It is remarkably simple.
Some people seem to get that instinctively. These people tend to be “hyper”. They automatically turn their bodily energies into the urge to actually do things and this makes them high energy type people who, ideally, get a lot done.
They might still be anxious in the moments where they have to slow down, but at least they are being productive towards their own ends.
Contrast that with dysthymic depressives like myself whose entire motivational structure is clogged with the ice cold sludge of depression and thus that motivation cannot lead to action and instead leads to frustration, anxiety, resentment, and yes, more depressive.
It’s like having a seized engine. Stomp on that accelerator all you want, you still are not going to get anywhere and the strain of the engine trying to move the car will hurt like hell and make you feel crazy so you will stop even thinking about trying.
Thus, the depression conditions you to live a very limited life. A life limited by what your seized engine will allow. And because you don’t know what the problem is, you can’t explain why you can’t do things that, from the outside, it seems like you are perfectly capable of doing and that definitely would help you if you did them.
But you can’t and you don’t know why.
The solution, of course, is to get all that gunk out of your engine and un-seize it. And that is more or less what therapy is for, whether it’s the traditional kind or journaling or shouting harshly at trees.
Don’t worry, they’re old, they can take it.
But it takes more than getting the gunk about. You have to break the conditioning that seized engine forced upon you. You’ll have to convince your sluggish mind that it is okay to press gently on the accelerator again.
This will not be easy. That kind of deep conditioning operates on a level far below the reach of our usual conscious mind. You can’t just order yourself to forget all about that set of rules and be ready for new ones.
To be honest, I don’t know how one breaks that kind of conditioning. I have not developed this line of thought far enough for that yet.
The classic Skinner-box answer would be that you have to condition a different, healthier response via positive feedback. In this case, that would mean revving the engine and getting a positive, reinforcing response instead of pain or fear.
Simple enough in theory but I am not quite sure how one arranges that when this is mostly happening in your head.
Got to find new, rewarding, life-affirming experiences, I guess.
And become less dependent on always doing the same damned things. The last line of defense my depression has against any kind of newness or progress is that cold, exposed feeling I get when I contemplate going outside the usual even for a little while.
Like the world outside my narrow little existence is some kind of cold and brutal ice planet that makes Antarctica look like Club Med.
But it’s easy to grow to feel that way when you never go out there or even look out the window. It’s a way to make yourself feel better about “choosing” to stay in.
Instead of just putting on a fucking jacket.
For all you know, it’s nothing but warm sun on green meadows under a brilliant blue sky out there now.
And even if it isn’t, you’ve got your coat and your scarf and your toque and you know that, with those weapons, you will quickly get used to the cold once you’re out there.
And you’re getting cabin fever from being stuck inside for so long anyhow.
So get the fuck out there!
Aaaany minute now.
More after the break.
The work of life
Life is work.
To be a live human being on this planet is always going to require doing things that are not inherently fun and thus take effort – in other words, work.
The only people who come close to getting out of that are the very rich and the very sick and even they have to invest a little effort into their lives now and then.
Even if someone brings you your meals in bed, you’re still the one that has to eat them.
And this is why treating effort as the enemy can be so deadly. And addictive. There’s nothing wrong with trying to live your life with a minimum of tedium and drudgery… as long as you still live your life.
But if this healthy desire for efficiency turns toxic, it can turn into a pathological avoidance of anything except for the things with the absolutely highest effort to reward ratios that exist.
Those are the things that become addictions. Junk food, liquor, drugs, video games, even risky sex or for that matter, knitting.
All it takes is for it to stimulate the reward center of the brain.
And thus you have the dysthymic life : doing as little as you possibly can while fixating on one or two very high reward activities and making them the center of your life.
Like me with video games.
Breaking the hypnotic trance of dysthymia is not easy. Trust me on that one. Finding the living spark within you that doesn’t want to live life like you’re in a coma will take a fair bit of digging and letting it ignite the rest of you be a gradual and painful process of slowly bringing yourself back to life.
Right now I am trying to rouse myself enough to make a quantum leap to my next energy state so I can become more active in my engagement with life and less of a passive barnacle clinging to the underside of life’s vessel and spinning my wheels while pretending I’m getting somewhere.
There’s a hell of a lot a world waiting out there for me and I am eager to go out and get my own slice of it.
But I’m scared.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.