Wellness

Health, well-being, and taking care of ourselves

The Philosophy of Bitterness

~ superdullboy

Have you been wronged? Slighted by life? Dealt an unfair hand? There’s an overused and completely unhelpful sentiment you might have heard: “Join the club.”

That statement is usually followed by a story about how bad the person you’re talking to has it, so, naturally, you should have nothing to complain about in comparison.

The cold truth is that you probably have been done dirty by the probabilities of life. Not of all us were winners in the genetic lottery, blessed with powerful builds and symmetrical features. Did you know that attractive people, by far, believe that life is fair while their less attractive counterparts don’t? No shit, right? But even the most beautiful among us have lost a hand in the game of life a time or two.

How many of us have been chronically unlucky in love, or unable to get ahead financially? It’s a high number. And some people, unfortunately, suffer these inequities more than others. Race, sex, economics, geography, it all matters in life and we didn’t get a say in any of it.

Life is unfair. We all know this, and yet… We still expect on some level that it should be. This isn’t to say that we can’t, or shouldn’t do our damnedest to make the world a better place. That’s our responsibility. There are issues of injustice and inequality that run deep and won’t go anywhere until we do something about them.

Doing something about a problem is taking action. When that action is a positive force for change, it is the greatest step a person can take to improving their lives, and even the world. Positive action is the cure for the unfairness of life.

However, on the opposite end of the spectrum from positive action is negative inaction. In short, being bitter. Living in that cold, dark place where you peek out at the world and let your mind fill with venom as you curse anyone and everyone who you believe has had an easy go of it, enjoying the best of life while you have been forced down into the smelly bowels of existence.

If you have a heartbeat and internet access, you’ve undoubtedly run across a troll or two in a forum or on social media. Putting aside the bots and paid Russians, there is still no shortage of people who seem to exist wholly on the internet, doing nothing but skimming threads until they come upon a comment that they can seize into tooth-and-claw, starting a pointless flame war that will consume hours of time and buckets of energy. Why would someone do that? What could possibly motivate that kind of action?

Bitterness.

A person who has given up, who believes that life is against them and theirs, who blames others for not receiving their due, this person is bitter. I know, because I’ve been there. Hell, to some degree or other, I think almost all of us have. The difference is how long we choose to stay in this state.

The first protest I get when expressing this opinion is, “What about people who truly can’t control the unfair circumstances life has presented them with? Aren’t they allowed to be a little bitter about something they can’t control? What kind of ‘positive action’ could they possibly take?”

Positive action doesn’t mean magically turning your frown upside down and finding a plucky method of getting what you’ve been deprived of. A positive action could be accepting a situation for what it is. If that sounds passive, then try doing it. The emotional work it takes to truly and honestly accept a situation out of your control is anything but easy. At least at first.

At the core of my opinion is this. A person has very little control over the circumstances of life. What they do have control over is how they react to it. The philosophy of Bitterness is to never accept that fact. Sure, when bad things happen we all need a little time and space to lick our wounds, to regroup and heal. Being bitter, however, means that you retreat and never come back. This world is filled with stories of people who adapted and overcame the greatest of adversities. I guarantee that none of them had an easy time of it.

Which is the true allure of bitterness. You don’t have to do much. It’s home is a state of low energy. You get to sit back, blame the world, and feel the righteous thrill of unleashing your anger on others. Unfortunately for those who walk it, this path is endless. When would it ever truly be enough? At what point would the simmering anger create a solution that gives you all your hopes and desires? How many angry internet posts will take until you are proven unequivocally as being right?

Years ago, after spending too much time in a bitter place, I came to realize this truth. Not academically, as words printed on a page that I read and dismissed as an interesting theory, but fundamentally, as a truth that was all around me. I won’t say that the moment I realized it things immediately turned around for me. But, what did happen was that things started getting incrementally better for me. Over time, those increments added up to big, positive changes that overhauled my entire life.

We all have a choice when life takes a dump on us. We can bitch about the smell, or we can go take a shower.

Control, Anxiety, and Peace

~ superdullboy

Control, for the most part, is an illusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are powerless to affect change in our lives. Not at all. What I’m saying is that most of what we mistake for direct control is merely influence. While having influence over events and outcomes can be powerful, having a persistent belief that we are always in control leads to the need to always be in control. A need that when examined at any length will fall apart like wet tissue. And when critical, life-affirming needs aren’t met, in walks Anxiety and it’s jackass cousin, Depression.

At some point in life I developed a fear of flying. I have no idea why. I wasn’t in a plane crash, I didn’t have a bad flight at any point. I’d been on quite a few plane rides with no problems. I’d even been along on a mid-air refueling mission with the Air Force. So, why in the world did I start getting anxious about flying? How did the panic attacks and heart palpitations even become a thing?

The answer was in control, or rather, the lack of it. My “Type A”, hands-on, only-I-can-do-this-correctly personality had struck again. My fear of flying was actually a side effect of a larger issue: A need to control any and every detail of my life. Being a passenger in an airplane was just a representation of the awful fear that I wouldn’t be in control. It’s not like I can fly the plane myself, after all. Captain Tom Bunn, a psychologist and airline pilot, explores these issues in depth in his SOAR program, which has helped thousands of people tackle their fear of flying. For me, his book shone a light on what my fear was really about.

Lack of control manifests differently for people. I had a coworker who would have panic attacks before a date, which was ruining his love life. I knew a girl once who was afraid of driving on freeway overpasses for fear of the whole thing collapsing or her car crashing over the barrier. Their fears, like mine, had roots in the same place. It wasn’t dating that made my coworker anxious. He wanted to date. It was the lack of control, not being able to manage someone else’s opinion or impressions. Overpasses and bridges were just a symptom of the girl’s lack of control over the stability of the structure and flow of traffic.

I can’t truthfully speak to anyone’s experience but my own. From my point of view, it seems that as a whole, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Our culture prizes the triumph of the individual above all else. The person who forges their own destiny is the embodiment of the American Dream. But how realistic is this vision?

Remember the serenity prayer? That old chestnut has been a favorite of twelve step programs since their inception. When you talk to people who have worked those steps, they’ll usually tell you that they’ve found that what they can actually change is usually pretty small compared to what they can’t. That’s the crux of the matter. We are told from birth that our role in life is to get out and change the world around us. Make it into our own vision and chase success. But when reality creeps in, showing us that our control is actually pretty limited, we feel powerless, adrift, frightened.

When I take a look around me, I see more people than ever being held hostage by anxiety and depression. I wonder how much of that can be attributed to this lack of control in our daily lives? Certainly not all of it. But some, surely. For me, this was definitely the case. Like so many of us, I had been raised with the values of individualism, told that I should be able to shape the life that I wanted, down to the last detail, if I was only good enough and strong enough to make it happen. But this wasn’t true then, and it’s certainly not true now.

My fear of flying (and anxiety in general) didn’t start receding because I learned more about airplanes and safety. Although it did help. It started improving when I realized that it’s okay to not always be in control. That, in fact, I’m usually not in control. I can influence events to an extent, but, at other times, I need to let go of the idea that somehow I should be able to change things that are obviously out of my control. It’s not always easy. But it is worth it.