1/ One thing I rarely hear people talk about re: depression is how stupid it makes you. Maybe my experience is outside the norm, but I may as well have dropped 15+ IQ points for two years while being depressed.
(This might get long.)
Conversation
2/ The brain fog was terrible for me. I was super distractible, incapable of focusing on anything, even for short periods. My memory was so bad that I’d forget to take care of basic life things or just completely fail to do something I’d made plans to do.
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3/ I think I went a full year without reading a single book. The best I could do was short articles. I only had the reading comprehension to understand things on the most superficial level, but I couldn’t retain information either, so the whole exercise felt pointless and sad.
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4/ When I first started coming out of depression, I was shocked at how much smarter I felt, but I think I’d just forgotten what’s it’s like to be fully cognitively functional. Lol.
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5/ Mental/work tasks that used to take me an entire afternoon now take me 20 minutes. I make plans & set routines for myself that I actually follow. I solve problems quickly & feel energized just by having problems to solve. Focusing is no longer a problem for me.
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6/ I read for 2 hrs/day & can have conversations about complex things. I have MY OWN ideas again & don’t feel nervous or self-conscious sharing them w/ people—I don’t *feel* stupid anymore.
Having my brain back has been the most exciting part of correcting my mental health.😊
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7/ I’m losing the thread here, but circling back: If you’ve never been depressed & have trouble understanding how it might feel emotionally (& I think it’s basically impossible for non-depressed people to understand that, btw, because the emotional parts are bizarre AF).
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8/ Maybe it’s easier to imagine yourself just being way dumber than you are now, esp if you take pride in intellect or have a vibrant & constantly moving / constantly computing inner world.
Imagine the emptiness/frustration of experiencing a disconnection from your own mind.
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9/ It’s like significant portions of your mind just shut off & you can’t figure out how to get them back on. Imagine how that might affect the way you feel about yourself, or how alien you might feel in your relationships & daily interactions with the world around you.
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10/ Imagine feeling unclear about yourself, your life, the world ALL THE TIME. Not in a healthy, embracing-nebulosity kind of way. It’s incredibly draining. Ex. confusion about what things you like, what your needs are, how to get work done, how to interpret what other ppl say/do
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11/ Intellectually, depression is like having to solve a million problems from scratch that you know you already solved but you forgot all the solutions.
It’s like that everyday, basically. Whatever progress you make on solving the problems gets wiped out @ before the next day
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12/ So even if one day goes really well, it almost never carries over into the future. There is no global (life) progress because there is no learning, or if there is, it’s too slow to matter.
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13/ Unfortunately, I think a lot of people eventually just surrender and stop even trying to learn and stop hoping for progress. Because why would they? They might be dumber than they were before, but they’re still smart enough to see when their efforts have no payoff.
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14/ I think that’s the best I can do on Twitter re: the intellectual phenomenology of depression.
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