The absence of anxiety and depression is only for the most privileged under capitalism.
For everyone else their presence is a tool of our enslavement.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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If someone isn't worried about the state of things, they're mentally disconnected from the world around them, and/or have wealth to not worry about it.
Well it's actually true, most people feel generally okay. On social media it looks like everybody in the world is hopelessly depressed, because hopelessly depressed people post relentlessly about how hopeless and depressing the world is. Overall it's actually not. And it won't help to click Reply right now and angrily spew a list of reasons why I'm wrong, and give your proof that everybody else should be as depressed as you are or there must be something wrong with them. People generally focus on the things in their lives that they can control, to avoid being paralyzed with inaction. That doesn't mean they don't care about the world, it just means they understand that hopelessness and depression don't help.
Hopelessly depressed people do have a much stronger case for the world in general being hopeless and depressing than they have in a hundred years or so, though.
I’m going in for a yearly check up next week to try to get depression meds. I’ve never thought I had depression before (besides seasonal), but I’m not motivated to do a lot of things like cleaning or exercising. I’ve already been on ADHD meds for years, and that did the trick until maybe this last year or two. I’m super positive and optimistic, but I just want to feel like a little more drive in my work and home life. I feel stuck and lazy most of the time. Fingers crossed that I can get on some kinda anti depressants, because I saw the change my wife had when she started them.
I don’t get anxiety. The fuck you’re scared of? You just wake up and be scared? Of what?
I just don’t get it.
I get it that you’re scared when driving a car, because everyone sucks at driving except me.
But how could one be anxious all the time? Could one please explain like I‘m mentally handicapped?
It's a low level scared. Like being a sentry in watch through the night. You're used to it. It's not like the alarms are blaring and you don't know where the problem is, but there is always that nagging feeling that something is going to happen to break the safety any second.
You go to work. The boss makes sure you feel like you are barely scraping by on your performance. You are coming in early to make sure you clock in at the exact second requested. God forbid a traffic jam causes you to be a minute late. You give your best all day at work and go home a zombie at night, but hey you kept your job and health insurance another day. Sure hope the car doesn't break. You can't afford a repair bill right now. Speaking of bills, you just heard that your rent will be increasing in a few months. It's basically extortion at this point, but you can't afford anywhere else either. Where will you get extra money in a few months? Oh well. That's a problem for a few months from now. Maybe you can be an Uber driver or something. Well, not with your worn down car. Maybe instacart deliveries.
It's basically like that. Everyone is on the edge wondering what mild breeze will be the one that pushes them over.
there is always that nagging feeling that something is going to happen to break the safety any second.
This is what is alien to me. My parents live like that as well and my take is just "I’ve lived through so many shitty things I wasn’t prepared for" I live carefree (could be naive or dumb) but I do have backup plans going as deep as having written guides on how to hunt and prepare game with household items.
And that job situation… I never gave it my all to begin with. I have so many hobbies of which only one is expensive which I look forward to after work that I just don’t want to give it my all and never did.
You can’t change if something happens, when it happens or how it happens, and I don’t know how anyone could waste time on something they can’t change.
Are you joking around or do you want a serious answer?
Actually yes. This might be classified as a boomer mindset or something like that. But how can anyone be scared all the time? I get depression, but anxiety? Alien.
Imagine any time you've felt a worry or fear of something, but imagine it's being said by another person. They will not shut up. You have to listen to them. You know they're wrong, logically, but they're very convincing and keep going on. I mean, they're not wrong. While unlikely, the car next to you COULD suddenly swerve and hit you. It's not impossible. They're getting louder. They will not shut up. They get louder again. They will still not shut up. They drown out every sound. You can't hear anything else but how this terrible bad thing is going to happen.
2021, still mid covid
US citizen. Stand-up Commendiene in LA.
The elections were spinning up.
Meanwhile her doctor has a completely stable job making enough money to live comfortably with little worry about their livelihood which was right at that moment, worst case, too in-demand.
A doctor sees a lot of patients each day, so she can have a pretty clear picture about the mental health in the population. This statement isn't necessarily about the doctor herself.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
I like your doctor.
