akemi’s Reviews > Toward Psychologies of Liberation > Status Update

hmm. This one really making me think and question my own position. Because
a) I am very anxious and depressed
and
b) my anxiety and depression don't feel compassionate, healthy, or realistic, but instead to be based on false ideas and expectations
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do you think the pursuit of ataraxia, in the sense of a philosophical project to make do with the present moment, is doomed? be that in epicurean, stoic (don't get me started on stoicism), or buddhist, or whatever the fuck. I am aware that my class and etc. privileges are what allow me to come at this topic from a very book angle, but I think my core probe stands

Hehe, I think normalising negative states as a response to a fucked up world is a good baseline, but it misses the element of trauma, i.e. of how negative states can persist long after the conditions that created them are gone. That's how I understand things like depression, anxiety, narcissism, borderline.

At the same time my depression is cyclical, and after thirty years I know it will never leave me. I no longer fight it, so in a way I have accepted it. But working 10hr days, for weeks on end, stresses the fuck outta me, and disables me further. I start dissociating, and falling back into narcissistic delusions. I don't think it's a healthy response, but it feels like a realistic one?

My understanding of delusions is that they always come from outside of ourselves, whether from oppression structures in the present or the past. So even if our responses aren't particularly healthy like this book claims, they're usually informative. They point us to something worth dismantling.