black-tangled-heart:

Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life. It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”—

This post brought tears to my eyes. I can totally relate to it, no doubt.

(Source: sherunsfromdarkness, via arpeggia)

TAGS: psychology

cancerninja:

Have you tumblroos heard of Out of the Darkness Overnight? It’s a walkathon, of sorts, where people get together and walk 18 miles through the night. Why are they walking and why through the night? It’s all to help raise awareness about depression and funds in support of suicide prevention. 

Have you ever been depressed? I have. It took me a while to even realize it, because for me, in my life, it was such an unfamiliar experience. But that’s not the case for many people, indeed, I know that many of you out there struggle with depression every day. 

Growing up I’ve had friends who had their own struggles with depression or depressed mood disorders. In middle school and high school I didn’t know how to handle it, and, in retrospect, I think I often handled it poorly. I didn’t understand and their depression scared me with its weight. Unfortunately, I think this is an all-too-common response. People too often turn to look the other way because they don’t know what to do. Sure, not everyone who’s depressed needs the same thing, and sometimes, alone is good, but I know that for me, and for many people I know, just knowing that support is there, if and when it should be needed, can make a world of difference. 

To be completely honest, I don’t know all the ins and outs of this organization, Out of the Darkness, but one of those high school friends I mentioned is doing the walk this year in honor of another one of those high school friends, and while you all have things to do, bills to pay, and trips to save for, I thought that maybe, just maybe, some of you might like to support her in her efforts to help this cause.

Or if not her, anyone, anywhere. Depression is hard, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Be an ear to listen. Volunteer for a crisis center or hotline. Smile at a stranger on the street. Just try to remember, that as fucked up as this world and the people in it can be sometimes, at the root of it, we are all humans, and we are all emotional creatures.

(via crookedindifference)

TAGS: psychology

Via Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future

We message on Facebook but in-person I’m awkward and you’re shy. When our Twitter conversation went from @ messages to direct messages, you seemed more reserved and I felt more open to speak my mind.
Via readwriteweb.com

(Source: wildcat2030)

TAGS: psychology

Twitter is harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, study finds

Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes andalcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires.

They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” said Hofmann. Sleep and leisure were the most problematic desires, suggesting “pervasive tension between natural inclinations to rest and relax and the multitude of work and other obligations”.

The researchers found that as the day wore on, willpower became lower. Their paper says highest “self-control failure rates” were recorded with media. “Resisting the desire to work was likewise prone to fail. In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money.”

“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”.

Image source.

(Source: approachingsignificance)

TAGS: psychology

1. THE INTERNET IS OUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

   We don’t have to remember phone numbers or addresses anymore. Instead, we can just hop on our email or Google to look it up. According to a study by Science Magazine, “the Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves,” and our brains have become reliant on the availability of information.

2. CHILDREN ARE LEARNING DIFFERENTLY

   Remember all of the history lessons that required you to remember dates, names, and finite details? Kids don’t do that nearly as much as they used to. With online libraries, “rote memorization is no longer a necessary part of education” according to Read Write Web. Educators are beginning to understand that information is now coming at us through a fire hose, quicker and faster than we can digest it, and memorizing facts wastes valuable brain power that could be used to keep up with more important information that can’t be quickly Googled.

3. WE HARDLY EVER GIVE TASKS OUR FULL ATTENTION

   Have you ever updated your Facebook while listening to music and texting a friend? If so, you’ve experienced the phenomenon of continuous partial attention and its impact on your brain. It remains to be seen if partial attention is a distraction as most believe, or an adaptation of the brain to the constant flow of stimuli.

4. WE DON’T BOTHER TO REMEMBER

   In a study by Science Magazine, students were asked to type in pieces of trivia, and depending on their group were told that their information would either be erased or saved. The group that was told their data would be saved were less likely to remember. This study indicates that people have lower rates of recall when they can expect to be able to access information in the future.

5. WE’RE GETTING BETTER AT FINDING INFORMATION

   Although we can’t remember it all, we’re getting better at finding the information we need. It seems that the brainpower previously used to retain facts and information is now being used to remember how to look it up. Professor Betsy Sparrow reports, “We remember less through knowing information itself than by knowing where the information can be found.” She indicates that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and may even be “kind of amazing,” as we’re adapting to new technology and becoming highly skilled in remembering where to find things.

