To Be Yourself Or Not To Be Yourself

Don't Talk to Strangers.
Eat Your Fruits and Veggies.
Stop, Drop, and Roll.
Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street.
If You Can't Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything At All.
Remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Treat Others as You Would Want to be Treated.

As children we are taught many things above and beyond addition and subtraction. There are certain lessons we were all instilled with, until they become part of our very worldview and means of approaching our lives.

One of the primary examples is very simple: Be Yourself.

We were inundated with the sense that we should not conform for the sake of winning others' approval. We should not be afraid of what others think. We should never try to change ourselves for someone else. So basically, we don't need to adhere to social norms if we believe they're wrong. Right?

There's just one problem I have with this easy, feelgood moral. There is a word for people who don't adhere to social norms: they are called psychopaths.

The technical term for this is Antisocial Personality Disorder: these are people who frequently infringe on the rights of others in very real ways. They are your classic serial killers or CEOs who rob their company of millions of dollars-- they are cruel and vicious and feel no remorse. Social norms mean little to them.

There are some theories as to how this may come about. In normative development (i.e. the way it's supposed to go), we experiment and test the boundaries of behavior. When we act badly, we are punished, either directly, by a parent or teacher, or indirectly, by being alienated from social groups. We develop a sense of what is "normal" in society, and through this, we are accepted by our peers. Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder may be less able to undergo this type of conditioning: something about their biochemistry is prohibiting them from anticipating the consequences of their behavior, or of seeing the effect their actions may be having on others. As a result of this, they never develop a sense of what is right or wrong in their environment: they never develop a conscience. In actuality, these people are only interested in being themselves, and have no sense that there might be something very misguided about that.

Where I'm going with all this is that people need to conform, to some extent. There are many reasons why, among them being that conformity promotes friendship, and the acceptance of our peers is important for our mental health. We need social bonds in order to develop well emotionally and to have good self esteem. But mostly-- and here's my primary thesis-- people need to act a certain way so society can run. It is one of the most basic tenets of a working civilization: that the individuals therein follow an implicit social contract of how to behave and interact with one another. When individuals have no regard for others' thoughts and opinions, in less severe cases, we get those people who have no courtesy, tact, or sense of social grace. They are obnoxious and sometimes offensive, but it doesn't usually go beyond that. It is in the more extreme cases that we get liars, cheaters, abusers, and psychopaths: those people who undermine the fabric of society.

While I certainly don't condone mindless, sheeplike behavior, and I will always argue that people should think for themselves above all else, I believe that conformity gets a pretty bad rap. We need to care what others think of us, so that we can remain decent human beings. A wise friend of mine once told me that "The human mind, when left to its own devices, is a dangerous thing". So true. We need others to keep us in line, as our system of checks and balances.

Our brain lies to us, frequently. Our emotions mislead us. Our gut reactions make us do terrible things, to ourselves and others. When people tell you to "Be Yourself", they forget to mention that the "self" is not one constant, unchanging thing. It is very much the product of our upbringing, and our environment, and our personality continues to change into old age. Moreover, we are different people depending on what context we're in, or who we're interacting with, or what we think is expected of us. They never tell you which "self" to be. They can't, because the "self" is as transient as sand, and if we rely too heavily on it, we will be carried away on its unstable flow.

I understand that these ideas may seem evil and tyrannical in this capitalist society, where we hold the Individual as the highest standard of good. But I think it is crucial to highlight the need for balance and moderation: being true to ourselves, and only ourselves, to the exclusion of what society wants from us can easily lead down a more insidious path than we may have been led to believe as children.

The Insidious Face of Depression

One of my main interests in psychology is, at the moment, depression. This wasn't the case until recently, when I was finally told that I had it. All of a sudden, this "common cold" of mental disorders that I had been learning about for years, which never really interested me before, turned into the issue I devoted all my energy into understanding.

Depression is deceptive in its simplicity. At first blush, it is someone being unhappy for a long time. The predictable consequences of this are lethargy and lack of motivation, meaning the person is doing less in their lives that might make them happy. Therefore, they continue being unhappy. Bam-- you have a case of depression!

