Paranoia and Depression

Maybe they do not belong together. Maybe they do. A world of threats and a world in which life is worthless, may not be completely unconnected. If paranoia feeds depression, depression can become nihilism. I had paranoid thinking that fed my depression and which my depression fed in turn, causation becoming muddled, and my depression became nihilism.

Considering my own paranoid thinking, I thought there was something to learn from Aeon's How to handle paranoid thoughts. Only when I got to the last sentence of the following paragraph did I go "Yeah, no kidding."

Through years of clinical practice, I have noticed that when the overall level of anxiety a person feels is heightened – perhaps due to a stressful life event such as a job loss or a relationship breakdown – paranoid thoughts can become more likely. Paranoia can also exacerbate depressive feelings, and vice versa, leading to a negative spiral.

But then the advices starts:

Developing more awareness of your thinking can help you to identify a paranoid thought when it comes up and to create some distance from it. The next time you are having a thought that involves someone threatening you or potentially causing you harm, simply notice your experience, without trying to change or control the thought – start by just accepting that you are having it. You can put your thought into words in this way: I am having the thought that… This initial step will help you to learn that your thoughts are different from judgments and actions.

Another helpful step for developing more self-awareness is to listen to the sensations coming from your body. How is your body responding in the here-and-now when you are having one of these distressing thoughts? Are there signals that you begin to notice? The fight-or-flight response – a physiological reaction that can include a quickened heartbeat, more rapid breathing, and tension in your jaw, shoulders or muscles – can occur automatically when you face any kind of experience that is stressful or frightening. It can be triggered by paranoid thoughts as well. The signs of a fight-or-flight response may help alert you that you are engaging in paranoid thinking.

And I have been writing stuff down now for 13 years. You are getting to see that, my self-therapy. Here is another thing, I think, that comes from writing, although the writer separates the two:

Slowing down one’s thinking has been found to reduce paranoia and help improve the quality of life for those who struggle with paranoid thoughts. When you notice your thoughts becoming faster and faster, like racing cars on a highway, you can try the following mindful breathing exercise (adapted from the NHS website) to help slow down your thinking:

1. Sit or lie down comfortably, relaxing your head and neck.
2. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your abdomen, just below your rib cage.
3. Breathe in slowly through your nose, counting for four seconds, letting the air in deeply.
4. Exhale through pursed lips to a count of four seconds. Repeat the breathing steps for a few minutes, or until you start to feel yourself becoming calmer.

After anchoring your awareness with your breathing, take a moment to concentrate on the present, the here and now. Focus your attention on the chair you are sitting on, the room you are in, the time of day. If you notice that your attention drifts away from the present moment, gently return again to being aware of your breathing.

And what I did not do:

Central in paranoia is the idea of an imminent threat, whether it is physical or psychological. One of the ways that people sometimes try to defend themselves from the perceived threat is to retreat, limiting or avoiding contact with others. However, this ultimately leads to isolation and loneliness, which in turn are known risk factors (and maintaining factors) for paranoia.

A sense of trust and safety with others is a fundamental factor in overcoming paranoid thinking. Though you might feel vulnerable or ashamed about your thoughts, or fear what the reaction will be if someone learns about them, sharing your thoughts with someone you can trust – such as a family member, close friend, or a psychologist or other healthcare professional – can help you increase your sense of being heard and understood. You might want to think about what you would like to share, as well as what feels, for you, like a confidential space and a safe way to communicate with a trusted person (whether that is face to face in a quiet room, by phone, or in writing).

Why not? I quit trusting people.

I also read from Aeon, For Nietzsche, nihilism goes deeper than ‘life is pointless’. 

