Well, due to a complete and total lack of focus or motivation today, I totally failed to get anything much done in the way of submitting or editing, so I sure as hell better justify my existence by writing something.

Luckily, I have hilariously entertaining high content value vaguely new thoughts about the nature of depression that I am just aching to share with you all.

I know, I know…. even more ill formed navel grazings about your mental health issues? Can this be truly truly truly true? Can you lovely, intelligent, and sexually transcendent people get any luckier?

I know, I know. I spoil you people. I can’t help it, you are just so adorable!

And to answer your question : nope. You cannot get any luckier. So relax and quit trying!

Anyhow, depression and stuff.

It occurs to me that part of the desperately maladaptive pattern of depression, at least of the dysthymic variety (you know, us boring depressives that just hide from the world and don’t bother anyway while we die a little more each day inside), is an intense over-reliance on keeping everything quiet and calm.

Like a lot of maladaptive patterns, it is in some ways the reverse of a healthy person’s response.

A healthy person goes out into the big bright loud scary world, and (not being cripplingly avoidant) stays there and learns to deal with it. As they are exposed to the higher levels of stimulation, challenge, fear, uncertainty, and emotion, they slowly acclimatize to it, develop their own effective coping methods for dealing with it, and after a period of doubt and confusion, emerge with a sense of their own power and independence and a conviction that they can handle life’s challenges and overcome them.

And all because they hung in there long enough to adapt, grow, and succeed.

Contrast that to the depressive pattern, which is to enter reluctantly and draw an immediate conclusion based on a very small amount of evidence…. namely they immediately conclude “I can’t do this” where a healthy person might not even think to give up or escape that early in the process. This fits with a generally avoidant personality, which deals with the world via collapse and withdrawal…. essentially identical to an animal’s submitting and fleeing when faced with a stronger competitor…. and hence, the individual never learns that they can hang in there, overcome things, and come out of it stronger.

Thus, their belief in their inability to handle life is reinforced, causing them to further withdraw from the world, often writing off enormous avenues of life based, again, on a very small amount of negative experience. In adaptive terms, this is like cutting off your arm to avoid the slightest possibility of another hangnail.

The rest of the cycle is clear. By withdrawing even more from life and experience, the person gets even less of the valuable life experience that might help them to better adapt to the world, and thus their self-image of incapacity is even further reinforced, and they withdraw even more, until they are living the highly proscribed life of a shut-in or worse, and cannot even begin to imagine how to escape their situation because they have completely abandoned all notion that they can take on the world and succeed.

What causes this destructive behaviour pattern? Why does one person persist and succeed, while another person fold, give up, and retreat, over and over? What taught this second person that the best thing to do when faced with stressful situations is to give up and flee?

Presumably, there is no single cause. But I have come across a bit of data that might shed some light.

I read recently that a study was done investigating the differences between the ways men and women play with their children. The main difference in play styles centred on what might be considered rough play.

Mothers tended to be extremely protective, keeping their children far away from all danger, discouraging energetic, exuberant, or enthusiastic play and in general emphasizing quietness, low levels of stimulation, and highly danger averse play patterns.

Fathers, while of course being very concerned about their children’s safety as well, tended to stimulating their children, and encourage them to try things which scare them, and which might get them a little hurt. And when their kids do get a little hurt, the fathers were far more likely to encourage their children to try again. Overall, they emphasized more exuberant, energetic forms of play, were more tolerant of noise or mild danger, and encouraged their children to try new things and overcome obstacles and fears.

If we imagine that evolution had provided these two approaches to parenting play for a reason, and that both are needed to raise a healthy, balanced child who can face the world with both caution and courage, then it is not hard to imagine that if one of these roles is absent or insufficient, catastrophe can result.

A child without a strong influence in the “mother” role might grow up to be rash, impulsive, quick to anger, overconfident, and have great difficulty with issues of self-control and gentleness.

Conversely, a child with a deficit of the “father” influence, might well be timid, afraid of the world, passive, insecure, and seeking unrealistic levels of safety, stability, and comfort in the world.

Sounds kind of like what we are talking about, doesn’t it? I have to wonder about a possible relationship between avoidant depressives and mother-centric upbringing. The father does not need to be absent or weak. He just has to fail in his role in stimulating the child to try things and succeed.

This might be because said father figure is simply too angry, impatient, or otherwise unpleasant to be around in order for the necessary connection and trust to be built.

It seems more than a little weird to say this in this modern era, but there might well be some truth in the anachronistic notion of the timid “Mama’s boy” after all.

And the mothers in these cases are not doing anything wrong. They are doing what their every instinct tells them is right. But it simply is not enough. There needs to be both influences.

This is only a theory, of course, and one that will likely ruffle a few feathers. A superficial take on what I have said here might lead to accusations of misogyny or the like. That is neither my message nor my belief.

But is it so wrong to think that a child is better off with both parents?

And what happens to the ones who are left all alone to be raised by television and the Internet?