/lit/ - Literature

>>15073262
no

>>15073262

>>15073285

>>15073262
briefly, but never sustainably.

>>15073262
To me, yes. November-February I felt the absolute worst in my life. Even thought about ending it all. At that point I haven't read a book for at least six months prior. Then I decided to pick up on Meditations, and afterwards Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Literally as basic as it gets with philosophy, but it actually helped me a lot. I realized I had to get my ass up and do things, I had to get over a breakup and a huge family issue, and I did. I also joined the Red Cross, started playing the guitar and hit the gym again. It helps. Just read something good.

That's how I discovered my love for philosophy, and I am genuinely feeling better now and enjoying the books I read and the things I do.

>>15073262
if help you mean push it further, yeah

>>15073262

>>15073307
I feel this

>>15073262
A book can kick start a recovery, but you have to keep working on it from point zero. Things don't just happen overnight.

>>15073262
Only if you want to be shattered to pieces

>>15073262
>books to deal with depression
You poor, poor rational man, what have you done with yourself again?

Seek the absolute alone and all will be revealed and all troubles vanquished.

I have seen your works rational man and i wish i had not.

For a brief period. Nietzsche was the first that helped. Spinoza also. Don Quixote had the biggest impact. But whatever positive effects I felt didn't last. There is no outrunning depression.

Industrial Society and its Future - Ted Kaczynski
Beyond Good & Evil and The Genealogy of Morals - Friedrich Nietzsche
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Feeling Good - Dr David Burns (the podcast of this on youtube is excellent)

You need to consciously try to change your thinking, little by little. Catch yourself in distorted negative thoughts and realise they're bullshit, sounds impossible but give it time. When I worry about things a lot I try and pretend in my mind that my worrying will help, and then laugh at myself. For example, if I'm worrying about something silly I said at work, I will think "yup, by worrying about this you're gonna telepathically change how everyone around felt about the situation, reverse it and make material changes". This makes me laugh at myself and lightens my mood considerably.

>>15073262
read "Man's Search for Meaning", regardless of whether you believe the holocaust was fiction or truth, it's a based book.

>>15075445
>you have to live for the sake of other people
But what if I don't have anyone I care about?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy helped me through some very tough times. It really put things into perspective, and laughter is good for the soul.

I posted this in another thread, but I think it applies. Books never helped my depression.


Dude with severe depression here. I spent 5 years in and out of mental hospitals, trying all kinds of drugs, trying TMS, counseling, DBT, group therapy, and trying rigorous exercise.

You know what finally worked? Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). I finally feel like a real functioning person again. I no longer spend day after day in bed. I’m holding down a job. I’m feeling pleasure and enjoying things again.

feeling good by burns

if you actually want to get better, this is the book youll read

otherwise youll keep whining like a pathetic fucking baby and youll wallow in misery

>>15073262
Proust.

Monsieur, Or the Prince of Darkness - Lawrence Durrell

>>15073262
person who used to be depressed here; this book definitely helped me, in combination with lexapro of course. In fact this book was shown to be just as effective in clinical trials. Feeling Good the New Mood Therapy

Epictetus' Enchiridion has helped me a great deal for the past few years.

Yeah I read the Blind Owl, and it made me super fucking depressed. It really helped my depression make me feel worse.

No, but some books managed to inspire me to do certain things that bettered my life, which ultimately lessened my depression, at least a little bit.

Plus books can heighten my sense for aesthetics or whatever which can help as well.

>>15075445
I was struggling with depresssion for like 9 months. Philosophy (Spinoza and Nietzsche) were the only ways I could stimulate my mind. Finally I had a dream that blew my mind apart and I was able to piece it together with the Jungian ideas I was tumbling around. It actually fixed.

Although I also tried microdosing LSD around that time. So maybe it was that.

>>15076534
I second this. This book is legit op

>>15073262
Crime and Punishment

>>15076622
I don't do drugs but reading Jung always gives me weird dreams.

>>15075445
Fuck this book

I guess it depends on what the depression is rooted in. A nice book to give you pause and a proverbial kick in the ass to get moving could be Dino Buzzati's Tartar Steppe. If you're struggling to make sense of the misery of your existence, someone else has already Man's Search for Meaning, which I can also recommend.

