What is depression meta-physically?

[LastThursday]

@Joseph Maynor what is your take on the meta-physical aspects of depression?

Edited 16 hours ago by LastThursday

[Heaven]

Depression is a lack of serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain. 
In a meta perspective I don’t believe it exists.

[Judy2]

48 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

It is important to acknowledge some mental illness has a physiological component.

yes, precisely.

it might also be a matter of genetic predisposition to experiencing more negative affect in general.  ane differences in neuroanatomy and neurochemistry as well. with bipolar disorder, for example, the brain goes through cycles of increased flexibility vs increased rigidity, which corresponds to manic and depressed phases.

Edited 15 hours ago by Judy2

[Judy2]

20 minutes ago, Heaven said:

Depression is a lack of serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain. 
In a meta perspective I don’t believe it exists.

but the brain does exist?

anyone who has ever experienced depression can probably attest to the fact that it is more real than "serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain".

Edited 15 hours ago by Judy2

[Joseph Maynor]

31 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

@Joseph Maynor what is your take on the meta-physical aspects of depression?

It depends on how we interpret the past and also how we treat certain things in the present.  

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, Joseph Maynor said:

It depends on how we interpret the past and also how we treat certain things in the present.

That seems like stating the obvious to me. How specifically?

[Jirh]

15 hours ago, Vynce said:

Where people, out of the blue get the feeling of "no feelings". 

1. Depression is not just no feelings. General emotional numbness is a symptom of depression, not all of it. Depression itself actually feels like a heavy burden, which mutes out the bandwidth and ability to feel positive feelings.
2. There's no such a thing as out of the blue. Nobody lives in a vacuum. But there is often a breaking point, where bad environment overpowers the individual mind's capacity to stay functional. Hence, the seemingly sudden shift.

[Heaven]

5 hours ago, Judy2 said:

but the brain does exist?

anyone who has ever experienced depression can probably attest to the fact that it is more real than "serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain".

Depression has degrees. I believe that a healthy body can help a lot.

[PenguinPablo]

Not being (able to be) yourself.

 

[Judy2]

54 minutes ago, Heaven said:

Depression has degrees. I believe that a healthy body can help a lot.

yes:) 

[Vynce]

1 hour ago, PenguinPablo said:

Not being (able to be) yourself.

 

Spot on I'd say. 

Like God unwilling to give you more excitement, since you couldn't even act on the primary excitements. Whatever belief you had that stopped you from pursuing it.

I found living with this logic to be very anti-depressive. 

[Carl-Richard]

7 minutes ago, Vynce said:

Spot on I'd say. 

Then you'd like the thread I linked 👀

[PenguinPablo]

1 hour ago, Vynce said:

Spot on I'd say. 

Like God unwilling, to give you more excitement, since you couldn't even act on the primary excitements. Whatever belief you had that stopped you from pursuing it.

I found living with this logic to be very anti-depressive. 

Spot on as well. 

Your description is very Jungian.

I'm 50/50 on whether you knew that.

Anyway yes, the theory goes if you do follow your souls purpose then nothing will work out and/or you will be miserable and dysfunctional.

 

Edited 7 hours ago by PenguinPablo

[Vynce]

49 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Then you'd like the thread I linked 👀

good stuff, I just read through it.

[oOo]

On 09/10/2026 at 9:21 AM, Vynce said:

Specifically the non-organic (no brain tumor ect.) kind of depression. Where people, out of the blue get the feeling of "no feelings". 

I wondered if "being closer to" / "conscious of" God is the opposite of feeling of "no feelings".

I noticed how my own depressive tendencies quite precisely aligned with me not being conscious of Truth/Beauty/Goodness/God ect. 

Hence nature, plants, animals, new smells, new sounds, laughter, physical activity ect. are so anti-depressive. 

Let me know how I could be wrong and or what depression could be meta-physically. Or if this question cannot be answered like that at all. 

 

This is a really interesting topic for me. My interest in Technopsychiatry, a term that I hope to make popular in the future, particularly in virtual reality, is in how technology shapes connection, identity and meaning. In the second part of my response, an idea that I came up with while responding is “meta-spaces”, which can be used by anyone now to start designing and thinking with this kind of vocab to help explore this area and develop approaches to depression. 

From an existential perspective, I would distinguish three overlapping gaps that may contribute to depression:

- Socially: between the connection we desire and the belonging, understanding and recognition we experience.
- Existentially: between what we believe would make life meaningful and the purpose we actually experience.
- Through agency: between what we want to bring into being and the meaningful influence or progress we experience through our efforts.

I see two common themes across these categories. First, a gap between desire and feedback; so what life gives back, including our own internal response, may not meet the underlying need.

Second, a gap between meaning acknowledgement and meaning integration. Acknowledgement means recognising what matters to us. Integration means emotionally processing its gain, loss or transformation, and adapting our identity and actions accordingly.

