How Stress and Uncertainty Can Lead to Depression
By: Kelvin Winter
Tags: Psychology, Depression, Mental Health, Stress, Philosophy

Photo by Gift Habeshaw (unsplash.com)

Up until recently, I have dealt with persistent social anxiety and depression since I was in middle school. It wasn’t until the past year that I have finally found ways to effectively manage these issues that have been holding me back in certain parts of my life. I want to share what I have learned from my experience with depression and what I think might have caused it to take hold of my life for so many years. I have three main ideas that I separated into their own sections on why depression may be so common in our species. These are just my opinions and I don’t have a medical degree, but I think these ideas could be useful to some people who also have depression, and possibly certain other mental disorders.

Depression Could be a Coping Mechanism for Stress and Anxiety

Looking back on my past experiences with depression, I am beginning to think more and more that depression serves as a coping mechanism for dealing with stressful or anxiety-provoking situations, which could be why many people with depression also have an anxiety disorder. I would often find that the negative thoughts that came with my depression would almost always be triggered by a situation or thought that made me stressed or anxious. I used to have really bad social anxiety and I would often find that if a social situation stressed me out, I would begin to have negative thoughts about myself and my ability to make a conversation and connect with other people. Stress and anxiety forces the brain to go into overdrive or “survival mode”, which causes the body consume unnecessary energy in the case of non-life threatening situations. I think that the brain accidentally learns that when it creates its own negative thoughts, it leads to an artificially induced state of sadness that helps alter activity in the brain, thereby decreasing the level of anxiety produced by the stressful situation, and therefore energy. For example, I frequently used to have negative thoughts such as, “life is pointless, so what is the point in being afraid of rejection” or “there’s no point in trying to achieve this goal because no matter how much I accomplish in life, it won’t matter in the end”. Paradoxically, these negative thoughts would actually lower the anxiety I originally felt and would replace it with feelings of sadness and contempt, along with a sinking feeling in the chest. I felt that when my brain was in this negative state of mind, I often would realize that the anxiety I felt was nonsense because these negative thoughts seemed so much more important to focus on. I’ll explain in more detail in the next section on why I think these negative thoughts can paradoxically alleviate stress and anxiety in the short-term.

The Negative Thoughts that Come with Depression are Delusions

I think this is an important idea because one of the defining symptoms of depression is the persistence of negative thoughts or “cognitive distortions” as they’re often called. But I would argue that “delusions” would be a more appropriate term for these negative thought patterns since depression and other mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, often seem to have some overlap with each other with the altered thinking patterns that they produce. I actually had first-hand experience with psychosis this past year (it was only temporary luckily), and along with it came a bunch of delusions that I believed were completely true. I won’t describe everything in detail here but one of my previous articles talks about it. The psychotic episode I had was very stressful and terrifying at times but also very eye opening for me into how the brain works. For example, one of the delusions that I had was that there were evil spirits inside of me and the only way to get them to leave my mind was by coughing them out. I’m usually a very logical person who questions their thoughts and beliefs, but during the psychotic episode, no amount of logic or evidence could convince me that there weren’t evil spirits inside my head. I also had grandiose delusions, which involved this feeling that I had somehow become enlightened and was the only person who could save the world from evil. I had completely lost control of the rational part of my brain that would have otherwise told me that this was nonsense. After going through this experience, I later began to question why the negative thoughts that came with my depression should be considered any different from the delusions I had that there were evil spirits inside of me. They are, after all, both falsely held beliefs. I know that life isn’t actually pointless, but when I’m depressed, this seems to be the reality that I feel like nobody else seems to get, and I’m the only one enlightened enough to realize it.

