The language of depression has a voice and controls us. Anxiety, apathy, despair? All these feelings permeate the words we choose, modify our lexicon, distort our grammatical patterns and even the length of the sentences we say. Everything is shorter, darker and marked by this deep bitterness that completely blurs the watercolor of our reality.
Depression gives clues and enters through the windows of our house in different ways, however, your main skill and ferocious cunning is to distort everything: our behavior, our motivation, our lifestyle, our thoughts, our language?
- On certain occasions.
- Far from reacting to all this.
- We end up renouncing and assuming its presence.
- Integrating it as part of our being.
“Depression is a prison where we are prisoners and jailers. “-Dorthy Rowe-
We say this for a very specific fact. There are people who come to normalize these moods; men and women who often continue their duties and responsibilities, not without much effort, but without their surroundings noticing this shadow and the weight of depression.
In addition, new technologies have now been developed in terms of programming models, which has allowed to identify language models related to this disease over the Internet. The results demonstrate, once again, the high incidence of this disorder.
The University of Texas, for example, conducted a study in which it was able to detect depressive traits in the social media interactions we use, as well as in the Internet forums; our teens, for example, have become accustomed to frequently using social media as environments where they can communicate, communicate and express themselves.
We often find clear clues about some psychological disorders that are not being treated, simply because the person’s environment has not identified symptoms of seemingly normal behavior.
Remember: does depression leave marks, clues, and evidence in the style of communication we usually use?
The language of depression is part of our culture, this phrase can draw our attention, but it is an obvious fact, there are songs that are the emotional reflection of an author who goes through a very complex or dark stage of life. I love these lyrics, because in fact we identify and revel in sad stories and songs. We have, for example, the songs by Curt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
We also see the language of depression in the world of theatre, literature and poetry. Sylvia Plath, a renowned poet, said: “Dying is an art, like everything else. What do I practice extraordinarily well?” Virginia Wolf has also left clear, and sometimes even open, clues in most of her books about the existence of depressive feelings. Examples can be seen at The Waves or Ms. Dalloway.
In some cases, as can be seen, mental disorders invoke that creative genius that appears almost like a demonic chord, an agreement where success, recognition or creative mastery usually demand the end of the author’s life, sad and desperate developments that they were intuitive, that it could be perceived, because the language of depression is bitter, has very striking patterns and is the mirror of a disturbed inner world.
Let’s see how we recognize him
Earlier this year, a study published in the scientific journal Clinical Psychological Science revealed a way to detect depression through language and we are not referring to oral communication, as we saw at the beginning of the text, but to a number of computer systems capable of analyzing social networks and forums and detecting certain disorders.
It should be noted, for example, that experts associate such expressions with people who already have suicidal thoughts.
One curious thing is that the language of depression often use a pronoun almost exclusively: “I”. The world in the mind of the depressed person becomes tiny, reduced and oppressive.
In this small territory of suffering, only the person lives, that self that can no longer connect with anyone, who cannot see the prospects of his life, who cannot feel empathy, relativize, cannot open himself to other worlds, winds and more. optimistic currents.
Thus, the constant use of first-person verbal times is a reflection of those negative emotions that completely boycott the protagonists of this discourse.
Language is a reflection of our thinking and mood, so when depression has conquered a vast mental territory of our brain, it is common for rumination, it and its endless cycle of obsessive thoughts to be present as well.
This habit persists and looks like stagnant water. Nothing is renewed, it is the same current that comes and goes through us, moving the same bacteria and microorganisms until we get sick.
Therefore, it is common to hear the depressed person always fall into the same conversations, the same negative ideas, always the same doubts and obsessions, there is no point in asking him to stop, stop, change his speech or think of something. More. They just can’t do it.
In conclusion, if we are able to perceive that our family and friends give the first clues of depressive language, we can facilitate intervention and their subsequent recovery, it is an act of great relevance, especially when we look at the younger population. , our children and our teenagers.
There are those who confuse certain behaviors or communication styles with a teenage crisis, but these dynamics and expressions do not reflect a personality style, in fact they show an underlying psychological disorder.
So let’s learn how to identify the language of depression so that we can respond better, prevent it more accurately, and better treat a disease that has a greater impact on the population every day.