David Cain writes, in Give Yourself a Ripcord to Pull:
The low mood works like a bad hallucinogen that turns your personal world into its dark, anemic twin, a landscape drained of good possibilities.
Aside from being unpleasant, this kind of mood creates an immediate practical problem, in that it prevents you from identifying and taking the actions that might bring you out of it. The mind doesn’t know what to do in this state, because a world drained of positive possibilities isn’t one in which anything seems like a good idea. If your world currently seems like a place where things never work out, how are you going to work it out?
There’s a related phenomenon, which I’ve been noticing in myself recently: the “low mood” is also a breeding ground for all manner of unrelated negative thoughts, negative thoughts that, when in thrall of the low mood, may appear to be its cause.
Maybe I’m pissed off, anxious, or angry because it’s raining out, or because my stomach hurts, or any of a million other invisible reasons. In that vulnerable state, a gateway is open to every unclosed loop that’s banging around in my head.
I haven’t filed my corporate taxes yet!
There’s gout weed growing in the back garden! We’re out of my favourite cereal!
How come Lisa uses so many abbreviations when she texts!?
It’s chilly in here!
Did my father really love me at all?
In the growth medium of the low mood, any of these can appear to be the cause of the mood itself.
More often than not, they have nothing to do with it.
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
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Comments
I know what David Cain is…
I know what David Cain is writing about. After my mother died, I had my father and we supported each other as we had to deal with my mother’s estate. I wasn’t able to be there when my father died.
Every so often, what I call the “hamster wheel” of grief starts spinning and spits out the what-ifs (what if I had treated my mother better emotionally near the end - would my feelings of guilt have gone away; if I’d been able to talk to my older brother about his lack of empathy and sympathy, would we have a better relationship) and so on. I’m trying to get this hamster wheel to stop spinning by engaging with the world but it doesn’t always work and then I have to withdraw for a while. I hope that eventually I’ll be able to look at my past, present and future with optimism.
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