I have an idea on how delusions might serve as a way for a person to cope with stress, which I’m curious to see if anybody else agrees with or has a differing opinion. Animals evolved with their own mechanisms to deal with stress. What we often call “stress” is basically caused by uncertainty in our environment. Since an organism can be considered an organized system, one of its goals is to minimize the uncertainty (or entropy) in their surroundings. So, it would make sense that life evolved with ways to address these uncertainties (stressors) in their environment. Stressors that most animals might be exposed to include hunger and life-threatening situations, such as predation. I think humans are special because of our advanced brains, which give us certain options to cope with stress that most other animals probably don’t have. And one of these is our ability to form a belief system that is unique to our own personal identity. When a person has a belief in something, they are convinced that they are right. A belief system is often important to human beings because it reduces the amount of doubt and uncertainty that is present in our life that would otherwise overwhelm us. And since our species is very intelligent and has a much better understanding of how the world works than all other species, it would make sense that cultures would naturally create their own belief systems so that the infinite number of uncertainties in our universe that can be exposed with our intelligence can be swept under the rug so that we don’t have to contemplate or worry about them constantly. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that because humans can experience life in ways that other animals can’t, our ability to form a belief system is imperative for reducing the uncertainties in the world that are revealed through our superior intelligence. These belief systems help reduce the stress and anxiety that comes with our intelligence. This could explain why no other species (that we know of) worships a deity. They don’t have the intelligence to see the world in the way humans do, so a belief system is unnecessary since their only focus is on simple day-to-day survival. I think the biggest advantage of our ability to form a belief system is that it helps cope with the death of a loved one. Since we are a tribal species that forms close bonds with members in our community, the death of a loved is almost always a traumatic experience. And unlike animals of most other species, humans have a good long term memory, so the memory of a lost loved one is never forgotten. Because humans are so intelligent, they will try to rationalize if there is a way that they will ever be able to see a loved one again. The uncertainty to this question is probably a major reason why thousands of religions have appeared all throughout our species’ history. A central idea to almost every religion is to offer an explanation of what happens to a person when they die, and most religions believe in some sort of afterlife. If members of a religion truly believe in an afterlife, then the uncertainty of what will happen to themselves or other people when they die will be virtually non-existent, so this thought will be much less likely to cause them unnecessary stress or anxiety that could interfere with their survival.

I think the ability of humans to form their own belief system is a good thing for mental health overall, but depression is one example of this ability going awry. On a more personal level, my depression significantly worsened when I started college, which was also around the same time I began identifying as an agnostic. At first it had very little impact on my life; I actually liked the idea of having an extra hour of free time on Sunday. Then a couple years later as I began to question more about the purpose of life, I got stuck in a cycle of depression. One of the biggest reasons for this was that I had given up my religion that previously provided answers to most of the unanswerable questions in life. But now, I kept wondering things like, “what happens when you die?” or “If there isn’t anything after this life, what’s the point in even trying?”. These questions caused some considerable stress and anxiety that really started to interfere with my life. So, to compensate for all answers that I didn’t have for these unanswerable questions, I began to form my own belief system to give life more certainty. But unfortunately, this belief system was rooted in depression. To push these unanswerable questions aside, I began to answer them in my head with a statement of negativity, or a delusional thought as I have now begun to think of it. So, I would tell myself that there was nothing after this life so there was really no point in trying. This left me in a low mood most of the time and made me more susceptible to stress. It became a positive feedback loop.

As I kind of hinted above, I think a major source of a lot of the stress in our lives comes from questions that we cannot answer with certainty. Take the example of being stuck in a traffic jam. Most people will at least become somewhat stressed when they come across one, especially if it’s unexpected. Some questions you might ask yourself are:

“How long will this take to get through?”

“Is there a way to get around this that will definitely save time?”

“Would I have gotten to my destination sooner if I had left earlier?”

“Why do I always seem to get stuck in one of these when I’m in a hurry?”

“Will I be late to my destination and what will the people I’m meeting think?”

These questions cannot be answered with absolute certainty, but almost all people will subconsciously ask questions like these without realizing it. This subconscious thought process is what causes a person to become stressed in this type of situation. Often to make themselves feel better, people will check their phone to get an idea of how long the traffic jam is to calm themselves down. But even that can cause more stress and anxiety, especially if they find out that it will likely take over an hour to clear up. Then even more questions might come up.

Depression is rooted in questions that cannot be answered with certainty. But instead of accepting that these questions cannot be answered with certainty, a person suffering from depression will try to answer them with a delusional statement that is often negative. In terms of my experience with depression, here are some questions that I would try to answer in my head with a delusional statement:

“Why don’t I try harder to find a job in a field that I want to work in? I probably don’t have the qualifications, and even if I did my poor interview skills would screw it up.”

“Why do I have trouble making friends? People clearly get bad vibes from me, probably because of the way I look or my awkward communication skills.”

“Why can’t I become more extroverted? I should have worked on this when I was younger instead of retreating because of my social anxiety. Now I’m too old to improve my communication skills even if I tried.”

