It’s not you, reality; it’s me.
Depressed algorithms and why you can’t tell who’s got ‘em
A friend was recently describing to me these moments he has in which he can see things from above, get a more complete view. In these moments of enhanced perspective, what becomes very clear is that he’s been wasting his life, that he’s behind somehow. He sees how he should have done this, shouldn’t have done that. Regrets and anxious wondering become his world.
I used to think moments like this, when I had them, were clarity. With intense introspection, I could get a truly clear view of actual reality. This view, I thought, was free of the lies I told everyone, the lies I told myself. It was real. I could see what I was hiding, what was festering in secret. Everything I was behind on, every responsibility I was neglecting, every person I was letting down, every penny of debt — it all stood out piercingly clear and without rebuttal. I was sure it was “true” reality.
Over time I’ve been able to step back and realize that this “clarity” is a distortion. My anxiety built it, and my depression told me it was real. Like the pessimist who’s so far gone he thinks he’s actually a realist, I thought I was getting a look at objective reality. This is the trouble with reality, or what we tell ourselves reality is, there isn’t a single human with the ability to actually see it.
Let’s talk about color vision. As humans, we can see colors ranging from red to violet, what we call the visible spectrum. Below it lies infrared, and above it is ultraviolet. We use our standard three types of photoreceptors (called cones) — red, blue, and green — to take in the visible spectrum. Some rare people have a fourth cone. They see colors that don’t have names. Then there are colorblind folks, whose photoreceptors have defects that narrow and confuse their color spectra. The mantis shrimp has 12 to 16 cones and sees ultraviolet colors we can’t even begin to imagine.
In analogy land, the mantis shrimp is our mythically well adjusted person with flawless reactions and off the charts emotional intelligence, the one that doesn’t actually exist but to whom we all love to compare ourselves. The mantis shrimp doesn’t get down on itself. The mantis shrimp sees through everything and perceives absolute reality without making attachments, good or bad. Then there’s us. Most folks are pretty okay at going through life without twisting it around too much. Sure, some situations can mess up their vision occasionally, but it always gets back to normal. There are some exceptional people out there, too. They can really keep things straight. To the colorblind, these four-cone-having miracle babies might as well be mantis shrimp. If you can’t tell some of the basic colors like red and blue apart, you’re not out pursuing untold shades of green; it’s not something that occurs to you.
In isolation, it doesn’t usually occur to anyone to question reality. You can’t tell what’s different about yours without comparing to someone else’s. This is exceedingly difficult with colorblindness, and many minor cases go undiagnosed and unrecognized by the colorblind person until formal testing. That person has learned throughout life to say “red” when pointing at something that’s red. It’s different than everyone else’s red, but that person has no idea. How many of us have learned to say we’re fine in the same way? To point at whatever normal happens to feel like and call it okay?
There are two main points I’d like dive into:
- Depression and anxiety distort reality.
- You can’t just see whose reality is distorted or how.
I’m not sad; my algorithm is busted
Referring to depression and anxiety as affecting the lens through which one sees the world is common. The analogy is flexible and comes with wonderfully universal and easily understood concepts, like cleaning the lens, regrinding it, realigning it, or, if the user of the metaphor is referring more to an internal eye-like lens, putting on glasses. The metaphor works, but it feels reductive. A more apt analogy for the 21st century, I think, is the algorithm.
The reason we need an analogy at all (and I will get back to mine) is that depression and anxiety are often conflated with the emotions they produce. This can be very confusing for non-sufferers, who think that questions like “What do you have to be depressed about?” and “You think you’ve got it rough?” are helpful for adding perspective. The key here is this:
I am not depressed because of things. I am depressed because of what my brain does with things.
My actual reality matters very little. I will distort the good things and amplify the bad. Here’s where the algorithm analogy comes back in. An algorithm is a set of processes, like equations, used to produce an outcome, like solving a problem. While not too many know how it actually works, we’re all pretty familiar with Google’s search algorithm, which takes your query and delivers to you the most relevant results from around the internet. Imagine that one day, all of your searches started returning results that were all a bit, well, potato-related.
