A few years back I knew a psychiatrist. She said, “most people don’t want to change or improve their lives. They just want someone to listen to their complaining without interrupting. They’ll even pay for it.”
In real life I get told a lot that I’m a good listener. It’s amazing what crazy things people will tell you when you’re simply willing to listen. You know someone for 7 1/2 minutes and find out their 13-year-old had to be withdrawn from junior high for attempting Wiccan spells in the school bathroom.
What I’ve mainly learned from listening to people for thirty years is that the psychiatrist was right. People don’t want anything to be different, ever, no matter how bad it is or how much they complain about it. Fix it? What?
Severe depression has caused you to be a hoarder? Be sure to go cold turkey off those meds as soon as you get one room cleaned up. For good measure, adopt several new pets and get pregnant again. Yeah!
You have an amazing, life-changing insight about how your biggest problem is you? Be sure to forget this ever happened the very next day and go back to blaming it on other people.
You spend several months working hard to get into shape and look really good? Be sure to totally stop working out and start eating Little Debbie snack cakes and regain all that weight for no good reason.
Oh, sorry. That last one was me.
Why do we torpedo our own lives? Why would we rather wallow than stand up and do something really great? I see this over and over again. Even in my own life, dedicated to constant improvement… sometimes I just feck it all up for no reason.
I’m still trying to work out the why. If I figure this out, I’m sure it will lead to fame and riches.
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So…. why do we do that? That’s what I want to know. Because the whole losing weight and Little Debbie thing is totally me. I hate that I do that to myself and I don’t know how to stop it. I know it is dumb and not a good idea and not healthy so why do I do it.
Jennifer´s last blog …Where was the mom in all of those stories…
If you figure it out, you’ll probably get a Nobel prize.
Psychology is gradually trying to become an exact science. The problem is the people–they just don’t behave in a scientific way. So it’s a lot harder to pin them down.
The Mother´s last blog …The Curious Case of the Pig Farmer and his Wife
I should get a Nobel prize just for imagining the possibilities.
We all have vices/self destructive behavior. Some are just more obvious than others, i.e. smoking vs. shopping sprees. We use that when we have our fingers in our ears saying, “La, la, la, la.” about the real problem in life, “that I just can’t deal with right now” aka “I’m not going to deal with until I absolutely have no other choice.”
That’s how it applies to me life anyway.
Elizabeth A.´s last blog …Random Friday
hmm… I can’t say for sure, but I would vote that it has something to do with the fact that our vices are selfishly satisfying. The things we do to ourselves make us feel better than the things we do FOR ourselves. All things being equal, if I had the choice to eat LIttle Debbies or run on a treadmill, is there any guess which one I’d choose?
Just like facing our monsters and dealing with them, or ignoring them and just keeping the status quo, it’s just easier. We’re all just lazier.
What can we say? We’re americans.
Texan Mama´s last blog …Self-Reflection
I’ve found the cliche “the evil we know is better than the evil we don’t” is usually in play for me.
I hate change and yet when I take a small step outside of my comfort zone I realize that the secondary evil — the one I thought would be too much to bear — is actually easier than what I’d been hanging on to.
(Shouldn’t end a sentence on a preposition, but I can’t think how to re-write that one. Wanna take a stab at it?)
It’s also difficult, for me, to embrace change and actively work at making that change the norm. I guess that’s why there’s the other cliche — “We’re all a work in progress.”
cardiogirl´s last blog …Auugghh, I wanna bite someone in the face