I Highly Doubt Copernicus Was A Cheerful Pussy Who Needed A Hug
DR: So it says here in your assessment that you have a long history of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Are you interested in exploring the way those symptoms might connect to your mother’s suicide attempt when you were two-years-old?
BHJ: No.
DR: I see. OK. Well. Then. Can you speak about your resistance to a discussion along those lines?
BHJ: I think it’s stupid.
DR.: I see. Good. OK. Honest. Thank you. Good. Alright. Let’s see. Stupid, um, how?
BHJ: I don’t remember that event. It was 35 years ago. And my mother’s not here.
DR: I see—
BHJ: Do you? Because I want to make that very clear. My mother’s not here. She’s 2000 miles away. She’s not here. She’s not present. She is not that which appears before us. Unless we summon her appearance through language, which, as I’ve already told you, I think is stupid.
DR: But your mother is present. In your unconscious. Your mother’s actions contributed to the way you originally conceived of your self, which, in your case, was incredibly negative. This original concept of who you are, your value, and what you deserve, continues to perpetuate itself via your anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.
BHJ: So I’m fucked.
DR: Excuse me?
BHJ: Well if what generates my present moods happened 35 years ago, you’re not leaving me many options for hope. Or is this the part where I finally accept it and start crying like a pussy while you affirm me as worthy and desirable? Are you gonna Robin Williams my Matt Damon? Is that the deal? It’s not my fault, right? It’s not my fault boo hoo hoo in your comforting arms. Look at me having a breakthrough over here. I fucking love myself now. Got some Paxil?
DR: You are an angry man, BHJ.
BHJ: You’re god damn right I’m angry. I want to smash you in the head and light your office on fire. But only figuratively, see? That’s what people don’t understand. Yes. I want to kill you. I really do. I want to knock your teeth out and smear your blood all over my face like war paint, but only as an image that reflects a disruption of your tired paradigm. Taking me too literally is a function of the very problem I’m trying to solve. This literal train of thought is the same abortion of thought that reads the Bible too literally and latches onto the myth of the family as the only true source of psychological malady.
DR: What?
BHJ: It’s a story, man. The Mom and Dad story. A 100-year-old story posing as the literal truth of psychological life. Sure. It appears to have some explanatory power. But what’s the end result? Impotence. First of all, most people never even get past whining about their parents and, if they do, so what? What’s been accomplished? Nothing. If anything, they just walk around all smug and loving themselves and buying copies of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
So why not do this? Why not dare to ask radical questions about the source of our anxiety and depression? We’re not idiots who need to believe the first thing a bunch of books and therapists tell us. People used to think the world was flat. If we refuse to step up and be Copernicus, who will?
Let’s start here. Maybe our parents don’t carry as much weight as we’re led to believe. What’s wrong with wondering about that? Let’s say they yelled at us. Scared us. Beat us. Did all kinds of mean and heinous shit. OK. Fine. Does that determine us? Really? How do we know? Are we sure?
It seems to me that the only thing we can know for sure is how we feel right now. Beyond that it’s a guess tossed into the wind. We can’t know. And because we can’t know—we can’t ever know for sure—the next best thing is to ask ourselves what kinds of practical effects our answers will have on the world.
If we believe that we feel terrible because of our parents, we create a culture of sissies whining about their parents. If we believe that we feel terrible because of physiological processes in the brain, we become a pill popping culture. If we combine these explanations, we become a culture of sissy whiners eating pills for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But are those our only alternatives? Why do we feel terrible? Instead of attributing the cause to something that happened 35 years ago, to some literal event that can’t be altered, couldn’t we risk becoming more imaginative about this? Maybe we feel terrible because things are fucking terrible. Right now.
30,000 kids starved to death yesterday. 30,000 more will starve to death today. MAYBE (work with me here)… JUST MAYBE… all those dying kids bear on our individual experiences of depression. Absurd? Why is that more absurd than attributing my depression today to something my mother did 35 years ago?
What’s your problem with my fucking mom?
Maybe (just imagine with me—dare to dream), in some way, we’re all inextricably bound up with the horrendous treatment of animals in the meat packing industry. Maybe the heartless, needless suffering of animals on such a massive scale, in its own subversive way, depresses us. Maybe the steady decline of wilderness and the daily loss of biodiversity collectively bums us out. Is this too tree huggy? Well then why can’t the cause of our depression be the daily physical and sexual abuse of children and the perpetual battery of women? Did you know that gay people can’t even express their love through marriage in California? Now THAT’S depressing.
