https://blog.thomas-bray.com/tags/depression/Recent content in Depression on Rabid CuriosityHugoen-usThomas BrayThu, 23 Apr 2026 06:30:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression/Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:30:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression/<h2 id="the-performance-of-planning">The Performance of Planning</h2> <p>In my worst depressive episodes, making plans felt like church youth group theatre. I was performing.</p> <p>The audience was a small cast: authority figures who needed to believe I had my life together, and myself — the harshest critic, who knew exactly how hollow the performance was. I would map out courses each semester with the same enthusiasm I might bring to a role I did not want. To my professors and advisors, I appeared organized. To my peers, I seemed to have it figured out. The secret was that planning itself had become a coping mechanism, a way to generate the appearance of forward motion while standing perfectly still.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/depression-anxiety-and-new-guy-syndrome/Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:10:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/depression-anxiety-and-new-guy-syndrome/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>Starting a new job is stressful for everyone. For people managing anxiety and depression, it can be genuinely destabilizing. The ambiguity of a new environment, the pressure to prove yourself quickly, the absence of established relationships and social capital—all of these hit harder when your baseline is already taxed. &ldquo;New guy syndrome&rdquo; is my term for the specific cluster of experiences that comes with being new somewhere when your mental health is already a factor. This post is about navigating it.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/zoloft-as-my-soma/Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:15:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/zoloft-as-my-soma/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>In Brave New World, soma is the drug that keeps citizens content, compliant, and untroubled by the weight of real experience. When I started taking Zoloft, I worried about something similar—that I was trading authentic suffering for chemical comfort, blunting the edges that made me who I am. This is a post about why that framing was wrong, and what psychiatric medication actually does and doesn&rsquo;t change.</p> <h2 id="key-points">Key Points</h2> <ul> <li>The soma anxiety: fears about medication changing identity or dulling experience</li> <li>What SSRIs actually do at a functional level</li> <li>The difference between treating illness and altering personality</li> <li>Reflections on before and after: what changed and what stayed the same</li> <li>The stigma around psychiatric medication and why it persists</li> </ul> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Zoloft didn&rsquo;t make me a different person. It made me more capable of being the person I already was. The soma comparison gets it backwards—it&rsquo;s the illness, not the treatment, that narrows your world.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/shackles-of-anxiety-and-depression/Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:05:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/shackles-of-anxiety-and-depression/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>Anxiety and depression are often described in clinical terms—symptoms, diagnoses, treatment protocols. That framing is useful but incomplete. What they actually feel like from the inside is more like wearing shackles: a persistent drag on everything you try to do, a narrowing of what feels possible. This post is about that experience, and what it means to start removing the shackles one at a time.</p> <h2 id="key-points">Key Points</h2> <ul> <li>The difference between describing mental illness and inhabiting it</li> <li>How anxiety and depression interact and reinforce each other</li> <li>The specific ways they constrain decision-making, ambition, and relationships</li> <li>What &ldquo;getting better&rdquo; actually looks like from the inside</li> <li>The residue that remains even after significant recovery</li> </ul> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>The shackles metaphor matters because it implies agency. Shackles can be removed. Understanding what they are and how they work is the first step toward taking them off.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression-2025/Sat, 29 Nov 2025 14:35:00 +0000https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression-2025/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>This post will delve into the relationship between monetary discount rates and depression.</p> <h2 id="key-points">Key Points</h2> <ul> <li>Explain monetary discount rates and their significance.</li> <li>Discuss how depression can affect decision-making and discount rates.</li> <li>Explore potential solutions or interventions.</li> </ul> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Wrap up the discussion and highlight the importance of understanding this relationship.</p>