Is depression anger turned inward?

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Depression = anger?

Yes
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No
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Somewhat
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Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Tesseracts » Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:09 pm

I often hear the theory that depression is anger turned against the self. I don't know if this is speculation, or an idea with merit enough to prove.

Are the two emotions related? Are they related in some people, but not others? Are they distinct things which come from similar sources?

I have been doing light therapy and it has been making me less depressed. I'm also more irritable and people have been complaining I should stop yelling at them. I seem to be angry or depressed but elude happiness.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby PSTN » Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:47 pm

I'm not really sure. For me, depression is just the way I've been since I was nine or ten. I pretty much don't know of any other way of being.

Though for me, especially in recent years, self loathing has been a huge component of my depression.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Knicholas » Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:48 pm

I'll use that old standby: it depends.

I've seen plenty of grief turned to anger, and depression turned to anger. I've seen depression due to anger with oneself.

I believe they are sometimes related. I would not presume to say definitively. But it's not unusual to deal with personal unhappiness through anger.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby sunglasses » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:26 pm

I agree with Knicholas. It does depend.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:51 pm

What does "anger turned inward" mean?
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Windy » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:52 pm

No, depression is a mental disorder caused by brain chemicals. Anger is an emotion... caused by brain chemicals.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby PSTN » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:54 pm

aviel wrote:What does "anger turned inward" mean?


Shouting really loud into a tube shoved up your butt.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:56 pm

Well if that's not depression, then I don't know what is.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Marcuse » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:17 pm

I think saying depression is anger turned inward is too broad a statement to be able to attach a yes/no answer to it. Certainly I would consider self-loathing, which is a common facet of depression, to be an expression of anger against one's self. But then feelings of hopelessness which tend to be a defining characteristic of depression, seem more in the character of sadness than they do anger, so I'd say that self regarding anger is definitely one element of depression, but it's not the only one.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:22 pm

I feel like whoever came up with that line has never experienced depression.

Depression is the absence of any feelings; it's just numbness.

Despair is anger turned inwards, but it's not even close to the same thing. Despair is what I sometimes feel when I'm coming out of depression.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:25 pm

It's more that anger and depression are two different ways of reacting to similar problems. The most popular theories behind depression are strongly based around the concept of learned helplessness. The most famous experiment on this subject involved dogs being put in a box with an electrified floor. Some of the dogs were able to push a lever that opened a door allowing them to escape the periodic shocks; others were trapped with no means of escape. The former group all figured the lever out quickly and experienced no discernible long-term effects, while the latter group developed symptoms virtually identical with those associated with depression: apathy, low energy, lack of interest in usually desired activities, and so on. When both groups were then put in boxes with escape doors, the dogs in the experimental group didn't even try to open them--they just laid down on the floor and howled. Trying to get out hadn't worked before, and being trapped in the shock box had convinced them that it would never work in the future either, so they just gave up.

That said, reading about this experiment didn't make me depressed; it made me angry at the scientists, for inflicting clinical depression on a group of dogs. I wasn't trapped in a shock box, and I knew perfectly well who was responsible for the dogs' pain, so I reacted emotionally to the situation in a very different way than they did.


Something I've noticed anecdotally is that depressed people generally have damn good reasons for being depressed. I've lost count of how many people have told me horrific, heartbreaking stories with the same tone of voice you'd use to comment on the weather. They did that because those stories weren't anything new or noteworthy to them--they were so commonplace in their lives that these people were convinced that's just the way life is, and there's nothing to be done about it. When some form of successful therapy breaks that perception and gives them hope again (breaks them out of the box, if you will), often the first visible result is a wave of anger at their current situation and at slights long forgotten. You teach a mouse to speak, and the first thing out of its mouth is a roar after years of being treated like a mouse.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:34 pm

But when does it lead to the darkside?
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:15 pm

NathanLoiselle wrote:But when does it lead to the darkside?


When it leads you to believe things that aren't true. Depression might make you not just feel but believe that there's nothing you can do about your situation when that isn't the case, and that's when it becomes most dangerous. Likewise, anger becomes most dangerous when it leads you to not just feel but believe that the object of your anger is a fundamentally bad person who should be hurt or destroyed when the evidence doesn't necessarily support this.

This is why the forms of psychotherapy with the strongest documented effects on depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy and, more recently, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy) are largely based on teaching people to spot and counter cognitive biases that depression and other extreme emotional states create in people's thinking processes.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:37 am

Speaking as someone who's directly and indirectly dealt with about a dozen different shades of depression since entering his teens (three-quarters of my closest friends and half of my idols have it, and I struggled with a thankfully comparatively mild form for several years), I give a resounding "sometimes".

Sometimes it's anger at yourself. Sometimes it's the rawest, purest sadness one could ever dream of. Sometimes it's overwhelming stress hitting a natural breaking point. Sometimes it's something utterly existential that only makes sense to the affected person. Sometimes it's completely fucking inexplicable and genuinely down to nothing more than the bad luck of getting the wrong chemical balance in your head.

It all sucks the same no matter what, for the victim and the people close to them.
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Last edited by KleinerKiller on Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is depression anger turned inward?

Postby DashaBlade » Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:46 am

The depression I'm used to dealing with personally is a sort of apathy. If I were capable of feeling anger at myself during those times, it'd be way more emotion than I can usually muster. So in my case, no, it isn't anger turned inward. It's a lack of feeling or motivation or desire to do diddly squat. It's not sadness, self-recrimination or self-destruction, it's simply not giving a shit at all. Not being able to feel happiness or sadness or anger or pride - just an emptiness, a numbness.

But that's just me - I've seen other people whose depression seemed like a violent reaction to themselves, and some whose depression caused misery and grief. So I agree, it's sometimes anger turned inward. And sometimes it's misanthropy turned inward. And sometimes it's just emotional deadness.
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