i think Paulo Coelho wrote something along these lines sort of, lol in one of his books he said basically that the life people have is the life they choose for themselves whether its consciously or autonomously. and all of their smaller actions within that as well.
https://www.biography.com/writer/paulo-coelho
That was interesting. I started reading the book. Thanks, Blanc.
I just responded and it glitched on me, so I'm going to more generally sum up my reply rather than type it back to the like.. 9985 character total it became.
Whether it is or isn't the case, you sound like what I hear from people with mood disorders rather than constant chronic ones. Your Depression sounds contextual to your environment not challenging you but I suspect aligns towards a sense of timing as well, and your epiphanies being like lightning rather than steps up a ladder I've more often than not seen reported by people with some form of hyperactivity. For your average, more balanced person, epiphanies tend to come from a series of smaller steps lending to a larger outcome, while more excitable types can even find tiny things to be a huge development, lending to rapid adaptation at a surface level. Your depression could have been you feeling like a trapped Zoo animal within hyperactive tendencies, or one of two extremes for emotional phases that you report inaccurately.
OCD has many ranges for intensity, at it's lower ranges (Quirks) becoming increasingly common across the average person as distinctive habits or particular tastes, while the higher more debilitating ranges (Compulsions) tend to be much more rare as a symptom among the cluster for a larger problem. How hard it is to walk away from those symptoms typically yields how debilitating it must have been for that individual in the first place, as many can find themselves trapped in these behaviors no differently than trying to ignore profusely itchy bug bites or, in the deeper cases, it can feel like resisting the urge to blink. The subject can be entirely aware of the issue, be actively working on it, and still find themselves acting on it from some loop in their brain having hardened over the related stimuli. The real mystery to me is moreover where they come from, rather than what lets them persist.
Conditioning has been Exposure Therapy, forcing myself as many others have had to do to the stimulus that triggers the response repeatedly until the reaction deadens. While this does not work for everyone, it can work in enough individuals to be worth the effort, and in my case it proved helpful for getting over older problems I had that otherwise fueled other problems adjacent to it into becoming worse through the increased stress.
If you had my lived experience, you would think differently. I think you're trying to fit me into a narrative because you suffer from what Daniel Kahnemann calls WYSIATI.
My depression was not chronic, from what it sounds like? It wasn't. I don't have depression anymore, so clearly it wasn't chronic. But it was definitionally not chronic. I'm just saying that, at the time, if you had evaluated me, without the wisdom of hindsight, my condition would have been indistinguishable from what you call "chronic depression".
In fact, I have major qualms with the way that modern psychiatry deals with mental illnesses. They've essentially elevated mental imperatives to the level of biological imperatives. I'm saying that there's no need to do that, and that there is no evidence that almost any of these chronic mental illnesses are actually chronic at all, with the exception of a few.
Would you say that Buddha and that guy Paulo Coelho was actually just ADHD, too, along with everyone else who thinks they've awakened?
To be fair, I was actually diagnosed with ADHD, alongside dyslexia and several learning disabilities. But I guess you knew that already. As for whether or not I was overtly excited by small changes -- I would say jumping to a D or C student to a having the highest academic scores in the school overnight is not a small, incremental improvement. As for running as a kid, ever since what you call a small incremental improvement, I had the highest score in every race up until university. I'm not necessarily bragging, but I'm just saying that these realizations did not lead to small, incremental improvements that, as you say, I was overtly excited about because I was hyperactive.
OCD does have ranges, and I'd say that your analogy to "blinking" sounds very apt. I think you don't need to blink, either, if you don't want to. When you do resist blinking, at some point you will feel the biological imperative to blink, but that's no longer a mental imperative. If someone was giving you eye droplets like that scene from clockwork orange, I think you could just not blink. Bug bites, you can also just not scratch them. I get what you're talking about, but I'm saying that you can just choose not to do it.
I am also fascinated by how our brain works. I think it's a set of connections. I think I can sort of maneuver my brain in the way that I can switch between what I would call "modes", similarly to how people can switch their mindset by going to a familiar or a nostalgic place -- suddenly all those feelings and attitudes you used to have come back to you. Have you ever seen how someone becomes suddenly angry for no apparent reason when they visit a place? I like to think that they just accessed a section of their brain that is associated with some shitty memories and experiences. Being hopeless in front of those feelings and mental habits is what I call zombie mode.
