I have had a pretty serious depression that lasted for around two years, and am still trying to get out of it. I've noticed that depression, and probably other mental states, is something you don't see in other people unless you have had similar experiences yourself. Now I can see that friends of mine have gone through a depression by the cues they have left, but I would never have noticed this before - if you haven't been there yourself you won't see it.

I'm pretty sure that mental problems of one sort or another are much more common than you would expect, but it's one of those things that it is still a taboo, so you never know how widespread it is. So you should know that you aren't alone at all. Almost everyone has to go through one or more major crises in their life.

As to how to move on I think you're on the right track - accept your mental state and whatever baggage you have and start working with it. Once you accept that you are what you are and that this is OK you are halfway there. Next make sure you have friends or family you can talk to. They'll tell you that they love you no matter what, and that if you were different you wouldn't be you.

Accepting who you are is much harder for you than it is for the people around you. Judging by your post it looks like you're well on the way to acceptance of yourself. I'm sure you'll be OK.

I'm posting this under a single serving account made for this purpose because I'm a regular cotributor here and don't need to have my personal life and problems all out in the open, but if you want to contact me let me know in the comments and I'll reply by mail.

This is a topic worth discussion -- I bet a lot of people here have some of these issues.

For your writing, I'd suggest continuing it, but putting it into some kind of "buffer" so that it doesn't get immediately posted to your blog. Then trim it down to the best, most polished entries, and pass it through some friends to review before being published. I think PG does something like this for his more significant/weighty essays.

I too have panic disorder, OCD, PTSD and mild depression. I also used to be hypervigilant and a hypochondriac. Being hypervigilant means that you are constantly monitoring your body for signs that something massive is wrong. I used to get a mild chest pain and would turn that into angina. Or I'd get a headache and convince myself it was a tumor. Fucking miserable.

I've been battling the panic disorder for the last 7 years or so. PTSD for the last 15 and everything else since day 1.

I have one recommendation for you and it's cognitive behavioral therapy, aka CBT. It's less talking about all the stupid shit your parents did, and more about changing how you think about these particular issues.

I did my fair share of medications (nothing too major, ad's like effexor and zoloft and benzo's like ativan, klonopin and xanax) but I don't do any of them anymore thanks to CBT therapy and the growing understanding that everything is temporary. When you're facing down a vicious panic attack, considering a call to 911, I've found I can stop the entire process in it's tracks by simply acknowledging that this is all temporary and transient. Sounds so simple, but it's so very hard to do. Takes a lot of practice.

I've beaten the mild depression by forcing myself out amongst humans and participating with people socially. Really, anything that puts you out of your head.

My two secret weapons, beyond CBT therapy, have been marijuana and poker. Poker has definitely hardened me quite a bit, but more importantly it's helped me grow my own power base. Any activity that satiates ego is good for people like us.

Marijuana, counter intuitive since it typically promotes anxiety in people, has really kept me out of my head for the most part and definitely greases the wheels in terms of accepting my lot in life and the issues that I deal with day in and day out. It really is my Adderall. I can't wait for it to be decriminalized.

Finally, the biggest thing I did to change it all around was quitting smoking tobacco. That one single thing probably caused the biggest change out of all the things I've tried.

Anyways, hope that helps.

I know nothing about hypergraphia, but I question the assumption that your desire to write could be "channeled" into coding. I don't think it's necessarily true that two superficially similar activities are really scratching the same psychological itch.

When I had a blog, I'd inevitably find myself posting inappropriate personal confessions on it... hence the reason I do not have a blog. I've ruined relationships with brutally honest emails.

This makes me suspect that your itch is not writing per se but self-revelation. Have you tried taking up painting or sculpture or some other art form as a hobby, so that you can express your feelings in a way that gives you more plausible deniability, so to speak?

Or learn a conlang and make your inappropriate personal confessions in a language that only ten or twenty other people in the world can read fluently. :-/

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."

Is your mental illness diagnosed (other than a self-diagnosis). I am not implying at all that you are, but am merely posting this for the community's sake: mental illness is serious (much like any other illness) so if you do seriously suspect mental (or other) illness seek professional diagnosis.

(It could also reveal that the symptoms are that of a physical illness, at times with an easy cure: I've a friend who experienced anxiety/OCD issues but the doctor recommended that he instead take up exercise and get fresh air which essentially wiped these issues away).

It makes some sense that serious trolls are mentally ill.

How did you get into meditation? What kind of meditation do you practice?

I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I just wait and persevere.

I've had to wait through dark times: hoping the suicidal thoughts will go; hoping the crying will stop; hoping I won't take the final step.

And, then, hoping the good will never leave; hoping my thoughts will continue to accelerate; hoping the pen won't stop; hoping the music in my head won't slow; hoping to dance, and wanting to run forever.