>>15076534
Is this cognitive behavioral therapy or something else?

I should warn you OP, others will belittle this wonderful book. That is a problem with them, not it. But I truly believe it will help you. It helped me.

>>15073262
No, and Lacan can tell you why

>>15073405
Can confirm anon's life decision.

I read many books, but Nietzsche helped the most. Zarathustra, the godless, managed to make me overcome my disbelief in everything and my self-denial. He has unshackled me from petty depression and mood fluctuations.

I sought refuge in his cave, and maybe one day, I shall exit it and and reach the sun.

>>15073262
Why are you feeling depressed? Just like headache it's not a disease per se.

>>15075445
>regardless of whether you believe the holocaust was fiction or truth


kys

>>15073405
>Meditations
what Meditations?

>>15077758
I've had it since my early teens and in my 20s it has only gotten worse.

>>15073262
reading makes me happy so all of them :)

>>15077953
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations. Basically the daily deep-thinks of a Roman Emperor

>>15073262
No but exercise did

>>15073262
Of course, the Holy Bible (Catholic version).

>>15075445
Listened to the first 45 minutes of this jerk-off book on a fucking Delta flight. A waste of time.
>implying finding meaning is hard when a tangible obstacle is put in one's way
The post-post-post-(ad infinitum)-modern problem is finding meaning in the midst of a striated, easy, comfortable life.

>>15075445
I found it so pathetic and I think holocaust happened.

>>15077442
its cognitive therapy

>>15073262
I'm sure it's been said but Feeling Good by David Burns

>>15079426
Interesting

>>15073405
Nietzsche made me stop wanting to die. But he also made me stop wanting to live, at least in the usual sense of the word.

>>15080209
pbuh

>>15073262
Until you get fit, you will not know whether your depression is a symptom or a disease. The former is more likely in every mild case and a significant amount of moderate cases.

>>15073262
Aurelius.. Meditations. I wish people would just read this and stop asking

Now I finally have the courage to end it

>>15080945
>stoicism is an answer for all people

>>15080855
Looks like women/basedboys hate it.

bump

Yes and no. I’ve had books radically shift my perspective in a way that helped depression. However, there’s a degree to which I’m simply depressed because I feel I’m living an inauthentic life in my day-to-day so failure to make a radical physical change along with that shift in perspective ensures that it’s simply temporary, whereas it may or may not be otherwise.

yes

michel tournier - friday
peter sloterdijk - critique of cynical reason

>>15080855
I instaread every book I come across that leaves trails of seething women and basedboy reviews like these

>>15073262
no but this did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-0ETX4z_DU

Depression is an illness that you must get medically treated through therapy or medicine.

Books can help with your therapy but it is necessary to get professional help or take medicine.

>>15073262
Bronze Age Mindset

Honestly, no. I've been in a deep-seated depressive ennui ever since I was a child (I am now 23). Dostoevsky stirred something in me as a youth, but it was merely the discovery of my condition's broad collective acknowledgment - there was no hope of an answer.

You can't think of any possible book as a "cure" for depression but you might at least hope for the first break in fundamental depression which is the realization that what is happening to you is something that happens to others.

The The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is perhaps the first work of psychotherapy in recorded history. To this day his dissection of human unhappiness went unappreciated until Freud. William Styron's Darkness Visible is a good bitesize intro to the phenomenology of depression: it will help you to see that you are not alone which is one of the core aspects of the phenomenology of depression. I love Robert Burton in particular for being such a pioneer. He was one of the first to conceive that the mind could be physically diseased. To transitively adduce the concept of physical sickness with mental sickness.

>>15083549
Based TV watcher and new york times reader

>>15083549
psychology and medication is utter bullshit

t. institutionalized twice, met with dozens of therapists, and was put on over 5 different types of SSRIs and SNRIs throughout my life (not counting dozens of increasing doses).

>>15080197
>No but exercise did
This, go for a walk, OP. Try and find meaning and purpose (I know it's hard).
Also be soothened by the fact that THERE IS BEAUTY OBJECTIVELY. I don't know why but thinking in this way (when I really believe it) brings me such a confort.

