From being depressed and burnt out to Being Who I Want To Be - Part 1

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My own development from who I was when I started this blog (see my very sinister first post) to who I am now has been pretty amazing. The most dramatic changes happened within the last 8 months. If you haven’t read “The Story of Myself” yet, then it’s a good idea to start reading that post, first. However, I have to note that today I view some things differently. I’m not really addicted to horses anymore. That has come as a surprise even to me. It seems that I am really happy with just focusing on that which is most important: Trying to improve this world in the most effective ways I can imagine: By providing uplifting visions, philosophies and self-improvement strategies.

When I’m thinking back to my depression in 2009-04, which inspired me to create this blog in an attempt to stabilize my psyche by releasing my ideas into the web, I’m still not perfectly sure about what caused it. But at least I have become better at analyzing myself, see Understanding Myself: Seeking Perfection and Adverse Consequences. Here are the causes for my depression which I think are most significant, in the order of their importance:

1. I didn’t experience studying mathematics and physics as really inspiring. Often I was unhappy and frustrated. Frustrated by my inability to learn really effectively, and about the generally low quality of teaching at the university (which I think is mostly a structural problem in Germany, btw). But most importantly, I didn’t have the right skills to use my time really well.
2. Over the last years, I have developed a house dust mite allergy, which caused problems with breathing. However, the allergy hasn’t been detected until 2010-08.
3. Becoming a vegan is no matter that can be taken easily. Making that step exposes oneself to a huge part of the ignorance and indifference, which is prevalent in this world. That creates a huge emotional strain, which makes it harder to be emotionally balanced.
4. Yeah, it’s a real problem that I have no own animal as zoophile. But even though that problem might seem huge, at times, it isn’t really as important as the previously mentioned factors.

But let’s focus on the first problem for a while. Actually, I’m most interested in philosophy, but I wanted to study mathematics and physics to become a better philosopher and science fiction writer. And in fact, I have found the thinking patterns in mathematics being much clearer than those in most of philosophy. Unfortunately, real life is a “problem” that is too complex to be “solved” by purely mathematical thinking patterns alone. Anyway, it’s good to be able to think extraordinarily clearly, if it is really necessary or useful. Now, the biggest problem I faced at the university at learning mathematics was not that it was too complicated (which it actually was), but that most of it wasn’t clearly motivated. Typically modern mathematics goes like this:

We have a definition A, and by some simple calculations we get proposition B, and then we pose lemma C, which is proved by applying some more complicated tricks and then we use lemma C and proposition B to prove theorem D, but of course we don’t mention that we used proposition B, because by now proposition B has become too trivial for us to even mention it anymore.

What’s wrong with that? First of all, you would like to know why we are considering definition A and why it looks the way it does. Does the student get a satisfying answer to that? Usually not – the time wasted on that could be better used for proving more theorems! The part which makes most sense, is stating proposition B, which is typically something like a useful formula or a statement of the general form: “If object O has the properties P1,…,Pn, it also has the properties Q1,…,Qm.” But afterwards you get confronted with a weird looking lemma C and ask yourself: “Ok, what’s that good for?” Of course, the answer is that it is good for proving theorem D, which is great, but you might still ask yourself: “Ok, what’s theorem D good for? What can I do with that?” If you are lucky, you get an example of the application of theorem D to calculate something possibly interesting. More typically, you have no clue what’s the purpose of theorem D – unless you find out that it can be used to prove theorem E, which in turn proves theorem F in a more advanced course, which might be actually really interesting or useful. Great, so why don’t mention theorem F at the beginning to motivate all the work? Usually, the problem with that is that you need the more sophisticated definitions X,Y and Z to state theorem F in the first place. And the definitions X,Y and Z often don’t even make sense, unless you understand theorem D or proposition W, and so on.

