My first epiphany was about the nature of contact with women, specifically about their independence and that they might not want to have anything to do with you, specifically me. It took me over a decade to decipher that one. I most recently had an epiphany. It may change my life to a greater degree than any other epiphany, other than the one that allowed me to discover my Autism. This one allowed me to discover my negative personality. Not a big surprise to a lot of people, but sometimes the filter takes a while to allow things to sink in; in this case years. I just have to now make the change, they say that realizing that you have a problem is the first step.
I don't know when I became negative exactly, but it is pretty easy to guess. Always is the simple answer. Few people understand chronic depression like I do, I have been depressed since about the age of seven, about the time where I started getting the inklings that I could not seem to relate to the other children like they were able to relate to the others. That is the intellectual answer, the truth is more subtle: I did not know I was depressed or what depression was, but other people knew there was something up or rather going down. In any case I did not really know I was depressed at this time until I discovered happiness many years later.
Chronic depression does not confer an automatic negative attitude though, that is something that you acquire through misfortune or failure, repeated and often. Misfortune I did not have. I was blessed growing up, I had two parents working for me, behind the scenes, trying to help me succeed through high school, because they knew I was having difficulty, but did not know why. That was a rare thing in Smallville, in Boonieland, where the teachers and the system would rather relegate abnormal children to more remedial teachers.
Not misfortune but failure. Not school failure, although that was a near thing, despite an trap mind for facts and Mentant abilities for collating lots of information, I lacked the ability to express my thoughts orally and through writing so I did badly on tests. No my failure was socially, which has been consistently the ONLY field of battle that I have ever been interested in. My battles in that arena have typically one sided and even my successes tainted. Success because the first person was not availible has been a common theme, also has been failure because something better has come up. This failure type I think has given me the start of my negative attitude. But not wholly, as when ever there is a new contest, a chance at love, I cease to be so pessimistic, I believe that change is around the corner, another chance to succeed.
So what is it? Why so negative, why is it pulling me down? I would have to say that it must be confirmation. When you predict positive things to happen all of the time, you will meet with failure more often than not, well maybe this is just a personal observation. When you predict a negative outcome, you are rewarded, I am rewarded with success, more often than not. There is a danger to predicting a negative outcome, you receive validation which is a positive feeling and you may seek more negative outcomes, subconsciously. Seeking failure justifies your negative state, and that is bad because you will not want to improve your situation.
I recently became aware that every social interaction I was engaging in was negative. I was being negative, I was letting negative things happen to me, so I could talk about it. I was ignoring the positive. I became aware of the reactions of people around me. There are a lot of negative things in this world I don't need to bring a new host of them to every conversation that I have. I don't have to be superficially happy and bright to everyone I meet, but I should not be honest to strangers who ask how I am doing either
As they say, put a smile on your face and a happy disposition and things will start to look up, I don't think that will happen, but there is sense to atleast keep the negativity to a minimum.
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