Автор: abeis003

In the middle of my first term at FIU, I felt that something was wrong with me. I was lazy to do anything, could not eat, sleep and study. I didn’t want to share my feelings, even with myself, I couldn’t accept it, but deeper inside I knew what was going on with me. That was depression. Depression- one of the most frequent diseases in the world, and I believe, one of the most unexplored ones.  A lot of scientists, doctors, and psychologies talk about this illness more and more often, some of them have different suggestions to help patients to go through and win the battle with the illness. But there is almost nobody who can say for sure, where depression starts from and what are its causes. 

As most of the people, who, unfortunately, faced with this problem, I wanted to know how to struggle and get rid of depression. I looked at different sources but nothing really helped me, and then I stumbled upon an interesting video from one popular Russian psychologist- Veronica Stepanova, that helped me fight with depression. However, there were no suggestions or any special treatment, the cure started from the root, from the real reason for my depression. “Most of the people want and like to be in depression.”- she said, I didn’t believe it first, but let’s look at that statement closure and maybe you will see yourself in that, as well as I did a couple of months ago.      

First, I want you to understand that sometimes it is difficult to accept the thoughts that you want to or like to hurt yourself. Veronica Stepanova said that “this is human nature to make everything with the easiest and fastest way, however, the greatest things were done while the greatest misery. And depression is one of an example of it.” Please, make sure, that psychologist won’t talk about long-term depression or the depression caused by pills chemical affect. She will talk about recent, fast depression started after the conflicts between one or more people. 

Mostly, people want to be depressed to show their misery to others, she believes. It is the fact, mostly we feel bad after the conflict. Depression is a great way for others to see how bad you feel, so they will be guilty about it. “See, what you have done to me… this is your fault”, a typical inner monolog of depressed one. An interesting fact, the one who will show his depression first, will be automatically considered as an innocent (Stepanova, 5:03). Don’t see yourself at that point? Let’s look at more evidence. 

Your depressed feeling is concession because of your laziness, says the author, Hedgepom, from psychological magazine OneDio. Smoke cigarettes more, drink alcohol, eat greasy food, that you did not eat before, oversleep, stop treating yourself, careless of the way you look (Hedgepom). Some people, for sure, will say that this is the main factor of depression, and they won’t be wrong. But if you look at it from a different perspective, you may see that it can be the way you want to take pity for yourself. “I feel so bad that I don’t want to take a shower today. I feel that upset, so I have no power to cook today, I will eat the burger. I am so depressed to go to work.” In other words, sometimes, especially, if you live a life with strict rules you can make yourself depressed to give yourself a moment to stop follow rules and relax from your regular life (Hedgepom). The author, Hedgepom, likes to call it a “crisis”. When everything you regularly do is too boring, so you get upset about your life overall.

An interesting hypothesis is that depressed people may have a specific choice is food. This is the conclusion made by statisticians of OneDio.  “People with deep depression don’t want to share their feelings and try to avoid alcohol, so it won’t untie their tongue”, on the other hands, “fast depressed people like to overdrink, so it is easier to them to express the way they feel (OneDio).” Moreover, deeply depressed people like to punish themselves by lack of food, and fast depression patients like to overeat more. So, this is another evidence to support those people with after conflict depression who like to behave more demonstrative and pity themselves in different ways. 

But not all of us may accept this claim, and some scientists say that depression, in all of its display, is a real disease that should be cured with medications. As evidence, the scientific group from King’s College of London had the hypothesis that depression is a hereditary disease, strongly connected with specific gen region, called 5-HHT. This part of the human genome affects the functionality of serotonin hormone expression. Serotonin- the “happiness” hormone. If a person has with region one or two times in his genome, then he is likely to have chronic depression (Rus.Delfi). By this, we can conclude, that people have no effect on their depressive behaviour and it is no more than just a natural disease, happening by biological lottery. 

To conclude, I believe that after this text you may see your depressed condition not that radically, and maybe the real cause hides in your mind. I hope that this will help some of you get rid of depression as it helped me once. I understood that I was the only one who or what made me feel this way, I wanted to show how bad I feel to people I had the conflict with, and pieces of knowledge about it helped me to survive from depression. One African proverb said: “when there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” So, look at yourself first, be honest with yourself and maybe you will see more than you expected.

Reference page

“Depression- hereditary disease.”, rus.delfi.lv, 12 May 2005, https://rus.delfi.lv/archive/depressiya-nasledstvennoe-zabolevanie.d?id=11176776&all=true

Hedgepom, “11 habits of people with hidden depression”, onedio.ru, 10 October 2016,  https://onedio.ru/news/11-privychek-lyudej-so-skrytoj-depressiej-10511

Veronika Stepanova. “Депрессия! / Любовь к депрессии / Психотерапия депрессивных состояний.” YouTube, 07 July 2017,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFUeuu5OrCA.

She was depressed. The cup of ice-cream was next to her. «No, it is not enough», she thought and went to the kitchen to bring a bucket of «Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chips» and pizza and soda and popcorn and more and more…
This is a typical scene from a movie or a book that each of us may see once. Most of the people a familiar with the term depression somehow, maybe even personally.
I was in a process of researching depression’s causes as the feeling of pleasure and stumbled upon an interesting hypothesis that people with depression have a deliberate food and drink preference.
I started to think about that, when I had a deep depression no long time ago, I stopped drinking alcohol at all and could eat no more than once per day. This lack of food is related to two reasons: self-harming and fear that someone will see my depression. My personality is made of the feeling of guiltiness, if something is wrong, I am the one that made mistake, so I am starting to punish myself, for example, not allow myself to eat.