Someone might achieve the fame they wanted yet struggle to experience fulfilment, while someone losing it might struggle to rebuild their sense of self. Obtaining a desired outcome and integrating what it means are different processes. This is one lens on depression, rather than a complete clinical explanation.

A possible pattern across all three:

Disappointment > Absence of perceived resourcefulness > Learned helplessness.

Disconnection > Misalignment > Learned helplessness.

Disintegration > Confusion > Learned helplessness.

Some variant of learned helplessness seems to be one common underlying pattern, and that’s from the smartest person one can imagine to the seemingly most socially capable person. Where the gap becomes personally meaningful differs, so with the “genius”, perhaps it’s the existential, and with the socialite, perhaps it’s almost like an “emotional dysphoria”.

Where the digital intersects here is not necessarily as a cause but as an interface by which those patterns can play out, often more easily in our capitalistic environment, and the potential resulting depression can manifest.

People from many different psychological, sociological and neuroscientific fields of expertise are paid big bucks to maximise engagement in digital products, sometimes through something like “the addicted gambler effect”.

Your description of nature, beauty and movement could reflect moments when meaning becomes something you directly experience.

For your example then, given the massive contrast there can be between integration with God and the most beautiful things in life, and the artificial life the digital world tries to falsely sell, I think all three patterns can work simultaneously.

1. The disappointment between expectation and reward/cost.
2. The disconnection between alignment and sense of self/other.
3. The disintegration between understanding existential self-consciousness and actually being able to live from that understanding.

One of my goals in VR is to investigate whether carefully designed experiences, progressing from smaller to larger emotional challenges, can help people practise this resolving of their sense of self across all three; as that’s where a lot of this seems to be at, isn’t it? Depressive distress, viewed through this existential lens, can involve a lack of resolution across at least one scale of one’s sense of self.

By creating opportunity spaces for resolution spaces to emerge into something meaningful for a person to learn from, that’s where the promise lies in using the immersive virtual to address important areas of a complex subject like depression. The question is whether that learning produces lasting change that carries into everyday life, and whether those positive impacts are more direct or indirect depending on the challenge, including difficulties that existed before the simulation.

I feel that when it comes to helping with areas around deeper spiritual connections like with God, the job of virtual reality is most likely never going to be direct. But instead creating simply the right intelligent spaces that facilitate positive indirect effects. And there are many ways of doing that because the underlying pattern in many of the experiences I’m thinking of seems similar, no pun intended, and that’s learned helplessness; but in its niche for the particular form and manner in which it manifests.

If I were a psychologist and I was trying to help someone with depression, or if someone wished to explore this for themselves through some kind of dialectical self-reflection, that’s where I would land my introspective explorations, so the unique manner in which learned helplessness might be manifesting. Then slowly creating the opportunity spaces, in mind or out in the physical like connecting with nature as you say, to create an environment by which resolution spaces can co-occur.

A resolution space is an interesting idea. An analogy I would make there is like preparing a romantic date with someone. The opportunity is the date, the environment and what can happen within it. The resolution space is where the emotional and mental baggage we bring along can be worked through, and whether those two environments can mesh to allow clarity of mind to forge enough for meaningful learning and change to become possible. The hope is that this learning, and the plasticity involved, might in return ameliorate parts of the depression. I don’t know that there is much literature on this particular framing as a psychotherapeutic technique, however in principle I believe it could work or at least facilitate.

Now to the second part of my response, an idea I came up with while writing is meta-spaces; a conceptual toolkit for designer to sufferer as I said, and feel free to improve it, it’s just something I’ve come up with on the fly.

A meta-space is simply a space in which humans can experience consciousness.

It’s far more straightforward than one might realise.

Need > Opportunity > Resolution.

These are three spaces.

Prediction Effects > Expectancy Effects > Responsive Effects forge how what I’m calling a Gauge Theory of depression interacts with those three spaces.

What I mean by Gauge Theory is literally what it sounds like: it’s the brain gauging where it’s going to be in the future, expecting certain outcomes in that future and, whether it’s accurate or not, how it responds to those results, and whether it responds passively or proactively.

To separate prediction from expectancy here: prediction is what I think will happen; expectancy is what I’m emotionally counting on happening. Those aren’t always the same thing.

This version of Gauge Theory is something I also came up with while writing. Humorously, we all know that one person who complains no matter the social environment they enter. It’s not even necessarily that there is some defect in spaces to do with their needs, opportunities or resolution, despite the overlaps. It can have more to do with how their brain is making predictions, the expectations it makes here and how it responds to the results in reality, including the accuracy across all three, and whether their response is more passive or active.

