Heres my theory-- Moods are dictated by two sources: 1) Internal digestive states. 2) Reactions to social or other external stimulus. However, part of whats so confusing about our moods is that similar experiences often appear to provoke different emotions, even within the same person. Moods appear to gather and lose strength and intensity over time. So a major factor in how we choose to interpret and react to experience appears to be simply what mood we are already in. According to this theory, someone with clinical depression is essentially stuck in a bad mood. Dug into ones own hole, unable to climb out. So, of course, you have to scrape dirt off the walls, carefully so as not to bury yourself, until eventually you can climb out. If walls of dirt are failure, then each scrape brings out a shovelful of success (or maybe a handful, depends on the tool available.) Which raises another question-- what factors lead us to turn around and start climbing out, instead of continuing to dig the hole deeper (or refusing to move and remaining stuck?) My theory-- There must be some deeper factors driving our decision to sink into depression, or elevate ourselves into mania, or choose a more contemplative, detached mood. Im getting tired and losing focus. I guess what Im coming to through this musing is some sort of iterative, nested structure. Makes sense, thats how computer programs work. Just to roughly tie up some of the loose ends I started with-- I think that eating and sleeping as well as posture changes (standing, sitting,) exercise and rest provide some sort of clearing mechanism on our moods. Its all very body-related. The weird stuff that we dont understand as well is mental illness, trauma, intense romantic breakups, grief, lost jobs, other lingering effects of social relationships and personal history. Peoples entire psychic worlds appear to be systematically biased by stuff that happened years ago. Anyway, another time.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 13:40:24 +0000
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