Dilemma

Have you been in a situation in which you overracted, in a negative way, to an event? And you know you've overracted. But you have to have validation of your response. You have to "know" that others believe your reaction was proper. So you will go to almost any extreme to find that out.

Once you've stumbled into this scenario, reality slips away, and you start deceiving yourself. But you continue to spin. And the original event is no longer the real problem.

I'm all too familiar with this situation because of my own temperament. And I hate any context in which I've done this. I started to say I wonder if this is the result of some form of depression. Some form of self-hate? But it's more than a matter of wondering for I'm convinced that depression plays a part.

Interestingly enough, since I've been on antidepressants, I have had fewer such experiences. I can't say that I've totally eliminated them, but there has been a substantial decrease.

Depression can be very sneaky. It feeds off of your own perceived inadequacies. One of the classic examples is the young woman who doesn't think she's thin enough. But she'll never be thin enough, no matter what.

I guess one of the side effects of taking antidepresseants is you come to a realization of your own past behaviour. And you begin to recognize how depression shaped your response. But you never would have considered that at the time.

Once this self-relization has materialized, you began to notice signs of depression in others. And this is the dilemma I find myself in. And I'm not sure what to do. It may be that anything I can do will have to be "through a glass darkly." Not by intervention but by distraction or redirection.

PAX!