Disclaimer

I did not write this article just for people with mental illness. I wrote this article for everybody, because depression and anxiety are normal parts of being human, and everybody is vulnerable to these emotions spiraling out of control. I understand that depression and anxiety are often very deeply ingrained problems caused by a host of biological, chemical, and hereditary factors, so if you are deeply ill I recommend that you go to some kind of medical professional and consider taking drugs to stay afloat. I believe that most people can take actions that can improve their depression and anxiety, but if you are so paralyzed with negative emotions that you are suicidal or cannot make any progress in your life, you may need drugs until you get to the point where you can make progress. 

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, nor do I have a degree in any kind of psychology. I am just a guy who enjoys writing about subjects that interest him. If this article helps you, fine, if it doesn’t, ignore it.

Introduction

For human beings, positive emotion primarily comes primarily from two sources: 1) pursuing desirable goals and 2) feeling accepted by the tribe. Pursuing desirable goals produces feelings of enthusiasm and confidence. Acceptance produces feelings of calm, contentment, and spiritual enlightenment. Anxiety occurs when your subconscious mind feels like you are failing at pursuing desirable goals. Depression occurs when your subconscious mind feels like you have failed at being accepted by the tribe.

Anxiety and depression are linked because humans evolved to only feel accepted by the tribe after they do something to contribute to it. And to contributed to the tribe you must successfully pursue desirable goals and bring back some resource for others. People who do not feel like they are successfully pursuing desirable purposes that lead to valuable resources often feel worthless to the tribe, and this feeling of worthlessness causes depression.

Depression and anxiety are alarms that evolved to warn us if we are doing the wrong thing. Both involve a similar cycle (what I call the “Rumination Cycle”): 1) an external stimulus indicates to us that we are doing the wrong thing, 2) we feel negative emotion, which causes us to freeze and stop doing whatever we are doing, 3) we collect information, 4) we process the information we have collected to determine a new purpose, and 5) the negative emotion clears and we get moving again towards our new purpose.

Depression and anxiety become pathological when we get stuck in the Rumination Cycle and the negative emotion never clears. This can occur because 1) the relevant information we need to pick a new purpose is not available to us, 2) we fail at processing the information correctly, 3) we are overwhelmed with too much negative stimulus to process, 4) our alarms go off for the wrong reasons, and many other reasons.  

Your Subconscious Mind

To understand depression and anxiety, you must understand that your subconscious mind is not “you”. Our subconscious mind is almost like another person living inside of you, who has plans, thoughts, feelings, attractions and aversions that are complexly independent of your conscious mind. When you realize that the voice is in your head is not “you” and that sometimes it is wrong, you can engage in meta-cognition, which means thinking about thinking, and disconnect your “self” (whatever that is) from your thoughts and emotions. Once you can view your thoughts and emotions with a cold, objective eye, you can start working on fixing some of the more destructive ones.

Depression and anxiety are diseases of the subconscious mind. Nobody wants to be depressed or anxious, and if it was as easy as reading a few inspirational quotes or “toughening up” everybody would do it. The reality is that our subconscious minds sometimes develop a horribly distorted view of the world which causes them to produce intense negative emotion that is completely unjustified. Oftentimes people that are incredibly rich, powerful, and loved feel depression even though on paper they are the most “accepted” people in the world. Similarly, some of the most secure and competent people you will ever meet will suffer from intense anxiety. Our subconscious mind is a strange thing and fixing it is often a very difficult task.

You may read some parts of this article and think “that doesn’t apply to me.” The truth is that the basic wiring of everybody’s subconscious minds is the same. Some people are genetically predisposed to have slightly higher positive or negative emotion than average, or to feel more or less pleasure at certain activities, but the primary difference between humans is how we tutor, shape, and accommodate our subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy, and you must work hard for it to be the former.

