My life. Random web content. The usual crapola.

Crapola, of course, being the ironically self-aware cut-rate competitor of Crayola. Crapola… because really, who has six bucks for a box of crayons for some dumb kid?

Been trending towards relatively good mood more often than not lately, which is peachy keen cool. I think venting my frustrations with my life at my last therapist’s appointment did me a lot of good. Clearly, I have a lot of stuff that needs to come out, and the emotional constipation that normally prevents that has got to be eased up somehow or that shit is going to kill me.

Don’t worry, that is as far as I am taking that metaphor.

Wait, one more : anyone know the name of a good emotional laxative? And please don’t say “tequila”, liquor is bad news for diabetics.

Okay, now I am done.

Wandering back in the general direction of the last known sighting of the point, I clearly need to internalize the lesson that feeling bad means it is time to vent. There is no point in suffering and feeling crappy and hating my life (I hate my life, by the way) for a long time when the solution is clearly just to get all that negative meshuganah stuff out of my system so that the sun can rise again within my soul.

Activity helps a lot too. I really enjoyed cooking for my roomies Tuesday night, and it made me realize that I actually like to cook. It is just the false negative of lack of motivation that keeps me from doing it more often. Well, that and the old “easier to get motivated to cook for others than for yourself” thing all cooks face.

But depression’s anti-action bias really is a terrible illusion. It makes all activity seem like too much bother and convinces you that whatever it is, you won’t enjoy it, and you will wish you had not even bothered, and so you might as well do nothing.

Heck, it even convinces you that by doing nothing, you are actually coming out ahead, like you almost did something but at the last minute, you decided not to, and really dodged a bullet there. You actually feel smug and smart for going back to lassitude after whole seconds facing the terrifying prospect of actual action. Thank goodness you are so good at completely surrendering at the slightest pressure against your life negating fears! You might have actually changed something.

And this continues even after you have had experiences which give you the exact opposite input as the delusion, namely, things which are quite active that you enjoy greatly and were totally worth the effort you put into it.

You might think that would convince a person that the heavy anti action bias was lying to them when it told them not to do it, you won’t enjoy it, just stay safe.

But no, that same voice defends its grip on your psyche by convincing you that you really did not enjoy it that much, and wasn’t it awful to be so exposed and out in the world for so long, away from your teeny tiny comfort zone, and aren’t you ever so glad you can just crawl back into your hole and pull the lid down tight and go back to the very state you hated before you did something and which you will hate again in just a few minutes.

Again I am reminded of the cartoon I once saw of the prisoner in his cell screaming “Let me out! LET ME OUT!”, but when the cell door swings open on its own accord, the prisoner looks at it in horror then slams it shut so hard the whole room shakes, and then goes back to shouting “LET ME OUT!”.

Psychologically, you might say that he has been a prisoner so long that it has become his lifestyle, his safety, his identity. And when it comes to psychological priorities, absolutely nothing, sometimes not even survival instinct, beats out our urge to preserve our sense of identity. Nothing terrifies us more, and on a deeper level, than a threat to our sense of who we are. People will die, or more likely kill, rather than modify their sense of their own self, especially as they get older.

So one of the biggest challenges facing a depressive, especially one who has suffered from the illness for a long time, is that you have a firmly cemented depressive identity and this is the primary cause of the terrible strength of your anti-recovery responses when people attempt to help you.

This is exacerbated by the extreme emotional conservatism that depression engenders. Depressives have a distinct tendency to feel as though they are just barely holding things together as it is, and therefore absolutely any change threatens their perceived delicate stability.

So they are stuck wanting to get better without anything actually changing because change is bad.

This is, quite obviously, heartbreakingly futile, and it is only when the depressive accepts within themselves that recovery involve changing into a different person that might be nothing like the person you know yourself to be right now.

And isn’t that what you really want? To become someone else?

And part of accepting the need for you, yourself to change… not your circumstance, not your income, not your luck, but you yourself… is the realization that there is no point waiting around to feel like doing something that you known damned well you will never ever feel like doing.

Just do it, especially if it is something you know you probably will enjoy once you get started. Summon up all your will and reach for the happiness. Reach out and grab it. Use it to pull yourself out of your hole. Forsake the comforts of depression’s deep cold snowdrift bed and instead go to where you can feel the sun on your skin and breathe clean clear air.

Remember, it is the comfort and safety that is killing you.