I've dealt with lots of people who have anxiety disorders. You know...
And one thing about people who have anxiety disorders is
they are not mysterious to me.
I understand ...
It's
it's no problem for me to understand why people have anxiety disorders
or why they are depressed
or why they have substance use problems.
The mystery to me is always why
people don't have all of those things at once.
Because everybody has a reason to be anxious.
In fact we have the ultimate reason to be anxious, because
we know that we are vulnerable and we know that we are going to die.
And how you could not be anxious under those circumstances is a great mystery.
It's a massive mystery.
And the same thing applies with regards to depression.
And then the same thing applies to some degree with regards to drugs and alcohol abuse.
As I said last week, there's plenty of reasons to drown your consciousness in alcohol.
That's for sure.
We could refer to the aforementioned anxiety and depression not least.
And so ...
And the sorts of drugs that people are prone to take
are chemicals that take the affective edge off the tragedy of life...
so
Back to the issue of fear.
I mean... Abraham is self-conscious
because that's what this commentary says
But the thing is... is he moves forward despite that.
He's self-conscious and he knows the danger, but he moves forward despite that.
And that's actually the appropriate response in the face of
actual non-naive understanding of what constitutes life.
Like if you're naive and you move forward, it's like well what the hell do you know.
You know... There is no courage in naivety, because you don't know what there is to stop you.
You don't know what dangers you might apprehend.
But to be aware of
what it is that your problem is - so to be alert existentially, let's say,
or to be fully self-conscious means that you're perfectly aware of your limitations or how you might be hurt
and then to make the decision to move forward into the unknown and the land of the of the stranger anyway...
That's the... I would say that's one of the secrets to a good life
And I can say that really without...
fear of contradiction I would say, because
the clinical literature on this is very, very clear.
What you do with people who are afraid
and to some degree depressed, but certainly anxious, is...
You lay out what they're anxious about, first of all.
In detail. What is it that your're afraid of. What might happen.
And then you decompose it into small problems, hypothetically manageable problems.
And then you have the person expose themselves to the thing that they're afraid of.
And what happens isn't that they get less afraid. That isn't what the clinical literature...
...indicates, exactly.
What happens instead is they get braver.
And that's not the same thing, right? Because if you get less afraid, it's like:
"Well the world isn't as dangerous as i thought it was", you know, "silly me..."
If you get braver, that's not what happens. What happens is "Yeah, the damn world is just as dangerous as I thought...
...or maybe it's even more dangerous than I thought, but it turns out that there is something in me, that responds
to taking that on as a voluntary challenge and grows and thrives as a consequence."
And there's no doubt about this. Even the psychophysiological findings are quite clear
If you...
If you impose a stressor on two groups of people and
on one group the stressor is imposed involuntarily
and in the other group the stressor is picked up voluntarily
The people who pick up the stressor voluntarily use a whole different psychophysiological system to deal with it.
They use the system that's associated with approach and challenge.
And not the system that's associated with defensive aggression and withdrawal.
And the system that's associated with challenge is much more associated with positive emotion
and much less associated with negative emotion.
It's also much less hard on, you because the defensive posturing system (the pray animal system)
man, when that thing kicks in, it's all systems are go for you. You know...
The gas is pushed down to the... or the pedal is pushed down to the metal and the breaks are on
You're using future resources that you could be storing for future time right now in the present to ready yourself for emergency.
There's nothing simple or trivial at all about the idea of being called to move forthrightly forward
into the strange and unknown.
And there's real adventure that's associated with that. Right?
So that's an exciting thing, which is part of the reason why people travel.
And then also to see yourself as the sort of creature that can do that - is willing to do that on a habitual basis
is also the right kind of tonic for - I hate this word - for your self-esteem.
You know. Because the self-esteem has nothing to do with feeling good about yourself.
As I already mentioned.
There isn't necessarily a reason why apriori you should just feel good about yourself. But
if you can view yourself acting in a courageous and forthright manner
and encountering the world and trying to improve your lot
and taking risks - you know - in a non-naive way, well then you have something that you can
comfort yourself with at night, when you're wondering what the whole damn point is of your futile and miserable life.
And so... And that's necessary, because
it's often the case that you wake up at four in the morning
or at least sometimes the case that you wake up at four in the morning when things haven't been going that well
and wonder just what the hell the point is of your futile and miserable life.
You have to have something real to set against that. It can't be just rationalizations about
how, you know, you are a valuable person among others. Even though that's true, that's not good enough.
You need something that's more realistic to set against that.
And observing courage in yourself is definitely one of the things that....
that can help you sleep soundly at night, when things are destabilized a little bit around you.