This is important.
I think one of the fundamental cognitive flaws that underwrites one’s depression is the idea that energy is something you either have or you don’t.
How typically of depression : a false all or nothing binary.
The truth, as always, is more dynamic : energy is something you can give yourself by doing things that pump you up.
Healthy people know this intuitively, so intuitively in fact that they don’t know they know it and therefore can’t explain it to us lost children.
But their motivational routines include it and that’s why they work. They grasp that motivation doesn’t go straight from 0 hp to full blast from a cold start,.
It comes in stages, and each stage contains the energy to boost to the next stage. Just like the gears in an automatic car.
I use a surprising number of automotive metaphors for someone who can’t even drive and has to memorize license plates to tell which car is a friends’.
A : What kind of car does he drive?
Me : Um…. kind of grey?
A: Seriously? You’ve been in his car thousands of time and you still don’t know what kind of car it is?
Me : Well it’s not like there’s labels everywhere….”
Anyhow, asides aside, the key principal is that there are ways to GET energy (or motivation or inspiration or whatever) but you have to put in the initial effort to get things started in the first place.
You need to install some spark plugs.
Spark plugs don’t power the car. All they do is provide the spark that ignites the fuel and after that the engine is running on gas.
So depression’s bleak and narrow view that you either have ALL the energy to do something or you just can’t do it is just plain wrong.
And that error is a vital cog in the way depression conspires to keep you down.
The truth is that you can have the power you need if you want it.
So do you want it?
But Fruvous, if I accept your theory, that might lead to my doing things and I am in general against doing things ever so I have to reject your theory!
Well then it’s not really about energy or motivation or whatnot, is it? So you can stop lying to yourself about that. You now know that the power to do what you want is available to you and it’s a matter of your choosing not to do it.
As for what will pump you up, I obviously can’t tell you that. It’s too personal and individual. Only you know what things make you feel inspired.
But the main thing is to fight to want to be inspired. To let inspiration in and give it permission to call the shots.
To stop fighting yourself and your own motivation. To put your all into combatting the anti-action bias and accept that if you truly want to get better, that is going to involve actually doing things, with no guarantee of reward.
It’s up to you to stop clinging to the bottom so you can float to the top.
And that means giving up the safety and security that is god damned killing you.
More after the break,
The energy miser
Think about that seminal example of financial constipation, Ebenezer Scrooge.
He ruthlessly and compulsively hoards money even though it doesn’t make him happy. At best, it makes him somewhat less unhappy.
But like any addict deep into their habit, he no longer pursues his drug because it makes him feel good, but because stopping would make him feel bad.
He has more money than God and it still barely keeps his demons at bay.
The ultimate irony is that he can’t even spend it on himself. Richer than beef gravy and yet in terms of material pleasure, Bob Cratchett lives better.
If he hadn’t inherited that house from Marley, he might be living in the street. Or his office, sleeping on his desk.
And it’s all because his mind is stuck in a state of false scarcity. No matter how much he has, he still feels like he’s desperately poor and can’t afford to spend one farthing more than absolutely necessary or everything will fall down around his head.
In his head, he knows that’s not true. But it’s the demon tormenting his very soul that is in charge and it knows no such thing.
And that’s what depression does to the relationship with one’s own personal energies. It creates a perpetual state of false scarcity.
The body most definitely has the energy to do the same range of human activities that healthy people eating the same diet and getting the same amount of exercise do.
For those of us who are obese, one might even say we’re quite rich. Energy galore. A million dollars in the bank.
But depression tells us otherwise. Its propaganda constantly tells us that we are barely surviving and we have to do and move as little as possible or we’ll die.
Ultimately it all comes down to reward. It’s the anhedonia that kills you.
Motivation falls apart when the pleasure one should get for doing things disappears. You stop doing the work because you’re no longer being paid. The stimulation of the reward center of the brain that is one’s “pay” for every action dwindles to next to nothing and one becomes an addict and a slave to whatever can press that reward button the hardest with the least amount of effort because that’s the only way the cost/benefit ratio of effort versus reward can work in your favor.
In the lab experiment of life, we are the rats who have to keep on pressing that goddamned lever as fast as we can just to stay marginally sane.
This is where religious faith can help. It allows the mind to invent an independent source of reward stimulation that is purely internal and therefore cannot fail.
Not an option for many people, sadly.
But perhaps freedom begins with the realization that you do not need reality’s permission to be happy.
You can go ahead and be happy for no reason. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Maybe not bliss. That could get messy. But enough joy to keep your head above water.
Give yourself permission to stimulate your own happiness at least that much.
Who knows, it might even work.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.