http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/84078/
Solid answers from both Vienna and Heidi Book on choosing a major.
Answers I liked
Moderator: Marduk
Re: Answers I liked
For more amazing Wikipedia sentences, look no further than http://citationneeded.tumblr.com/
Re: Answers I liked
I really enjoyed this question from a few days ago asking why writers went/didn't go on missions.
Re: Answers I liked
I don't know if the anonymous writer who went through their crisis of faith and happiness reads here, but I will say, your experience reminds me very much of my own.
I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. Maybe you will be happier outside the church, maybe you won't, but I wouldn't make that decision while you're still at BYU because it is such a bizarre environment. Being stuck in the middle while at BYU is hard. I wish you the best of luck.
Also, if you ever need religion professor recommendations (because that was the hardest part for me—I felt like so many professors discounted my experience), you can hit me up.
I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. Maybe you will be happier outside the church, maybe you won't, but I wouldn't make that decision while you're still at BYU because it is such a bizarre environment. Being stuck in the middle while at BYU is hard. I wish you the best of luck.
Also, if you ever need religion professor recommendations (because that was the hardest part for me—I felt like so many professors discounted my experience), you can hit me up.
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yayfulness
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Re: Answers I liked
I'd just like to second every word of that. Faith crises suck no matter what, but having one at BYU is just about the worst.Violet wrote:I don't know if the anonymous writer who went through their crisis of faith and happiness reads here, but I will say, your experience reminds me very much of my own.
I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. Maybe you will be happier outside the church, maybe you won't, but I wouldn't make that decision while you're still at BYU because it is such a bizarre environment. Being stuck in the middle while at BYU is hard. I wish you the best of luck.
Also, if you ever need religion professor recommendations (because that was the hardest part for me—I felt like so many professors discounted my experience), you can hit me up.
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TheBlackSheep
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Re: Answers I liked
BYU faith crises are the worst, but I don't think having a faith crisis at BYU is necessarily a reason to put action or decisions off. Exactly nothing changed for me once I was out of BYU re:faith. It definitely comes down to the individual situation, and if you're sure, you're sure. I can definitely see the wisdom in re-integrating to more typical Mormondom before making any decisions, though.
Re: Answers I liked
I had remembered the quotation slightly differently, but I still like this one and think it is relevant.
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Re: Answers I liked
oh, I know the Facebook group Young Mormon Feminists has some BYU students in it going through faith crisis. The group tends to be a bit more volatile than Feminist Mormon Housewives though.
Re: Answers I liked
I thought it significant that a question where the reader was experiencing the textbook symptoms of schizophrenia appeared adjacent to the question about types/severity of depression. Mmmmmmmmaaaaybe mental health issues aren't taken seriously enough by those experiencing them or others? Yeah.
So, I'll admit, growing up, I was a bit of a "depression skeptic." It's well-known that Utah has a high rate of antidepressant use, especially among women, and there was a family who was particularly vocal about their mental health struggles, including over the pulpit. For a combination of reasons (she was just kind of a judgmental person, I'm pretty sure she had wells of rage and unfulfilled ambition within her own soul), my mom was in turn very vocal that their problems were overblown and attention-seeking. I saw merit to this claim — I felt I knew people far worse-off than this family — so I internalized an attitude that "depression" = "weakness, bad, do not want."
Looking back, I think this attitude was problematic, perhaps precisely because I myself have experienced what used to be called "situational depression" and almost certainly do not have Major Depressive Disorder.
1) Depression is a symptom — not just a single diagnosis. My temperament is what you might refer to as "moody:" when things go poorly, the entire world seems bleak and I'm usually reduced to sobbing; when things go well, I'm elated. (It probably sounds like I have the emotional landscape of an adolescent — though I think I can relate to teens well, I'd say this particular issue was most pronounced in my early and mid twenties, and seems to have evened out a bit, but not disappeared.)