You search “gas stations near me,” and your phone gives you the nearest gas station that sells potatoes. You search “10-day forecast,” and you get back results regarding how the weather is for growing potatoes. Looking for a new car? Let’s see how many potatoes you can fit in that bad boy. You get the idea.
Now imagine the same thing if Google could factor in your depression and anxiety. That first example returns gas stations near you where people will judge you harshly but accurately for how dirty your car has gotten. The forecast says it’ll be uncomfortably cold in the morning, and you’ll have to scrape your windshield. The coat you’ll wear will be overkill for the rest of the day, and people will judge you for it. That new car? Here’s how it will break, how you’ll inevitably pay too much for it, how you’re irresponsible and terrible with money for even thinking about buying a new car right now.
In this example, it might seem like Google is sad, but that’s an incomplete version of the story. The results are sad, and it wouldn’t matter what the input was, something in the algorithm is twisting everything around expertly. This isn’t a smudge on the lens making things look fuzzy; this is a complex series of processes augmenting reality for the worse.
For sufferers of depression and anxiety, what is actually happening in their lives does not matter. The algorithm will spit out negativity. New job? Just a whole new place to screw up in front of new people and ruin your whole career in one fell swoop. Win the lottery? No one who wins the lottery is ever happy about it; it will ultimately ruin your life. Tragedy? That makes sense. Life is shit wall to wall.
No variation of “Don’t be sad! You’ve got X, Y, and Z to be happy about!” will work. The good things won’t compute, and the outcome won’t be what you expect. Depression is not sadness that will pass. Anxiety is not simply agitation with a dash of negativity that can be waved away with the facts. These are conditions that create distorted, convincing realities, and it can be very, very difficult to catch them doing it. It can be even more difficult to catch them doing it to someone else.
Being part stranger
My depression and anxiety have been with me for so long that it’s hard to share in the surprise others show when they find out I’m a secret sad person. It’s part of why I don’t tolerate being treated differently or with kid gloves well. Nothing has changed for me other than who knows.
I mean, I get it: If my colleague of ten years suddenly told me that he was a die hard Dr. Who fan and he spends every extra cent and spare hour working on elaborate cosplay for the myriad sci-fi cons he goes to but never once mentioned, I’d be a little taken aback. I’m not sure he’s watched an episode. He doesn’t have a single Tardis, Dalek, or sonic screwdriver toy in his office. To me this newly revealed part of him would seem like a total stranger, however familiar it might seem to him.
I’m told that I come off as someone with my shit together. I’m an extrovert. I crack jokes and contribute actively at work. I’m active, and I eat well. Until recently, I’ve been pretty quiet about my depression and anxiety. To many, the revelation has been a complete shock, something they “never would have guessed.” And that’s just it:
You cannot tell who is suffering.
Not only does the social stigma stop sufferers from opening up, but the diseases themselves tell us not to talk about it, like a bully who says things will only get worse if we tattle. Many of us have worked our whole lives to cover it up. The kid who cries a lot doesn’t get picked for kickball. The sensitive young man gets his ass kicked in the locker room. The professional who can’t get out of bed doesn’t get promoted.
We find ways of coping. We learn to compartmentalize and maintain in public. We also learn what parts of our twisted realities we can’t talk about with most other people. We learn to just say that we have a doctor’s appointment, not therapy, that we’re feeling under the weather, not unable to to get out of bed or stop crying. It’s certainly not kosher to answer a casual “How’s it going?” with a weepy soliloquy. We learn to keep it inside to get by.
It’s isolating. All secrets are isolating, and this one’s tendrils get into every part of life. I’ll even give some credit to the lens analogy here: depression and anxiety color everything.
While I’ve been writing this, I had the opportunity to do several of the things listed above: I compartmentalized; I kept a stiff upper lip and laughed it off in public; and I had a full-blown anxiety attack in the safety and quiet of my home afterwards.
