do we get depressed, and why is it common among aspies to be depressed?


I would be very fan of videogames, and i would play them a lot in the past (i dont play them that much, i dont have much time right now). Not long ago I was part of an Unreal Tournament community, and besides having lots of fun, I was curious about some things that happened within the game. I mean, an online game is very different from a stand alone game, you get to deal with real people, and the interactions in the game one way or another are the same as the ones in reality. Most of the social rules apply, and there are groups, defined by interests, ages, points of view, etc. And there are also status and social hierachies (although loose, but still existant)
But one thing came to my attention. I noticed that people behave very differently depending on their situation within the game. An average player would be relaxed most of the time, just shooting around, going for the flag, sometimes he succeeds, sometimes not etc. A good player, acts confident, abides by the rules, and he is even willing to share and teach and say hi to new players etc. A bad player is usually a new player, and he is in the excitement of learning the game, and gets very excited if he manages to do something for his team despite being new (which is why I think capture the flag is very addictive). Those little victories push him forward to learn more.

Hang on with me.
What happens when a great player comes in? I mean, really great player, and just owns the other team by his pure skill. He doesnt even lets them get into his base, he is that good. I noticed that when this happened, a lot of the times, average players, good players, etc. doesnt matter, lost their cool and started breaking rules and doing whatever they can to at least save their 'honor' and make some points. They also got frustrated.

Why is this? I think it's because of relativity of social nature (cotinuing a bit with the other post). Our brains function a way depending our situation in society.
And what happens when you face a force that is so overwhelming that you feel you have no chance? There are two choices, you keep fighting and clinge on the very little hope that you might overcome at some point. Or, you accept things as they are out of frustration; but this acceptance, in this case, comes with depression, because you dont really feel you can do anything about it.

I think it happens the same with aspies. I dont think depression and other feelings are intrinsic to us, they are just more or less bound to happen to us because of our situation. The overwhelming force of course is other people, who dont have the syndrome, and thus can learn and improve themselves socially. Even if someone is not good at first, they have a feeling they can overcome and be good at some point, this hope keeps them mentally stable.
We get depressed (in a good part) because we dont think there is a solution to our social problems. We are like the monkey that is electrocuted and has no control over it (it sound a little awkard i know, but its a famous experiment). This feeling of not having any control on our circumstances, is the problem. We dont have much to look forward when we think about social things. I mean we can learn some things to some extent, but as said, things are relative. Most of the people around us have no problem with it, so that's what really makes it hard for us, and thats what makes it overwhelming.

So whats the solution? Thats the difficult thing, there seems to be no easy solution. I notice that when you are younger, you 'just dont get it'. It seems that we take some specific time to understand social queues and situations. I know I only got to really understand when i was around mid twenties. No doubt there is people who get it in their late teens, but its the exception. I see that it takes a lot of time to really learn about social things, if you are an aspie. You do learn at some point, but its all about work. There is no way around it. And even then, you dont get to be a social genius, obviously. But you do get to have some decent functioning within society.

I was depressed most of my teenage years, i see that now. But i also see that it was because of what i explained earlier. I am not depressed now, I started to not feel depressed when I started to feel some control over situations, and also when I let go the guilt. The guilt is very important to depression also.

There are a lot of other factors, but I think you said it well. Humans have a tendency to conform, or be very much alike. Different cultures have different expectations, but in all of them, those who don't fulfill the expectations are outcasts.

I dwell on criticism and am skeptical of praise. I also have a very poor self-image and question all my actions. I think these are common traits among aspies. Lots of us are lonely, too.

What you said about "getting it" is something I've been thinking about. I equate this with trying to learn a foreign language with no help and no one to communicates with in your language(s). Eventually, you will learn the language, but it will take different amounts of time for different people; it may take ten years, it may take twenty-five.

I was diagnosed Bipolar when I was much younger, mostly (I now suspect) because my mom is very decidedly Bipolar (lengthly hospital stays for her - yikes).

When I was a teenager, I certainly had Bipolar episodes (mania, fast-thinking, and so forth) but those symptoms eased with age, and a lot of what I thought were Bipolar experiences in later years I now recognize as classic Autistic meltdowns. I may still be Bipolar, but it's not the primary issue in my life.

Depression (and keep in mind I am *not* an expert here) is a consequence of a fairly basic fact of life for the AS community - we're not accepted by the general population. We're different. We're "weird". Pardon my male-centric position here (I am male, and thus have no ability to be objective in this matter), but the fact that it is inordinately hard to find/form a partnership with a significant-other seems to me to lead to an inevitable amount of frustration and depression.

