Wotanaz

5614: Nobody's disputing that, but there are healthy and unhealthy ways to compare yourself. Simplistic. A person who is clinically depressed will not "feel better" without therapy (generally medication) no matter how much they smile and make themselves look good. Your logic is very very flawed. Saving another's life at the risk of your own is still a selfish action - you are trying to preserve one of your group, which benefits you. NavahoEverclear: Makes sense. Our instincts are selfish, and can lead us to act in "unselfish" ways.

NavahoEverclear: I doubt there's any 'exact' trigger. Again, that's not a rare way to feel. When you're seventeen, you don't have as much perspective on people as you do when you're older. I would think - well I had the idea that everyone but me spent thursday through sunday partying, then the rest of the week was spent enjoying themselves with friends between classes. Nobody else was depressed ever and everyone but me had the most perfect family and boyfriend (girlfriend). Above all, nobody else could possibly identify with me or my interests. Didn't help that my school was full of "trendy" people who definitely tried to convey that image, and very few of them could possibly identify with me or my interests. Watching people up close will help. You realize that they have their own problems and uglinesses, and you stop comparing yourself to them in such an unhealthy way. Thales: All actions, even the "altruistic" ones, are based on selfishness.

NavajoEverclear: Embrace existentialism Depends on what you mean by "change". Medications will alter the way your brain processes certain neurotransmitters, but not on a permanent basis. Bipolars go through a cycle of depression and elation. Being mostly depressed but sometimes happy doesn't really fit the description. Besides the advice given (all good), it might also help you to keep a mental diary of when you're depressed and when you're not. Is there anything that triggers a deeper state of depression, and what changes on the occasions that you're happy? According to your profile you're seventeen. I don't know exactly what your situation is, but I felt much the same way at seventeen, and most everyone I know well felt about that way at about that age. For whatever reason that is. Your depression may well pass. Mine hasn't. At twenty I am a good deal happier and more secure than I was at seventeen, but I still have long periods of pessimism and gloom. They are not crippling, but I suspect (from talking to others older than I am) that such feelings remain with one all one's life. Analyzing them will help you control them, and physical exercize will help you suppress them. The brain creates its own antidepressents in the form of endorphins.

1) Never had that experience. 2) Yes. I've noticed that my dreams generally have a plot - or rather, they are like Clive Barker's short stories, where one discrete short story bleeds into another. Just like in a movie, the plot moves faster than in real life because the time it has to develop is shorter.

First you'd have to say what the subconscious is, and we'd all have to assume it actually exists...