How to live a full and meaningful life? Why the pursuit of the ideal can become an obstacle to happiness? More on this later in the article.
In psychology, there is a theory according to which, from the moment of conception to death, a person is truly happy only in the mother’s womb. This is a period of bliss, comfort, and serenity, interrupted by a painful, painful birth. Immediately after birth, a period of adaptation to this harsh, unfair, sometimes aggressive world begins. And this adaptation continues until the very last minute of human life. But somewhere in the bowels of the unconscious, memories of that carefree period spent in the mother’s womb are stored. And for the rest of his life, a person strives to return to this ideal world.
This theory is very old, known since the time of Freud. It has many interpretations. For example, some psychologists argued that sexual desire is nothing more than a desire to return to the womb, and sex, accordingly, is an attempt to carry out this return. We don’t know how much truth there is in this theory, and we’ll likely never know. Many aspects of psychology simply cannot be proven or disputed by natural science.
Many people sometimes recall their carefree childhood with nostalgia.
For many, adolescence is a difficult and dramatic period, because this is the period of farewell to that same carefree childhood. We often dream of an ideal world in which there is no suffering, illness, or death. And if we look at the aspirations of mankind as a whole, then it is moving in this direction: to defeat all diseases, overcome hunger, and achieve immortality. And no matter how absurd it may sound, people even fight and kill each other in order to create a world in which there will be no wars and killings. And even the physicists from the Manhattan Project, who created nuclear weapons, dreamed that this invention would create a geopolitical balance in the world and stop wars. Why not try to find the lost paradise? How is this lost paradise different from the mother’s womb?
Now let’s move from the world of abstract ideas to the human world. What practical significance can this theory have for us? If you observe yourself and the people around you, you can notice the following causal relationship: the more a person longs to live in a non-existent ideal world, the more difficult it is for him to accept the reality of the present world, and the more difficult it is for him to accept the real world, the more anxiety in a person.
And this is real, tangible anxiety, which is embodied in mental disorders of the anxiety spectrum.
Let’s now define what anxiety is. There are many theories of anxiety, however, most scientists agree that anxiety is related to the future. Anxiety is the expectation of something bad. Moreover, these expectations can be rational, related to real events in the future, or they can only be drawn by the human mind. In the second case, there is a rejection of the real world, because it is seen as something aggressive, and threatening. And, as a rule, such people do not look for an opportunity to come to terms with the real world and learn to live in it. They are looking for their paradise, where anxiety does not exist.
Consider, for example, the most common phenomenon on Earth, familiar to all of us, is procrastination ., i.e. putting off important things for later, or even never at all. A large number of theories explain this phenomenon precisely by anxiety. And it is here that we can see the very desire for an ideal world and an escape from the real world. If we begin to delve into the unconscious, finding out the reasons for procrastination, we will often find a desire to avoid mistakes, anxiety, criticism, and pain. Behind such postponing, thoughts are visible: “I will not start learning English until I am sure that I will succeed and I will bring this matter to the end”, “I will not quit my unloved job until I am sure that I will definitely find a new one a job that will suit me 100%” or “I will not start developing my business until I am sure that I will not burn out, will not lose my investment and will certainly succeed.”
Procrastination is one of the easiest manifestations of anxiety. But sometimes it develops to terrifying proportions. There are times when people begin to experience anxiety in the morning, live in it every minute of their day, and calm down only the next night, falling asleep. And so day after day, year after year. This is not an artistic exaggeration, these are real cases. For such people, every interaction with the real world and other people causes anxiety.
Much of the therapeutic work with anxiety disorders is to orient the person towards accepting themselves, the world, and their feelings. And sometimes this is the hardest part of the job. It can be very difficult to convince a person that anxiety is a natural, normal, and even useful feeling. It can be even more difficult to convey the idea that the essence of psychotherapy is not to turn off anxiety. And only after accepting this thought can a person be helped to develop effective strategies for resolving stressful situations. Do not avoid stress, do not bend under its pressure, but accept it and coexist harmoniously with it.
So, I want to summarize this article with three thoughts. So how do you live a fulfilling life without being enslaved by anxiety?