Battling your subconscious mind is difficult for a variety of reasons. First, our subconscious mind is much more powerful and sophisticated than our conscious mind, so we often need to rely on it. We cannot just ignore or repress it. It is impossible to consciously think about every single little thing we do, think, and feel in our lives so our subconscious mind has input into almost everything we do. Secondly, our subconscious mind often infects our rational mind with negative, counterproductive, and false thoughts in a process called confabulation (I discuss confabulation later in this article), so we are often “tricked” into thinking we are having rational thoughts when our thoughts are really just justifications for the emotions generated by our subconscious mind. To make matters worse, our subconscious mind often connects these negative thoughts and emotions to real data from the outside world, so we believe these negative thoughts and emotions are real and justified (not realizing that these thoughts and emotions are ignoring a lot of other real data from the outside world). Over time, these negative thoughts and emotions accumulate, weighing us down and tormenting us.

To defeat these negative thought-emotion bundles, it is not enough to think, talk, or wish. The only thing that changes the emotions in your subconscious mind is action. You must create a routine for yourself that generates positive emotion in your subconscious mind, and then use these positive emotions to individually attack each of these negative thoughts that have accumulated (trying to attack them without the requisite positive emotion is too difficult). This process may take a long time because you often have years of negative thought-emotion bundles to unwind and fix, but you might as well get started now.

Goal Conquering

Human psychology is best understood in terms of purposes. Everything we do is either consciously or subconsciously directed to some purpose, and our subconscious mind is always trying to figure out what purposes to pursue. Generally speaking, we evolved to pursue purposes that 1) feel pleasurable and 2) we see a clear path to attaining. Humans generally prefer delicious food over mediocre food, but we evolved to settle for mediocre food if we see a clear path to the mediocre food and the delicious food is guarded by a lion.

Humans evolved to hunt, and the neurochemical associated with hunting is dopamine. Dopamine is associated with focus, confidence, pleasure, and enthusiasm. Almost all pleasure comes from dopamine, whether it be eating food, having sex, winning something, etc… But interestingly, our brain releases most of the dopamine ON THE WAY to the pleasurable object (what I call “journey pleasure”), rather than when we are consuming the object (“destination pleasure”). As the famous comedian Artie Lange once said, “the best part of doing cocaine is the ride to your dealer’s house to get it.” Successful people often have all the money, status, and friends they need, but they still go to work every day because the hunt is what motivates them. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense why journey pleasure is stronger than destination pleasure: evolution needs to motivate us to hunt the deer; it doesn’t care as much if we enjoy eating the deer afterwards. But even though destination pleasure is much weaker than journey pleasure and lasts for a much shorter time, if we cannot find journey pleasure we will settle for destination pleasure. 

Journey pleasure is maximized when we: 1) venture into the unknown, 2) defeat challenges or threats, 3) hunt down a resource-rich target (preferably one necessary for survival), and 4) bring back the fruits of the hunt to share with the tribe. Goal conquering also causes us to feel accepted and valuable because we have contributed to the tribe.

The Problem

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is basically an alarm that makes us freeze when our subconscious mind thinks we may be pursuing the wrong purpose (or in other words, hunting the wrong target). We feel anxiety 1) when our subconscious mind thinks that the paths to our purposes are blocked by threats or obstacles, or 2) when our subconscious mind perceives multiple equally appealing purposes and cannot decide which one to pursue. When anxiety kicks in, our subconscious mind enters the Rumination Cycle until it figures out a different purpose to pursue.

Anxiety is also caused by the unknown. In fact, most anxiety we feel comes from the unknown and uncertainty rather than consciously identified threats. The unknown induces anxiety because 1) the paths in the unknown to appealing things may be populated with threats and 2) the unknown is full of infinitely equally appealing paths.  

