Which comes first ? Alcholism or Depression (or cheese biscuits) ?

[The_Real_David_Charles]

I'm long term bipolar and am currently supporting a depressive son.    There is no support from my O/S family.  But they are well supported to the point of addiction by alcohol.    Many a contact ends in drunken tirade or judgement calls.  But none of these family members have been diagnosed with depression or other mental health issues (apart from being English).

Is it a complete waste of time to deal with such difficult relatives ?   I've had 3 previous suicide attempts so don't feel such abuse bodes well for my own health, which is actually OK at present.   Stress triggers the crap out of us, so to speak.  Is there a way of keeping in with my loser English relatives whilst maintaining a calm and healthy support to my Aussie family ?

Adios, David.

PS   Am I jumping the gun to think that the alcohol in this situation is masking what was a very abusive childhood, emotionally and physically for all my brothers and sister ?  Is this there way of "connecting" with hard times ?  Can I have the cheese biscuits now ?

[Mel_D_1978]

Cheese Biscuits comes first because cheese is yuck and that would make me depressed.

[The_Real_David_Charles]

Dear Mel D.

But cheese biscuits can be depressing too if you forget to take the wrapper off.

Adios, David.

PS  In some parts of cheese making France the bank holds onto the massive cheese rolls (8m wide) as colateral against investing in the farming business.   And anyway, it takes cheese longer to mature than cheese biscuits.

[S_A_D_]

I've been working on the basis that "cheese and crackers" was a metaphor. Cheese is what people say when they want a fake smile for photos, which is related to the concept of false pretences and being insincere and dishonest about your feelings. Crackers is what people are often referred to after having a nervous breakdown, synonymous with mental illness.

I figure that "feeding the moderator's cat" is a metaphor too, perhaps for procrastination and/or when something is so pointless that trying to feed a cat that's already been fed would make more sense.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

I've recently been introduced to the hierarchy of needs, and on first instinct it appears to me like a malarkey of .. reeds.  Living your life by a recipe sounds like one for disaster.

[Dayna]

I believe it is all a vicious circle and you end up eating cheese biscuits because you can't even get up to actually cook something! I have many alcoholics in my life and they are beautiful people who honestly, sometimes you just want to slap because they can't see how great they are and don't know how to fight for themselves. In my experience most people drink because it is a way to mask pain and the alcohol fixes that and makes you brave. But it is only a mask and the real you is fighting to come out and live a true life with no guilt or regrets. The same can be said for depression which I have suffered over the last 12 months. We all need to embrace our lives, the good and bad and take a lesson from what we done and try our best not to go down that road again. Good luck to you and your son David.

[S_A_D_]

Rodentdron, and for all who wonder about how models are applied to our lives,

You say "living your life like a recipe sounds like one for disaster," yet you are doing this now and you always have. In fact, every human being that has ever lived uses models to achieve desired results. If you want to make a cake, you are more likely to make a cake that looks and tastes the way people expect it to if you follow the clearly articulated recipe designed by people who have extensive experience in replicating that cake thousands of times with near perfect results.

The same principle applies to any action you wish to do to achieve the most effective possible results. Think of an orang utan trying to access the edible core of a nut with a strong shell. If it were to be pounded with the orang utans wrist it would hurt, and no deliver nourishing results, so that model would be abandoned. It might try putting it on the ground and hitting it with a rock, and it wouldn't hurt, but still fail to deliver results. It would simply push the nut into the ground. This would tell the orang utan that the rock is strong but the ground is weaker than the nut, and the model would again be thrown out. If put on a boulder and hit with a rock, it might crack and the orang utan can eat it, or it could bounce off and disappear into the distance. Today, humans use nutcracker devices that can shell hundreds of nuts per minute with high reliability.

Once upon a time it was firmly believed the Earth was flat. When you look at the horizon, it appears perfectly flat. Later, some people posited that the earth was a sphere, and were declared heretics. This was later proven beyond reasonable doubt as an accurate model, but then people started thinking it could be egg shaped, and they were laughed at and embarrassed. Satellite photography can now prove it is in fact an oblate spheroid (egg shaped). Each time the model being proposed was able to explain existing evidence, and also explain something the former couldn't, like why the edge of the world can't be found despite an extensive search.

