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depression community people are talking about an article in The Independent entitled "Is depression actually good for you?".
I left a comment there, that I'm unpacking/editing somewhat here.
I have chronic anhedonia and mild depression. I think it has affected my personality in some positive ways (I can think outside the box, I'm somewhat compassionate, I'm interested more in intellectual pursuits than purely sensory or emotional pleasure pursuits because much of the time I don't experience sensory or emotional pleasure very strongly [the last couple of months somewhat to the contrary]).
But it has sure also affected my life in negative ways.
There's a general trend these days to conflate an illness with the learning experiences that come with having an illness, and then to say "The illness is good!" Fuck that. Learning to be a better human being is good, but there are plenty of ways to do that without having an illness.
I noticed this tendency before, but since reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided, which discusses it at great length, I notice it more often. I used to belong to an Alzheimer's forum (my Mom had Alzheimer's). I was sort of appalled to see a thread entitled "I love this disease". I actually could relate to the content of the thread—people feeling like they became closer to their loved ones who had dementia, changed their views about what was important in life, learned that they could do things they didn't know they could do. OK, fine. But (with all due respect to YKIOK) saying that because of this, you love the disease? That doesn't make sense to me.
depression community people are talking about an article in The Independent entitled "Is depression actually good for you?". I left a comment there, that I'm unpacking/editing somewhat here.
I have chronic anhedonia and mild depression. I think it has affected my personality in some positive ways (I can think outside the box, I'm somewhat compassionate, I'm interested more in intellectual pursuits than purely sensory or emotional pleasure pursuits because much of the time I don't experience sensory or emotional pleasure very strongly [the last couple of months somewhat to the contrary]).
But it has sure also affected my life in negative ways.
There's a general trend these days to conflate an illness with the learning experiences that come with having an illness, and then to say "The illness is good!" Fuck that. Learning to be a better human being is good, but there are plenty of ways to do that without having an illness.
I noticed this tendency before, but since reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided, which discusses it at great length, I notice it more often. I used to belong to an Alzheimer's forum (my Mom had Alzheimer's). I was sort of appalled to see a thread entitled "I love this disease". I actually could relate to the content of the thread—people feeling like they became closer to their loved ones who had dementia, changed their views about what was important in life, learned that they could do things they didn't know they could do. OK, fine. But (with all due respect to YKIOK) saying that because of this, you love the disease? That doesn't make sense to me.
no subject
Date: 2 May 2011 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 May 2011 09:24 pm (UTC)Yeah, there's a lot about life that's hard and unpleasant, and I'd really rather not believe it was deliberately designed that way.