>>15084546
it's fucking quarantine time, what the fuck are you talking about

A Thurber Carnival. It made me laugh

>>15084720
You can still go outside, you just need to keeo your distance from people. Are you a mongoloid?

>>15080876
So what should I do if I'm diseased?

Should we have a depression general (/dpg/) to corral these bullshit posts? Depression is a delusion, like every other emotion, and I say this as someone as someone who's actually been in a psych ward over it.

>>15086571
>Depression is a delusion
Elaborate on this

bump

>>15073262
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

>>15073307
This, reading helps pull me out of the spiral because it makes me feel productive.

>>15075462
>you have to live for the sake of other people

that's the biggest bullshit ever. If you really want to kill yourself you don't care an ounce for other people.

>>15073262
>>15073886
nice

>>15088734
How can Nietzsche help with depression? If anything it makes you even more depressed.

>>15073262
no, get a hobby and make something with your hands

>>15088890
First off, the author here is Deleuze commentating on Nietzsche. If I may ask, in what sense do you think Nietzsche makes one even more depressed? I honestly find some of his stuff the most tender, the most humanizing, the most child-like and serious. Its often uplifting.

Deleuze's commentary on concepts like the dice throw, ressentiment, the eternal return etc. is a good exposition of Nietzsche but also flows right into Deleuze's other stuff, which I had gotten into before finding this book.

>>15089553
Do you have to know Nietzsche's works pretty good before reading it?

the only thing that works is exercise, getting social, eating well, drinking water

>>15089597
I think its best used as a companion and read with Nietzsche. I've been making my way through his stuff for the last couple years, and have revisited that Deleuze book several times. Originally I had only read Beyond Good and Evil, and I found the Deleuze book pretty ineligible even if I couldn't quite cite every reference he was making. Maybe also useful is Deleuze's "Kant's Critical Philosophy" because in the other book, a key theme is Nietzsche overcoming Kant, as well as Nietzsche's anti-Hegelianism. It provides you with something to weigh your own reading of Nietzsche against which was helpful for me in orienting research.

>>15089673
*intelligible

>>15073262
If anything, reading, for various reasons, only made me more depressed.

The Richest Man in Babylon kept me going for months after I read it

>>15073262
I'd recommend Zhuangzi.

>>15086743
How does anyone know they're feeling depressed? It's invariably a felt sensation in the body, and people get lost in post-hoc rationalizations (oh, I need to get laid/friends/a job and on and on and on) caused by what is ultimately and literally just a sensation in your body. Once you cut through the mind abstractions and direct your attention to what is actually going on, which is never the story running through your mind, your pain increases, but then goes away.

This approach is unpopular in the west because it means seeing through all emotions and bodily states, not just depression, and ours being the Faustian civilization, we try to ground everything in desire, in the pursuit of happiness (as if happiness is something that has to be pursued). It's not for nothing that Ashtavakra calls such a way of life being "one of samsara's bewildered beasts of burden", and Western civilization needs its citizens to be bewildered beasts of burden.

>>15073262
War and Peace helped me get a better grasp on reality.

Sidarta by Hesse is another great book about the search of happiness which i would recommend to anyone that is struggling to see the light in everyday life.

>>15086517
Lift. Your chemicals are fucked, you gotta get them back in order. If it was a symptom, you would have to change the life situation that is causing it, then likely lift afterwards.

>>15083686
>listen to the hot takes of a loony

>>15073262
Check your poltard opinions at the door, and this can save your life.

>>15073262
I like better than Aurelius. Funnier, and more direct.

>>15073262
I like him better than Aurelius. More direct and way funnier.

>>15091549
Really enjoyed this one last time I read it, I need to give it another spin.

>>15077635
I fucking hate seeing this faggot ass book in every other thread.

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra helped me out of a slump

>>15081065
based Ligottiposter

>>15073307
this. i dont think that there's a permanent solution.

>>15073262

Yeah, you should readh Johan Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther." I've never actually read it, but it's free on gutenberg.

>>15073262
The Fall by Camus

No Longer Human made me go down a few short romanticized depression spirals but ended with a brief "cure"