Who the hell wants to live out their life alone?

When I asked a friend what I might do/say to a woman I'm attracted to in order to gain her attention, my female-NT-pal's response was "I’d just tell her she was hot and that she’d regret it her whole life if she didn’t f**k me at least once. ". Yeah, I realize that is was meant to be a humorous remark, but it hurt like a sonnabitch.

To be honest, I *do* want to be alone some of the time, but I also *want* to know that there's another human being that I can be with unconditionally if I'm not in isolation-mode.

That I don't have another person to talk to, who accepts who I am and is willing to listen, or who might at least provide a patch of warm skin to hold onto when I'm doubting my essential humanity... well, that just hurts. Being alone when you need basic human reassurance is traumatizing, and above all else it is *depressing*.

So, in my mind, the depression is a side-effect of isolation, and the isolation is a side-effect of AS, and we can't "cure" the AS, so we're sorta stuck with the depression.

I guess this observation doesn't help much, but it's all I have to offer at this point.

Nick

s**t, I'd like to know how to get undepressed... Get your ass in gear and tell us!!

One thing I've noticed, I can act "cool" and can be a real badass while socializing certain people and get along fine, make friends easily and people don't think I'm different at all. But I tend to be quiet, nervous, and odd around a certain other few...

Aspie or not, I get very depressed when I don't have a chance to pursue my interests. In this case, since 2004...

well i wish i had the formula for getting out of depression, but theres obviously no such formula. We are all different, we all live different lifes, and we are depressed for different reasons. Of course there can be generalizations, and thats what i was talking up there, its a generalization for aspies. I just say that if you are aspie theres a good chance that if you are depressed because of the reasons mentioned earlier. Even though we are different, we are the same in a sense, we are all human and we want more or less the same things.

One thing I think helps greatly to improve socially and to understand better a lot of things, is having a girlfriend/boyfriend. Ok, I know what you'll say, its catch22, you cant get a gf/bf because of the social problems, and you cant improve because theres no gf/bf. But it really just takes one big effort to break the cycle.
It's amazing the power of social forces on our behavior. NT people are completely subject to this forces from the beginning, and thus they are 'socialized' bythe process of socialization. And its this process that makes you really understand NT world. But aspies are like on the rim of this process, and it doesn't really affect us the same way. In a sense, we are never 'socialized', we dont go through the process all the way. And then what happens? We create our own personal worlds. The process of socializing is really going into this one big mainstream world, and since everyone lives in the same big world, they understand each other better. But any NT would also build their own worlds if they were on a deserted island, it's human tendency to do this.
I know it sounds a bit obvious, but its not. In a true sense, we aspies really build our own worlds out of isolation. I believe its a human tendency, not an exclusive AS tendency.

I 'got this' mostly through my girlfriend. Up to one point, I noticed that in one way or another I had been living in my world, with my own fantasies. My girlfriend has 'socialized' me a bit further into 'mainstream world'. Through our daily interactions, she, uknowingly, has taught me a lot. I used to look at NT people like totally different beings than me, like we were different species. But now I dont, I do feel different, but not nearly as much as before.
And I do behave inappropiately a lot of times, and I don't like to go to parties or anything. But I can act much better on limited situations thanks to this. There is an obvious limit of how much you can socialize your own self, but you can always push a bit more.

I think we are much more "normal" or typical than we think we are. The real problem is that social forces don't have much effect on us, so we 'deviate' into a million possible 'worlds'. What I learned is that the process of "socialization" is very real, and its very neccesary to function in society.

Ironicchef: I think thats a very good point. First the connection of depression because of isolation. But mostly the indirect recognition that we really are social beings. That's my problem when people talk about neurodiversity and autism. As much as we are "ok" as we are, we really have to face the fact that in the end we do want to be around other people. And not being able to do so, is major source of negative feelings. When someone says "im better off alone all the time" im really skeptical. The living proof of this is this forum, writing here is proof you do want to interact with other human beings (if we dont do it in real life is not because we dont want to, its because we "cant" or have bad experiences doing so).


damn ive become the person i hate. Now I always write long posts lol.

HERE is a flash animated slideshow I did a couple of years ago for uni. It explains how I imagine clinical (chemical) depression occurs in the brain, based on the research I've done.