I don't think a doctor would respond like that would they?. Anxiety and sadness are a normal human emotions. They only become Depression and anxiety disorder when they meet specific thresholds. Everyone waters down the meaning of both terms so much that its hard to tell the severity of the issue when someone says i have anxiety.
This isn't a structural support meme; don't lean so hard into it.
If you don't have feelings of depression or anxiety you're not paying attention.
I mean sounds like a good deal
Or you're super well off and also don't give a shift about everyone else
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It kinda drive me nuts how mental health is always a check at a primary care now. Not because I don’t think it’s important. It is. And I’m glad those not in treatment are asked. But for those of us IN treatment. Fuck. After my primary arm chair therapized me for an hour contradicting what my psychologist said, I just started lying.
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If you don't then you're either not paying attention or something is wrong with you. The correct response to the state of the world is depression and anxiety
Being depressed and being anxious are not the same thing as the medical conditions known colloquially as "depression" and "anxiety".
Equivocating the two is part of the reason mental health treatment is stigmatized, and is what causes dangerously-dismissive statements like "he can't have depression, he has a good life".
This is true, though most people asked that in a casual doctor's appointment aren't actually equipped to delve into that nuance.
Of course, that "no" is the way to extend the conversation to dig a bit deeper. The last thing someone suffering with the conditions needs is for someone to optimistically assume "normal" and brush a potential sign of trouble under the rug as 'normal'. Maybe after a bit more digging it's clear it's just reasonable sadness or nervousness versus something deeper, like a seeming inability to feel pleasure or happiness.
The correct response is anger. Depression and anxiety are the socially acceptable responses left when we're conditioned to avoid anger at every turn.
Could be others are better at dealing with stuff
Dont break their illusion.
something is wrong with you.
Well yeah it's pretty obvious in this case. "Doctors" are generally rich and extremely privileged. They're outside the cares of regular servants.
Eh..... It kind of depends on if they paid for medical school or their parents paid for medical school.
Most doctors don't really start making a decent living until they're in their mid 30s, and most of that goes to paying back loans. Medicine does not pay what it used to, and residencies are still basically a form of slavery.
I agree the work culture in residencies needs to change. I still find it hard to sympathize with the med school debt. Like many homeowners were paying off their debt for quite a while and came out way ahead. I expect the same of doctors.
Not saying they don’t work very hard and are very stressed, but they are wealthy when you define wealth over the course of life (and their ability to spread that wealth across time with credit).
still find it hard to sympathize with the med school debt. Like many homeowners were paying off their debt for quite a while and came out way ahead.
It's yet to play out really. The drastic change in rate of reward vs debt is relatively new, and the debt to pay ratio is getting worse and worse, at least outside of specialties. There are older physicians who are still practicing that are making bank, but that doesn't really guarantee the younger physicians are going to be in the same place when they get that age.
The management and finance sectors of healthcare are now taking the lion's share of profit, and less and less physicians are owning their own practices.
I'm not saying they aren't going to be financially comfortable, but it wouldn't surprise me if most newer physicians end up just being upper middle class instead of "rich or wealthy".
That’s fair, I hadn’t really adjusted for the recent COL problems. But I’m also thinking of specialities over family physicians, which seem to have already been screwed even years ago.
Yeah, it's getting hard to find people willing to stay in family medicine. Specialists just end up earning so much more that it's almost financially irresponsible to not do a fellowship if you can.
I will say that one of the good things about medicine no longer being super lucrative is that it's no longer really attractive to people who are interested in the field just for the money. It's a lot easier and more profitable to just get an MBA, or go into finance if you just want to make money.
Though that fact has created some of the worst people in the world imo.... There's a subset of physicians who end up deciding they hate patient care and end up going back to school for their MBA to become hospital administrators.
There are parts of the world which are doing fine/haven't changed. And people can ignore things happening somewhere else quite good or just gettung used to it. We had decades of cold war with the looming immediate annihilation of all humanity and people still did fine.
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My doctor assures me that the answers don't matter and he only asks for insurance purposes.
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