What’s also missing in the whole course are “real world” applications. Something like “you can use theorem D for flying to the moon”, or “theorem F simplifies a whole area of physics”, or “theorem T makes your friends fall off their chairs”. Seriously, mathematics is more than the formal manipulation of symbols and the tricky application of theorems and formulas – but from the student’s point of view it really just looks like that. Although mathematics can be very interesting, it hard to notice that fact, unless someone really tells you why it is really interesting.

While learning higher mathematics in that way can be really frustrating, learning physics is even worse! In physics, you use unclear, questionable mathematics and dubious tricks to get formulas and theorems, which can be applied to real world problems, if those problems are sufficiently idealized in the right way. Often, it is difficult to see the connection between physical “formalisms” and really existing objects in the material reality. It’s good that physics tries to connect mathematics with reality, but in the process of doing so, you typically lose the connection to real mathematics and real reality.

In the end, learning mathematics and physics at the university might help a bit to become a better philosopher and science fiction writer, but the education mostly just tests your ability to tolerate huge amounts of frustration. And that’s something which I call a hard soft-skill. If doing mathematics and physics is not that what you are best at, or not your favorite subjects, then it’s very hard to attain that skill without falling into dark moods regularly. Well, and that’s exactly what happened to me. After 4 years of studying, enough frustration has built up to let myself question whether what I’m doing actually makes sense or not. I also wasn’t sure what to do after I would have finished studying. Together with my other problems, this caused my depression in 2009-04.

Taking an antidepressant, which contained bupropion, helped me to become more or less happy again. Several months later, I decided that I was happy enough and stopped taking it. Fine, but that happiness coming from the antidepressant wasn’t really sustainable, because I didn’t really change my life sufficiently to solve the underlying problems. So, I slowly slid down the slope to depression and finally hit the bottom in 2010-07, where I wasn’t only depressed, but also burnt out! As opposed to the first time, the antidepressant didn’t help a lot, at least within the first weeks.

What helped me out of that severe crisis, was asking my friends for help and creating an online diary on Google Wave, into which they could write their comments and suggestions. Soon, Serendipity Seraph gave me the hint to read the book Feeling Good by David Burns.

That so totally saved me! It just took a single week to get me back to an acceptable state again! With the wisdoms from this book, and the cognitive therapy tools described in it, I made very rapid progress and my life has become fun again. What’s so great about that book, is that it provides very effective rational self-help tools. For example, I started making plans for my daily activities and compared those plans to what I’ve actually done on that day. That helped me to find out more about myself. To measure my unhappiness, I used the Burns Depression Checklist from the book. After some weeks, I had mostly scores below 5, which means that I was pretty happy with my situation.

In any case, the book keeps what it promises: Reading it, will make you feel good. Feeling Good is not an ordinary self-help book! It’s based on the cognitive therapy devised by Aaron T. Beck, which is better than most other treatments for depression, according to a meta-analysis. Some studies even have shown that just reading Feeling Good, and using it to help yourself, is as effective against depression as the best antidepressants! But it’s actually even better than that, because the books provides you with capabilities, which make it easier for you to remain happy in your life afterwards. Upcoming crises can be fought with the tools you can learn from the book. It also features a technique, which can help you overcome your worst fears. When I applied it to myself, the effects were unbelievable. I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore (well, at least at the conscious level)! However, I had to learn that having no fear doesn’t equal having real courage. Subtle anxiety still made it difficult for me to do some very challenging tasks.

A word of caution is appropriate here: Although Feeling Good really can make you feel good, that doesn’t make you more productive or successful automatically. It is possible to be happy even if your current situation isn’t really great. Luckily, the book also features some techniques against procrastination. Nevertheless, I cannot say that I was very productive during the time in which I recovered from my depression and burnout. After all, I was mostly busy with helping myself, and improving my mood. Sure, I was relatively happy, but being happy wasn’t my actual priority! I thought I had to be happy to be productive, so that I can reach my goals and stuff. Later on, I have found out that this assumption was actually wrong! My productivity only slightly correlates with my happiness! As astonishing as that revelation was, I was still very happy about having gained the ability to feel good, if I really desired feeling that way.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4