Take a risk. Imagine with me. What if millions of people went to their therapists, paid them $120 an hour, and heard them say “In a world that’s all bound up in an intricate web of interconnection in ways that still elude our understanding, your depression is a function of global suffering. Get off your ass and do something.”?
Compare the result of that possibility to a million therapists saying “You need to forgive your mom and take Prozac.” “Express your feelings.”, “Get to know yourself.” What results from that? You already know, don’t you? You get a bunch of pill popping smiling people who wanna hug you and talk about useless abstractions like actualization or wholeness. And they’re smug about it too. That’s what kills me. They’re smug. And helpful. Makes you wanna punch their smug helpful faces.
I’ll keep my depression, thank you very much. With a side of anxiety. I’ll keep my confusion, my edge, and my awed sense of wonder. And unless you’re writing a prescription for 4 shots of Jack Daniels and a pack of Reds, keep your fucking prescription pad to yourself.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Reader Comments (83)
Thanks for that. Seriously.
Wow. Finally someone else who doesn't want everything screwed up in their life/head tied back to Mom and Dad. I had a therapist argue with me for over a year that my Mom was at the root of my *problems* and that she was a *bad Mom* and when I refused to agree, he dragged out my therapy for over a year before he would sign off on annulment paper I needed to get remarried in the church. While I'm not averse to meds for depression or anxiety, I will not blame the need for them on other people.
Good for you for challenging the traditional modes of talk therapy.
It so pisses me off that modern psychology and psychiatry are so into this "find yourself" "uncover your childhood pain" shit. It's so ridiculous, shortsighted and egotistical when you think of how the universe was created, how energy and matter actually work, or don't work, the biology behind life itself. I too chose to keep my sweet angst, because if you were happy all the time, then you're probably not thinking too much, about anything.
“In a world that’s all bound up in an intricate web of interconnection in ways that still elude our understanding, your depression is a function of global suffering. Get off your ass and do something.”?
This is the way I feel ALL THE TIME, but hesitate to say it to Joe Anybody because they look at me like *I'm* the crazy one. Some people are more attuned to this interconnection and are more easily moved/exhausted/bewildered/overwhelmed by it; I believe that, too.
I started to e-mail you this morning because I was worried that you were sailing off the edge. I'm glad you wrote this, because it makes me less concerned about where you are at....and we know it's all about me, yeah.
De-lurking because, DAMN. I just posted that same video myself the other day, though I couldn't muster much else to say except what Maynard says. Excellent taste in music and excellent post!
http://hardtobehuman.blogspot.com/2009/09/trying-tuesday.html
I love this. And it's not because I've had the same experiences or understand exactly where you are coming from. I love this because this it is real. I love this because sometimes, our own world is just a little (or a lot) fucked up and pointing the finger doesn't solve a damn thing.
By the time DSM-V comes out, it's going to be 12,000 pages.
Never underestimate how good it feels to punch something (or someone) hard.
I don't disparage serious mental issues. I just wish people could take more ownership of them. The culture of victimization victimizes everyone. Abdication of personal responsibility is a cop-out. Always has been.
P.S. Your therapist only charges $120/hour? Shit, I might have to move. My bitch's going rate is $200.
I'm so glad you wrote this.
The guy who connected polygraphs to plants and recorded their responses discovered that when lettuce was served in the front of a plane, the lettuce in the back started getting agitated, until it passed right the fuck out.
I'm pretty sure I feel bad a lot of the time because my system reabsorbs serotonin too quickly, and my neurons don't ever get to feel the lurve. So, meds can be nice. Just let that serotonin circulate a little while longer.
You don't care, but you are kind of my bloggy hero. You have no idea what it's like here ... in my head ... in my heart and home. But I value your courage and you inspire nothing but rebellion and chaos in me.
Love always,
Mrs. B
"Are you gonna Robin Williams my Matt Damon?" That cracked me up. Sorry, I know it's not a funny post, but it did. So what are you going to do, BHJ? And if it works, are you going to get a psychology degree and sell it to us stupid masses?
What the FUCK.
AMEN.
Shit that's a great post. BHJ, I could be labelled five things, but I refuse. My family of origin is littered with suicide, addiction, alcholism, beatings, torment, abuse. And I will NOT let it rule my life.
I'm fucked up, go through bouts of mania/depression/anxiety/inapproppriate behaviour. But I stay clean, and there always comes a day when I feel better. Always.
