Dysthymia is a relatively unknown condition, which 1/6th of the general population appears to be prone to develop, and may be actively affecting up to 5%.
When it takes hold onto someone, they really need to step away from the activities they love for a while, if at all possible.
Otherwise, the emotional memories spawned by this dreadful condition can get inextricably blended with the desires to see projects completed, making it at worse impossible to continue.
Dysthymia can be characterized as mold having grown over critical thought processors in the brain.
Trying to Think, at that point, becomes truly distressing.
The experience is very much overbearingly physiological, rather than the more tractable psychological one, which outside observers may end up ascribing to the situation.
Those who have never had this condition will obviously find it very difficult to understand. It is often misdiagnosed as an ongoing form of āmild Dysphoriaā.
However it is absolutely not a mild condition.
When it has taken hold, if there is a sudden stressful situationā¦ the consequences can be truly disastrous.
Aaron Swartz wrote of his experience: āGo outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you donāt feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness.ā
But it is not sadness ! It is far far worse.
It is as primal and as irrational as the deathly fear of mice (which also only a small slice of the population appears to experience).
This is something along the lines of an Instinct of Self-Destruction.
Evolutionary Game Theory explains quite well how such an instinct can be beneficial for a species as a whole, even if it wonāt be nearly as useful to the specific individuals involved.
Eckhart Tolle concludes, after telling Oprah of the way he "hacked himself out of his condition":
āā¦ and the next morning, I woke up, and looked around, and everything looked so fresh, all the old furnitureā¦ the pencilā¦ Everything looked fresh and alive, and I could [hear] bird song outsideā¦ wow ! As if Iād never heard it before ! Because the mind had become still. And there was simply the beautiful perception of things, the sunlight coming through the curtains, āincredible !ā I saidā¦ Iād never seen that beforeā¦ā