2. What's for dinner? Depression

Today’s post is a bit of a follow up to the last one. Sequels are always slightly risky (anyone who’s seen Grease 2 will be able to attest to that), but let’s go with it!

For a super quick recap of the previous post; all of our miseries are due to evolution. Thanks Darwin.

Seriously though, we are susceptible to feeling down partly because it served us well in prehistoric times. In said times, being overly cautious to any potential threats (i.e. having our fears and insecurities at the front of our thoughts) helped us stay safe, and was therefore fundamental to our survival.

Whereas being scared of everything was a pretty effective way to keep the human race alive, this has resulted in our modern-day brains being extremely sensitive to feelings of depression, anxiety and worthlessness. All fun stuff.

As a build on that, I was keen to have a further look at how these fears and insecurities can manifest themselves in our everyday lives. And as a result, how we can go from thinking about something completely trivial one moment, to obsessing about our fears and insecurities the next. Which is as equally common as it is draining.

By way of example, let's have a think about a common insecurity. How (un)attractive we are? Yeah, that’s a bit of a classic. And now a seemingly trivial thought... What we’re going to have for dinner? Definitely a thought that occupies my brain more than once a day!

What so often happens is that we start off by thinking about some random thought (in this case, dinner), and the next moment - via a series of fear-driven neural pathways - worrying about one of our many insecurities (in the above example, how unattractive we are).

How this may play out...

• Hmm, what am I going to have for dinner tonight?

• God I’d love some pizza!

• No, I can’t have pizza, I’ll become unattractive.

• Oh no wait, I already am unattractive...

• I’m unattractive!!!

Full stop. “I’m unattractive” is the insecurity our overly protective brain was trying to find. Mission accomplished, and now we can stew on that thought for minutes, hours or sometimes even days.

Maybe that’s an obvious connection, but even more seemingly unrelated thoughts and insecurities follow the exact same cognitive pattern. Here’s a slightly more obscure one:

Trivial thought: where should I go on holiday?

Insecurity: I have bad teeth.

An example of how this may unfold...

• Right, where should I go on holiday?

• What about Mauritius? Beautiful place.

• Ooh, beautiful place, imagine the content I’d get!

• Ah good old content...

• Hang on, getting content requires taking photos...

• Photos! My smile is awful on photos...my teeth!

• My bloody teeth!!!

Again, insecurity located, brain sticks on this thought.

You get the point. Regardless of the thought (A) and regardless of the insecurity (Z), our brains are unbelievably proficient at going from A to Z. And doing so very quickly. The general process goes:

1. Trivial thought.

2. Series of mildly related thoughts.

3. Insecurity.

4. Full stop.

And of course, this is when our old friend comparison likes to join the party too, to further compound our misery “Everyone is happy, popular, beautiful, thriving and having an amazing time other than me!” - leaving us with the (totally irrational and incorrect) belief that if we're not constantly living our best life, then there’s clearly something wrong with us.

So not only do we feel down, but we beat ourselves up for feeling down. We’re down about being down! Tough going.

In fact, humans are the only creature in the world that can go from feeling euphoric to feeling unhappy with a simple thought. So it’s not really any wonder that we occasionally feel a bit rubbish.

However, I've always found the realisation that everyone is in the same, slightly fucked up boat, to be rather reassuring.