This post gave me food for thought. Thank you for being fucked up, and sharing your fucked up-ness, because you make other people ok about being fucked up.
You're like, some kind of alternate Angel. Keep mining. Keep shining a light on the shit.
I don't want the smug people to help me. I don't want their help. I sleep better at night without their help.
Whatever keeps you passing the open windows is fine by me.
Great post.
I was playing around with the word "smug" today and finally felt that it and the phrase "low IQ" explains a lot. Hang in there. You're bound to feel better because nothing lasts forever.
Edenland. This is the best comment I've ever received:
"Thank you for being fucked up, and sharing your fucked up-ness, because you make other people ok about being fucked up."
It's going on my banner or sidebar or somewhere. A tattoo?
Now, see, I was going to suggest that it's about skills. Our parents teach us how to deal with the world based on how they deal with the world while we're growing up. That's what we learn and determines how we see the world. But that's only skills. It's only perspective and tools, both of which can be changed. It's not about events. That's just stupid. Because, as you so brilliantly pointed out, events can't be altered, so if it's the events that shape us, we are fucked.
And yeah, what if we really are all more closely connected than we'd like to think? Oh. Shit. We'd have to start being more compassionate and responsible. So much easier to just take a pill.
This just strengthens my resolve to never go into therapy.
You're fucking crazy bro but you have a gift. Sometimes I step outside myself and kind of watch my life just pass me by. I've always had a really hard time connecting and I'm aware that I'm wired differently but nobody would ever know it because I keep it all inside. I've been in and out of therapy since I was 7. Parents divorced. yada yada yada. It makes me crazy that I can't break through and feel "normal". Maybe this is my normal. I have a beautiful wife and two amazing daughters that love me. Not so bad after all I guess. Keep writing my man. It's a perspective not often heard but too often felt in silence.
My parents are responsible for my depression. My brain chemistry is, most likely. But, like you, I feel that the global mood has a huge impact on me.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's why I don't go to therapy. Seriously - everyone is fucked up. Everyone had fucked up parents. Now what? Just give us all meds and let's move on till we need new meds.
Terrific. Again.
I've often wondered if we really can know for sure how we feel right now. Or, maybe more accurately, can we be wrong about our own feelings? I think I feel happy right now, but am I right about that? Is it possible that I'm not actually happy, I just think I'm happy? Is my mood subject to my own interpretation, because if so, I've been known to interpret things incorrectly. Sometimes I'm convinced I'm sad. But what if somebody comes along and asks me why I'm crying and I say, "because I'm sad" and they respond, "What are talking about? You're not sad. You're totally happy, man!" Perhaps I've been misinterpreting my perceived emotions my whole life. Who's to say otherwise?
I've been helped by therapy. I love drugs (when necessary and when fun). I love this post. Thank you for writing it.
Have you read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? So much of your writing reminds me of that book...main point is changing our stories, our tropes, and in turn our reality. It's stories and myths that make facts. We are ruining our world with the stories that have been handed down to us. We need new ones.
Mate, you are so welcome. There are two typos in my earlier comment because I didn't think I'd post it but I thought, fuck it.
I like the tattoo idea. I'm getting a new one next week saying "Know Thyself". It's the key.
Yowza. That was great.
god you are such a pretentious twit. david chase spent half the previous decade making the same argument through a 280-lb sociopath. but you BHJ, you are the true arbiter of others' mental stations, the first to ever make such an argument (on a daddyblog at least). you are our copernicus! better yet, you are our columbus AND our rimbaud in cargo shorts, at the helm of a coal mine by day and this mighty daddy blog by evening. you are like some kind of superhero. the duplicitous depressed douchebag.
Hank. Do you need a hug?
amen
Hank,
Did it ever occur to you that You may be the problem? When paople are nasty without a second thought, just to be nasty, or to build themselves up, it just makes the world uglier. Tell me did you feel better? More powerful? Does your tiny dick feel bigger? Jeez, if we fill the world with people who speak without thinking of the consequences, what a fun place that would be.... oh wait, we have.
I really liked this man. I've read it a few times now, and have it set aside to come back to later for a slap of perspective. I got a lot out of therapy a few years ago, even considered going into the field myself, even started down the path of doing so. I dropped out because I realized I had sort of a paradox going on -- I doubted my ability to do any good for anybody, considering what a mess I am most of the time, but at the same time, I would never want to talk to anybody about any of my shit who themselves isn't at least as big a mess as I am. There's nothing quite as frustrating as trying to talk to someone about mental health issues and you can see from the look on their face that they just don't get it.