So yes, on a bad day, I may say I'm "feeling depressed," but its very transitoriness rules out a Depressive Disorder as such. Even my most extended period of the blues — when I was unemployed? when my mom was dying? — was punctuated by days of extremely good emotions/happiness. Many of the writers mentioned numbness, or a lack of affect: that's never been my problem.
I'd agree with the notion that the notion of a "chemical imbalance" is reductive at best and outright inaccurate at worst. Take moodiness — despite a preponderance of evidence that most teenagers' wildly swinging emotions and impulsiveness comes from underdeveloped frontal lobes, there's this idea that it's "hormones." I don't have any MRI evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if my own frontal lobes were somewhat late to develop fully/markedly less able than the rest of my brain, since I'm considered to have high intelligence.
I guess I just don't think it's helpful to police other people. Yes, obviously, some people have Sylvia Plath levels of suicidality; others are grumpy. Just like some people have nervous/paranoid temperaments, and others experience intrusive thoughts which they interpret as demonic. If I use the phrase "I'm depressed" (which I actually tend to try to very much hide; more on that later) I'm not co-opting someone else's experience. I may actually be depressed, leading me to:
2) There are straight-up weird causes of depression. I knew I was a moody person. But I generally liked being alive. However, I noticed that, with a regular occurrence, there'd be a day or two where I felt like I wanted to die, and that everyone hated me, and that the things that reliably make me feel good were stupid, so maybe jumping in front of trains was a good idea, after all.
After ruling out a bunch of other things, a friend pointed out that it could be related to my menstrual cycle. After reading about PMDD, I totally think it rings true. (And I'm not a hypochondriac. I'm in generally good health and don't go fishing for "issues" to have. I'm a pretty private person in my day-to-day life, too, but this why do I want to die stuff was getting out of hand.) If there was ever a time to say "it's chemicals! it's hormones! I'll totally want to live in two days, just leave me alone!" this is that time.
Because it's a female thing, and a fleeting thing, and something that usually can be managed with short-term solutions (pills, huge amounts of sleep, avoiding Life Stressors, as it mentions, because seriously I will blow a fuse during those days), make it less real? Well until you're standing on a train platform contemplating an Anna Karenina, I don't know, maybe assume it's real.
It can be very difficult to tell someone about this: I didn't exactly relish the thought of other people freaking out and causing them pain. So as a friend to someone who says they're depressed, listening and helping them find solutions is probably going to do them more good — maybe even help them to a treatment that works for them — than being kind of judge-y and rude.
If you're in college, it may be that it seems like it crops up a lot because so many mental illness have their onset in their early twenties. Take our friend with intrusive thoughts — it would be terrifying to have this happen to you, no? Schizophrenia and related stuff usually hits at age 20. (And I've never heard anyone doubt that it's "real," although in developing countries, schizophrenics are often locked in cages like animals. Yikes! Not how we want our friend to get help!)
3) Our mental landscapes are as surely shaped by our circumstances and society as is anything.
In societies where women are routinely treated like trash, their mental health suffers.
If there's anything I have, it's high levels of anxiety. After many, many discussions with friends, family members, and past and present love interests, I've concluded that being a woman is stressful. Being a Mormon woman, in my experience, was especially more stressful. Literature abounds with intelligent, ambitious women who have nervous breakdowns trying to fit a paradigm that might not be useful for them. I've heard a culture of perfectionism blamed — for me, at least, it was plain demoralizing not being felt I was taken seriously.
Not to say that only women suffer, either mentally or otherwise. Read the "Gender and mental health" article to see how acute alcohol abuse is among the male population. Again, most people aren't hypochondriacs, and most men I've known who self-medicate anxiety or depressive symptoms with booze (this is straight from the horse's mouth: "I've been really stressed and drinking a lot more lately," for example) are very much secretive about it. No one likes to be seen as a failure! Few people want others to pity them!
