The ancient Greeks used to divide people into four temperaments: phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic, and choleric. We’ve come a long way since then. We no longer fit into little neat categories, and things are now decidedly more complicated. Genetics has now replaced the temperaments, and there are far more than four genes to contend with.
Everyone has a different genetic profile, and these profiles are a bit like canvases on which mental states are painted. The genetic qualities of the canvas determines how certain colors — like the dark hues of depression and anxiety, or the warm tones of happiness — are expressed in a person’s life. Some people have canvases that favor darker colors, other people have canvases which favor lighter colors.
Your personal biology, your unique blend of genes, provides you with the form and quality of your canvas. However, environmental factors will bend, twist, break, and mend this canvas into different shapes. It’s this combination of nurture and nature that will ultimately determine the quality of your experiences.
Depression will be painted differently depending on the canvas it finds itself on. There is no single image of depression. That’s one of the reasons why different drugs work differently on different people. Despite the symptomatic similarities that depressed people share, each case is unique, because each canvas is unique.
Let’s consider five factors that will help determine the nature of your depression. These five factors can also shed light on different mental states, like happiness, anxiety, and anger. Each of them twists your canvas in a different direction, leaving you with different experiences.
1. Genetic factors
The genes you inherit play a large role in determining the experiences you have. Some genes that may play a role in regulating depression are 5-HTT, monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, and COMT. In time, we’ll have a fuller understanding of these genetic variables.
It will be years before we have an understanding of how our genes combine to create our human experiences. Despite the existence of genetic profiling services like 23andme.com, we are still a long way off to understanding the very building blocks which predispose us to conditions like depression. For this reason, though genetic factors are perhaps the most important in causing depression, they are also currently the least understood.
I’d like to keep a solid, predictable schedule for this site — daily posts, Monday through Friday, with the week-ends off.
The posts will cover issues concerning mental health in general, with a particular emphasis on depression, anxiety, and stress. I’m not tackling these issues from the usual perspective. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be depressed, anxious, or stressed out. Hell, even a little OCD can be a good thing. It’s only a problem when these states become debilitating, preventing people from engaging and participating in the world in ways which conform with their desires.
I’m not in favor of “curing” depression, anxiety, and stress. I want to manage them. In a world as fucked up as ours, in a world as broken and bruised and bloody as ours, in a world full of inequity and injustice, being depressed is a healthy and normal response.
Society is sick, yet most professionals want you to adapt to it. That’s a terrible idea. A better route would be to recognize that society is broken, and no matter how good you get, your mental health will always be constrained by your environment. If that environment isn’t healthy, you won’t be either.
What that means is that seemingly happy, functional citizens are often broken on some very deep levels. They’re ability to be happy is directly related to how alienated they are from the world around them. In order to believe everything is okay, they have to ignore everything that’s wrong.
This leaves people with a choice; they can be depressed yet aware, or they can be happy yet ignorant. I’d like to argue that it’s better to be depressed and aware. Happiness that relies on ignorance is an illusion, and that illusion ends up distorting every aspect of it’s victims life. Their relationships are shallow, their goals empty, and their lives built atop a foundation of sand. They’re only okay because they’re not paying attention, but once they fix their eyes on the world, everything comes tumbling down.
Depression, on the other hand, is what happens when your eyes are so close to the floor that you sometimes feel like you’re lying on it. It’s not pleasant, and it can be emotionally and physically crippling, but if people manage it properly… it can open up a pathway to a more satisfying and enriching life, a life that’s free from the rules, definitions, and limits of a broken world.
It’s no secret that the depressed have a more accurate understanding of the world and their place in it; they’re much more attuned to their limitations than other people. Limitations are, in fact, a weapon of great power in the hands of those who understand them. People who are aware of their limitations are more likely to pick their battles wisely than people who overestimate their skills and talents. The depressed can seize the world precisely because they aren’t deluded about how wonderful it is. They know the rules and the facts better than happy folks, so they can break those rules and use those facts in ways that others can’t.
The depressed are in a better position to live the lives they want to in the way they want to then are happy, and hence, deluded people. Why rid yourself of your depression if it means embracing delusions?
Nuts to that. Focus on controlling that depression so that it never consumes you, then learn to channel it into a force for positive social change.
I plan on helping you accomplish this. I’ll be sharing the best psychological studies I can find while mapping out a comprehensive philosophy of positive misery.
Because at Mister Misery, we believe being miserable can be a good thing.
- The Posts of 2008
- In 2009, I resolve to be…
- A diet of happy thoughts
- Misery Around The Web
- Daily meditation stops wandering thoughts
- Quackery, Pseudoscience, and You.
- Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
- Personal Stories and Interviews, a round-up
- The Power of Posture
- Beating Seasonal Affective Disorder
anti-depressants buddhism celexa childhood abuse citalopram depression drugs FKBP5 genes genetics lithium loneliness mania meditation misanthropy misery nlp pharmacogenetics relationships SLC6A4 studies suicide Treatments and Therapies for Better Health videos website