Links between depression and love

[Apocolypsemeow]

Hello everybody, I'm new to the forum. :] I've been perusing this website for some time and I finally decided to make an account.

So, I guess I should get to the point.
Every time I find myself becoming attracted to a person, I always end up feeling depressed. On the plus side, I become inspired to play music. However, I am unable to fully concentrate on anything for very long, I lose track of time, and I forget to do important things, all because I find myself compulsively thinking about that person. I have read that the serotonin levels in a person who is falling in love mimic the serotonin levels in a person with obsessive compulsive disorder. In spite of these things, somehow people derive pleasure from being in love.

I know that all of what I just said is pretty typical and actually highly sought after for a lot of people, but what I can't understand is why I feel so depressed and sometimes highly anxious when love should feel like a positive thing. I would love to hear everyone's opinions on this insoluable emotion. Perhaps some of you can relate.

 

[cope]

Hi apocolypsemeow, and welcome to the forum. Will you also introduce yourself in the appropriate section?
Like everything else, your body will try to maintain balance. So, with the overstimulating state of being 'in love', you will invite a numbening of the receptors in the brain. Maybe it is a good idea to use your in-love-ness-time also to make friends, for later?

 

[nicklebleu]

Hi apocolypsemeow, and welcome to the forum. Will you also introduce yourself in the appropriate section?
Like everything else, your body will try to maintain balance. So, with the overstimulating state of being 'in love', you will invite a numbening of the receptors in the brain. Maybe it is a good idea to use your in-love-ness-time also to make friends, for later?

Welcome Apocolypsmeow to our forum.

We generally ask newcomers to quickly introduce themselves in the Newbie section, where they also will "officially" be welcomed by an ambassador or mod. It doesn't need to be very personal, just a rough sketch of your journey and how you found to our shores.

With the information at hand I am not sure I can give you a meaningful answer, as this in my opinion depends much on the situation - whom are you in love with, is it love or "hormones", what has happended between the two of you while you were "in love"? Maybe you can give us a specific example and we can take it from there? Or maybe I am just too thick?

Anyway, welcome!

 

[Apocolypsemeow]

Oh, it's a recurring thing. I always get depressed when I feel myself becoming attracted to someone. It probably is some sort of hormonal imbalance, and I suppose it's worth noting that I've been experiencing depression since early childhood. I have gotten quite good at coping with depression by setting goals for myself and making sure I learn something new every day, which is humbling and it allows me to look at life more objectively. By learning new things and looking at myself objectively, I am able to calm my emotions and feel grateful for the wonderful things that life has to offer. I'm fairly new at meditating, but that also helps me find balance.

Perhaps it's the uncertainty of love that adds an element of chaos which throws off the balance that I've tried to create for myself. I don't like that I can't concentrate on anything lately. I find the process of 'falling in love' to be unpleasant...

After reading what I've written, I'm starting to think that the link between love and depression is not as common as I had initially assumed. I will have to research the two topics some more and see if I can gain some insight. Maybe people who have a long history with depression can't experience love in the same way because our brain chemistry is askew. *shrug*

 

[RedFox]

Hi Apocolypsemeow

My best guess would be low serotonin (see the Mood Cure) and/or a particular set of beliefs that is leading to the depression.
These two things would show up as depression as a child too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/brain.shtml

Does love drive you mad?

In 1990, a study in Italy indicated that people who have recently fallen in love have some of the symptoms of 'Obsessive Compulsive Disorder' or OCD. People with OCD behave obsessively about certain things. They might be constantly washing their hands, or need to continually check to see if the door is closed.

Does love make you sad?

Rather than making you happy, love could actually make you depressed. One symptom of OCD appears to be unusually low levels of the neuro-transmitter 'serotonin'. Low levels of serotonin have been associated with anxiety and depression. Italian students who claimed they had recently fallen in love were found to have serotonin levels 40% lower than their peers.

Virility

Another interesting finding is that people with low serotonin levels tend to have a lot of sex. If men have a particular version of a gene known as the 'serotonin transporter', they will have lower levels of serotonin in their brains. They tend to be more anxious than other men and also more sexually active. {too much sex lowers dopamine levels, which can cause depression}

Love on the brain

Brain imaging techniques have been put to use in the name of love. Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki at University College London used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to take pictures of the lover's brain.

Whilst inside the scanner, loved-up students were shown pictures of their new flame. They were also shown images of platonic friends of the opposite sex. Zeki and Bartels were struck by how clear cut the pattern of brain activity was when students were looking at their new love.

Four areas of the brain became active, and one area noticeably inactive, when the students had love on their mind. The active areas include one responsible for 'gut' feelings and one that is known to respond to euphoria-inducing drugs. The lights go off however, in the prefrontal cortex {logical reasoning gets shut down, and all you are left with is raw emotion}, an area that is overactive in depressed patients.

Beliefs that what you are feeling are wrong, or acting on them is wrong can easily cause depression too. That is, beating yourself up for what you are feeling/thinking causes depression.

The thread On Love, and Finding Partners may also be of help.

 

[BHelmet]

Here is another slant or more:

A long karmic history of messed up relationships in prior lives?
Foreknowledge of a karmic debt owed?
Some kind of weird psychic deal with yourself where you just KNOW it is going to end badly and so it does;
The foreboding of the ultimate 'come down'?
On some level you know it is not all it is cracked up to be?
Just the vulnerable feeling?
The fear of being hurt?
The confrontation of trust?
The spectre of responsibility?

.....So many good 'reasons'....'causes'

 

[Kisito]

I hope the poor translation will help you focus :)

If we assume that love of which you speak is love that one feels about a woman, her husband, her lover or mistress. This one is passionate love, and selfish exculif (STS), and is not to be confused with the compassionate love that is selfless, that a mother can have for her children or one that can having for his next (STO). To understand this depresses the face of love, we must in my view to understand what an emotion. I would describe as a shock, due to the meeting of two contradictory information (past / future). Or wisdom, compassionate love isn't influenced in any contradictory information. We can say that wisdom is not an emotion.

I go listed 14 all emotions modeled on our Ego. As are ethymiologie suggests emotion is moving, it is unstable. Here are their rankings, the higher their number, the higher the emotion is unstable, much like atomic numbers and more energy is distortion. 1. Be positive self-estimate/ 2. Be negative self-estimate / 3. Shyness / 4. Trust / 5. Shame/ 6. Pride / 7. Jealousy / 8. Friendship / 9. Hate/ 10. Love-passion / 11. Depressed / 12. Sexuality / 13. Fanatisme fear / 14. Fanaticism joy.

As for the analogy between passionate love and depressed you mentioned, we see two things: one that the emotion of depressed is located on the border of passionate love and sexuality. The second thing we see clearly that these 14 emotions are divided into two equal groups: Fear and joy.
Therefore, it is sufficient that passionate love is somewhat disrupted, the energy is concentrated there by our ego is heading either towards sexuality, as is more often the case, or whether by depressed.
I hope I have been able to enlighten you.