Our attitude to life is self-hypnosis, where we outline what is happening, comparing it with our ideas about how it should be. And if life does not correspond to this "must", we instill unhappiness in ourselves. In advanced cases, such self-hypnosis works like an avalanche - they wind on their own base, grow in size, taking away more and more vital energy.
The darker life seems, the more its participant seems to be a loser. With such a self-hypnosis, a bad state is perceived even more justified and appropriate. This is how you can get into a vicious cycle of long-term depression. The logic here is something like this: “life is shit, she treated me badly, and therefore does not deserve any respect or understanding. Since she is to me for a bad, then I also to her.."
That is, in this state, something like a condemnation of life is born: "you are bad, gloomy and unfair." Everything happens as if a person does not understand that his life is himself. It’s like “I” is an invited guest who deserves a normal relationship, and life is a host who should arrange everything as it should be. And since this owner behaves indecently, it remains only to condemn him, waiting until he himself corrects himself and shows the proper hospitality.
Our life is us. If we believe that life is such a low-grade phenomenon, untrustworthy, then we do it with ourselves, and by the strength of this faith we feel like worthless people. And since they are useless, it means that they are unnecessary to anyone, and do not deserve a good attitude. With this logic, the turnover of the growing depression turns around.
Of course, there are whims of fate that are beyond our control - worldwide floods, hurricanes, earthquakes. I'm talking about natural disasters, because in a depressive state, life is just like an uncontrollable gloomy element.
Assessments of all phenomena come from within. We perceive what is happening by ourselves and beyond this perceptual subjectivism, personal "external" reality cannot jump out. Even if everything is OK at the event level, depression imposes its gloomy realism on what is happening, and the stupid feeling that nothing can be done about it. Bad states are inherently a set of false beliefs around which corresponding moods and emotions are wrapped.
We are introduced to false beliefs from childhood. We are born helpless, developing a strong belief that reality is something beyond our control. The quality of a child's life completely depends on the external "omnipotent" - giving or depriving force - from his parents. In fact, the life of a child is the attitude of his parents towards him. From childhood, we learn to feel the reality of a safe, threatening, stable, unpredictable, generous, subtracting, judgmental, encouraging, influencing, indifferent. Each has its own list with its own accents.
And this is the feeling of an external whimsical fateful element that rules life, in one form or another sweeps through the years. But at some point we realize that this element is not our parents. They are the same as we are grown children. And the feeling of an almighty capricious force, on which well-being depends, does not go anywhere, but everything also invisibly affects. And we try to please her, butter up our fate, sometimes cursing, and sometimes thanks for her “gifts”. For some, the image of God is suitable for this purpose, for others - the images of patrons, partners, bosses, or senior comrades.
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So it turns out that for most people, God is just the embodiment of a fantasy driven by the need for an omnipotent caring parent - an eternal unshakable support that we lost when we began to grow up, faced with a not childishly complex chaotic reality.
I understand how loud this theory sounds, but I do not at all claim that there is no God beyond our minds. In a sense - only there he can be. Regular readers of progressman.ru know how often I reduce everything to projections. In this case, this means that for an individual person, not only God, but the world in general is just a way of perception - a set of personal sensations. The image of God in our “soul” grows and transforms with us.
We perceive luck and bad luck in this perspective as if this invisible force encourages us or punishes us. Say, if you are unlucky, then fate does not favor. And if you're lucky, you can rejoice - higher powers love and support you. From here grow legs of all sorts of senseless superstitions and rituals, to which we are led in fear of offending our fate. Don't superstitious people take on a lot, believing that God is so neurotic that he will get offended, angry, jealous and punish for deviating from our little rituals?
It's the same in relationships. People sometimes get so upset when they fail to please someone, as if at that moment a cross hangs over them, with which fate swings for personal well-being. It seems like if someone doesn't like you, then this is a sign that God has turned away from you and looks at other - better quality children. And the fact that people have different tastes and it is simply unrealistic to please everyone, so this fact, apparently due to its blatant evidence, sometimes remains unnoticed.
Another neurotic expects that life as a kind of global parent should pour out streams of free love and happiness on him in the form of all sorts of benefits and fortunate circumstances. And when this does not happen, he thinks that the life-parent does not love him. And if he doesn’t love it, then something is wrong with him - some kind of neither, some - wrong, flawed. It seems like happiness and good luck is something like a lucky star, under which one must be born, and if “unlucky”, then nothing can be done about it.
The mistakes made in this case emphasize the neurotic that he is inherently a failure, and in order to protect himself from this unpleasant realization, he avoids independent actions that can lead to mistakes. The neurotic does not understand that mistakes on the way to success are simply inevitable, otherwise you will not learn anything.
And in business, it happens that a person sets a goal for himself, works, hopes for success, builds expectations, and after the very first failure he gives up, as if a small misfire is some kind of sign with which the higher power responsible for success capriciously expresses its dislike, closing the path to success. As a result, a person thinks that it is useless to try to continue the intended path - all the same, nothing will work.
But do mistakes really predict failure on the chosen path? Practice and common sense suggest that there are no higher powers that demonstrate their disfavor in our defeats. There is only experience. While we are learning, mistakes are inevitable, because they are the ones who teach us in the most effective way. And success is not a consequence of being born under some abstract lucky star, but the result of purposeful actions.
In this life we are our own parents. There is no need to cajole anyone and wait for approval - this infantilism usually brings nothing but pity and contempt. I would like to change something, we must act. If you act scary, it is this fear of yours that must be taken as a real ballast. And reproaching fate for your own omissions is a painful pointless waste of energy.
It can be scary to act, because in this way we seem to be taking a step from the path where we remained infantile children to the path where we ourselves are responsible for ourselves. To take this step, it is important to feel that the comfortable illusion of being protected by a higher power is not as valuable as real strength and freedom of independence.