Maybe You’re Not Depressed. Maybe you just need a snack…

Consider this a hypothesis, and one that I am more than willing to be wrong about: Psychotherapy is form without function.

A brain is designed for specific functions, just as legs are designed for walking. If a man, through some tragedy, loses his legs, then he loses the function of walking. If through artificial means we are able to regain his ability to walk, then he is of no greater or lesser importance than he was. But now, his function has improved (to a certain extent).

The man without legs may feel depression, and the man with artificial limbs may feel a satisfaction. But this psychological state does not change the fact that the function is either restored or it is not.

Psychotherapy aims to restore the function without restoring the limbs. This is impossible.

Psychotherapy has a noble purpose: to improve one’s mental state. From sub-suicidal to sublime. And any varying degree of success is accepted. At first glance, this seems reasonable. Perhaps, even a good thing. But it lacks a vital key to success. The brain is part of the body. And your body is you.

I have written previously about the need to stop seeing depression as a chemical imbalance and the need to “stay in the body” when treating mental illness. Let’s dive deeper into what I mean about that.

The brain is approximately 2% of the body’s weight but uses 20% of its energy.

When you struggle with mental illness such as depression, addiction, anxiety…You are literally starving to death.

Now, this doesn’t mean someone in a hunger state would necessarily be depressed. Because it’s the depression causing the starvation and not the other way around.

When stressed, your brain creates a kind of “black hole”. A gravitational sink hole sucking as much energy as it can from the rest of the brain. As stressors build, some people do not have the framework to withstand more energy loss.

Think about how after a long day of work you feel “fried”. Like you don’t want to think anymore. You just want to relax on the couch, scroll mindlessly on your phone, or read a book, or watch netflix –You get the picture. You also know that loud noises (aka kids) or dirty dishes or garbage that needs to be taken out can make you feel worse and more irritable. This is because you are essentially “done” for the day. Your brain can’t handle any more intense stimulus.

This example shows two issues at play: your body and your environment.

Now with depression, this feeling is amped x 1000 (I’m making up this number. Just understand that the feeling is more intense). The issue here is energy. Remember how earlier we discussed the brain uses 20% of your body’s energy. With depression, an area of your brain has been created and is utilizing more energy than you can “handle”. Other parts of your brain are starting to suffer. You can’t filter out stimulus. You can’t tell the difference between a tiger chasing you and a bill from the insurance company. Everything becomes a life or death stressor. This is why you might tend to cry “at the drop of a hat”. Or get angry at little inconveniences and “lash out” quickly.

With anxiety, you might find yourself struggling to sleep. Your mind races at night and typically it’s some specific event that you can’t quit thinking about no matter how hard you try. As sleep suffers, it creates a vicious cycle. Because sleep is vital to replenishing energy. And thus you’re unable to restore your brain’s normal functions.

These are generalizations of course and symptoms vary. But I think you get the point. And the problem here is not that you’re “sad” or that your serotonin is low. It’s that you don’t have enough energy in your brain to handle stress, dampen stimulus, filter minutia, provide adequate chemical responses, or to correct the initial problem. So the depression worsens and continues to suck more energy from the rest of the system. This is a cycle of destruction.

This cycle also causes another major problem: Learned Helplessness. Initially, you may try many ways to “feel better” but nothing helps. Everything you do seems to backfire. The brain starts to shut down further, believing that nothing you do can help. You may not even avoid damaging thoughts or actions. You may continue to drink alcohol even though you know it’s killing you because you’ve essentially given up hope.

Let me give you one more small, personal example. When I was in 1st grade I received a C on a hand writing test. My friend got an A. Now, I immediately “knew” I was a bad student and was destined to never get good grades. How crazy was that? You may think that’s silly but that memory still sticks with me today! (No one told me that bad hand writing meant I could be a good doctor haha). If something as trivial as a bad grade stuck with me all these years, how much more can traumatic events follow us into our entire lives causing a pandemic of learned helplessness?

And here is why I think psychotherapy alone doesn’t work. Because you can’t talk yourself out of the black hole. It’s a systemic biological issue. One where energy is the biggest mover and rate limiting step.

This is not to say psychotherapy can’t help. It can. Because I believe we must adjust our mindset from learned helplessness to brutal optimism. But this is going to take changing the playing field. Because we need some “wins”. We need some momentum. To do that, we need more energy for the brain to use.

So how do we improve our energy?

Well, that will take another post and I think your brain is probably too tired to keep reading at this point so let’s just start with this…

Eat a snack.

p.s.

If you struggle with mental health problems: Do not take medical advice from the internet or buy random peptides. Talk to your doctor.

p.p.s.

You can read Mind and Tissue by Dr Ray Peat if you’d like more information. He explains things much better than I do and the book is only $995 on Amazon.

p.p.p.s.

In no way was this post meant to minimize the seriousness of depression or downplay the benefits of counseling. It is intended to give a more complete way of looking at the illness and thus broadening potential treatment options.