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Start-Up Founders On Dealing With Depression
v3rgEz (125380) writes "Founders at a number of Boston startups shared their stories of building and growing a company while battling depression. One founder didn't even realize he was depressed until glucose and blood tests came back normal, while another said it was worse than her life struggles growing up in the projects. All shared different coping mechanisms. Any advice for dealing with the same?"
When I ran a start-up, I remember the pressure being crazy. I believe I had gastric reflux pretty bad. Then when it failed (like most start-ups do), it hit pretty hard. The good news is that it was an incredible experience, and I learned a great deal about business and life from it.
There's only one piece of advice those who think they may be suffering from anxiety or depression need: Seek professional help as soon as possible, and ignore the ignorant fuckers who tell you to just man up and move on.
The level and type of professional help you'll need may be a counselor, may be full on treatment - but you'll never regret it.
"I hate my job. Is there a support group for people like me?"
"Yes, it's called Everyone. we meet at the bar."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Maybe try getting professional help? Instead of asking Slashdot? Just saying.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
One founder didn't even realize he was depressed until glucose and blood tests came back normal
If his results were normal why would that indicate he had depression?
High performance requires high maintenance. Just the way the universe works (entropy and all).
Depression may be an evolutionary stable strait, meaning like pain receptors, it may be there to protect you.
Here are some things I know after studying it for many years, and experiencing it for many years:
1. Get your Thyroid checked (TSH, free T3). Stress among many other things can bring it down and create depression. Even if you are young: Dr.s won't begin testing until you are middle-aged, typically, so ask for it.
2. Walking every day or other healthy exercise is shown to reduce mild to moderate depressive symptoms in studies over and over again
3. Take a B complex vitamin that contains Niacin. Take choline and L-Glutamine for brain food. Look these up.
4. Make sure your blood sugar stays stable. Read up on hypoglycemia. Standard protocol is protein every meal and have 5 small meals a day.
5. Acknowledge your limits and adapt around them.
5. If your thyroid is fine and you are still suffering with depressive symptoms it's time to look at either lowering stress in your life or getting with a good Dr. to help adapt.
Depression will one day be found to have many types I think. It will fool you too by making you think you have thoughts that are your own, but they are as much influenced by mood as your deliberate effort to think. This means simply, if you are depressed, your judgement is not good. That's why support systems are important, but get to good Dr. Your life may depend on it. Oh, and most cases of depression can be remedied.
Depression is weird
No, its really, really simple actually, even depressingly so. When you're smarter than everyone else, they all team up to try to destroy you. This is very stressful and the effect of the stress is quite distracting in a way that is nearly constant, even when not being actively bullied at that moment. Imagine how much smarter our most brilliant minds would be if they weren't tormented by mainstream society and their "peers" practically from the cradle to the grave.
When you are depressed you are supposed to have lower mental activity, and yet some of the most brilliant people have been known to be clinically depressed [citation not needed]. So then, if depression sometimes comes with brilliance, what gives?
Here's a weird analogy that seems roughly accurate:
Being depressed is like being perpetually out of gas. You just can't *do* anything.
Now, your average person's brain is a typical Honda 90 horsepower engine. Good gas mileage, terrible performance.
Your average genius's brain is like a Ferrari V8 - super-high performance, but at the cost of needing a LOT more fuel.
If everyone's getting the same amount of emotional 'fuel' from their friends, family, culture, society etc., who's going to run out first?
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
People who spend dark to dark in their offices often lose sight of life, while scrambling to the top. Give your endorphins a chance to work out, too. We're all headed to the grave, make sure your journey there isn't all work and no play.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes depression is real. Yes people have chemical imbalances or are wired the wrong way. Yes some people are born into shitboxs with terrible life circumstances. Yes some people lose their fortunes taking a crap-shoot gamble on flaky or even sure-fire premises. Depression is complex. It could be sourced from professional failure, home-life problems, neurological imbalances, marital issues. Man the fuck up and face your emotions head on. Or take drugs if your brain doesn't allow you to cope that way. Or just talk to somebody about it and let it all out. Venting is helpful too. Depression is real. Sometimes it is overdiagnosed. Sometimes it is missed in people. There are many coping mechanisms. I'm making generalizations but all in all depression is not a binary state, but a spectrum. This is not news for nerds, but it is stuff that matters, particularly if the rates of depressions are on the rise, rates which could be indicative of the socio-economic status of a populations inhabitants, and perhaps about the greater culture as well. I am a software developer and have no professional qualifications to comment on the matter, but since this is the internet, fuck-all lets give it a go!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I once had to work in a highly stressful environment. I started doing more and more exercise out of work to just forget it all. I stopped having appetite. Eventually I started losing weight really fast. I also started sleeping less and less. I finished and delivered the project to the client, then left.
