This is either the brightest thought I've had in a while or reallllllly fucking stupid.

[kellinator]

I've been thinking a lot lately about all the misery I see around me, all the unhappiness that I'm powerless to fix, the shit that seems to just keep coming for so many who don't deserve it.

But I've started to wonder: Do some of us create misery for ourselves because it's familiar, it's safe? I'm starting to think that some of us, either consciously or subconsciously, manage to keep ourselves in the situations that make us so desperately unhappy. We think about how we want to change things, but we don't.

Now I'm not saying I agree with Hamlet that "there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Honestly, if you just lost your job and broke up with your SO and your dog died and you're not depressed, dude, I think I'll hide under my desk, because if that doesn't depress you, either you're Superman or you're completely denying your emotions. But sometimes we don't move as quickly to change things as we should, because we're used to it. It's really sad, because then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle until you don't know how to break out of the misery anymore.

Not that I really have any useful advice on how to break out of the misery. What worked for me might not work for anyone else, especially those with much bigger problems than I have. I'm just observing here.

Flame at will. You are all loved.

Comments

[crowyhead.livejournal.com]

I think that's very true. Some of the reading I've been doing about depression lately talks about how there is a chemical aspect to it, but there is also a sort of negative loop that people who are depressed get into -- we get into these patterns of thinking that are really detrimental to recovering from depression, but it's much easier to continue in these patterns than it is to break out of them. Especially since when one is depressed, it's hard to see one's way out of any situation. It's one of the reasons why antidepressants by themselves rarely work as well as antidepressants combined with therapy.

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what she said. No, seriously, I was going to use this example of why people tend to stay depressed--it's familiar and therefore comforting.

Of course, either with or without depression, it's not easy to make those changes. A lot of times it takes concious though. It's kind of like reprogramming yourself.