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Yaowen
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Default Apr 01, 2020 at 12:52 PM
 
Dear byumetalman,

I am so sorry your wife is suffering. That is awful!

I am not a physician or medical professional, but I suspect that anxiety is linked to attaching a sense of life or death urgency and importance to matters that are not really matters of life and death.

Have you seen people become quite anxious about getting a good parking spot at a shopping center or getting in the shortest line at supermarket checkout counters? People, it seems often attach life or death importance and urgency to matters that are really not life or death. Sometimes it seems, there are medical issues involved which might respond to treatment by means of medication or therapy. Not sure if your wife is being treated for her anxiety and depression.

Depression, I suspect is linked to a way of looking at things [sometimes caused in part or whole by medical issues]. The depressed "outlook" is to look at oneself, others and anything from the perspective of "could be better, but isn't better." Of course it is true that anyone and anything can be looked at this way. That is a fact. But it is also a fact that there are other facts. The very same people and things and events can be looked from this perspective: "could be worse, but isn't worse."

If one habitually looks at things from the "could be worse, but isn't worse" perspective one generally has feelings of being lucky; feelings of being grateful and appreciative. In other words . . . joyful feelings.

Depression seems to be linked in part to people getting "stuck" in the "could be better, but isn't better" perspective and being unable to balance this view with the other perspective. Sometimes this is a partly medical issue for which the person cannot and should not be blamed.

The "could be better, but isn't better" attitude naturally produces unhappy emotions and moods: anger, aggravation, frustration, dissatisfaction and guilt.

This "could be better, but isn't better" way of looking at things is often called "perfectionism." I think that perhaps people who have not been afflicted with anxiety and depression can shift between the "could be better, but isn't better" way of looking at things and the "could be worse, but isn't worse, thank goodness" way of looking at things. Both views have usefulness. And one, I think, wouldn't want to get "stuck" in either view to the exclusion of the other.

I would think, and I could be totally wrong, that perhaps your wife is "stuck" in a "could be better, but isn't better" way of looking at things [through no fault of her own] and this contributes to the anxiety and depressed feelings and moods she experiences in her work as a recruiter.

Guilt in those suffering from depression and/or anxiety is, I think connected to a loss of perspective. Good and bad are not always like "on" and "off" positions on a switch. Good and bad are a range of values. There have been people in the last 100 years who caused the death of tens of millions of people through genocide and campaigns of forced starvation.

The "guilt" that your wife might feel over taking a day off is not due to anything like causing the deaths of tens of millions of people. But it is common, I think for people suffering depression to feel the same level of guilt over things which are relatively minor or not bad at all . . . like taking a day off.

Taking a day off is not morally equivalent to causing the deaths of tens of millions, millions, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, thousands or hundreds of people and so on. But because of depression, perhaps your life experiences guilt that is excessive. I am not blaming her at all, since depression is a mental illness. It is a mental illness that robs a person of the ability to keep things in perspective, I think.

Since I am not a medical professional I cannot offer any advice that could or should be relied upon and my reflections might be wrong too. I would think that anything you could do to understand anxiety and depression better might come in helpful. Just being there and listening is often helpful in many situations, I would think.

There is a kind of therapy called "cognitive therapy" that attempts to help people have tools for dealing with getting stuck in the "could be better, but isn't better" mindset. I was helped a lot by cognitive therapy although I know that what helps one of us might not be appropriate for someone else.

It is inspiring that you are trying to be helpful to your wife in her anxiety and depression. People like you are really one in a million. I hope you get many responses to your post and that others here will have better and more helpful words than mine!

Sincerely yours, -- Yao Wen

PS: sorry if my English is not good.

Last edited by Yaowen; Apr 01, 2020 at 01:04 PM..
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