4) I believe, if anything, most people are hiding at least some sorrow from others. I wonder if the twenties are a tough decade precisely because so much realness hits you at once — your first heartbreaks, your first real-world failures, maybe your first experience with death, your first time being away from your family.
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
So, I'll admit, growing up, I was a bit of a "depression skeptic." It's well-known that Utah has a high rate of antidepressant use, especially among women, and there was a family who was particularly vocal about their mental health struggles, including over the pulpit. For a combination of reasons (she was just kind of a judgmental person, I'm pretty sure she had wells of rage and unfulfilled ambition within her own soul), my mom was in turn very vocal that their problems were overblown and attention-seeking. I saw merit to this claim — I felt I knew people far worse-off than this family — so I internalized an attitude that "depression" = "weakness, bad, do not want."
Looking back, I think this attitude was problematic, perhaps precisely because I myself have experienced what used to be called "situational depression" and almost certainly do not have Major Depressive Disorder.
1) Depression is a symptom — not just a single diagnosis. My temperament is what you might refer to as "moody:" when things go poorly, the entire world seems bleak and I'm usually reduced to sobbing; when things go well, I'm elated. (It probably sounds like I have the emotional landscape of an adolescent — though I think I can relate to teens well, I'd say this particular issue was most pronounced in my early and mid twenties, and seems to have evened out a bit, but not disappeared.)
So yes, on a bad day, I may say I'm "feeling depressed," but its very transitoriness rules out a Depressive Disorder as such. Even my most extended period of the blues — when I was unemployed? when my mom was dying? — was punctuated by days of extremely good emotions/happiness. Many of the writers mentioned numbness, or a lack of affect: that's never been my problem.
I'd agree with the notion that the notion of a "chemical imbalance" is reductive at best and outright inaccurate at worst. Take moodiness — despite a preponderance of evidence that most teenagers' wildly swinging emotions and impulsiveness comes from underdeveloped frontal lobes, there's this idea that it's "hormones." I don't have any MRI evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if my own frontal lobes were somewhat late to develop fully/markedly less able than the rest of my brain, since I'm considered to have high intelligence.
I guess I just don't think it's helpful to police other people. Yes, obviously, some people have Sylvia Plath levels of suicidality; others are grumpy. Just like some people have nervous/paranoid temperaments, and others experience intrusive thoughts which they interpret as demonic. If I use the phrase "I'm depressed" (which I actually tend to try to very much hide; more on that later) I'm not co-opting someone else's experience. I may actually be depressed, leading me to:
2) There are straight-up weird causes of depression. I knew I was a moody person. But I generally liked being alive. However, I noticed that, with a regular occurrence, there'd be a day or two where I felt like I wanted to die, and that everyone hated me, and that the things that reliably make me feel good were stupid, so maybe jumping in front of trains was a good idea, after all.
After ruling out a bunch of other things, a friend pointed out that it could be related to my menstrual cycle. After reading about PMDD, I totally think it rings true. (And I'm not a hypochondriac. I'm in generally good health and don't go fishing for "issues" to have. I'm a pretty private person in my day-to-day life, too, but this why do I want to die stuff was getting out of hand.) If there was ever a time to say "it's chemicals! it's hormones! I'll totally want to live in two days, just leave me alone!" this is that time.
Because it's a female thing, and a fleeting thing, and something that usually can be managed with short-term solutions (pills, huge amounts of sleep, avoiding Life Stressors, as it mentions, because seriously I will blow a fuse during those days), make it less real? Well until you're standing on a train platform contemplating an Anna Karenina, I don't know, maybe assume it's real.
It can be very difficult to tell someone about this: I didn't exactly relish the thought of other people freaking out and causing them pain. So as a friend to someone who says they're depressed, listening and helping them find solutions is probably going to do them more good — maybe even help them to a treatment that works for them — than being kind of judge-y and rude.