Afterwards I stopped working for a while. My sleep instead of improving got even worse. It came to a time where I did not sleep for 3 days straight. That was when everything started going bonkers. I got highly irritable at the slightest things. Blood pressure went down for no reason at all. I went to the hospital to get some diagnosis on my sleeping problems. While I was waiting for my appointment I lost consciousness. When I woke up I was lying in an hospital bed.
When I finally got a proper diagnosis and got proper medication, a trial in itself, my condition improved. After a couple of months I went back to work again.
My advice to you is if you are in a stressful work environment either change your conditions or leave it ASAP. Preferably prevent it from happening in the first place. Try to keep a private life outside of work in order to avoid getting stuck into mind loops. If you keep doing the same workload that is causing you to be stressed under the medication you may come off the rails. I have seen it happen. This condition is a lot more frequent than people would like to admit it. For whatever reason it seems to be anathema to discuss this subject in Western societies. Even if a lot of famous people e.g. Winston Churchill suffered from it.
I've suffered from chronic depression all my adult life, but I didn't want to medicate unless it was a medicine which could cure me, which doesn't exist (yet). I've been an entrepreneur for most of my 20+ year career. Here's how I "self-medicate":
There's no one thing that seems to have done the trick, and it's not a perfect cure. I still have "down days," but I feel a lot better off overall than I used to. I think the hardest thing for anyone to do would be to cut their TV, cell phone, and car out of the picture, but I have to say, these were some of the most helpful things I did. Not only did they dramatically reduced bills but also reduced lots of stress and distractions. Granted, I can find plenty of distractions with my copious internet bandwidth, but at least they're more self-directed.
When I worked as an engineer at McDonnell Douglas and things were spiraling down... I watched as the energy required to do a small task seemed to require a herculean effort to complete... Seemed that each day there was less employees to do the work... and each of them had less energy to "make it happen"... I have been fortunate not to have to experience this over and over like some individuals have. My heart goes out to those who suffer with depression and with those who struggle maintaining ... whether it is maintaining a job or trying to maintain consciousness to man up and get by.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
One model claims that manic depressive tendency is under-recognized and over-represented among entrepreneurs. This sounds intriguing, but I must admit not being aware of any data that directly support the claim.
Another factor is post-mission depression. Here, we have something in common with military people, aid workers, and religious missionaries returning from deployment. One's life was for a time directed by a highly directed sense of purpose and mission, held in common with one's principal cohort. This often was within an organizational structure that made high demands, but diverted attention toward the mission and away from unknowns and uncontrollables. When the mission ends, the coherence and structure end with it.
Startup culture can reward what in other contexts would be seen as manic and obsessive/compulsive behaviors. In a bubble market with an IPO pending or recently made, it can be difficult to distinguish reality from illusion from delusion. For a while, one's life can evolve toward an obsessive focus upon one number: a stock price.
Spoken from experience.
There is a condition known as "manic depressive disorder." Essentially, you can have a day where you're feeling so great that you decide to move all of the furniture in your house, repaint the living room, run a mile, begin a novel, and more. You have tons of energy and can do it all. And then you crash into the depression stage where getting out of bed is a major achievement.
There were some very brilliant people who did some wonderful things in their manic stages only to sink into horrible depression stages (sometimes committing suicide while in these).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
SSRIs work reasonably well for a lot of people to help with depression. But that depends on how much serotonin you have in reserve and whether or not the depression is actually caused by low serotonin. One of the major places your body stores serotonin is in the intestinal lining. If you eat a diet that is more conducive to intestinal health, you’ll store serotonin better. Meanwhile, 5-HTP supplements are like eating pure serotonin (there’s actually a two step conversion process from 5-HTP to Tryptophan to Serotonin, IIRC, but 5-HTP passes through the blood-brain barrier much more easily than Tryptophan). And if you are too low in serotonin, an SSRI won’t help, because there just isn’t enough serotonin to reputake inhibit.
