Depression By Jordan Peterson
The Medical vs. Behavioral Approach to Depression
Often, people ask me how to differentiate the utility of behavioral or psychotherapeutic treatments for depression versus medical treatments.
The very first thing I will say is: do not underestimate the utility of medical interventions. Depression is a catastrophe. It carries a tremendously high suicide rate, it levels people out, it destroys families, and it is physiologically, extraordinarily damaging.
If you are in a severe depressive state, you can try an antidepressant. You will know in a month if it works. Sometimes, your life is actually together—you have friends, an intimate relationship, a career you respect, you're industrious, you're playing a minimal number of games with yourself—and yet you are terribly depressed. In those cases, an antidepressant can be absolutely miraculous.
People always complain, "Everyone is taking antidepressants these days." But no one takes those bloody things without serious consideration. Half the time I spend with my depressed clients is a two-year-long attempt to get them to tentatively try an antidepressant because they feel so guilty about relying on an "external crutch." I tell them: "Look, man. What if you had diabetes? Would you refuse to take your insulin?" When you get stressed, you blow out at your weakest point. If there is something out there that might help you strengthen yourself so you can prevail, take it. Leave your pride behind. If it keeps you from cutting your throat in the next month, you take it, because it is very hard for a therapist to work with a dead person.
Having said that, you have to do a multi-dimensional analysis of your life. Depression is not always a purely biological malfunction. Sometimes, people are depressed because their lives are genuinely terrible. The diagnosis of depression is not always well-formulated. It is very different to have a terrible life than to have a biological depressive illness, and antidepressants can only help you so much if your life is wrecked.
Parameterizing a Functioning Life
Very frequently, what I am doing as a therapist is helping people build a life that actually works. We can parameterize what human beings essentially need. You have a human nature, and if you are missing these elements, you will feel the lack.
What do you need?
Friends: You need people who kind of like you.
Intimate Relationship: You need someone you can trust, with whom you have a future.
Career/Job: You need something that puts you in a dominance hierarchy so you have the possibility of rising and stabilizing yourself.
Routine: You cannot live without a routine. If you do not have one, get one going immediately. Pick a time to wake up and stick to it, because it regulates your circadian rhythms and your mood. And eat something in the morning! I had a client with severe anxiety who was starving herself on half a cup of rice a day. We fixed her diet, and the anxiety vanished. Your brain will thank you for a schedule.
Regulated Habits: You need to regulate your use of drugs and alcohol.
Family: You need family—parents, siblings—and ideally, you should figure out how to get along with them. And eventually, you probably need children.
You might have a good reason to not be operating on one of these dimensions, but if you are not operating reasonably well on at least three or four of them, there is no way you are going to be psychologically thriving. If your life is falling apart across these dimensions—you lose your job, your marriage shakes, you isolate yourself, you add a drinking problem—that is a downward spiral. And when you go to counseling, they might diagnose you with depression. But it isn't always obvious that the problem is in your head; sometimes, it is a conspiracy of external forces augering you into the ground.
Constraining Anomalies and Stopping the Downward Spiral
When you are trying to reach a goal (Point A to Point B), and you make progress, it signals two things: first, that you are moving forward, and second—crucially—that your map of the world is correct.
But what happens when you hit an obstacle? Say you get a bad grade on an exam. If you are depressed, that bad grade blows up your entire map. You immediately think: "What the hell am I doing in university? I'm clueless about my future. I'm useless. This is just another reason I should jump off a bridge." Every small negative event produces a cascade through their entire value system because they have no defenses.
You must learn Mental Hygiene. You must constrain the anomalous event to the minimal necessary domain. If you get in an argument with your partner, your first response shouldn't be, "I should never have married you!" or "You've always done this and you always will!" If you attack their entire character, the only thing they can do is fight back. Instead, you must ask: "What is the narrowest framework of interpretation within which I can understand this mistake, requiring minimal behavioral change, to decrease the probability that it happens again?" Don't open the door so every possible snake comes crawling through. Keep the problem small and precise.
The Sense of Meaning as a Deep Instinct
Nihilism tells you that nothing you do matters in a million years, that you are a limited creature in a limited place, and your sense of meaning is an illusion. But that is wrong.
Your actions are scalable. What you do today affects tomorrow, which affects next week. It affects you, your family, your community, and society. It is very difficult to consciously calculate the effect of your actions across all these scaling levels simultaneously. But you have an instinct that does this for you: Meaning.
When you are engaged in something that feels deeply meaningful, it is a psychophysiological marker that you are positioned perfectly between order and chaos. Your sense of meaning is not an epiphenomenon or an illusion; it is the most fundamental form of perception. It is an orienting reflex that tells you that your actions are serving multiple masters simultaneously across time and society.
The Rat's Nest of Misery and the Call to Adventure
Life is a rat's nest of misery. You could make a powerful argument that life is mostly tragic. But that leaves a massive question open: If you didn't do everything you could to make it worse, how good could you make it?
The worst-case outcome in the worst of all possible worlds is that your life could be a tragedy, but not Hell. And tragedy is bloody well better than Hell. Tragedy is being at your mother's deathbed. Hell is being at your mother's deathbed while you and your idiot siblings bitterly argue and tear each other apart. If you get your life together, you can be the reliable, useful person at the funeral. That is a truly noble goal.
So, who are you? You are not your rigid plan. If you cling to your plan too tightly when the ocean gets rough, you become totalitarian and you drown. You are not chaos, either.
You are the thing that confronts the obstacle. When an obstacle arises, it is not just a problem; it is an opportunity to learn something that will allow you to formulate an even better plan.
Carl Jung had this idea of circumambulation. He suggested that your potential future self manifests moment-to-moment in your present life by making you interested in things. Your interest is literally capturing the things that will fully expand you as a well-adapted creature. That is the Call to Adventure.
Now, you might hesitate. You might think, "Well, I don't know if I should pursue that interest. I'll probably do it badly." And you are right! You will do it very badly. You will stumble around like a fool. But the Fool is the symbolic precursor to the Savior and the Master. If you are not willing to be a fool, you can never be a master.
Do not wait around until you get the "perfect" idea. You are too ignorant to recognize the perfect opportunity anyway. You must take tentative, stupid steps on your pathway to destiny. You will overshoot madly, making all sorts of errors, just like a child babbling every possible sound before zeroing in on a language.
When you make a mistake, you haven't failed; you've just learned what not to keep doing. As you move forward, the world changes, you change, and the goal becomes clearer. Even if your journey looks like a zigzag of errors and intermittent catastrophes—like the Hebrews wandering blindly in the desert after escaping tyranny—it is a hell of a lot better than rotting away at home.
You are full of faults, but you can learn. Posit an ideal, move towards it, do it badly, overshoot, correct your path, and keep moving forward.
