Depressed or Anxious? You Make the Call.

 Worry.  Damn.  Human beings, programmed to worry about serious things like wild animals and starvation and diseases that strike and kill with no discernible  reason, don't have as much to worry about so they manufacture crap in their own heads.  No one is coming to get you, people.  No one is outside your window and there's nothing under your bed.  You're not having a heart attack.  You don't have cancer.  That siren isn't racing to the scene of a horrible wreck involving your children, spouse, or significant other.

Nightmares in your head.  Telling yourself scary stories.

There's a line of theoretical reasoning in the field of psychology that we don't become fully free of the influences of our upbringing until sometime in our early 20s.  Nature and nurture are still holding sway, influencing many of the decisions we make.  We're trying to please or even BE our parents and other significant players in our upbringing.  After we break free, once we are our own person, there are two paths available: Depression and Anxiety, and doesn't THAT sound pleasant.  Actually, the point that is meant to help us is that there is the way of inertia and there is the way of action so if you're going to suffer you're best served moving forward into your future.  

Many of us don't ever take the scary steps to free ourselves from those childhood influences which were inescapable when we were too young to take care of ourselves, so we hunker down and stay put, and this is depressing because we never become our own person.  Conversely, we can break free and travel into the unknown, do new things, full of fear of the scary monsters lurking in the fog.  

One of my mildly amusing jokes is that I know I'm going on a good trip when I feel like throwing up on the plane.  This means I'm stretching my mental and emotional wings.  Sometimes, of course, I've stepped a couple of feet past my comfort level and experienced real anxiety and, some would say for good reasons.  India, the jungle of Ecuador, Syria, are some places that come to mind and these were, of course, some of my most memorable trips.  I pushed and I survived and I was changed.

Maybe I'm using this theory to justify my tendency to be anxious.  I will tell you that I am definitely an outlier in my family - if they went right, I juked left.  I have done things my own way - work, schooling, friends, interests, travel - I have had no one in my family showing me the way that I wanted to go.  I'm not sure if I was a rebel or an adventurer.  But the end result in all of this striking out on my own is that I've been anxious much of my life.

Better than depressed, right?

Peace of my mind is gained by walking through trials and tribulations.  If you've done something scary then you're not afraid of doing that thing ever again.  Unless it really was scary.