Many things to be afraid of but also joyous dancing
So buckle up, it's an emotional something something too burnt out to write this part
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Samantha Irby has OCD, it turns out
My guest on Depresh Mode this week is Samantha Irby, the best-selling author, humorist, TV writer, and newly diagnosed person with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sam hasn’t talked about her experiences with OCD in the past because she just didn’t dang know about it until the other day. That’s right: IT’S A DEPRESH MODE EXCLUSIVE. Journalism, baby! Or something.
Now she’s in the process of figuring out which parts of her psychological makeup are a result of the OCD and which stem from her long-standing experiences with other mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.
A major theme we keep coming back to in the interview is Sam’s very specific imagined scenario. She’s afraid of being violently confronted by angry men who are really out to get her. For instance, goes the thinking, “What if the driver behind me is really mad that I’m driving so slow that he runs me off the road, drags me from my car, and beats me to death?”
I try, in the interview, to point out that if the fictitious guy is really so upset about not getting somewhere quicker, would he really go through all the effort to do all those time-consuming acts of violence? Wouldn’t those chores make him even later to where he was going? But logic plays no part in this.
What I find remarkable about the interview is that these thought experiences are simultaneously terrifying and very funny to Samantha Irby and, thus, to the listener as well. I found myself laughing along because she was laughing along. Anyway, it’s a great episode and she has a new book out that’s very funny and raw and honest.
The Governor of Texas says that the constant shootings are a mental health issue
That, he says, is the real problem.
I honestly don’t have much to add to this conversation that hasn’t already been stated a million times by a million other people. But I’ll be number 1,000,001 to say that in other countries, people also have mental health issues. Mental health issues exist all over the world. What those countries don’t have is anywhere close to as many shootings as we have in the United States. That’s because people can get guns very easily. Also, people with mental health problems are zillions of times more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators. Also, if there are, in fact, violent mentally ill people running around, why make it easier for them to be armed with assault rifles?
Burnout and what to whatever whatever I’m too tired to write this headli
Popular Science (the science magazine that gets voted prom queen) has a long read about burnout and how the brain chemistry of it works.
Burnout is a syndrome that may cause a person to become depressed; depression might predispose a person to burnout. But ultimately, burnout is distinct in that work is always at its root. People often feel better as soon as they’re able to get away from the cause of their stress, Parker said. That’s not usually the case with depression.
That distinction is important to make, because by treating burnout as an illness—like depression or an anxiety disorder—we risk offering the wrong solutions, Maslach said. You can’t self-care away your burnout, she added. It’s not so much about the individual as it is the situation they’re in. You have to remove the cause of your stress, and that often requires structural changes in the workplace.
As if allergies aren’t bad enough
And they are bad enough, they’re terrible. But now the New York Times is reporting on the link between allergies to things like pollen and mental health. Makes you want to sneeze YOUR MIND OUT.
If someone is allergic to tree pollen, for example, and that pollen reaches the membranes lining the nose, it prompts the immune system to release a cocktail of substances that can create inflammation in the body’s airways and brain.
“Among these substances are proteins called cytokines, which the body produces to fight certain infections,” said Dr. Todd Gould, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “These cytokines activate areas of the brain that regulate depression and anxiety.”
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