Scion of NLP

Posts Tagged ‘control’

I think some of my readers who aren’t experienced with depression have good questions that deserve answers … one of which is:

How the hell does a person with depression who knows that their mind twists things in a negative way actually believe that self-created bull-shit? I mean, if you KNOW that the negative perceptions are illogical then why do you still choose to believe them?

Well, the truth is, the human desire for control over life is one of the basic needs all humans share in order to maintain a sense of safety with regard to their survival. For this sense of safety and control over the things we need in life to survive an average person will seek predictability through daily routines — the proverbial “rut” that people fall into. It’s our rut in life which gives us that sense of security we all so desperately look for because, if we can predict the future, the belief is that we have some level of control over the outcome; however, for a depressed person this is extremely dangerous …

You see, that need for creating patterns in life that can be predicted turns into habits of self-sabotage for many people. In a depressed person this self-sabotage is an outstanding source of comfort as it gives the person a Jedi like skill of clairvoyance at seeing their future — to ALWAYS know how things are going to turn out (through ensuring things always end in failure) it means they’ll always know what to expect and thus can be feel prepared in how to deal with it. The problem resides in the fact that any future they think of will ALWAYS end in ‘failure’ (even if they need to do things in order to make it fail).

So, the trade off to not being afraid of the future is living with the knowledge that the entire rest of one’s life will forever be an ongoing, constant, epic failure! … over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again … kinda depressing ain’t it?