If you're in college, it may be that it seems like it crops up a lot because so many mental illness have their onset in their early twenties. Take our friend with intrusive thoughts — it would be terrifying to have this happen to you, no? Schizophrenia and related stuff usually hits at age 20. (And I've never heard anyone doubt that it's "real," although in developing countries, schizophrenics are often locked in cages like animals. Yikes! Not how we want our friend to get help!)
3) Our mental landscapes are as surely shaped by our circumstances and society as is anything.
In societies where women are routinely treated like trash, their mental health suffers.
If there's anything I have, it's high levels of anxiety. After many, many discussions with friends, family members, and past and present love interests, I've concluded that being a woman is stressful. Being a Mormon woman, in my experience, was especially more stressful. Literature abounds with intelligent, ambitious women who have nervous breakdowns trying to fit a paradigm that might not be useful for them. I've heard a culture of perfectionism blamed — for me, at least, it was plain demoralizing not being felt I was taken seriously.
Not to say that only women suffer, either mentally or otherwise. Read the "Gender and mental health" article to see how acute alcohol abuse is among the male population. Again, most people aren't hypochondriacs, and most men I've known who self-medicate anxiety or depressive symptoms with booze (this is straight from the horse's mouth: "I've been really stressed and drinking a lot more lately," for example) are very much secretive about it. No one likes to be seen as a failure! Few people want others to pity them!
4) I believe, if anything, most people are hiding at least some sorrow from others. I wonder if the twenties are a tough decade precisely because so much realness hits you at once — your first heartbreaks, your first real-world failures, maybe your first experience with death, your first time being away from your family.
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
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NovemberEast
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Re: Answers I liked
http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/84223/
Actually, yes I do think it affects how people view depression. I think it makes people see it as less of a spectrum and more of one thing.
Growing up I had friends who romanticized depression. They thought it was cool and necessary to being a great writer and artist. I had to quit hanging out with them because I found it so very stupid and insulting. You see, my half sister had pretty serious depression problems when we were teens and still works very hard to keep her mental health in balance. She hasn't had anything happen to her in life that she could blame her depression on. And it often makes people skeptical. Our childhood and early adult years have been equally great. We talk a lot about how she doesn't want to be this way at all and would absolutely love to "snap out of it."
Maybe you guys will just think I'm a jerk because my experience isn't the same, but I think there are plenty of people out there who say they have depression when it would be more accurate to say something else. And yes there is a wide spectrum of depression, but I do think there is a difference, power, and importance to how you say it. Lumping everything in to one thing is what causes people to think my sister is just looking for attention because "geez, what could she possibly be depressed about?" It sets me off a little bit in defense of my sister because a lot of people don't take her issue seriously because of this. I can't help but blame it a little on the overuse of the word "depression." It's a large umbrella to a lot of people.
Or I'm just really defensive of my sister.
Or both.
Actually, yes I do think it affects how people view depression. I think it makes people see it as less of a spectrum and more of one thing.
Growing up I had friends who romanticized depression. They thought it was cool and necessary to being a great writer and artist. I had to quit hanging out with them because I found it so very stupid and insulting. You see, my half sister had pretty serious depression problems when we were teens and still works very hard to keep her mental health in balance. She hasn't had anything happen to her in life that she could blame her depression on. And it often makes people skeptical. Our childhood and early adult years have been equally great. We talk a lot about how she doesn't want to be this way at all and would absolutely love to "snap out of it."
Maybe you guys will just think I'm a jerk because my experience isn't the same, but I think there are plenty of people out there who say they have depression when it would be more accurate to say something else. And yes there is a wide spectrum of depression, but I do think there is a difference, power, and importance to how you say it. Lumping everything in to one thing is what causes people to think my sister is just looking for attention because "geez, what could she possibly be depressed about?" It sets me off a little bit in defense of my sister because a lot of people don't take her issue seriously because of this. I can't help but blame it a little on the overuse of the word "depression." It's a large umbrella to a lot of people.
