—I hear you talk a lot about the things you shouldn’t do or feel. But what do you actually want more of?
My therapist’s question set me back. I had come to the session prepared with a list of things I felt I shouldn’t be doing and emotions that I felt held me back.
—People are often most occupied with the things they want to get rid of: stress, weight, bad feelings, whatever, but I’ve often found it instructive to ask what one wants more of, my therapist told me.
To be honest, I was embarrassed because it’s so obvious.
(Sidenote: Therapy can be a humbling affair of super simple points made to a self-aware-I-know-better-and-it-has-to-be-more-complex-than-that-person. That’s why you might not like it at first.)
I don’t aim for “happy,” I aim for “being OK.” That’s ambition enough. To be precise, I aim for “being a person who is OK.” For me, depression isn’t an endless state of being sad (even though I’ve been hit by profound sadness at times), it’s mostly not feeling anything at all. And that can be upsetting if you notice it. I have many times found myself thinking that “this should’ve made me feel joy,” or feeling bad because I’m not able to feel bad when I see someone close to me having a hard time. The latter is scary because it limits my empathy and my ability to connect.
My therapist’s question begs some follow-up questions:
What’s important to you?
What person do you want to be?
What is the one little thing I can choose to do to come closer to what I want?
These are open-ended, and you’ll find it tempting to answer with want you think other people would expect you to answer. Try to bypass that though. That can be somewhat of a challenge if you have been struggling with depression for a long time and become used to the void state. You can search for moments when you felt that things were OK, where you felt good. For me, that has been hanging out with friends. Or been on a hike with my partner. Or when I used to play in a band. Or when I have managed to refurbish something in our house. Some of these moments were years ago.
As a former student of new religious movements, this way of thinking reminded me of The Secret routed in the New Thought-tradition and the “Law of Attraction.” Basically, thinking of things you want will for cosmic energy reasons™ magically bring them to you. With the darker side of if they don’t, there must be something wrong with your wanting and you can blame yourself.
My therapist's point isn’t that only thinking about these things will be sufficient. The key is what I’ll choose to do with my answers. That’s where this simple idea becomes harder because it’s about changing behavior and catching yourself making unconscious choices that keep you away from doing what you really want. Like choosing to stay indoors even though you know you appreciate being out in the woods and appreciate nature.
This also reminded me of the philosopher Arne Næss and his “rule of well-being” from his Philosophy of Life (only published in Norwegian):
well-being = (enthusiasm x enthusiasm) / discomfort
The interesting feature of this formula is that increasing enthusiasm does more than decreasing discomfort:
Næss also made a point of challenging the search for the meaning of life, by turning the proposition to finding meaning in life. That is, you have to give life meaning in playing an active role in it, do whatever increases the quality of life for yourself and those around you.
I’m not saying that this perspective is easy to live out when you’re depressed. It’s actually hard because you have to consciously work for it. Going regularly to therapy is partly helping to keep this perspective salient and not fade away into numbness and anxiety.
Have you asked yourself what’s important to you lately? Or what you want more of in life? And did you find something surprising?
Fint å lese. Tankeprosesser som du aldri har delt, og som forklarer litt.. Kjenner meg også igjen i mye, spesielt ulike typer «elsker å være ute, blir inne»-situasjoner 😊