“Why did I move away from my family and friends for a job? I must care about myself more than I care about them.”

“Will I ever be satisfied in life? No, humans have evolved to always feel unsatisfied because it pushes us to acquire more resources that increase our chances of survival.”

“Why do good people always seem to lose in life? Because the world is a horrible place where competition wins over cooperation.”

“Why is everyone so focused on money and success? Because they don’t realize that life is just a pointless journey and the brain tricks you into feeling like you need these things.”

“Is there anything after this life? Humans aren’t as special as we think we are, so probably not. Even if there was, it probably isn’t a pleasant place because the universe is full of chaos and evil by design.”

“Why don’t I enjoy life anymore? There just isn’t anything I look forward to in the future.”

“Why can’t I just push these depressing thoughts aside? I’ve already gone past the point of no return. There’s no way I can ever have an optimistic outlook on life now.”

Interestingly, a lot of these questions begin with the word, “why”, which implies a question that involves the meaning or significance of something. Instead of pushing all of these questions aside, I was convinced that I had to answer them to make sense of myself and the world to reduce the stress I was experiencing. There are actually no correct answers to any of these questions, but depression makes you see the world through a lens that filters all of the more realistic answers to these questions, leaving you with the worst of the worst every time. Learning how to identify and challenge the negative statements (cognitive distortions) I made above is a central idea of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The book, “Feeling Good” by David Burns is a great guide on how to do this. Finding ways to substitute these negative beliefs with more positive beliefs is challenging, but it can be done. Another way to challenge negative beliefs is to identify the question they are trying to answer and recognize that there are no correct answers to these questions. This involves becoming comfortable with the fact that there are an infinite number of uncertainties in life, but we don’t have to know the answers to all of them, so they shouldn’t stress us out. This completely goes against how we evolved to see the world, but I’ve found a couple possible methods online that may assist with this, some of which may not be legal at the moment in the case of psychedelics. In my case, I have not yet reached the point where I can simply push these questions aside and leave them unanswered. But one thing that has helped me quite a bit is to identify the negative thoughts that I have and think about the question they are trying to answer, similar to what I did above. Then, I will try to think of an alternative answer to the question that is less pessimistic and more realistic. It can be very difficult to do at times, but with time and investment, it becomes like rehab for the mind.

Depression can be Addicting

This could explain why depression is so difficult to get rid of when a person is left to their own devices. Addicting activities (smoking, drinking, video games, eating, sex, etc.) almost always seem to reduce the amount of stress we’re experiencing at the moment since they distract us from the uncertainties in our surroundings that are causing the stress. The brain reacts positively to this since all animals have basically evolved with the goal of minimizing stress while maximizing survival (e.g., If an animal is hungry, it will search for food; if an animal senses a predator nearby, it will try to avoid getting killed). In the case of addiction, the brain interprets the short-term stress relief from addicting activities as a positive since it reduces the amount of energy being spent on reacting to stressful events in our surroundings. Despite the short term relief, many addicting activities can have negative consequences in the long term.

Recently, I’ve begun to think of depression as an addicting activity. Whenever I would experience a stressful event or thought that was overwhelming to me, I would usually end up becoming depressed. As I described in the previous section, my mind would create a negative delusion that helped provide certainty to the situation that was causing me stress. While it could, at times, be beneficial in the short-term, over the long-term the negative beliefs would continue to accumulate until I was left with an ever increasingly pessimistic view of the world. This would constantly leave me in a low mood where I was even more susceptible to stress and anxiety. Breaking the habit is extremely difficult to do, which is why typical treatments for depression often involve outside intervention, similar to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. Interestingly, overlapping treatment methods that are often used for both drug rehab and depression consist of counseling/therapy and medication.

Conclusions

Technically there are no definitive conclusions. Once again, the ideas I discussed here are just my opinions and I don’t have much data to back them up other than my own experience. But I think discussion is important in making progress against mental illnesses, such as depression, even when some ideas can be labeled as apophenia. Also, I should mention that even though my depression has not been cured, it has gotten over 80% better from where it was just over a year ago. I hope the ideas I discussed here might also prove useful to some people. I’ll probably write some future articles related to the subject of stress because I think that our aversion to uncertainty could explain why we view confidence as an attractive trait or why many people are obsessed with perfectionism. Thanks for reading.