Bruno

Discussion (9) ¬

1. 
   Mr Lapin

   July 1, 2016 at 4:34 am | #

   Random, desultory thoughts:

   I know it’ll sound cynical, but I found long ago that troubled and depressed folk seldom really want help. They desperately want you to listen, and maybe make comforting little noises.

   Listening to them seems to give them some release, albeit temporary. Then they cling to you because they’ve already driven off countless others who used to listen.

   To some degree society judges you, as listener, in proportion to your ability to withstand this treatment. I guess this is considered the measure of your love, whatever that means. If you have to run away from a depressed person to save your own sanity, you’re judged weak or craven. (That’s me, I guess. See above.)

   We as human critters seem to have a fundamental need for others to pay attention to us. Social success comes in part from suppressing that need while indulging it in others – that is, being a “good listener.” Think Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Lutherans and “You are not so special.” Social failure comes from indulging it in yourself: you’re not listening, therefore you’re not interesting.

   Artists who just make pretty stuff – melodic songs, colorful paintings – are considered shallow. Yet that’s what most audiences respond to first. Unless you have that initially appealing “superficial” beauty to your work, you’re going to have a tough time drawing any significant audience.

   It’s like high school or college dating and the old “Well, he/she has a great personality.” Yeah. Good luck with that.

   OTOH, critics will tell you that the best work is emotionally invested. They’re not wrong.

   Where audiences and critics come together we find the greatest artistic success. (I was going to write something like “true art” but then I just couldn’t.) It works because the artist has created something about himself, but the audience believe that it’s about them. The song reminds you of your own heartbreak, the painting makes you think of your own childhood. Thus “universality.”

   As I say, these are just random thoughts – feel free to run with them, or tear them apart.
2. 
   ronald

   July 1, 2016 at 7:06 am | #

   IMHO human interaction is vastly overrated, anyway.
3. 
   Christopher

   July 1, 2016 at 11:08 am | #

   Good thoughts.

   I might note, I’m not sure if it’s as much that troubled and depressed folk seldom really want help, it’s that what people offer as “help” isn’t really helpful. It’s basically your brain fucking with you, and not as much something which can be figured out or resolved.

   And yeah, devastatingly frustrating both to people suffering depression, and the people who care about them.
4. 
   Chris Phoenix

   July 1, 2016 at 12:41 pm | #

   I’ve heard that an effective intervention for depression is to get two depressed people to stroll and talk. They both get listened to and apparently it helps. (Perhaps the mild exercise and change of scene helps too?)
5. 
   M.A.

   July 1, 2016 at 3:27 pm | #

   Also, I’ve found you can’t be depressed and furious at the same time, althogh you can switch rapidly between the two states and that’s REALLY crazy-making.
6. 
   Pete Rogan

   July 1, 2016 at 11:06 pm | #

   Few things are as maddening or as difficult to counter as depressive spite — the realization that there is a way out, that things MIGHT be better if done this particular way, met by the childish refusal to play along, for no other reason than to CONTINUE to be hopeless. This is in spite of the worth or utility of whatever option is presented, or described, or forced upon the sufferer. The result is not unlike the maddening sensation of being pinched on the cheek by an implacable maiden aunt who is convinced you’re just acting out, and that making you giggle will prove her right. And you can’t stop from giggling, no matter how murderous your rage, how trenchant your outrage at being made to giggle when you never felt like it. So your maiden aunt is satisfied that she’s been vindicated, and you are trembling with rage that she thinks a tickle fixes everything, at least as far as she’s concerned, and your only consolation is that it’s stopped, for now. But the threat of resumption is always there, and you are trapped in rage and desperation and a deeper isolation than you had before. And no one sees it, or knows what it means. They just think you need more tickling.

   And when there is no maiden aunt, nor anybody else to make fun of your mood, and you feel the same way… you have all the disadvantages of being alone, and none of the advantages of having no one to bother you. You’ve taken on their work, though you don’t want to, and you spin in your trap until exhaustion or breakdown. No way out until something in you breaks.
7. 
   Christopher

   July 2, 2016 at 12:39 pm | #

   <3 Pete
8. 
   Edward Welbourne

   July 5, 2016 at 4:38 pm | #

   Mr. Lapin: some depressed folk “want you to listen, and maybe make comforting little noises.” They’re the ones who talk to you about it. The others … you don’t realise they’re depressed, because they didn’t talk to you about it. Even if they want to, they may just think it’d bring you down; and they don’t want to do that to you; so they keep it to themselves.
9. 
   llirium

   June 3, 2017 at 9:46 pm | #

   @Mr Lapin–I’ll admit to wanting some “poor baby” that means almost nothing, but I’ve also learned that it ultimately comes down to *doing* things differently that make you feel like you did something worthwhile.

   There are a lot of “help vampires” out there that will suck you dry of all sympathy and empathy until you’re burned out or worse off than they are, but I’d like to think they’re not the majority of those that are chronically depressed.