6. DIFFICULT QUESTIONS MAKE US THINK ABOUT COMPUTERS

   When faced with a difficult question, people rarely consider the encyclopedia or history books, but rather, think about computers. It’s a brand new impulse that exists in our brains. For many, this means we don’t have to trek to the library, or, with the ubiquity of smartphones, even go much farther than our own pockets. It’s no longer a big deal to find an old classmate or remember the name of an actor in a movie — all you have to do is Google it.

7. IQ IS INCREASING OVER TIME

   In the age of MTV and video games, parents and experts worried that the new and flashy technologies would fry our poor brains into oblivion. But the exact opposite has happened: after MTV, after video games, after Twitter, Facebook, and Google, we’re getting smarter. Are we smarter because of technology, or in spite of it? No one’s answered that question yet, but it’s interesting to think about.

8. OUR CONCENTRATION IS SUFFERING

   In an article for The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr relates his growing difficulty in deep reading. Like so many others, he finds that “deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” It’s not hard to figure out why. Our time online is often spent scanning headlines and posts and quickly surfing links, never spending much time on any one thing. So of course, when it comes to reading more than a few minutes, or even moments, of information, your mind will often begin to wander.

9. WE’RE GETTING BETTER AT DETERMINING RELEVANCE

   With so much information, it’s only natural that some of it is junk. After all, we’re no longer in a world bound by printing presses and editors: just about anyone can put information out there and promote the heck out of it. It’s up to us as readers and consumers of information to determine what’s relevant and reliable, and with so much practice, our brains are getting better at this task every day.

10. WE’RE BECOMING PHYSICALLY ADDICTED TO TECHNOLOGY

    Even after unplugging, many Internet users feel a craving for the stimulation received from gadgets. The culprit is dopamine, which is delivered as a response to the stimulation — without it, you feel bored. The wife of a heavy technology user notes that her husband is “crotchety until he gets his fix.”After spending time online, your brain wants to get back on for more, making it difficult to concentrate on other tasks and “unplug.”

11. THE MORE YOU USE THE INTERNET, THE MORE IT LIGHTS UP YOUR BRAIN

    In 2007, UCLA professor Gary Small tested experienced surfers and newbie Internet users, asking them to Google a variety of preselected topics. In his experiment, he monitored brain activity, noting that experienced surfers showed much more activity than novice users, especially in the areas typically devoted to decisions and problem solving. He brought them all back six days later, this time having the newbies spend an hour each day searching online in the period before they came back. In the second test, the novice surfers’ brains looked more like the intermediate Internet users. “Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains,” noted Small, suggesting that over time, Internet use changes neural pathways.

12. OUR BRAINS CONSTANTLY SEEK OUT INCOMING INFORMATION

    Tests at Stanford indicate that multitaskers, such as heavy Internet users, often tend to overlook older, valuable information, instead choosing to seek out new information. Clifford Nass of Stanford observes, “we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.” Instead of focusing on important tasks, or putting information to good use, we’re distracted by incoming email.

13. WE’VE BECOME POWER BROWSERS

    Online browsing has created a new form of “reading,” in which users aren’t really reading online, but rather power browsing through sites. Instead of left to right, up to down reading, we seem to scan through titles, bullet points, and information that stands out. Comprehension and attention are certainly at risk here.

14. ONLINE THINKING PERSISTS EVEN OFFLINE

    When you’re online, you’re frequently attacked by bursts of information, which is highly stimulating and even overwhelming. Too much, and you can become extremely distracted and unfocused. Even after you log off (if you ever do), your brain remains rewired. A lack of focus and fractured thinking can persist, interrupting work, family, and offline time.

15. CREATIVE THINKING MAY SUFFER

    Some experts believe that memorization is critical to creativity. William Klemm, a neuroscience professor at Texas A&M University insists that “Creativity comes from a mind that knows, and remembers, a lot.” Although creativity seems to have grown with the use of technology, it’s certainly being done in new and different ways. And Klemm’s assertion is certainly true for creative thinking and brainstorming born out of memorized knowledge, which so many of us now store online.

(Source: mega-mix)

TAGS: science psychology

This is amazing.

(Source: staypozitive, via wakeupboo)

TAGS: psychology