Anxiety is linked to memory, which is why drugs that alleviate anxiety often negatively affect our memory. Our subconscious brain is always trying to build a map of the world around us, both of our immediate physical surroundings and our abstract future. It then populates this map with the threats it detects to prevent us from running into those threats in the future. For example, if we touch a hot stove and burn our hand our subconscious will register “hot stove” as a threat and try to cripple us if we consider reaching for a hot stove in the future. Unfortunately, this map can become polluted with false alarms so we find ourselves afraid of things that are not really threats. To keep us safe, our subconscious mind is overly conservative so over time our internal maps become polluted with more and more phony threats, causing us to become more and more narrow minded, afraid of the world, and stuck in our ways. Even worse, this causes our subconscious mind will write off certain paths as impossible before they even get to our conscious mind.

The opposite of anxiety is confidence. Confidence is the same thing as journey pleasure: we feel confidence when our subconscious mind feels like there is a clear path to its goals unobstructed by threat, and we are making progress towards them. Therefore, to feel confidence and defeat anxiety we need a plan that we feel like we can successfully execute. If our plan feels too difficult or riddled with too many threats, we will not feel confident and motivated. We do not need to actually achieve our goals to defeat anxiety: we just need to feel like there is a clear path to the goal. Most mentally ill people first manifest their mental illness in their mid-20s, and I suspect that is because people’s early 20s are when they are given freedom to choose their own goals and are not given any plan or routine. 

Confidence also requires certainty that you are on the “correct” path, and by “correct” I mean that there is no better path for you to be on. If your subconscious mind feels like there may be a better path to be on, it will strike you with anxiety. Obviously, it is impossible to be completely certain that you are ever on the best possible path, and there is usually something better you can be doing, but you need to come to some type of peace with your purpose. I think the way to obtain this certainty is to 1) pursue the biggest possible purposes that you are realistic for you and that you enjoy, 2) spend some time every week looking at your purposes with a cold and objective eye to make sure you are doing #1. 

Because anxiety depends on our progress to our goals, the goals we choose partly determine how much anxiety we feel. If are pursuing purposes that our subconscious mind feels are too difficult, intimidating, or remote, we will feel anxious and overwhelmed. Unfortunately, many people feel anxiety because they do not consciously choose their own purposes: their purposes are determined by their friends, their family, their society, their emotions, and other influences they are not consciously aware of. Part of the reason so many people feel anxiety in the modern world is because society imposes unrealistic standards as to what people should achieve, have, and look like.

Neurochemically, anxiety is our default state. The brain works by exchanging messages using chemicals called neurotransmitter, and the neurochemical GABA slows down the activity of excitatory neurotransmitters. Most anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax and alcohol, work by stimulating GABA receptors in the brain. Too much GABA makes one drowsy, sleepy, and stop producing memories. In other words, the alarm is “on” by default until we give it something (abstractly a plan, chemically a drug) to turn it off.

Anxiety Disorders

The part of the human mind that controls anxiety originally evolved in primitive animals to detect physical threats in the jungle, but in the human mind it is also used to detect more abstract threats that may happen far in the future, like the possibility of getting fired from our job or dying from a lightning strike. Because physical threats in the jungle often meant sudden death, our anxiety system evolved to be risk averse and overly sensitive to threats. It makes sense to be risk-averse in the jungle: if you take an uncertain risk the award is a little bit of food or maybe some sex, but the danger is death.

It makes less sense, however, for human beings to have an overly sensitive anxiety system. Our minds can detect abstract threats that may lie in the future and outside our immediate perception, but we often do not have enough information to accurately gauge the severity or possibility of those remote threats. And because we do not have adequate information to decide our next move, we get paralyzed in the Rumination Cycle. Infinite bad things that could happen to human beings, so our anxiety system can register almost infinite threats at any time.

Our capability for abstract thought makes us vulnerable to intense, constant anxiety. In the Bible, after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they immediately went and hid behind a bush out of fear because they realized the world is full of threats. Many psychologists and philosophers have noted that the question is not why humans feel anxiety, but why they do not feel constant, overwhelming anxiety.   

