I’m a terrible person. Which I repeat here not to be down on myself (which I know is common among depressives), but to accurately represent my situation. By almost any moral standard you could choose to use, I am scum. Of course there’s a sense in which any moral judgement is subjective, and artificially imposed on reality by the human mind. But if you do believe that there’s certain things one should not do, then chances are you’ll agree I’m trash. I say this based particularly on my past actions, but also my current behaviour, my motivations, my emotions, my psychology. I’m an example of someone who got so used to justifying doing small shitty things that I didn’t even realize when I’d stepped far outside all normal moral boundaries, until it was far too late.
And the obvious response to all that is “So do/be better!” Which is fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t take into account the dynamic of my shitty behaviour, and the messed up mindset to which I cling. I do these things, and allow myself to think in these ways, because on some level it makes me feel better. Or, even when it doesn’t, I so deeply associate it with feeling better. It’s so ingrained in my habits and ways of coping with the world that to even question it would be absurd. Because if I stop doing these things, and allowing myself to think in these ways, then I have to face my own emotions. All the shame, sadness, regret, self-hatred and disgust, despair. The overwhelming tiredness, the pain. The chronic fear. And if I have to acknowledge all that 24/7, without the occasional relief of the habitually shitty behaviour and delusional fantasy thoughts, then I don’t want to be alive.
Now suppose I could find some other effective relief from all that, some alternative coping mechanism to take its place. Then great. I’m sure I’d probably feel a little better about myself to not do such shitty things or think such shitty thoughts. In the same way I suppose I feel a little better now than I did years ago when I was doing worse things. But the problem is, I still wouldn’t feel ok. I might feel a little better about myself, but I don’t think I’d ever feel good enough. No matter what I did. Good enough to have a meaningful life, or connections, relationships, love.
So becoming a less shitty person requires giving up the only thing that provides relief from how shitty I feel. Without any kind of replacement coping mechanism that feels viable. And the reward is… at some point… maybe… feeling a bit less shitty? But how could that ever be sustainable?
Maybe if I believed my shitty behaviour had any tangible impacts on anyone besides myself, it might be easier to motivate myself. I’m not totally heartless. But I don’t. Any consequences for others are so abstract and tangential as to be effectively meaningless.
So, do the shitty thing, maybe experience relief (maybe briefly feel a little worse), continue to be shitty. Or resist doing the thing (and the associated mindset). Endure the full unrelenting force of negative emotions, or turn to unproven/dubious alternative coping mechanisms. Possibly feel a little better about yourself if you keep it up for long enough.
Why would I put myself through that? Why would I try to be better, if it means feeling worse in the short-term, and I’ll never be close to good enough in the long-term? What’s my motivation here? What’s it for?
5 comments
Incremental improvement seems like the only kind you can reasonably shoot for, given your track record. You didn’t get in this pit overnight, you won’t be getting out overnight. So motivation-wise, you have to make it fit to the incremental model. What is worth slow improvement?
I had my lungs for a few years, back when I was riding my bicycle as a method of trying to clean up my act. There is no doubt my lungs are in better shape than they should be because of that. So you’ve got to find some consequences to avert, some kind of way to pay the emotional bill.
The pain is coming either way though, whether you try to change or not, so enter that into your framing. If you are trying to avoid pain, self love might be an effective method, it will lessen your incident of illness.
Any progress will be incremental, small and almost impossible to see for some time, so your resolve would have to be pretty good. You’d have to be convinced of the benefit, which I suppose would be health related if any.
The biggest problem is I don’t think there’s any getting out of this pit. It’s more a question of how deep I let myself sink into the mud at the bottom.
It might improve my physical health a tiny bit. But really, the only benefit I can see is feeling slightly less bad about myself.
The pain is already here, in the background, constantly. But being this way allows me to keep it at bay sometimes, so I don’t have to fully feel it. At least that’s how it seems.
Yep, I have no resolve. Because I’m not convinced of the benefit. But a part of me still want to. Because I feel bad about myself, and who I am, and I don’t want to feel that anymore. But feeling a little less bad isn’t enough of a carrot.
I sure do wish I knew what you were talking about…but as someone who has their own shameful compulsions (more than I’ve shared openly here), I can understand remaining vague. If you’re anything like me though, there isn’t anything that can truly replace it on a 1:1 ratio. Nothing else is like it, really. There might be ways to satiate those appetites without fully giving in to them, though. The vampire that drinks the blood of animals instead, to illustrate.
Perhaps experimentation is in order. Maybe testing different things as seeing what does it for you would be beneficial.
Yeah, I’ve often thought of it as kind of analogous to vampirism (only without the glamour.) I suppose my current range of behaviours is an attempt to satiate those desires in a way that feels less bad than what I used to do (though even in my past I wouldn’t say I ever fully “gave in” to those desires.) But maybe I could further restrict my current outlets going forward to make them more ethical/less shameful.
I guess the biggest issue is when it comes to ways of thinking/fantasy. There’s times where I give in to indulging in really twisted fantasies, along with memories of awful stuff from my past, stuff that just shouldn’t be in my mind. And although in terms of my physical actions I’m not technically doing anything particularly shameful, allowing that part of my mind to take over even for a short time and indulging it feels super shameful. But if I don’t, it’s like it just keeps nagging me and eating away at me until I cave.
I’d ought to say, does doing the shitty thing really provide relief in terms of how you put it, or is it still just kind of doing the shitty thing? I’m guilty of said suboptimal route as well much more than I should be based upon what I know is the right course of action, but I also probably know that whatever alternatives could be out there are probably better in comparison. That includes thinking about it probably.
I’d probably aim for a shorter approach this time since the last response may have been a bit too long, but regardless, the best thing you can do, or at least in my case the best thing I’d know, is to not participate in those same things as before. I’ve ruled them out for a reason and each time I revisit them, I uphold that ultimately. But that may be a bit too general of a definition for it…