But when you delve deeper, you begin to see how treating it can look like beating your head against a brick wall, with, understandably, few results other than "Now my head hurts". In other words, one of the aspects of depression that makes it particularly dangerous is its self-perpetuation, even when we are trying to address it. In many ways, working towards "fixing" depression can actually worsen the depressive symptoms.

The core of depression is, I would argue, in the rumination: the tendency to chase negative thoughts round and round in your head, until they seem worse and worse, and impervious to solution. All of the time you spend telling yourself "I am intelligent and I don't have to be beaten by my depression" serves only to feed into the misery you feel when you are, in fact, beaten by your depression.

To put a real face on this issue, let me describe what happened with myself: I spent months and months making mental lists of all the reasons I was miserable. It was isolation at work, it was family drama, it was relationship drama, it was my social failures, it was my lack of academic motivation, it was my lack of self esteem, it was my lack of life direction... the list literally seemed to never end. I attempted to address each of these, but found myself unable to bring about any major changes, until eventually I could add "inability to make progress" to my list. No amount of thinking about these issues could do any good, because my depression was serving as a barrier between myself and personal improvement.

Have you ever had a depressed friend? Based on the statistics, we all probably have at one point, whether we knew it or not (research is showing that close to 40% of the population will experience significant depression at some point in their lives, even if they are never diagnosed). I can absolutely sympathize with the frustration that I'm sure many people feel when faced with someone going through depression. I believe there is a formulaic process that a bystander of depression tends to undergo: first, compassion and sympathy, feeling genuinely sorry for them that they are going through such a tough time. Next, attempts to help, and improve their situation, reminding them of things to be happy about, trying to please them however possible. Next, the inevitable irritation when none of the efforts are successful. You start thinking that the person is doing it to themselves, and just refusing to be happy. Finally, you start to resent them for being so dramatic and stubborn, and find yourself less able to feel that initial compassion/sympathy for them in any subsequent episodes they may go through.

Does this sound familiar? I know I've gone through this, myself. It wasn't until I, myself, became depressed that I started to understand how little sense this makes. No amount of telling someone to "snap out of it" will do any good, no matter how much we think it should work. When I was in a deep depression, feeling unable to be truly happy, and unresponsive to any logical reasons to cheer up, I finally got it. It's not something you can wish away, and it feels impossible to pull yourself out of-- particularly given depression's tendency rob us of energy and motivation, leaving us feeling utterly disabled by inertia! For this reason, it's a double whammy, which is why depression has some mysterious element of stability that makes it so resistant to change.

My own story with depression, at this point, has a happy ending, for which I am incredibly grateful. It was a painstaking process, however: when attempts to reason my way out of it failed, I turned to therapy. When therapy failed (I call seeing five different therapists with no improvement failure), I finally turned to medication. And, either because I really did have a serotonin deficiency or because the placebo effect is awesome, I felt substantially better after two weeks. I felt like myself again. I went to my therapist one more time after that, found that re-starting the process of examining my misery was only making me miserable again, and told her goodbye and thank you. I am still on my meds, and I suppose will eventually have to see what life is like without them. But I have a lot more faith in my ability to cope now that I have been pulled out of the pit.

However, I know that my story is actually rather uncommon. Many people continue to struggle with their depression, finding no help in therapy or medication. Which is why, in a forthcoming post, I would like to discuss some of the more philosophical aspects of depression: what is it, really? Why does it happen? Why are depression rates rising beyond anything we've ever seen before? Is depression unique to humans, and why? In addition, I will explain my new theory of depression as a form of addiction. Stay tuned!

Until then, please share with me your experiences, either as a victim or bystander of depression, or just someone who is interested in the topic. What do you all think about this issue?

If you're more interested in this topic, this blogger lays out the issues of depression much more clearly than I do. And be sure to check out this blog in particular if you're interested in the pitfalls of trying to think yourself out of depression.