And the smugness, my God. It's fucking palpable. It can fill a room with its stench.
whatever, mrs. bhj. this entire post was a passive-aggressive, unnecessary and ugly attack on another blogger's book because bruce is jealous (not of the writer's ability, but the fact that he got a book deal and bruce doesn't have one). look at the way your husband has behaved this week. like a petulant attention-starved little crybaby. not enough people reading TheBHJ this week? let's go back and update the WIYV RSS feed and remind everyone that I'm still contemplating suicide: that'll bring out the comments! you may think whatever you want about my dick size, but your husband is the one who looks like he's always overcompensating for something.
First, Hank, this post was actively aggressive. As to jealousy and book publication, I have never written a book proposal, sought an agent, or sought publication. I haven't even written a book. There are tons of stupid books by stupid people in the bookstore. It's not accurate to say that I'm jealous of those people. But you can think it. Because you're something of a BHJ expert. Why do you know so much about me, Hank?
Good eye on the WIYV update. Two things. I field 20 emails a day about that old site. I thought I'd try to save some time. Regarding your tasteless remark about my struggles with suicide ideation, please note that I linked to the Between post. Again, why do you know so much about me, Hank? Your opinion of me is so low. But you keep loading this page, like one of those lab rats hitting the cocaine button. What's up with that?
I like the idea that being depressed is an expression of being connected with something dark and large pushing around the globe. There were pieces of time when I relished feeling shitty, both because I felt like I had earned it and because it felt epic. Like I could engage with big, bad things in the world. But, I think this idea requires cautious handling.
I think that if you tear apart the idea that a person is partly a product of their family, you could lose the solid base for empathy that interpreting the world through the family metaphor brings. By what means, exactly, can those 30,000 dead children be significant to me, so far away? Does their death feel like a yank because I acknowledge that 30,000 humans have ceased to exist, and have ceased to exist by way of a lame carelessness? I think that is only part of it. I think we are capable of being deeply influenced by that loss because we view those 30,000 children as sons, daughters, siblings...as potential members of a family category. I think that is a mighty basis for human community. Acknowledging and analyzing our concepts of family can be a way of tuning our connections to other people, and of being respectful to our contextual existence.
I think modern psychotherapy may lack the imagination to extend and push its patients’ concept of family in this way, so that it could be a big tool for connecting to and understanding other people (not just an excuse to relish selfish introspection).
What’s it like to be an individual, who acknowledges and pays homage to her context and history, while simultaneously being a human, a participant in global suffering and sensitive witness? There’s got to be a good way. When well done, it’s got to be beautiful.
I was gonna say something all poignant and shit, but I got lost by the unexpected nastiness of the comments.
Huh.
I think I was going to say this: I don't like the idea of everyone medicating to a flat line in the middle of human emotion. Flat is boring. And very rarely real.
Awesome, Lucy. You brought up some cool stuff I'll address when I get home and off this iPhone. Until then, maybe HANK will decipher all your real thoughts and motives for commenting. Hank?
Oh, heaven. I loved it.
Hank. www.hidemyass.com isn't working for you. You've been here 16 times today and one would think that a man of your insight and intelligence wouldn't need to repeatedly load my lame ass daddy blog over and over and over.
You got a thing for pretentious twits, Hank? You think I'm cute, Hank?
17
I wished people would realize how absolutely scattershot the entire field of psychology is. Not that it's without value, but so many things have not only been thrown out a few years after being The Rule, but actually reversed as in "Telling people this or giving them this medicine actually may make their problems worse or just give them worse new problems. We need to do this thing now." That, plus there is almost no explanation for certain things other than circular logic.
It's not their fault, because nobody even begins to understand the brain, geographically or functionally. I just wish everyone would stop acting like they did, so we could all make more progress as a society. The BHJ approach, for example, could become one powerful new school of thought, accepted equally alongside, "My parents broke me and I can never fix myself, only patch things up here and there long enough to make it through the day."
Then we'd see which one outlasts the other. You rule.
I really loved this post. Not for the subject matter but for the fact that you get IT BHJ. You can see to a level that very very few people can. You get IT. 99% of people don't, they are sheep to whatever is prescribed, be it the idea that they are tortured in adulthood by the faults of parents passed, by their subscription to whatever ideology was chosen for them, by their acceptance that the USDA food pyramid is actually a recipe for health, whatever. You know what causes my anger, my depression, my heartache, my lack of faith in humanity? The motherfuckers that don't get it as they pop their paxil and chase it with a Big Mac combo meal on their way home from church where they got their swine flu shot.
