3. ELI5: If the main goal of our brain is survival, why does it let get depressed a...

ELI5: If the main goal of our brain is survival, why does it let get depressed and in some cases commit suicide?

I know what you mean. On the surface, sometimes you feel like your biggest factor in your depression is the disconnect between how good your life actually is, and how shitty you feel.

But I do believe the problems are just deeper down. Our subconscious is a powerful, powerful entity - arguably far more powerful than our ability to reason consciously.

It seems like it could make sense for your subconscious to work very hard to hide your problems from you conscious mind. Maybe your brain senses the dissonance and lapses into depression in order to solve it, but there's nothing immediate about the process.

Based loosely on the theory at OC's source, I'd hypothesize that the quicker route to solutions might be letting the depression work on us. Giving in instead of fighting it.

I'm very quick to fight it because I feel like I "shouldn't" be depressed. But maybe that's just exacerbating the problems, by keeping me from examining myself on a deeper level. And whatever level you think is deep, the problems are probably at least a layer deeper, maybe several - this is why psychotherapy can help a lot, because it's a trained professional unstripping the layers. Oh, if only all of us could afford it!

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