One thing I have reflected upon recently is anxiety, especially social anxiety. In my everyday life I navigate numerous social situations involving anxious people, and I find a curious pattern in their reactions.
Anxious people are for the most part lucid, the anxiety is rather like I said, a reaction. A response to something. What exactly it is I think varies from person to person, but I believe it is generally a subtle idiosyncratic trigger.
More often than not I have picked up on how anxiety seems rooted in awaiting punishment. The person in question has no idea about this, they do not seem aware of how they are awaiting punishment. It’s entirely subconscious. But their mode of communication is entirely defensive, and they address you as though you are a judge presiding over their infractions.
Suddenly they become trapped in strange cycles of self-justification, usually tangential and even incoherent to the casual listener. “What I am saying is this, but not to be mistaken for this, however I would also not want you to think this, etc.”
And so, a single sentence becomes a long trail of disarming assumptions that you have probably not even considered. What makes it worse is how your perfectly reasonable confusion at this might prompt you to ask questions.
Problem is that another word for question is inquiry, so now the anxious person thinks you’re staging an inquiry. You have in fact been tricked into putting this person on trial. From here on out things get more tense and more aggressive until they suddenly realise you’re just confused about it and then feel bad about that, and then think they’re on trial for this infraction, and then the whole process repeats itself.
This can go on for a while…
Now since I am not a moral coward, I resorted to the only ethical recourse upon discovering this pattern. Namely, human experimentation.
I hypothesise that I have somehow been appointed a judge in a trial which I am not entirely certain holds any particular charge. So, what do I do? I deliver a verdict of innocence.
I told the subject in question, upon one of these bizarre tangents, that I had no interest in punishing them. That they are not on trial, and that I do not seek to rebuke them. At first this was met with a quizzical reaction, but then they suddenly felt at ease. This was followed by positive self-consciousness, and even amusement.
I had turned this anxiety, this tension and fear, into something that no longer scared them, that made them laugh at themselves and their peculiar reaction to what was likely some subtle or idiosyncratic trigger.
And upon attempting this in other situations, I have experienced similar results. By simply pointing out the absurdity of their behaviour, and assuring them that I am not in fact this projected character, it puts anxious people at ease.
It’s as if they are suddenly in control of themselves again, because what was once subconscious was taken into the conscious realm, whereupon they are in control. To use a word from the pathetic liberal vocabulary: I had empowered them.
What I find so curious about this is because of how it demonstrates to me the often tragic pseudoscience of western medicine with regards to psychology, wherein they teach people to devote themselves to their disorders in an almost religious capacity. To treat pathology and dysfunction as higher powers that govern them, and how they cannot in any rational sense confront them or exist independently of them.
Reality of the matter is that you can communicate rationally with people who have psychological dysfunctions, and it is inherently dehumanising to pretend that we can’t. Anxious people, depressed people, paranoid people, whatever else, they are still in some capacity thinking beings. They are still capable of reason, communication, understanding and empathy.
To deny them this humanity has become a rather terrible trend in some sectors of modern psychology, in which the dignity and welfare of people becomes secondary to making them manageable.
And this human management is generally based on a doctrine of so-called self-acceptance or validation. To me, this is malpractice of the highest order. Imagine if physicians did this, if they told their patients upon diagnosing them with tuberculosis that they needed to accept themselves, that the tuberculosis is part of who they are now. It’s ridiculous, and not to mention dangerous.
Rather, I believe depression, anxiety, paranoia, whatever it is, is always external to us. Because it is external to our consciousness. It must be external in order to influence us. It is not some inherent part of our psyche, it is something that afflicts our psyche, an uninvited guest, just like a virus or a tumor.
And I believe this is a vital part of self-consciousness, to understand where your conscious mind ends, and where your pathology begins. To learn how to identify and separate the two, as to invite rational scrutiny.
More often than not, helping people with these problems requires careful listening, dedication and empathy. It is draining and difficult, but in doing so you establish not only the capacity to communicate on familiar terms, but also establish the trust necessary to help them out of it.
If anyone ever tells you to accept a psychological problem, then leave the room immediately, because you’re in the company of a quack. Find someone who has higher ambitions towards you than emptying your pockets in exchange for patronising assurances.
Because yes, it is in fact all in your head, it’s a stupid and really convincing illusion. It is comical how trivial and pointless a psychological problem is. It is not a consumer category, it is not a lifestyle aspiration, it is not a personal statement, it is just a trivial and solvable problem that mandates compassion.
You are not a customer in need of a product, you are a person in need of care. There is nothing special, or dramatic, or unique, or interesting about any disorder, they do not define you, and if anyone tells you so, then they are not helping you. You are the most interesting thing in your mind, and it’s not healthy to get upstaged by a paragraph in the DSM-5 manual.
