[quacked]

That's a great question. The only author I've ever read that I think comes close to answering your question is a pseudonymous author called "Alone", who wrote the blog The Last Psychiatrist.

Here is one article relevant to your question:

> https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/04/the_abusive_boyfrien...

Here is one article that describes the main lens he uses to look at personality, which is "narcissism":

> https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/02/the_other_ego_epidem...

Here is the archive of posts:

> https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/archives.html

In short--to stop suffering from extreme negative thinking, you will need to change your life. To change your life, you will need to live differently. However, living differently is harder than being unhappy. It will always be much easier to endlessly introspect about why you're unhappy than it will be to do the work of changing your life in order to live differently.

Good luck. I would be happy to send you some other primary sources that helped me in my life; my email is in my HN profile, but I may not have had the unique problems you have and could just be another dud.

(The only shot-in-the-dark tip I have for you is to stop hanging out and trusting dishonest people. It is not always easy to recognize when someone is dishonest, but once you've figured it out, don't make excuses to keep trusting them.)

[zepto]

> However, living differently is harder than being unhappy. It will always be much easier to endlessly introspect about why you're unhappy than it will be to live differently.

As someone who has fully recovered from chronic depression, I completely disagree with this.

I do agree that it takes sustained effort to recover, and this must be consistent and in the right direction.

However, having recovered, everything in life is in fact easier than returning to introspection about being unhappy now.

[quacked]

Good catch, living post-depression is definitely not harder than living pre-depression and wasn't trying to imply that it is. Updated my wording.

"Harder" is also subjective; is it harder to feel like you want to die, or harder to clean your room? If "harder" means "takes more effort", it's the second one, but if "harder" means "has a worse impact on your emotional state", it's the first one.

[zepto]

Yeah - I’m just not sure what useful work the term ‘harder’ is doing. It just compares two things in a way that seems irrelevant, and mostly harmful.

It does take ‘effort’ to clean your room if you are depressed. But that has very little to do with why one might not do it. Typically it’s because it seems pointless, and because taking action typically intensifies the pain for a while for various reasons.

The ‘effort’ piece to me seems like a distraction, and one which can imply that the depressed person simply is lazy or not trying hard enough, which is usually the opposite.

Someone who feels like they want to die can be putting a great deal of effort into battling with their thoughts and ruminating. Indeed some theories contend that this problem solving effort is fundamental to depression.