Surprisingly, I am not the only one like that, some phycologists are saying that depressed people and food choice is a certain way of showing your pain. According to the source that I found, there are two types of depression based on food preference, or it is clearer to say the preference to eat or not to eat.

People with spontaneous or fast depression based on a conflict between two or more people are more likely to overeat. This is the way to demonstrate how they feel to others, especially to the one the conflict happened with. People like that allow themselves to eat food that daily they would not eat that often. For example, greasy food like burgers, chips, candies, etc. Moreover, some doctors think that this type of food with a high percentage of fast carbs may make a person feel even more depressed. So, basically, this is the way to make yourself feel worth to show it to others. What somehow connected with the feeling of pleasure…

On other hand, people with deep or real depression, may avoid food at all, this is the type like I explained about myself, needs to mention that this type of people wants to hide their conditions as much as possible, so they may avoid alcohol too, as they don’t want share or show their true feelings by alcohol drunkenness.

So, this information was very surprising to me, and I hope for you too, what I really liked about this fact or hypothesis is that it is something that lay down on the surface but I never paid attention to it, and when I did I was excited how maybe even obvious things can be more complex than they seem from the first sight.

Music is something most of us deal with literally every single day. But have you ever looked deep inside lyrics as a structure, deep meaning or genre?
I wanted to analyze lyrics as a genre to show that song is not just a text with music but something more. As most of us, I didn’t really think about it that deep before, but I believe lyrics carry more than just words.
If it would not, then why songs mean that much in human life throw decades?

The main reason why i choose this genre is the complication of simple things. Music lyrics is an easy way to show your thoughts, feelings, motivate someone or even protest. I do believe it is important to pay attention on this kind of details in our life that little by little and very seamless affect us on a daily basis.

I decided to pick three absolutely different and quite popular songs to show their similarities and compare them to each other. The first one is «You Are The Reason» by Calum Scott, British singer who started with career as «America’s Got Talent » participant. The second one is a popular hit from 2009 by rapper Eminem called «Beautiful». And the last one but not least «Billionaire» by Bruno Mars and Travie McCoy.

The first similarity that i found is life important meaning. All of them sing about feeling that will never get old fashion. Love, success, life struggling or social protest. All of these things will always be in every person’s life and that is the reason why we love listen to music, we love songs about love, believe and happiness, we love something that we are close too. It is like, who would love listen to song about pizza? Of course only those who love pizza! But these songs speak about feelings that shared by all people all over the world. And that is the first thing that they shared.

The second thing, I found interesting, is the way how lyrics are always mixed to each other and the music by itself. Authors try to combine words to make rhymes or the beat, so all put together would be pleasant to listen. For example, here are a tiny parts from each song:

«I just can’t seem to get out this slump

If I could just get over this hump

But I need something to pull me out this dump

I took my bruises, took my lumps«

— Eminem, «Beautiful»

«There goes my mind racing

And you are the reason

That I’m still breathing

I’m hopeless now»

— Calum Scott, «You Are The Reason»

«I wanna be a billionaire so freakin’ bad

Buy all of the things I never had«

— Bruno Mars, «Billionaire»

See, there are highlighted words at the end of strokes that ‘smoothed’ edges between lines and make it more balanced and easier to listen. Not only words and its meaning but also the way how singers represent their ideas plays an important role in perception. Have you even hear a song where words and the beat and the music all together just incongruous and makes your ears bleed? Well, this song probably won’t be your favourite one, even if the meaning of it is unbelievable.

Another interesting and third common fact about lyrics as a genre is using of a figurative language, as metaphors. I do believe this is what make music one of the most beautiful and interesting writing genre. It is like a poem, more complicated and unusual language is, more interesting it is to pay attention to. For example, in Calum Scott’s song he says: «I claim every mountains and swim every ocean, just to be with you…». The meaning is as same as to say «i love you so much» but because of the figurative meaning and comparison of love importance as big as mountain and deep as ocean makes our mind to percept it on higher, more valuable level. This is how lyrics use language to play with our feelings.

I do believe, this is an important genre for society because it connects with every aspect of our life. A lot of feelings, emotions and perceptions of the world, political situations, global problems and so on can be illustrate in music. Songs is one of the most effective way to show you thoughts without being straight and mostly with no punishment, if the purpose was to show a negative side of the government, for example.

Talking about a research, i think this is really crucial to explore as by song we can conclude about psychological, inner characteristics of the author, as well as the auditory that find this songs attractive to them. Exploration can determine todays relationship to certain problems in a world, etc.

The one thing i found interesting is the fact that authors can not write fully and deep enough if they have never experience this situation or feelings. By looking at all singers mentioned above, i can conclude that all of them went to the scenarios they sing about. And this is what makes good song good, you can not fool listeners.

After studying this genre, i came to conclusion that every simple thing in our world make sense and if you will pay attention and will try to understand, you will find something meaningful, even if, from the first sight it doesn’t seems to have any.