Or I'm just really defensive of my sister.
Or both.
Re: Answers I liked
I can see both sides and don't think you're a "jerk." I think a lot of people who are feeling depressed could technically have anxiety, a personality disorder, have poor social functioning, etc. There's a book called "The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown" which seems to have a similar thesis to what you're saying: That depression is overdiagnosed
More accurate, maybe, to make those distinctions in our day to day speech, but also risks unburdening personal details that people don't want to go into?
And I've never heard of this "romantic" idea of madness outside, I don't know, Lord Byron fans. As a creative person, I know that not much is going to get done if you're in the throes of what Fitzgerald called a crack-up. (The best essay about the "dark night of the soul" I've ever read.)
Ultimately, it's a label which may or may not help an individual figure out their stuff. I took the problem with your sister's friends isn't the label per se, but assuming there's a "cause" to her condition, or others'. I guess I don't see how it's a zero sum game. Do you have any ideas on what would make you, personally, feel better in this situation?
I know that for me, merely overcoming the hurdle for recognition ("you don't seem like you're the anxious type--you're so outgoing!" or "you're still sad about your mom?" or anything about how wedding planning "shouldn't be stressful it's the happiest time of your life!1") is enough that hey, if people who are merely neurotic drama queens want to jump on the bandwagon, go for it. Maybe there's linguistic research into the prevalence of these terms...
More accurate, maybe, to make those distinctions in our day to day speech, but also risks unburdening personal details that people don't want to go into?
And I've never heard of this "romantic" idea of madness outside, I don't know, Lord Byron fans. As a creative person, I know that not much is going to get done if you're in the throes of what Fitzgerald called a crack-up. (The best essay about the "dark night of the soul" I've ever read.)
Ultimately, it's a label which may or may not help an individual figure out their stuff. I took the problem with your sister's friends isn't the label per se, but assuming there's a "cause" to her condition, or others'. I guess I don't see how it's a zero sum game. Do you have any ideas on what would make you, personally, feel better in this situation?
I know that for me, merely overcoming the hurdle for recognition ("you don't seem like you're the anxious type--you're so outgoing!" or "you're still sad about your mom?" or anything about how wedding planning "shouldn't be stressful it's the happiest time of your life!1") is enough that hey, if people who are merely neurotic drama queens want to jump on the bandwagon, go for it. Maybe there's linguistic research into the prevalence of these terms...
Re: Answers I liked
A bit of devil's advocate: Maybe more college students a decade younger than I am ARE depressed and anxious, and the types of thinking found on, say, Tumblr contribute? This article argues that that is the case.
BYU is no liberal university, so it's hard for me to say whether this phenomenon is even a thing there.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/
BYU is no liberal university, so it's hard for me to say whether this phenomenon is even a thing there.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/
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Zedability
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Re: Answers I liked
I guess I have had similar experiences to your sister in that regard - when I was trying to petition to withdraw from a class the petitions office was really skeptical of my depression because I didn't have a life event that "caused" it and so obviously it was just an excuse.
But I guess that made me feel like, people have a certain conception of depression and when I don't fit that, they don't take me seriously and that SUCKS. And so when people don't fit my conception of what depression is, it's not right for me to turn around and do that to them in reverse. Even if they don't have depression, or they just have super super mild depression, or they just have a very different kind of depression, it's still something that's apparently bothering them and so it's better to just help.
But I definitely understand where you're coming from as well.
But I guess that made me feel like, people have a certain conception of depression and when I don't fit that, they don't take me seriously and that SUCKS. And so when people don't fit my conception of what depression is, it's not right for me to turn around and do that to them in reverse. Even if they don't have depression, or they just have super super mild depression, or they just have a very different kind of depression, it's still something that's apparently bothering them and so it's better to just help.
But I definitely understand where you're coming from as well.
