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by autumnstwilight 507 days ago
Anecdotally, I've observed I feel better with a certain amount of difficulty in my life and felt particularly bad when there was nothing -wrong- but I still felt depressed. If you don't have any problems you can attribute the bad feelings to, then you naturally start to consider the possibility that the problem is you and you're broken in a way that means you're going to feel bad regardless of how much your life circumstances improve. Which is a particularly despair-inducing thought to have.

Last year I cracked my hip joint and ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks, doing physio to regain my ability to walk. I certainly don't want to repeat that experience but I was surprised that I felt less depressed during it, because there was clarity in what I immediately needed to do and I was focused on just getting through it, not existential angst.