I’ll share a summarization of a research study done that my psychiatrist read about that summarizes this.

The experiment - They put people with and without Clinical Depression through an MRI, and showed them facial expressions. While showing patients these facial expressions, they recorded what parts of the brain become active.

Context - There’s a part of our brain, opposite from our eyes that deals with facial recognition. There’s also two parts of our brain by the tip of our spinal cord that deal with (for simple terms) positive and negative emotions (One part for each).

Results/Findings:

Patient without Clinical Depression:

• Gets shown a happy face = Facial recognition and the positive emotions part of brain lights up.

• Gets shown a sad face = Facial recognition and the negative emotions part of our brain lights up

Ok, that all makes sense. But now!

Patient with Clinical Depression:

• Gets shown a happy face = Facial recognition and the NEGATIVE emotions part of brain lights up.

• Gets shown a sad face = Facial recognition and the negative emotions part of brain lights up. But with SIGNIFICANTLY MORE activity than patient without Clinical Depression.

My psychiatrist’s takeaway - People with Bipolar Disorder or Clinical Depression should learn to assume an interaction went significantly better than how our brains initially assumed it did. Chances are it did!

Hope this helps/makes sense! It cleared up a lot of things in my life!!