Re: Answers I liked
There's no question that the casual usage of clinical terms like "depression" makes the things they are intended to diagnose or treat harder, or for people to take seriously.
I mean, even though some people get lethargic when eating massive quantities of sugar, I've never heard anyone say "man, I am so diabetic right now!"
I mean, even though some people get lethargic when eating massive quantities of sugar, I've never heard anyone say "man, I am so diabetic right now!"
Deus ab veritas
Re: Answers I liked
Hmm, I disagree. "Send me into a diabetic coma" was a common hyperbolic exaggeration in my household.
I think you omitted a word. Difficult?
I think you omitted a word. Difficult?
Re: Answers I liked
Heidi Book's answer on remarriage after being widowed is simply lovely in so many ways.
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Cognoscente
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Re: Answers I liked
It really is. It's one of the best things I've read on the Board in a long time.Amity wrote:Heidi Book's answer on remarriage after being widowed is simply lovely in so many ways.
Early to bed and early to rise
Precludes you from seeing the most brilliant starry nights
Precludes you from seeing the most brilliant starry nights
Re: Answers I liked
Yes. I was just coming over here to say all the positive things about it. I think it is *phenomenal* that her family was able to have that experience.Cognoscente wrote:It really is. It's one of the best things I've read on the Board in a long time.Amity wrote:Heidi Book's answer on remarriage after being widowed is simply lovely in so many ways.
My family's experience with widowerhood wasn't quite so ideal.... My dad remarried about two and a half years after my mom died. In some ways it was probably "too soon." It was kind of horrible for me and my sister and step-siblings, and for a long time I considered it the greatest act of selfishness I'd ever witnessed from my otherwise fantastic father.
But as I've gotten older I have more sympathy for what he did. My dad had never had his own room until my mom died. My dad is the fourth of six siblings, and he and my mom married when they were barely out of high school. When we lost her seventeen years later, he was unbearably, excruciatingly lonely. I didn't understand that until I was in my twenties and experienced loneliness for the first time, myself.
Re: Answers I liked
I think one of the best things about the Board is when people can write thoughtful answers based on their own experience. Any one of us could have said something platitudinous about how we don't know what other people are going through or how every situation is different, but Heidi's personal experience gives her answer a weight that others can't match.Cognoscente wrote:It really is. It's one of the best things I've read on the Board in a long time.Amity wrote:Heidi Book's answer on remarriage after being widowed is simply lovely in so many ways.
Re: Answers I liked
I'll second what Emiliana said. +1Emiliana wrote:Yes. I was just coming over here to say all the positive things about it. I think it is *phenomenal* that her family was able to have that experience.Cognoscente wrote:It really is. It's one of the best things I've read on the Board in a long time.Amity wrote:Heidi Book's answer on remarriage after being widowed is simply lovely in so many ways.
My family's experience with widowerhood wasn't quite so ideal.... My dad remarried about two and a half years after my mom died. In some ways it was probably "too soon." It was kind of horrible for me and my sister and step-siblings, and for a long time I considered it the greatest act of selfishness I'd ever witnessed from my otherwise fantastic father.
But as I've gotten older I have more sympathy for what he did. My dad had never had his own room until my mom died. My dad is the fourth of six siblings, and he and my mom married when they were barely out of high school. When we lost her seventeen years later, he was unbearably, excruciatingly lonely. I didn't understand that until I was in my twenties and experienced loneliness for the first time, myself.
I've made no secret that I struggled with my father's remarriage. It really did blindside me and my siblings. I doubt I will be ever close to his wife.
But, honestly, how much do I know my dad as a person? Not much: he was always at work—working for me, my siblings, my mom. We don't have very similar personalities: in fact, my personality seems to be much closer to my bio dad's. Go figure.
My grandma's way of processing the grief of losing her only child was completely different from mine—and his!—and that's okay, too! She is happy single, and is someone who can be alone without being lonely. I know some might judge her for that choice, too.