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Yaowen
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Default May 07, 2022 at 10:52 PM
 
I think you are a very good BF and I commend you for that. It can't be easy for you.

There is a body of research* that has linked anxiety to depression. The stress hormones are designed for brief emergencies. But for genetic or other reasons, some people are unable to turn off the stress response. This is thought to bathe the brain in stress hormones which do actual damage to the brain {reduction in size, mass and density of certain regions of the brain, reduced regional energy utilization [glucose metabolism] and cerebral blood flow [can be seen often on real-time brain scans].

The damage can be to the hippocampi and the cerebral cortex. There appears to be a loss of protective glial cells in the brain as well. Damage can be microscopic too, affecting brain cell architecture, atrophy of dendrites.

Stress is often not obvious. Things people tend never to think of can be huge stressors. For example, people who are perfectionists tend to feel that only the perfect is good, anything less than perfect is bad. The drive for perfection in self, relationships and so on can lead to unrealistic expectations that are bound to be disappointed.

Perfectionism, and this is just one example of a hidden stressor, can lead a person to have a default attitude of "could be better, but isn't better." Of course anything and anyone can be seen and one can say: could be better but isn't better. This "could be better" attitude might operate at a less than conscious level in a person but tends to lead to a set of emotions: disappointment, aggravation, anger, guilt, sadness, joyless striving, even hopelessness. These are huge stressors!

To the person experiencing these things it appears that the world, others, events, things, even they themselves are "causing" their low feelings. But the truth is that the world is not causing this, it is their unrealistic expectations that are causing every bit of this unhappiness.

If I look at the past and present through the lens of "could be better" I can quickly become depressed.

But what happens if a person looks into the future, anticipates the future with a "could be better, but probably won't be better" attitude? That leads to anxiety. For a person with anxiety or panic disorder, the future is terrifying. This is because of perfectionism in part . . . the people here think I will not be good enough in the future, my relationship will not be good enough. I will not be brave enough, smart enough, good enough, attractive enough. So the future looks quite bleak. Things are not so good and don't look to be better in the future.

A person with anxiety and depression doesn't realize that there is whole OTHER way of looking at things . . . "could be worse, but is not worse." Everything and everyone can be looked at through that lens. And looked at through that lens, different emotions and moods are engendered: appreciation, gratitude, feeling blessed or lucky.

For whatever reason a person afflicted with depression, anxiety and panic cannot access that way of looking at things. They are "stuck" in the "could be better but isn't better" frame of mind.

Effective medication can sometimes heal the brain*. Sadly it is often a trial and error process. One med might help. One med might not.

Stopping a medication can sometimes cause a depression or anxiety to reoocur. One reason is because for some, depression is a chronic illness like epilepsy and one must remain on medication for life. For others, a medication has not fully resolved all the symptoms and so stopping a med can cause a person to revert.

Cognitive therapy can help a person to slowly realize how destructive a "could be better" attitude can be for some people. It is not a magic pill. Something like perfectionism or some other attitude that causes stress might be engrained in person from a lifetime of conditioning.

It isn't like changing from on to off on a light switch. Change can require months even years of effort. Often a person in a depression is not at their best. Often they are not really up the work involved in cognitive therapy. Often cognitive therapy alone is not enough and needs to be supplemented by medication.

I myself was raised to be a perfectionist by my parents who were raised to be perfectionists by their parents. I had to put little post-it notes all over my house, work space and even car with the message [B]"could be worse, but isn't [/B]worse, thank goodness" so I could constantly confront the attitude of mine that caused so much unhappiness and grief.

Some people believe that relying on medication is a sign of weakness or a character flaw. They rebel against the idea that the brain can become sick just as any other organ can. Often there is a kind of medical puritanism involved.

I once talked to a young person in college who felt she was the worst person in the world because she did not get straight A's. This is a good example of perfectionism. I told her that there were people like Adolf Hitler who caused the destruction of tens of millions of people through genocide. What is not getting good grades on the scale of good and evil compared to causing the genocide of tens of millions of men, women and children? It is hardly anything at all. It is far, far, far, far, far away from that kind of failure.
Yet for the girl, bad grades seen in the light of her perfectionism had a private meaning. To her it meant: "I am inferior, I am a failure. I am a loser. There is something fundamentally wrong with me. I am a waste of oxygen. I should not be alive."

Most animals have a stress response linked to life or death situations. In a life or death situation they will experience increased breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure. No need to be clam when a predator is chasing you to eat you or when you a chasing prey to prevent starving to death.
But once the emergency passes, the animals usually experience the end of the stress response. A gazelle might go into panic mode when a cheetah is chasing it. If it survives it will go right back to grazing as though nothing happened.

Humans though have trouble shutting down their stress response and can give a sense of life or death urgency to matters that are not life or death: getting ahead of other drivers on a highway, getting the shortest line at the checkout counter at Walmart, finding the "perfect" parking spot. People can stress about these things and experience the same physiological response as a gazelle feels when it is being chased by a cheetah.

I hope I have given you some food for thought. Wish I could have been more helpful.

*All scientific research is subject to caveats and limitations. Here a just a few: Size of researchstudy, depth of research study, quality of study, objectivity of study, confounding factors, studies leading to contrary results, conflict of interest, new discoveries

Last edited by Yaowen; May 07, 2022 at 11:28 PM..
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