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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.
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'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.
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.
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.