Stanford's Sapolsky On Depression

[Guest guest]

I found this 50 minute talk about depression by Sapolsky at Stanford to be riveting and helpful. For example, I didn't know that the "early wakening" form of insomnia is a marker for depression (I have this). He talks about the symptoms, the biochemical theories, and psychology. His bottom line is that depression is mainly a problem with stress-related chemicals and stress-related thoughts. It's also helpful to me to hear someone say that depression has a real biochemical basis like diabetes, and you don't tell someone with diabetes to "just snap out of it". He doesn't prescribe a cure, this is more of a brief overview of what is understood about depression.For me personally, I'm finding that ACT/mindfulness is extremely helpful in dealing with depression. Over the last months there have been times when I was flooded by those old emotions, sensations and thoughts that previously sent me into depression. But using my ninja ACT skills, I am able to sit with these experiences, "look them in the eye" as it were; while they are very uncomfortable, they are not unbearable, and I'm able to avoid reacting to them in dysfunctional ways. And then within a few hours or days I'm back to OK again. Or I'm able to stay present in a social situation where previously I would withdraw.I'm still learning about how to deal with these moments, but what helps is assuming the mindful/meditation view where I am an observer of what is going on in my head/body instead of completely at the mercy of the current thoughts and feelings. I still usually believe and "buy" the depressed thoughts; perhaps I "buy" them a bit less than before, also I'm sometimes able to find a philosophic viewpoint where I'm not at the center of the universe, realizing that my personal concerns (about money or career or social status) are not so important in the big scheme of the universe, or that everyone experiences problems. Sometimes, I just feel the raw content of the difficult thoughts and feelings, without judgement -- I think this is probably the most helpful, and the closest to what ACT/mindfulness is teaching. That is, I try to focus on the difficult sensations as an object of meditation, like focusing on breathing. Instead of engaging with the thought or struggling to avoid the feeling, I'm able to just watch it happening. At times I have to tell my mind that "this is just my reality, I have to accept this", because my mind wants to figure out a solution. I think what ACT does is break the feedback loop of difficult thoughts/feelings causing more difficult thoughts in an endless spiral. And then the difficult thoughts/feelings dissipate gradually on their own instead of being amplified and reinforced.I'm increasingly able to "take a valued action" in spite of difficult feelings. This is the most challenging part for me, as it's so much easier to do something distracting like eat or surf the web.Recently I am attending a meditation class. I've been meditating daily (this is new) over the last 6 weeks. Lately I'm noticing more feelings of fear and anxiety, especially at night in bed. My meditation instructor mentioned just last night said "you may be noticing things about you that are difficult or that you dislike, and wondering if the meditation is causing this... the answer is no, they were always there you are just now noticing them." This matches my experience. I seem to have this background level of fear and stress, but that I've found ways to ignore it or medicate it (caffeine works great, for a while). But now that I'm more mindful, I notice it more. The good part of this is that I can then use my ninja ACT skills to avoid a dysfunctional response.While ACT is huge for me, watching the Sapolsky talk has me wondering about the biological side of all this. I've always been a bit neurotic about diet, thinking that if I just ate the right foods then I would feel OK. There's some truth in there somewhere, but it's hard to navigate because the information on diet seems to me very unreliable (lots of conflicting research... I could go on about this).My current struggles are around using caffeine -- it works super great for a while, but then I feel super burned out, stressed out, can't sleep well, have to stop and get very depressed during withdrawal. Without caffeine I don't really feel fully alive. I find it difficult to accept this feeling of being only half-alive when the alternative is just a cup of coffee away. Lately I've been using dark chocolate instead of caffeine, but I'm suspecting this has some major downsides as well.So the relation of stress-chemicals and depression makes sense to me, because (to me) caffeine is essentially amping up your stress level chemically to get your body/brain working at a higher than average level.Wishing you all contentment, ease, and safety.