Many psychologists and philosophers have theorized that art, business, religion, and philosophy are all human constructions created to overcome anxiety. Basically, humans create “civilization” to make us feel safe from threats and to give us goals to pursue that kill our anxiety. But modern society is constantly changing and becoming more and more unpredictable and complex, which has led to an increase in anxiety. On top of this, people are given goals by society that often feel remote, unreachable, and littered with threats – goals which people do not have the preparation to successfully pursue. Modern liberal society also gives us infinite opportunities, infinite potential ways to live your life, and much too much information, which it makes it difficult to pick a goal, successfully make progress towards it, and feel confident that you are doing the right thing. The decline of religion, a declining trust in authority, a failure to adequately educate and discipline children, and a news media that is intent on scaring the shit out of us also serve to increase terror.

What is Depression?

Depression is the feeling of being rejected from the tribe. Depression is a normal and necessary part of life, but becomes a disorder when you get stuck in the Rumination Cycle and feel like there is nothing you can do to be re-admitted back into the tribe. Depression is often characterized as “learned helplessness” – you have “learned” that you might as well give up because no matter what you do, it is impossible for you to contribute to the tribe and become accepted again.

One of our strongest emotions, if not THE strongest, is the desire to feel accepted by whatever we perceive the “tribe” to be. We are usually attracted to the most appealing tribe, and we perceive the most appealing tribe to be the group with access to the things we want (resources) and can protect us and the resources. When you are a child, the “tribe” is usually your family, but as you grow older it can be your friends, company, gang, romantic lovers, and society itself. The tribes you seek acceptance from are determined by your values, because the resources you find appealing are determined by your values. At the same time, however, the tribe can also subconsciously and subtly change your values without you even realizing it.

The desire to feel accepted is stronger than almost any of our other desires, which is why people often change their likes, dislikes, interests, personality, and even identity to conform to the tribes they want to join. To ensure we stay loyal, evolution has caused our desire to be accepted stronger than any of our lower desires. People sacrifice themselves for their family, their country, and even their company because their desire for “honor” and status in the tribe is stronger than anything else, sometimes even stronger than their will to live. In addition, the emotion of “love” is related to acceptance. In fact, some psychologists describe “love” as “acceptance” + “joy,” the joy presumably coming from the fact that the person is getting the things they want from the tribe now that they have been accepted. And just as feeling accepted is one of our strongest positive emotions, feeling rejected is one of our strongest negative emotions. Biologically speaking, love is acceptance and depression is grief of love lost.  

Feelings of spiritual elevation are also related to feeling accepted by the tribe. A spiritually enlightened person feels simultaneously “wholeness” and “nothingness.” They feel “whole” because they have been fully accepted into the tribe, which means they have access to all of the resources of the tribe. But they also feel nothingness because now that they have access to all of the tribe’s resources, they have no desire for them. Addictions and obsessions with material things and bodily pleasures are the result of fear: because we feel like have been rejected by the tribe we have an impulse to consume as much as we can because that might be the last time we get access to those resources. Of course, this is all subconscious – you never actually have complete access to resources – it is a feeling that your subconscious mind generates based on the input it receives.

You do not need to feel accepted by every single person in the world or every tribe, but you do need to feel acceptance from SOME tribe to stay mentally healthy. Humans did not evolve to live as hermits completely disconnected from one another. “Loners” claim they are happy usually because their loved ones hurt them so badly they feel better off alone. But you evolved to seek relationships with others and your challenge in life is to find a good group of people to form relationships with.  

For optimum mental health, your tribe should 1) consist of people you respect and value, 2) have fair and transparent criteria for acceptance, 3) will not arbitrarily or unfairly reject you, and 4) accept you relatively unconditionally, even when things are going badly for you.

