Depression

Depression Is Arrested Development

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From our existential point of view depression is the unconscious response to having abandoned the process of human development, it’s the psyche’s way of rebelling in the face of life choices that aren’t furthering growth and self-actualization.

But you don’t have to agree with our analysis that depression is the result of arrested development in order to agree that depression is arrested development. When you’re depressed you’re in a sort of gray haze, each day is pretty much the same as the last. You don’t have any plans or aspirations, you won’t even get out of bed if you can avoid it. Your life has become an interminable nightmare. There’s no room for your growth, no hopes for your future.

So it doesn’t really matter whether you believe that depression is the result of arrested development or the cause of arrested development. What matters is that if you are currently depressed then you’re in a state of arrested development. We could say that depression and arrested development are one and the same thing. Therefore the anecdote, the way to combat depression, is to force yourself to get into gear, to elevate your growth and self-actualization to your primary concern, to make discovering the environmental conditions necessary for your growth and self-actualization a pressing task.

We can say with absolute certainty that these conditions won’t be found in your bed under the covers. If you want your depression to lift you’ve got to do something to make it lift, you’ve got to take back control over your life. Thinking in terms of your human development, in terms of the fact that your human development has gotten off track and that’s the core problem, provides you with an entry point that does away with all the various excuses and rationalizations to let you get right to the heart of the matter.

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