‘Nihilism’ is used today to designate a wide range of attitudes. Nihilists are often typified as those who hold certain beliefs about life’s purpose or significance: they believe that there is no purpose or ‘point’ to life, or that nothing matters. Alternatively, nihilists might be distinguished from non-nihilists by their alleged lack of any belief whatsoever: as represented by the Coen Brothers in their film The Big Lebowski (1998), nihilists might ‘believe in nothing’. Other times, nihilism is characterised as involving an absence of commitment to moral values, like the character of Anton Chigurh from Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men (2005) who rejects all notions of right and wrong. According to these popular understandings, nihilism involves the disavowal of various beliefs and values. It is a cognitive phenomenon involving abstract and highly intellectual stances.

According to Nietzsche, however, these intellectual stances do not by themselves count as manifestations of nihilism. As presented so far, there is a key element missing. On Nietzsche’s view, the beliefs that there is no point to life or that there are no moral values become nihilistic only when the individual holding such beliefs finds in them a reason for rejecting life and existence as a whole, for disavowing or disengaging with life itself. Nihilism involves a fundamental repudiation of life itself. It is life-denial, the negation of life.

You'd think with what I read of Nietzsche when I was younger, I would have remembered this - if I had ever understood the problem. By the end of my forties, I was ready to believe that life as actually lived was death and rot.

Understanding nihilism as life-denying in this first sense allows us to recognise one of Nietzsche’s most striking insights: if life-denial involves the negative judgment of this life and world as they actually are, then even beliefs and values that we typically understand as bestowing meaning and value upon life can function as covertly nihilistic. Let us return to the individual who believes that life is worth living only if there is some higher purpose to it, in which all human beings participate. For such an individual, it is not only nihilistic to disavow her belief in a higher purpose; it is also nihilistic for her to believe in a higher purpose. After all, Nietzsche argues, if we think life is worth living only if there is a higher purpose in which we participate – and it turns out that there is no higher purpose in which we participate (something that Nietzsche insists we must accept) – then one’s belief in a higher purpose is life-denying because it implicitly devalues life as it actually is (that is, as devoid of higher purposes). In other words, given that there is no higher purpose, belief in a higher purpose as that which is required to make life worth living covertly devalues life: it indicates that life, as it actually is, is not worth living.

The test is now whether I can continue stomaching being alive. This I have done well enough these past 13 years, two things are a different now. I am healthier physically; my body is not agreeing on self-destruction with my mind. Secondly, I have been working out my revulsion on paper. But the future still keeps coming with who knows what.

First, on Nietzsche’s view, life-denying beliefs and judgments tend to originate in individuals who are alienated from or averse to life and existence. This is what he intends to capture when he insists in The Twilight of the Idols (1889) that the same judgment of life that the ‘wisest sages of all times’ have reached – that ‘it’s worthless’ – originates in these individuals’ ‘fatigue with life’ and ‘hostility to life’. To judge that life, as it actually is, is not worth living is a symptom of a dangerous weariness with life, an inability to effectively engage with one’s world, grow in one’s form of life, and flourish. This holds regardless of whether such a judgment is covert (for example, if one believes in a higher purpose, and takes that as a reason to affirm life) or overt (for example, if one disavows a higher purpose, and takes that as a reason to reject life).

In fact, Nietzsche thinks that the adoption of life-denying beliefs is an unconsciously deployed coping strategy, utilised by individuals weary of life and unable to engage effectively with the world. And to some extent, this strategy works. If the disengaged, world-weary individual adopts the belief that there is a higher purpose to life around which she might meaningfully orient her life and action, she will likely experience an alleviation of her weariness with life and re-engagement with her world. Yet by adopting the belief in a higher purpose, Nietzsche argues that such a person is merely coping. While her investment in this belief secures her survival, it secures little else. Though she staves off that psychological form of life-denial Nietzsche deems ‘suicidal nihilism’, she is not thereby able to grow and flourish. (The distinction between ‘surviving’ and ‘thriving,’ typically invoked when responding to inquiries into our well-being, is apt here.)

Think about it. Be fore life. If you are depressed, get treatment. If you are nihilistic, ask yourself why. 

sch 4/11

 

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