I don't deal with it, I just live with it.

I have an intense compulsion to write. I'm good at it. I can pound out 2000 words of coherent English prose in half an hour.

I wish I could do that. I always found writing for my English classes was incredibly difficult, especially as the length requirements grew.

Don't suppress your intense compulsion to write just because it got you into trouble a few times... It is a gift. Manage it.

1. Always send your stuff to a few friends before you hit the publish button.

2. Don't write inappropriate personal confessions. Invent a character, have them live the inappropriateness and call it fiction.

Edit: 3. Revise the shiz out of your work until it is good enough that others can enjoy reading it.

Currently facing a massive challenge, and I have no idea of how to deal with it; to put it simply (but still very accurately), if you put me in jail for a few years with a computer and full internet access, it'd be pretty much the same as it is for me now.

The only reason I'm still sane is the internet, but that can't help xmas being very, very lonely. I dream of the day I get my life back. :)

My girlfriend is bipolar. I met her when she was going through a medication change, which was not fun, and she recently had to take a year off from school to deal with her condition, which was hard. She seems to be doing much better and things have calmed down with her.

I've heard some people say that it's not worth it, since those kinds of things "never go away", but she means a lot to me. I feel that mental illness is only one aspect of such a person, with pluses and minuses (one such plus being that it makes her a stronger person).

A huge number of people at my school have Asburger's, and many are on meds for it. I've seen a lot of them become much more stable and balanced people, mostly because of increased exposure to people like them as well as normal people.

Personally, I've found I've developed a very high tolerance to people with personality quirks.

Have you been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (AS)? Many of these problems sound like symptoms of AS. Many, many programmers have AS (it seems computers were made by and for people with AS (see the book below)). I've worked with several whom I suspected but weren't formally diagnosed. They were miserable because the couldn't understand how to deal with people on a functional level.

The key is to understand the root of the problem. Some of the coworkers would be diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and the like while AS was the painfully obvious condition (though anxiety, etc are very common in those with AS).

Read this book ASAP: The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book.php/isbn/9781843104957

try writing a novel. i know people working on books that push very hard to get 2000 words a day.

For almost a decade 18 to 28ish (early 30s now) I dealt with obsessive thoughts and in turn anxiety that stifled me being myself around others/enjoying myself. 18 to 24 before I went out of state to finish my studies I had a ton of friends. We did stuff day in and day out, but i could never enjoy those times as I was filled with anxiety and could never be myself.

Fortunately I talked about my problems a lot. My mom went thru the same thing and said that I would grow out of it, which I did after many years.

I tried various anti-depressants and stuff, but for me they never helped me ... time did though, as well as talking about it(this made me realize Im not crazy/not the only one)!

Don't just try to turn your hypergraphia into hypercodeia ;-) A lot of people find that by writing about things they learn about them. For example, if you write a tutorial about a certain algorithm, a certain programming language, or whatever, you're forced to learn the topic well.

Perhaps you could write content about things you want to learn with how you went about it, what you did, what you learned, and relay all that to other people.

Get a blog, don't do any personal blogging, but just blog about your programming adventures. I love to read such stuff because I get to enjoy the results of other people's experimentation!

I am speculating; Inevitably posting confessions and trolling seem to involve a need for attention perhaps? This may be a result of your earnest interest in fitting into your peer group at an earlier age?

Sometimes I have a problem with anxiety and OCD. Generally I can control the OCD but sometimes the anxiety is overwhelming when I'm stressed.

When this happens I've found exercise to be a good release. I'm able to clear my head and work out all the nervous energy.

Perhaps you could have a journal instead of a public blog? This way you can still write without the side-effects of telling everyone your secrets.

time_management, I admire your courage and understand your need to post this subject here on HN. Though your motive is to create a real debate around the subject of mental problem, some of us go through every day, I don’t think HN is the right platform to do this; here is why.

Mental illness in general is a very complex topic, unlike headache, flu or any other disease; it is not something the regular person (the healthy person) understands. Those who have never suffer from any form of mental problem tend to think that it is a philosophical problem; they think that by thinking too hard they can somehow come up with an explanation of a solution.

I also have to agree that Hackers community seems to be one with a high ratio of people with some sort of mental disorder. I have suffered from depression myself and all through my career many of people I met had some sort of mental problem.

I have to say that Hatha Yoga can be quite helpful. (But be careful because some people tend to see it as a religion). It's more of a physical and mental concentration exercice (Probably like your meditation).

Although It helped me a lot, i don't practice it anymore. But it's worth a try.

Good luck!

I'm good at it. I can pound out 2000 words of coherent English prose in half an hour.