Some people are low on norepinepherine too, so an MD might prescribe an SSNRI. Tyrosine (which you can also get in pill form) is a precursor to dopamine, norepinepherine, and epinepherine. Another way to boost dopamine is low-dose (i.e. 4.5mg) naltrexone (LDN), prescribed for a variety of things including chronic fatigue and autoimmune diseases; it’s a dopamine receptor antagonist that causes the brain to produce a net surplus of dopamine. Some people with mood problems also benefit from supplementing GABA, but that never worked for me or my wife, so I don’t know much about it, except that GABA is inhibitory in some parts of the brain and excitatory in others, making it have the opposite of the desired effect for some people.
Another mood enhancer is Theanine. You can get it in pill form, but a great source of that is Kombucha, which is fermented tea. It’s also loaded with antioxidants and probiotics. The probiotics and possibly the moderate amount of vinegar are also helpful for digestion problems.
Getting back to intestinal health, some people have a mild sensitivity to things like dairy (casein, lactose), wheat (gluten), and/or soy. Removing those from your diet may reduce tissue inflamation that interferes with good intestinal function. My kids can’t have dairy in winter. That’s when all these colds and other infections go around. Dairy causes just enough additional inflammation that when they pick up a bug, they much more prone to ear infections that require antibiotics (which tend to also kill off a lot of good bacteria). In small children, eustachian tubes aren’t fully developed and tend to have drainage problems. If we keep them off dairy (they get calcium and protein from other sources), proper drainage prevents ear infections from getting out of hand, and although they probably pick up various infections anyway, the symptoms are so mild that there’s no need to take them to the doctor. IIRC, when I was a kid, my parents observed that if I had too much dairy, I’d get phlemmy and have more trouble with colds and such. The dairy might also directly interfere with immune function. Anyhow, removing that may seem like a mild food irritant can actually have a substantial positive impact on intestinal function due to reduced inflammation and as a result better mucosal lining and better serotonin storage.
Other amino acids people often take to enhance intestinal health (e.g. people diagnose with celiac disease who require a great deal of gut rebuilding) include glycine and glutamine. Google that for more.
Not to get mystical or anything, but everything in the human body is a lot more connected than is suggested by what you learn superficially in high school biology. Why would the human body store serotonin (an important brain neurotransmitter) in the intestinal lining? I don’t know. Because there was no selective pressure not to? Perhaps the mucosal lining that partly serves to protect your tissues from getting digested themselves just happens to be good at suspending other things the body needs to store. Either way, the link is well established (see http://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/16/6348.full.pdf in the Journal of Neuroscience, for instance). Some things may seem obvious, like maintaining proper blood sugar levels (prefer low glycemic foods) and making sure you get enough protein are good for mental function; in fact, the link goes much deeper. Eat well, and you’ll think well.
I think the most important medicine is to surround yourself with people who care and are able to support. Me and my colleagues started a business. Things are going well now but I had those bout of depression before (including thoughts of suicide.) Before, I felt alone in an island. The image of me being perfect was so high that I didn't open up to other people.
Now, it is different, I've learned to share and ask for support from my family and close friends. I have learned that I am not superman and I do make mistakes. I have learned to take care of myself and love myself more. :) Life is so much better now. :)
P.S. May be one bonus for me is that I am generally a happy person living a simple life. Though one disadvantage is that if bad things happen, it does probably hit me harder than other people. I also didn't take any prescription medicine.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
No lollipop for you. Getting angry doesn't make you more intelligent. Angry people are famous, in fact, for doing really stupid things.
However, at least some forms of depression seem to be related to obsession. You receive what most people would think of as a minor emotional injury and you can't let go of it. It drags you down constantly as it replays over and over in your head.
Receiving a MAJOR emotional injury where "they all team up to try to destroy you" is more likely to end up with a major shooting incident or the like.
Obsession can be crippling when it comes to handling injuries, but obsession IS considered a sign of genius when you can't let go of a creative idea and keep pursuing it long after sensible people would have dropped it.