19. How about those Lions? When will our Lions get it done, Hank?
I'm in therapy for the first time in my life. The whole "attachment" thing is working for me, partially because it interests me on an intellectual level. I'm in therapy because I want to try to get a grip without being medicated. I can see where the process I'm following wouldn't work for everyone, just like I can see that medication wouldn't work for everyone.
I love your blog. I deal with depression as well and have also gotten to the point of questioning everything anyone has ever said about the experience. I was going to nominate you for a Kreativ Blogger award because I thought it would be funny, but I sometimes can't tell the difference between funny and cruel. I'm supposed to nominate 7 other creative bloggers and wanted you on the list 'cause you're really good and it would make me look cool, but then I tried to imagine your reaction to the logo. The Kreativ Blogger people have got rules, but I don't think you'd have to abide by them even though I did tell Jenny the Bloggess they have guns so she wouldn't be mad at me for nominating her. Lemme know if you are complimented or horrified by the idea. I can always switch you out for Tartine Gourmande.
OK, Lucy.
"I like the idea that being depressed is an expression of being connected with something dark and large pushing around the globe. There were pieces of time when I relished feeling shitty, both because I felt like I had earned it and because it felt epic. Like I could engage with big, bad things in the world. But, I think this idea requires cautious handling."
I wouldn't say I relish it. But it seems to relieve some of its pressure when I allow myself to be creative about its attribution, as opposed to always being pushed into the family of origin box with its subsequent toolbox of remedies. I think it's bigger than me and what I can DO. I wonder how I can live in such a way that doesn't scramble to fix it. I question the assumption that I am supposed to feel good. It helps. It doesn't feel better. But it doesn't grope for cure. One can find something akin to peace with one's sadness and ask the sadness: "What do you want? What's your business with me, sadness?"
"I think that if you tear apart the idea that a person is partly a product of their family, you could lose the solid base for empathy that interpreting the world through the family metaphor brings."
You'll have to elaborate here. Not sure what you're getting at.
"By what means, exactly, can those 30,000 dead children be significant to me, so far away? Does their death feel like a yank because I acknowledge that 30,000 humans have ceased to exist, and have ceased to exist by way of a lame carelessness? I think that is only part of it. I think we are capable of being deeply influenced by that loss because we view those 30,000 children as sons, daughters, siblings...as potential members of a family category. I think that is a mighty basis for human community. Acknowledging and analyzing our concepts of family can be a way of tuning our connections to other people, and of being respectful to our contextual existence."
I agree with you, but I was also pushing for something deeper, beneath consciousness. I didn't mean that I become aware of the dead children and then become depressed. I was suggesting the possibility that our depressions might be linked to them in a way too subtle to be understood. I'm wondering if, somehow, the fact of monumental suffering occurring at any given moment is distributed among what is usually considered "indiviudal" consciousness. How are we linked? Perhaps the experience of our emotion has causes that lie beyond the ego, in Africa, the slaughterhouse, etc.
Maybe The Sopranos addresses this. Hank?
"I think modern psychotherapy may lack the imagination to extend and push its patients’ concept of family in this way, so that it could be a big tool for connecting to and understanding other people (not just an excuse to relish selfish introspection)."
Me too. It feels pretty hopeless, especially when we keep cranking out patients and books that all perpetuate the same limited model. I even want to see the understanding pushed beyond other people, Lucy. I want the understanding to bleed into animals and rocks and dirt and stars. The environment as family. The things at hand are your family.
"What’s it like to be an individual, who acknowledges and pays homage to her context and history, while simultaneously being a human, a participant in global suffering and sensitive witness? There’s got to be a good way. When well done, it’s got to be beautiful."
To that I merely bow. Well said.
The ENTIRE universe, at the infinitesimal instant after "time zero" was 100 million trillion times SMALLER than a proton and a proton is a billion times smaller than a dust speck.
Everything that IS was, collectively, almost nothing.
How can anyone think that we are not connected or part of each other, if we are, indeed, each other?
The pain of a little boy with a distended belly in the Congo will inevitably weigh upon my psyche, and yours and everyones'.
20
Crap. You mean all things that have gone horseshit in my life aren't my parent's fault? Thanks for the cold reality shower.
i am buying what you are selling (meaning the original post). the comments kind of freaked me out tho. why all the hate, anonymous commenters?