Jordan Peterson Series #4 - Advice For People With Depression

Lately, I have been watching and listening to a lot by Dr. Jordan Peterson. I, therefore, decided to start this series, where I try to put into words what he is saying in short clips on youtube. I will also try to share my own thoughts and ideas on the topic.

In this clip, Jordan Peterson is asked how he takes his ideas and applies them to treatments for mental illness I will only write notes on the first half of the clip. You can watch the clip here:

Dr. Peterson clarifies in the beginning that if you're dealing with someone who is really depressed, you should try giving them anti-depressant. As you can't help them if they're dead. A strong statement to start off with. Dr. Peterson often starts off with some fundamental question to understand how much order and chaos someone has in their life. Question such as "Do you have a job?", "Do you have any friends?", "Do you have health problem?", "Are you addicted to any substances?", are examples of question that would help him understand. His experience is, that if you have three out of five of these issues, you are in big trouble. There is so much chaos in your life that if you deal/create order in one chaotic problem, you're most likely to get drawn back by another one. Just when you have closed one black hole, the others get stronger. When a person has nothing but an order in his life, he is often overwhelmed by the chaos, that it freezes him. Structure is the opposite of chaos and Dr. Peterson often tries to apply that into his client's life. Structure is therefore introduced into their lives gradually. It starts off simple. He would ask them to think about what chaos in their life they can do something about. Here he draws reference to former talks as well. The importance of creating structure within your reach. Within the area that you work in. It might be as simple as cleaning up a pile of papers, that has been torturing you for days. He talks about the importance of constantly fixing problem that you are capable of fixing. Afterwards are the importance of not trying to fix things you can't fix, as you would just mess it more up and create more chaos. Structure of life is/and has been an antidote for depression, unhappiness, etc if you would ask Dr. Peterson. Maybe not a direct antidote, but definitely something that would help you along the way.

I know there is a lot more to it than what I have written here, but as you can read in the beginning I am working on my ability to watch a clip, and write notes on it.

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