The hierarchy of needs is a theoretical model for determining motivational reasoning and the source of emotions. It can also be applied bidirectionally, however this is merely a model, and like all models it has flaws. The important thing about scientific models is not how many ways it doesn't apply. The important thing is that it explains more about the world than previous models. This is how we learn more about the world, and how to function effectively within it.

There are other theoretical models for explaining motivations and emotion, some of which act synergistically with Maslow's Needs, and some that have attempted to debunk Maslow's Hierarchy. Depending on which perspective the psychologist you speak to prefers, you may hear them advocate one model over another. The best psychologists are impartial, intentionally failing to become subjectively preferential. By advocating contradictory theories, we can determine the efficacy of theories under development. If a new theory is supported by the evidence used to support both of the contradictory theories, and is also falsifiable, it has the potential to win it's author a Nobel Prize for the advancement of science.

This has been an explanation of basic science, which is vastly different from the way that basic science is used to help us function in the world, called applied science. One way to apply Maslow's Hierarchy to your life is to ensure reliable access to air, food and water before concerning yourself with getting married, servicing the car, and updating your Facebook status. An even more oversimplified version of this model is through "priority status":

Do the important and urgent stuff first

Do the important and non-urgent stuff second

Do the less important and more urgent stuff third

Do not do the unimportant and non-urgent stuff, ever.

My current position on the hierarchy will determine what you decide to prioritise as important and/or urgent. If I have a stockpile of food in the fridge and pantry, and a reliable supply of tap water, it's status as a need to acquire food and water will fall significantly. I am certain that if my access to these supplies was impaired, I would not be thinking about the excellent TV show I might be missing at that moment, or if I my appearance was respectable enough to be seen and saved by emergency services.

It is very important to consider these things from a mental health perspective too. It is not enough to consider what you consider to be important and/or urgent currently, because your circumstances will change and that can be confusing unless you have a working hierarchy model. It doesn't have to be the same hierarchy Maslow determined, but we all need one, and we need to communicate our hierarchy, including it's mental health aspects, to the people who love and care for us, so that they know how best to help us.

Do you have goals for your health? Which hopes and dreams take a higher priority, via urgency or importance, over other hopes and dreams? If you've thought about following a recipe created by mental health professionals, which details a step by step process of achieving specific goals toward overcoming the problems you face, such a structured approach could dramatically ease the stress associated with evaluating the potential benefit of certain achievements, allowing you to focus on getting better. Again, I include the caveat that all models are flawed, and it will not happen perfectly. Then again, was the first food recipe you followed on your own able to produce a carbon copy of the pictured dish? It was with practice that you were able to replicate a picture perfect dish, and we are talking about achieving something far more challenging that making a cake. We're talking about saving lives, and it could take years, decades, or the rest of my life to achieve mental health. It is possible I may never get there, but every day I put the effort in I get better at reaching the next step of the recipe.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

It just feels sterile to plan out your life to that extent.  I don't think life fits into those boxes.  It also kind of reminds me of these people I see going to a hundred different types of therapy but never actually going out and doing something *real* like go fishing, or take a walk on the Riviera, or start that business they've been idly "preparing for" for years.  It typifies the "You can't learn to plough by reading books" mantra.  I'm sure at least some of this is me projecting, as "getting out there and doing it" has been one of my problems, but I still feel like it's there.

You obviously know more about it than I do, but it also seems to me that the order in whats-his-name's list is kind of arbitrary.  People will go on hunger strikes for moral reasons.  Being creative is often an outlet for people who don't have love, safety, etc.  Some people don't give a crap about property, which is apparently one of the second-tier needs.  I don't know how safety of property can come before self-esteem; if you don't care about yourself why should you care about your inanimate objects?

[S_A_D_]

Well Done Rodentdron,

I am very impressed. Either you've done your homework on this, or you have a natural aptitude for critical thinking and analysis. Either way, you should be extremely proud of those two paragraphs right there!

