I’ve likened depression to life in a fascist state before, and one of the ways in which this is true is the fanatical obsession with safety.
Safety is all. Safety is everything. Safety is the only thing that matters. Safety is the prime variable that is to be maximized at all times no matter what the cost or what it does to all the other important variables.
Variables like, say, happiness. Which should be the prime variable, the one that controls and supersedes all others. The only one that matters, really, because if maximizing others doesn’t make you happy, who frigging cares?
But being obsessed with safety tends to seek out justifications for itself, and is not exactly fussy about whether or not those justifications are true or even make sense.
The aim is to justify a fixed belief, after all. What they call “motivated reasoning” these days. And like the ancient Greeks who declared that the only use for logic and reason was to verify what “common sense” told them was true, the safety obsession only seeks information that verifies and justifies it.
Hence the apparent absurdity of a nation like North Korea obsessing over the remote possibility of foreign influence and pouring enormous amounts of money and other resources into the search for a very low number of not particularly dangerous spies.
If you already believe that the whole world is trying to destroy North Korea and its Glorious Leader, and this belief is important and central to your world view (how could it not be, given the circumstances?), then even the total lack of catching any spies or dissidents can’t change that belief.
It just means they got away. Obviously, we need to crack down even harder.
Same with the safety obsession of the depressed and/or anxious. Sure, maybe nobody hurt you today, but that’s only because you put yourself where they can’t reach you by isolating yourself from most of the world.
Like I said to my therapist, as solutions go, it’s like treating a hangnail by cutting off your arm. I mean yeah, problem solved, but the solution was far far worse than the problem.
A net loss, for sure.
As far as I can tell at this moment, the only way out of that trap is to wrap my head around the concept of dangerous happiness being better than safe misery.
That it is better to rise and fall and rise again than to stay face down in the mud. That risking disaster is better than guaranteeing despair. That nobody ever learned to walk by staying on the floor.
This is a hard subject for me to think about because the emotion of being absolutely terrified deep inside and willing to do whatever it takes to feel safe is still with me and struggles mightily against any attempt to calm it down.
Yet I know that I am safe. Too safe, really. So I am conflicted.
But you know what? i know which side I want to win, and that’s the one I am backing.
To hell with safety. I want to be happy.
More after the break.
The limits of safety
Wow, I am actually resuming the previous topic. Maybe I am finally growing up as a writer. Maybe one day, I will actually talk about the same thing for an entire blog entry with no asides, diversions, or total shifts of focus.
Nah. That sounds super goddamned boring.
Anyhow, you can’t talk about safety without including what you are supposedly safe from, and that gets to the very heart of illusion of safety.
Because what am I safe from? Certainly not depression. Or sadness. Or anxiety. Or self-loathing. Or really any of the things that really matter.
So what’s the frigging point? I have sacrificed my entire adult life on the altar of sacred safety. And all that time, all the things that would actually hurt me were locked in with me and had me all to themselves.
The ultimate disease is one that blocks all things which might cure it. There are so many potential cures for my depression. Like exercise. Or more social interaction with people outside my little circle of friends. Or improving my diet. Or just taking a little walk out in the world now and then to sample the fresh air and remind myself that there is a big beautiful world out there just waiting to lead me out of the depths of depression and into the real world, warts and all.
I want to find my way out of this shark cage of an existence, and to do that I need to find a way past all the guardians I have invented to keep myself in.
You know. For “safety”.
These demons of mine come in many forms, but they are all made of the same substance : fear. And fear only has power over you if you give in to it.
That sounds downright magical, as if saying it makes the monsters disappear, but it’s not that simple. Giving in to fear is a very hard habit to break, especially when you have been doing it for a long long time like I have.
And the thing is, the fear has a potent reward to give you if you give into it : relief. Fighting the fear is stressful. Your mind is in conflict with itself. The moment you give in to the fear, you are flooded with relief and the stress disappears.
Sure, giving in to the fear might be bad in the long term. But the reward is immediate and the long term is hard to hold onto even when you know better.
The temptation to just go for the immediate reward is very, very strong.
So it’s like an internal addiction. You are addicted to your own endorphins and other parasympathetic neurochemicals that produce that sensation of relief when the stress and pain that triggered them suddenly disappears.
Unlike external addictions, this is one you can’t quit cold turkey. Nor will a lifestyle change fix it.
All I can really do is turn and face the strain.
And no matter what, not let the fear win.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.