My timely collapse
I’m about eighty percent sure that no one could tell I’d been crying. I was late to work. I would have called in if I hadn’t had to run a training. The anxiety attack hit the night before and, after some sleep I was fortunate enough to get, again first thing that morning.
It came on slow. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that I’m not transitioning into a new position outside of work well, and the other night that was made explicitly clear to me and everyone else at the meeting. It was perfect. Not only did it play precisely into my anxiety’s favorite thing to tell me (that I’m letting everyone down), but it was something I didn’t even realize I’d screwed up. I maintained composure through the meeting. Some friends told me that I was doing great, that it was a hard job, but the initial talking to I received and how I’d twisted it around had already undermined the whole foundation. Things were in motion.
When I got home, I sat silently in the dark for probably twenty minutes. I couldn’t face my girlfriend upstairs. I thought my mood might snap to anger, and I have been trying really hard not to misdirect with her. Our dog, Maia, came down to see me. I couldn’t acknowledge or pet her. She curled up nearby and, when I’d mustered the strength to get myself closer to bed, followed me upstairs.
My girlfriend asked how my meeting went, and I got out a small “poorly” with my voice shaking a little. “Are you okay?” she asked. I had tried to slip by into the closet to undress. I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it. I answered, “No. Not really,” and felt things starting to crumble.
I knew that if I sat down and started filling out the worksheets my therapist gave me I’d probably be able to pull out of the spiral that was starting, but that thought was one of many spinning around in my head faster and faster. I told myself I’d put away my suit and then get to the worksheets. I got all the way to hanging up the jacket before the ground gave way and everything I’d worked to build over months of therapy and antidepressants collapsed with me inside.
I felt it happening. I knew the instant my negative thoughts hit critical mass, and quietly pleaded “no” before it crashed down around me and I crumpled to the floor sobbing. It was like watching the unfinished dome ceiling of my progress crack and fall block by block to smash on the floor.
I started repeating the Buddhist eight-fold path to myself over and over. “Right speech. Right action. Right livelihood. Right effort. Right mindfulness. Right concentration. Right understanding. Right resolve.” After five times through I had pulled out of the attack and stopped sobbing and hyperventilating. I tried to pack my gym bag for the morning, knowing I would need a win first thing the next day to get my spirits up.
Like all best-laid plans, prepping for the next morning didn’t work. Somehow I’d managed to set my alarm to silent while trying to change the time the night before. I still had enough time to make it to the gym, though, so I pushed that aside and kept moving. I almost made it out the door but misplaced my keys at the crucial moment. That was all the room my anxiety needed. Suddenly I was too incompetent to even go to the gym, too much of a fuck up to do anything. I couldn’t even set my alarm right. Not only that, but these attacks? They make me less of a man. Clarity, my anxiety told me, was seeing that I really was letting everyone down, that I really do have a net negative effect on everyone in my life, a deep fear of mine.
For all of the crying I fit in that morning, it’s remarkable that I made it to work only ten minutes late. I stayed busy, so time would go by. My happy-go-lucky-extrovert mask felt a little heavy around the eyes, but it got me through the day and to a point where I could think rationally again and start to put things back together. I moved from accepting my negative thoughts as reality to rejecting them intellectually but still living them to a place where I was able to get my head back on straight, defend myself, and see things more clearly.
Sometimes these episodes feel like I’m backsliding. As I mentioned above, in the moment of the attack, it really felt like all of my hard work was being destroyed, but that wasn’t true. When the dust cleared, everything was intact. I was able to use my new tools to stop the multiple downward spirals that came from this situation — sure, it wasn’t the quickest I’ve ever pulled my head out of a spiral, but it wasn’t the slowest. I’m more prepared now for the next time a real person repeats what my anxiety was already telling me, and I may be able to use what I’ve learned to help myself stay okay in the moment. Maybe not. Either way, progress is my reality right now, and it feels good.