Hierarchies are a generalised, stereotypical guide for needs. Nobody plans their life based on a hierarchy, but it might give them a clue to what's most important to them if they're confused, trying to decide between two options or paths they can take in life. Like any model, it is flawed and inaccurate, but describes the essence of the principle. As you've pointed out, there are many exceptions, but these are infrequent. Most people fall back on their hierarchy when life circumstances take a dramatic shift, and immediate needs change (for better or worse).

"You can't learn to plough by reading books." I love this quote. This exemplifies the difference between basic science and applied science. The difference between theory and practice. We need both to function effectively. A good model provides the theory, which we then apply to our lives to improve standard of living, or whatever.

As for what things go in what position, esteem and respect are higher on the pyramid because they are not necessary for survival. In the spoilt Western world, property is less important than the hierarchy suggests, but how much could you go without before you considered it of a higher priority than esteem? Keep in mind that your property includes clothing, basic shelter (cave or tent), and the tools you might use to build shelter, repair clothing, catch food, and prepare a meal. A good survival tool is matches / lighter / flint & striker for making fire to cook food with. Do you know how hard it is to make fire without tools? 

For obvious reasons the tools themselves are less important than the food when you are starving, but you would probably favour the tool over a chance of food if you could be confident of another chance at food a short time later (like when catching a fish makes you drop your sleeping bag in the water. There will be other fish. Let it go). Property gives us a sense of safety. It assures us that we can control our environment effectively enough to survive. Big screen TVs and smartphones are consumerism, and fall into the "Self-actualisation" category at the top.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

Oh no, praise - that most suspicious of feedback.  Makes me feel like I'm in a terribly linear video game, being led along a path that I have no choice about following, by a plot-dumping avian character who otherwise has no personality and is conveniently always found at the area where I've just defeated the boss, but didn't help me fight him himself.  "Hootity hoot!  Congratulations, Frogdor!  You've successfully won the Headband Of Dreams from the evil Moist Dog Prince!  Now you must brave The Ivory Lake to rescue the Blue Princess and her Shoes Of Recumbency!  Hoot hootery Hootaroot!".  Stupid bird, I hate you!  Yeah, you'd *better* fly away!

I recently finished a short online course (basically a series of videos, coupled with a forum populated by what seemed like ESL students and various propagandists) - Introduction to Psychology - and the hierarchy of needs was mentioned a week or two before you mentioned it here.  It didn't particularly interest me so I've only got superficial knowledge of it... like.. the fact that it exists.. and it can be shown as a pyramid.

Point taken.

[S_A_D_]

Hmm, interesting. Receiving compliments and encouragement makes you nervous, anxious and suspicious. As far as I know there are two possible reasons:

1.  Something undesirable has happened shortly after receiving complements in the past, like when people are nice right before telling you bad news. This is called conditioning, and if performed enough times we can learn to associate receiving complements with the expectation of bad things happening.
2. I have written at length about the effect that our ignorant society affects the confidence and self-esteem levels of people with mental illness. The influence of peer pressure is so powerful it changes our inner voice, so we tell ourselves what we hear others tell us even when they're not here. There is a long thread on harmful comments others have told us, and they hurt because we listen and absorb it. We learn to expect and anticipate more hurt from those people, even when they are being kind. We analyse and read into things and see meanings that were never intended. We lack the trust and confidence in them to be consistently gentle with us, and we're not confident enough to reject or slander bad/harmful advice, or reject the source from being a cruel influence on us. This lack of confidence in ourselves is reinforced by a culture that strives to keep the community peaceful and calm, even when keeping calm is more harmful than oppositional/confrontational attitudes.

It is also possible that both of these possible reasons are combining, each having a smalll influence, and yet together they combine and feed on each other, generating a feedback loop, reinforcing the pain. Suicidal ideations like mine develop when a feedback loop develops on both reasons which are both of significant severity.

Learning psychology helps me understand myself better, and provides elaborate coping mechanisms for when I'm struggling. I hope you can find a way to apply the theory you learned in your online course, and share those principles with others here. Not only is the act of teaching others the most effective form of memory encoding (to retain what you've learned), but in a forum like this we get a lot of feedback which increases both elaboration and mental mapping for more effective recall of those newly encoded memories. I'm sure you're aware of the massive (and increasing) need for an accurate representation of psychological science in a  forum for people with psychological illness. QED, right?