Damn, that's a problem I've always wished I had. I write too, but not much. I find that writing and coding to be very different activities, at least for me, so I'm not sure you could channel that energy into coding. From the sound of it, your writing compulsion sounds like it is more a matter of putting down your thoughts rather than creating something, that is, its not very cerebral. Coding, requires a filter between you and the keyboard, so this sounds like it would be a major stopper.

It does sound like you could make a nice political columnist/author: something like Limbaugh or Franken.

You've already won more than half the battle. You seem to have made a very studied and pragmatic analysis of yourself and you've shared that with your peers. That is a lot more than most people will ever do and it's certainly a big part of learning to control the the personal quirks which bother you. But you seem to have done that already to a large degree and that's commendable. It's almost the new year and I'm starting to think of my own goals for 2009 - your post makes me start to think of some things of my own which I'd like to change. Thank you for writing this post.

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It helps with your energy level and your immune system too . TRY B12 and let us know what you think . It changed my like .I was begining to forget things and now even my memory has improved because of the daily B 12 and B Complex

http://www.veganhealth.org/b12/sympt

I used to have panic attacks but they stopped after taking zoloft and eventually I grew out of them. I have cyclothymia and I deal with that pretty easily. When I get manic I obsess over thinking of new ideas and new approaches to problems that I have. I use all of my will to stay logical during this time. When I start getting off of that mania I start actually implementing the solution. Also, I think that taking martial arts and my logic class have helped me weed out the idiotic thoughts to and to get more structured thoughts.

I have been dealing with dyslexia all my life. I tend to make a lot of spelling errors and editing my own work is particularity difficult, because I read what I think I see so "My god's namme is Rex" reads "My dog's name is Rex". The best tools at my disposal are: - a text to speech reader - spell check - a thesaurus (The spell check suggestions are hard to tell apart )

Do tech jobs discriminate against mental illness? By saying they couldn't possibly be competent? I think some jobs discriminate by default, by looking at someone's CV, which could be tainted by periods in hospital. Myself, I have a mental illness and haven't been able to find work. It's up to me to sell my own software to make a decent living.

If you live in a state where medical marijuana is legal, you might talk to a doctor about seeing if this can help you.

I've had a friend with a similar problem with anxiety and panic problems, and this really seems to help her. (She tends to do it in the evenings when she can't shake that panicky feeling, but not while working.)

I would imagine the following would be of help:

1) think positively

2) set some goals for yourself

3) direct your energy towards those goals

The first step is the key. Without the right attitude the rest of it would be difficult. If you can bang out 2000 words in 30 minutes, then you have a talent that can be used to help others and yourself.

Thanks for sharing - I wish you the best!

I don't think you view your mental illnesses as something you want to change. i.e. "... so I regard it as a blessing, though a mixed one." "My most beautiful but also damaging..." The post gives the impression you want to be seen as a damaged butterfly. I know someone very like you. He has the same hyper-sensitivities, trolling, avoidance of drugs, obsessive writing and hacking. I class both of you as classic INFPs with a strong need for self-expression.

My friend made a couple breakthroughs with his life a few years back. He got into drama/acting and films. These things made him far happier and he began to express himself in a more positive manner. Maybe you should try out this area. It is a good way to get some decent friends.

Why code as opposed to novels? And what are you looking for? Some suggestions on how to get into coding, or ways to improve your coding?

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Socialise with like-minded people - I play darts a lot with friends, its a mildly obsessive game, but also a social one.

have you tried eating differently, or moving to the country side, does that help at all?

A friend of mine who I won't name here is an accomplished sci-fi writer/critic of no little repute whose "day job" is technical writing/documentation, which is how I know him, since we worked for the same company at one point. I wonder if you have ever considered technical writing? If one is really good at/enjoys writing but also knows how to program, this seems like it would be a good fit. A strong technical knowledge combined with strong writing skills makes for a good technical writer I think. The downside is that during layoffs, the documentation department is the first to go it seems like, but the upside is that advanced writers can really make a lot of money, especially if you develop skills in the tools of that field, such as RoboHelp. Just a thought.

I'm mildly depressive. Mental issues are very common among smarter people. Meaning: you're quite normal. :-)

* see a psychiatrist and possibly get on a drug. Can be very helpful.

* see a therapist

* start a regular exercise program and stick with it. Huge benefit there.

* limit carb intake, especially simple carbs.

No offense, but the lot of you commenters just need to get out more.

I wasted a lot of my youth and early adult years psychoanalyzing myself in order to learn and master myself, when going out into the world and participating and exploring it, having relationships with people, is the true path to self-actualization.

Extrospection is the path to enlightenment

the rest of us are fine, but thank you very much for asking