The Pain of Becoming Yourself
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Why do people with depression or anxiety believe they are uniquely flawed?
One of the things that's quite characteristic about people, especially if they're introverted and they don't have very many friends, they don't have people to talk to, if they're suffering, maybe they're depressed or anxious or they have some sets of strange symptoms like agoraphobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder, one of the things they always presume is that the fact that they're suffering in that manner means that there's something, not only something wrong with them, but something uniquely wrong with them, so that it's their fault, and no one else is like them. And one of the things you do as a diagnostician, you know, you'll hear a lot of rattling about how labeling is bad for people and Certainly mislabeling is bad for people and even an accurate label can be a box that you can't get out of but it's very very frequently the case that if you diagnose someone it's a relief to them like you can't believe because they come in to see you knowing that something isn't going properly and
But they think, well, they're the only person facing it, and that means they're idiosyncratically strange in some incomprehensible way that no one else could possibly understand, and there's no way they could ever get better. And one of the things you do is point out to them is like, depression and anxiety doesn't really require any explanation. Right? There's plenty of reason. I don't remember who said it. Everyone has sufficient justification for suicide. I think that was the claim. Well, but the point is, is that if you look through the experiences of the typical person, unless they're very, very fortunate, and they won't be that way forever, that's certainly the case, that they can point to traumatic experiences in their life, death and loss and illness and humiliation and all those sorts of things, that are sufficient to account for
existence in the state of quasi permanent negative emotion now often if you see as I said if you see people who are depressed and anxious by nature they assume that everyone else is the smiling face that you see on Facebook and so that that alienates them from other people and themselves even more than Then then then certainly far more than necessary and part of the psychoeducation that goes along with therapy is merely Educating people to understand that a fair bit of misery is the norm, and that there's plenty of genuine reason for it. Go somewhere you don't understand. That's the first thing. Get thee out of thy country. You know, back in the 1920s, there was a whole slew of American writers who ended up as expatriates in Paris, Hemingway among them, and who wrote The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald, yes, and a variety of others. It was very inexpensive in Paris at the time, and part of their transformation into great literary figures was the fact that they were out of their country, and now they could see what their country was, because you can't see what your country is until you leave it. So you have to go into the unknown, and that's God's first command. Go into the unknown, because you already know what you know. And so, and that's not enough, unless you think you're enough. And if you're not enough, and you don't think you're enough, then you have to go where you haven't been. And so that's the first commandment to Abraham. It's like, okay, that's a good one. That makes perfect sense.
Go to where you don't know. Yes. And from thy kindred. Well, what does that mean?
How can diagnosis and psychoeducation relieve feelings of isolation?
It means grow up. Right? That's what it means. It means, get away from your family enough so that you can establish your independence. And that isn't because there's something wrong with your family, although perhaps there is, you know, as there is perhaps wrong with you. But it means, get away. You know, I talk to people very frequently whose families have provided them with too much protection. And they know it themselves. And that means they're deprived of necessity. You know, one of the things that you see in the United States, for example, is that... The children of first generation immigrants often do better than their children.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why do people with depression or anxiety believe they are uniquely flawed?
0:00–3:18
2
How can diagnosis and psychoeducation relieve feelings of isolation?
3:18–10:41
3
Why is 'go into the unknown' presented as the first command for growth?
10:41–16:42
4
How do necessity and independence drive maturation and success?
16:42–19:28
5
What role do authority, competence, and power play in cultural tensions?
19:28–23:44
6
How do inner sub-personalities and calling influence vocation and interest?
23:44–27:24