Depressive Lifestyle

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It is still (or already) not a disease. This is not a choice. This is not a cognitive error. This is all together.

There is no point in writing about the prevalence of disorders that are somehow associated with the affective sphere (in other words, with mood and emotions): these statistics are quite accessible. Contrary to popular belief, the number of people who annually seek help and receive diagnoses of depression, chronic depression, reactive depression, and bipolar disorder is constantly growing, not because depression has become a fashionable disease, and not because they write and talk a lot about her. You can look for the reasons in the urban lifestyle, in environmental problems, in the values of the consumer society, and so on - these theories can be as deep and correct as you like, but they do not give a solution to the problem, as well as the search for the guilty.

In his monographs on depressive disorders (chronic depression, dysthymia, bipolar disorder, and others), American physician Richard O'Connor talks about why neither medications nor quality psychotherapeutic help aimed at relieving symptoms of depression have a long-term effect. The fact is that depression turns into a lifestyle for us, into the only accessible (because familiar) way of interacting with the world. A person who has experienced a long depressive episode (especially in adolescence or youth) develops a peculiar way of thinking, a characteristic habit of reacting to situations and a special way of interacting with his own feelings.

Self-blame, the search for negative decisions, an unconscious choice of actions leading to negative results and negative interpretations of what is happening are not parts of the personality, not character traits, not a deliberately chosen path - these are habitual patterns of thinking and feeling that we have been cultivating in ourselves over the years. Perhaps, once such patterns protected us from pain, from fear of punishment, from disappointment - and we remember them as the most effective, familiar, and understandable. But by continuing to use them, we only reinforce the depressive state.

For example, in childhood, a child was punished for manifestations of failure: bad grades, failures in competitions, losses - and each time actions that could become a reason for pride, regardless of the result, were associated in his head with fear of failure, paralyzing horror of punishment. At the same time, the parental attitude that he is obliged to win, to achieve, to do “better than everyone else” or “not worse than others” has not gone away. What will happen when the child grows up? He will be overwhelmed by panic every time he needs to take up a business that can potentially end in failure, but at the same time he may begin to unconsciously strive to lose, not succeed, break. First, because the state of "failure" is more familiar to him, and shame and fear are much more familiar feelings than pride and pleasure. Secondly, because a failure confirms an already established identity - he does not need to prove anything, he already knows that he is “bad”. Thirdly, the fewer victories, the fewer new challenges, which means that, having lost in advance, he "insures" himself against even greater disappointment and fear. At the level of awareness, this is not manifested, in words and even in thoughts, a person is sure that he must do the deed he needs, and preferably “better than everyone else”. But in reality, he will sabotage success - refuse to see obviously tempting prospects, procrastinate, make hundreds of small, unconscious mistakes that only reinforce his sense of his own inability and inadequacy.

Or a child who received too little love, care and support as a child grows up thinking that he is not worthy of a good relationship. Yes, at the level of a conscious choice, he can do everything to get acceptance, but at the same time he will behave the way the rejected person leads - to distance himself, hide his feelings, negatively interpret the actions and intentions of other people, look for a catch in any manifestations of care or love. … Further, his expectations are triggered by the principle of "self-fulfilling prophecy" - his behavior provokes others to rejection, his expectation of non-acceptance makes him withdrawn, constrained, unattractive, which only confirms his own hypotheses.

It works according to the principle of a snowball or a vicious circle - the more pain, disappointment, fear - the more a person expects a negative reaction from the world around him, the more the spring of distrust in the world is compressed, the more the perception of reality is distorted (everything looks worse than it is, expectations and interpretations of events are becoming more gloomy and negativistic) - and by his behavior, a person creates more obstacles in his life, more and more disappointments, more pain and fear. There is no "mysticism" or "esotericism" here - just the world becomes the way we are used to seeing it.

You can get out of the vicious circle, but it requires a strong-willed effort. In some cases, antidepressants come to the rescue, but we must remember that these are just "crutches" that can somewhat reduce the intensity of negative emotions in order to give us the opportunity to look at the world a little less biased. But the responsibility for what thoughts, actions, and response patterns we choose will have to be taken upon ourselves.

If from year to year, from day to day you feel that the world around you is becoming less and less benevolent, if you are used to not expecting anything good for yourself, if you are always looking for negative interpretations of current events and actions of other people, think about whether you are in a vicious circle of defense mechanisms, self-accusations and fears. What feelings actually make you react in one way or another? What are you really afraid of, and what - deep down, you really want. What exactly do you do to avoid getting what you want?

These questions seem to be either too simple, or too complex, or rhetorical. But in reality, the search for answers is a serious, creative task, which is almost impossible to solve in one day. Nevertheless, if you seriously observe yourself and find the strength of an unbiased assessment of everyday behavior, you can understand exactly how we make our life so difficult, and how you can learn to live in a completely different way.