Many things cause us to feel accepted: compliments, attention, reciprocal interactions with others, others complying with our requests, being explicitly included in activities, etc… But the thing that most solidly makes us feel accepted is being rewarded for something we did to contribute to the tribe. If we feel like we provided others something meaningfully valuable, we feel much more “secure” in our acceptance than somebody who gets compliments or attention for contributions of little objective value (like looking good). We evolved to only feel accepted after we did something for acceptance, so deep down we know when our acceptance is fake. Being competent to contribute makes us feel confident: once we know we can contribute to the needs of the tribe, that by itself helps us feel like we could get accepted by others.

Conversely, when we consume the resources of the tribe without contributing, we subconsciously feel worthless. Even if people tell us we are loved and accepted, deep down we still feel insecure. In fact, Sigmund Freud theorized that humans have a “death instinct” that makes them want to die when they feel they are no longer contributing to the tribe. This death instinct can manifest itself as consciously suicidal thoughts but it can also be subconscious, causing us to engage in dangerous and self-destructive behaviors because we subconsciously want to hurt ourselves. The evolutionary reason for the death instinct is simple: once you become a liability for the tribe, it is better off for the tribe for you to be dead. Others have theorized that humans evolved to attack enemies of the tribe, and when we feel like we are hurting our own tribe we turn that rage back onto ourselves. In other words, depression is “aggression turned inward” - our body attacking itself as punishment for hurting the tribe.

Because depression is aggression turned inward, you must be careful to not beat yourself up too much when you fail at something or you get rejected. You should characterize your mistake as narrowly as possible, fix that narrow mistake, and then keep moving. Your attitude towards yourself should be “I am a valued and important member of the tribe, and I made a mistake, like all valued and important members of the tribe sometimes do” rather than “I completely fucked up and now I am a useless drag on the tribe.” You also need to let go of your past failures and rejections with the same attitude – “I made some mistakes, I learned from them, and now I am back in the tribe.” Part of forgiving yourself and loving yourself is talking about your issues with somebody else – sometimes articulating your failures and rejections makes you realize how stupid and insignificant they really were.

Depression activates the Rumination Cycle to figure out what we did wrong so we stop doing it and rejoin the tribe. Everybody feels mini-depressions throughout their life, which are an important tool to help us correct our behavior. If you fail at something or do something to hurt others, and in return people look at you unfavorably, you probably should not feel good. But depression becomes pathological when we get stuck in the Rumination Cycle and cannot escape, perhaps because 1) we do not know what we did wrong, 2) we do not know what to do to be re-accepted, or 3) it is impossible for us to do the thing that the tribe demands to gain reacceptance.  

Depression induces a stress response, anhedonia (the inability to enjoy pleasurable things), and grief, similar to how you feel when a loved one passes away. Grief comes from the same part of your brain that causes you to feel pain, so depression literally feels like you got hit by a truck. Depression also induces psychomotor retardation, which makes it more difficult for you to move your muscles. The purpose of these feelings is to feel pain, stop enjoying things, and stop doing things so you ruminate on what you did wrong. Some theorists have even suggested that one of the purposes of depression is to make lower-ranked apes stop fighting the alpha male for dominance in the tribe after they have been defeated.

The neurochemical most closely associated with depression is serotonin. The higher a person’s status in the tribe and the more solidly “accepted” they feel, the more serotonin they have. Conversely, if one feels like they are the fringes of the tribe or rejected, they have less serotonin. Serotonin is correlated with feelings of happiness, contentment, and connection with others. Serotonin also causes the release of other neurotransmitters that produce feelings of well-being, like dopamine, oxytocin, norepinephrine, and others. Serotonin is related to practically every single positive emotion a person feels, which makes sense – once we feel accepted into the tribe, we feel like we have access to all the resources and protection of the tribe. For this reason, most anti-depressants by increasing the serotonin levels in your brain.

This article is too long for reddit. Read the rest on my website: https://www.woujo.com/blog/2020/12/29/woujos-guide-to-anxiety-and-depression