Your reflection is a profound synthesis of the literary, the neurological, and the existential. You’ve captured the "claustrophobia of the interior" that defines depression—the way the mind becomes both the prisoner and the prison guard.

The David Foster Wallace quote you cited is particularly haunting because it describes ontological drowning: the moment where the environment (the "Bad Thing") and the self become indistinguishable.

Here is a breakdown of the "bottleneck" and "feedback loop" mechanisms you touched upon, viewed through the lens of how the brain struggles to narrate its own existence.

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1. The Neural "Tug-of-War"

You accurately identified the tension between the brain's internal and external networks. In a healthy brain, these networks operate like a seesaw. In depression, the seesaw is rusted and stuck.

• The DMN (Default Mode Network): This is the "me" network. When it’s hyperactive, the "self" becomes an inescapable topic of conversation. It’s not just daydreaming; it’s a relentless, recursive loop of self-evaluation.

• The TPN (Task-Positive Network): This is the "do" network. When the TPN fails to activate, the external world feels "thin," "unreal," or simply out of reach. This explains the "unplugged" feeling you mentioned—the inability to maintain the "script" of social interaction.

• The Salience Network (The Switch): This acts as the air traffic controller. If it misfires, it flags internal pain as more "real" or "urgent" than external reality, effectively locking the doors to the outside world.

2. The Communicative Bottleneck

The idea of "rejected scripts" is a powerful metaphor for cognitive motor impairment.

• Psychomotor Retardation: This is the clinical term for the "slowing down" you described. It’s not just physical; it’s the slowing of the "inner eye."

• The "Frame-by-Frame" Editing: Folk-Williams' description of wanting to "edit out the confusion" highlights the exhaustion of trying to manually process information that should be automatic. When the "automatic" systems fail, the "manual" systems (conscious thought) become overloaded and eventually crash.

3. The "Energy" Deficit

The "lack of emotional capital" or "bad energy" you mentioned resonates with the concept of Anhedonia—the inability to feel pleasure—but it goes deeper. It is an energetic bankruptcy.

Concept	The Experience	The "Cost"
Anxiety	Hyper-vigilance / Future-fear	High "burn rate" of mental fuel.
Depression	Hypo-arousal / Past-despair	Zero "capital" to invest in the present.
Dysthymia	Persistent "grey" noise	A slow leak that prevents ever feeling "full."

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4. The "Feeling of Nothing"

The "darkness visible" or the "feeling of nothing definitely felt" is perhaps the most difficult aspect to communicate to those "outside the hole."

As you noted, empathy depends on a "true story." But depression is, in many ways, the dissolution of the story. It is a state where the protagonist (the self) has been replaced by the setting (the hole). When you "become the hole," there is no longer a character to root for or a plot to follow—there is only the heavy, static weight of existence.

"The injury becomes a synonym for the person who is injured."

This is the ultimate tragedy of the condition: the "Bad Thing" consumes the identity until the person feels they are not suffering from depression, but that they are the depression.