These kinds of people are not necessarily “depressed”. In fact, what’s interesting is that Gauge Theory doesn’t directly equate to depression; instead it could be more of a catalyst and compounder, because people with shit gauge dynamics, emotionally speaking, may also be extremely resilient people. That said, if someone learns more flexible mindsets across these three overlapping categories, combined with their resilience, they might be better equipped to handle the kinds of setbacks that can contribute to depression. 

This is where I think fortune-cookie sayings actually have their utility much more than we might have thought, when they’re strategically balanced across those three heh.

Meaning, all those people speaking affirmations, rereading philosophical quotations and so on each day, it’s not necessarily all mumbo-jumbo manifestation nonsense. It can actually be useful if it fits the person, along with the placement and timing in the context of those categories, helping balance the world between actuality and the imagined of say what they want versus what they want to avoid.

For example, some people say:

Prediction - “I don’t make predictions for the future; it will come soon enough.”

Expectancy - “I can want something without needing it to happen exactly as I imagined.”

Response - “Whether I gain it or lose it, what can I do with what comes back?”

But here’s the interesting thing, where someone balances with respect to Gauge Theory depends on where they fit with respect to the meta-spaces and where someone fits relative to the meta-spaces is also impacted by Gauge Theory, moreover both are affected by how their personality and environment contribute.

This is part of what makes depression so individual, which is why self-knowledge can be so pivotal to recognising the learned helplessness that may contribute to the depression unique to the person.

And self-knowledge becomes a compounding positive here when we have the right map to work with. The better self-knowledge and self-understanding someone has relative to their life situation, the easier it may become to gauge predictions, expectations and responses around situations in which they are vulnerable to depression. And so anyone here now has what I hope to be a useful formula to work with, or at least a beginner set, as I totally get it’s a lot to take in all at once, heh.

Within this framework, need is shaped by biology and self-consciousness, interacting with our circumstances. These also interact to shape transcendent needs and subsequent spaces, the latter which is still very much up for grabs especially in the virtual and just general imagined spaces to invent within.

If the opportunity space or resolution space is not available, our sense of control over outcomes can be compromised.

If the opportunity space or resolution space exists but is specifically inaccessible to us, our sense of agency can also be compromised.

So all in all we have:

1. Disappointment, Disconnection and disintegration as both individual and overlapping axes

The next is the environment in which it occurs in, even if that environment is one's own inner world, which is where the meta-spaces come in, from survival to transcendent dream spaces.

2. Meta-spaces meeting > Gauge Theory

The next co-overlap with the "Effect Spaces" from Gauge Theory and how it impacts:

3. Sense of control and sense of agency.

And across these balances, we return to the meeting ground between learned helplessness and depression. 

All in all, what I've proposed here is certainly not something I would say is complete, so what's another pattern here? It's that depression isn't something illusive, it can be mapped and that mapping can be learned to help prevent depression. The gap that needs addressing is the distance between not only from knowledge to empowerment but moving all the way from implementation to integration so it doesn't even need to be thought about in practical day to day anymore. There's more dynamics, but I've learned something from this, thanks for the read. I'll leave the rest to everyone else. 

For virtual reality, I see the most promise with helping depression where it directly positively impacts sense of control and agency, especially where it opens up the plasticity of the Possibility Space of imaginable alternate to real worlds. For one, the plasticity with which someone can reimagine themselves and the environmental space of where both intersect on their problem space, has a big correlation for me on the resilience and boundaries of a person's resolution space for integration to lead to healing and from healing to fulfilment.

Lastly, to come full circle to your original question, "what is depression meta-physically", its when depression becomes a relationship between connection and transcendence. For you as you've detailed so far, and correct if I am wrong, its the connection between the real and the sublime. At first glance, it may feel like creating virtual reality may be in the opposite direction one would want to go in to help someone with questions around how to solve their depression. How I would approach that accurate reality is that what we're dealing with is not an argument over what is more in alignment with God in the literal sense, but whether we can imagine and create problem-resolution spaces that give people the feeling of empowerment to solve similar kinds of problems in the real world. That, I think is much more achievable, and can be done with the transcendent. For now, keep enjoyin that sunshine aye!

My writing here is a little messy, and there's more connections I can make, but that's what I have so far. Thanks for sharing this angle to explore, appreciated!

Disclaimer: This are on the spot my non-biological theoretical causes of depression, it speaks neither of biological influences nor the biological impact that these theoretical causes can have which require a more physiological approach. Rock out, stay dancin!

 

Edited 1 hour ago by oOo

[Salvijus]

16 hours ago, Judy2 said:

i think this is a tricky one.

in a way, mental illness (or, at the very least, recovery) is a choice, but in a way it also isn't.

that's something that needs to be experienced for someone to even begin to grasp the depth of that.

It's impossible for you to be without love unless you chose to value something else. No condition of the body or the brain, not even death can impede the freedom of your Will. Your Will originates from the Source and the Source is eternally illness free. That Will is synonymous with Love and that is what You Are. 

Edited 30 minutes ago by Salvijus