Random thought

[firecat]

(also posted to alt.poly)

To what extent is having irrational fears a luxury?

Comments

Re: irrational fears

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

that phrasing is a translation of what it feels like -- it's a dreadful feeling of worthlessness, not-belonging, and it's underneath where i'd call something a belief. it used to just well over me; sadness, dread, a shrinking of the self. yeah, i call that as much an emotion as love, it's similarly complex. and i had it before i understood the belief -- i understood "not worthy, not wanted here" before i could put words to it. my mother was an excellent teacher. *wry grin*.

and yes, i think fighting it made a lot of sense for me. that feeling was rational around my mother, but not rational around many people who came afterwards. and even if i intellectually told myself that it wasn't true, that just didn't do anything much for me -- i mean, i knew that from a certain age on, i understood the etiology of the damn problem. but i had to counter-act the emotion itself, actively, at the time that i felt it, before i made any inroads.

i do this a fair bit with emotions i consider to be not-good for me. especially with the depression; it would just be too damn easy to sink deeper and deeper into dark stuff. and intellectual attempts to manage it, while i'd love them to work better than "thinking happy thoughts" (which is badly simplified), just don't do the job alone.

Re: irrational fears

[firecat]

Emotions that stick around and drag you deeper are worth fighting if you can find a way to fight them that works for you. I think the folks who say "emotions just are" have the experience that most emotions go away within a reasonable period of time. I never had that experience until I went on meds.