Member-only story
What I Learned About Depression From Business Finance
How the ‘Sunk Cost’ Fallacy explains why people throw good money after bad and why you might stay depressed longer than you have to
I fell into a depression a few weeks ago. I’m just coming out of it now.
Falling into a depression is a lot like falling into a hole. Once you hit the bottom, all you can see is the walls. You completely forget that beyond the rim of the hole, the world is bright and sunny. You forget that there are mountains and trees and the birds are singing.
All you can see is the muddy walls of this hole you’re stuck in.
And after a while, you start to think that everything, your entire life, looks just like this. You forget you’ve ever known anything but being in this hole. It looked like this yesterday. It will look like this tomorrow. There’s nothing to look forward to. There’s nothing to look back on.
You’ll be stuck in this hole forever.
But then the depression lifts.
Depression Causes Amnesia
You tie some vines together, make a rope, and you pull yourself out. And the world starts to look brighter. You see the trees. You hear the birds. You see the…