After zooming in on the brain in the two examples the screen goes black, you need to go on to the next slide as I didn't put in an automatic advance forward at those points.

believing your negative thoughts is guaranteed to cause depression.

Or at the very least, make the problem unbearable. Good call jjstar.

This is such an honest post; I think that's exactly the problem!

Depression for me usually begins with feeling lonely - not so much that I want to be with other people all the time, but that people don't ACCEPT me the way that I am, in my natural state. Even when I'm with people, I get depressed sometimes because in order to make people like me, I often have to alter my personality to some extent. I believe most people have to do this, especially when they first meet people, so they don't scare strangers off with their natural "weirdness." But if you have AS, you are even more "weird" than others, and so you have to keep the facade up. It's not right. I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of everyone being so different than me, because it makes it nearly impossible to develop relationships and feel loved. I know there's some debate about this, but for me anyway, I do want to feel loved.

Maybe if a symptom of AS was a lack of the need to feel loved, or a desire for complete isolation from humanity, we wouldn't be so depressed. But that's not the case. We are still HUMAN, after all.

Thats a good animation, i enjoyed it. I have this sort of attraction for anything educational done in flash (long story..).

Now about the causes of depression. I do believe also depression is in itself a disease (and this is the belief of psychologists and psychiatrists), and that is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. But that perspective, although true, can be misleading at times. If we only focus on the chemical imbalance of the brain, most of the time we would be missing a very important issue here. The fact is depression can and is triggered by events in the real world (not all the time, but a lot of the times). That is why taking only medicines to get through depression is not enough. You would also have to make changes in real life, otherwise its just like being 'high'.

Saying depression is only caused by chemical imbalances (not that im saying you say that), is like saying that motivation is also caused only by chemical imbalances, and nothing in the real world triggers motivation.
So a lot of the times the causation goes like this Events in real world --> chemical imbalance --> depression. Another times its just chemical imbalance --> depression (like in post-partum depression).

I think we aspies have good reasons in the real world to be depressed.

I don't really think that NTs are any happier than Aspies. In fact, I think they have it so much worse. They have to keep buying useless stuff to keep up with the Jones, and they can't really afford it. The social rules make it difficult for them to act on their desires. imagine the hell it must have been be to be gay, having the desire of that kind of same sex relationship, but the pain of having to break the social rules to get it.

There are things they need to do to be part of the social order, but if they can't be part of it, they can't find that happiness within themselves. The social rules keep getting moved around so it becomes harder and harder to measure up to what is expected. You are expected to be intelligent and rational, even though most NTs are neither of these things, so they put on a facade like they are, converting to an anti-religion like atheism. They have to pretend to like people they really hate, in order to be thought of as compassionate.

They have to get through college and sit through classes they are not interested in, in order to get a job where they are forced to be on the bottom of the social hierarchy doing tasks they don't enjoy. The go to bars and get drunk while having relationship problems with others who can never measure up to their expectations. They sit around and talk about how miserable they are, while never being capable of doing anything about the situation, because they are too tied up by the box of rules that they have to follow in order to feel safe and secure.

I have a feeling that aspergers and autism are not disorders, but rather a reaction to the dysfunctional culture that pervades all of humanity. I think people wish they could do something about it, but they are so confined by who they are. The only real way to change a culture is from the inside out, we are the outsiders, but we change it from the inside. We can imitate, but we are detached, having no emotional investment in the culture itself. We want to destroy it.

Yes, I agree with you 100%.

The main reason for the animation was mainly to show it to those who are undepressed and think that people with depression are either faking it, or weak, or should just "buck the [insert expletive] up!"

You are correct that the only way to beat depression, is to combat the causes of it in your life. My animation might help a few people who have a hard time facing this battle or having very little faith in themselves because deep down, they know this stuff shouldn't be affecting them but somehow it is. Well, that's the chemical side of things. You're not weak or lack will power, it's just that your brain has switched into (or has otherwise been set to) a mode that it shouldn't be running in non-stop.

You need to kick it over into the other mode, but it's not as simple as flicking a switch, taking a pill or chanting a mantra.

In many cases, the anti-depressants actually hinder therapy, because you can't tell if the emotional/psychological reconstruction is working. You make the changes, but you don't know if those changes make life easier or harder, because you're still on the pills.

You'll notice that the last few slides of my animation were saying that SSRI's can cause more problems that they solve and should only be used (very cautiously) in dire circumstances.

I think that the pills I went on probably saved my life, but the side effects were so bad that I should have got off them as soon as possible.