for me, fear of standing out is a privilege

[diony]

As you all know, I read LJ extremely irregularly, so it wasn't until yesterday that I came across the complex and often painful discussion about cultural appropriation that's been going on in various journals these last 10 or so days. But when I did I started to read, and then I read, and read, and read some more, and tried my hardest to listen

Comments

[xiphias]

My primary care physician once told me that, in one way of looking at it, there are only two emotions, love and fear. That you can, if you so choose and find it useful to do so, look at ALL other emotions as either expressions of love or fear.

And it is a useful way to look at things. Naturally, it's limiting -- it probably oughtn't be the ONLY way one looks at emotions, but it does clarify some things, sometimes.

[diony]

Hmn, interesting. I wonder if s/he connects anger to fear, then? (Which is valid, although one of the interesting things I saw in my self-defense teaching was that people almost always had either an anger gut-reaction OR a fear gut-reaction. Although what that might me neurologically I have not the faintest clue.)

[xiphias]

Exactly.

His point was that our emotions do two things: want to bring us closer to something, or want to get us farther away from something (-philos and -phobos, basically). And these are both very important things -- if we don't get away from danger, we die. But if we don't find things to which we can move toward, then what is the point of life? Fear keeps you from dying, love allows you to live.

Now, there are two ways to increase distance between you and something you want to get away from: get away from it, or make it get away from you. "Fear" is a desire to move ourselves away from something; "anger", to move something away from us. Both increase distance. "Fight-or-flight" both work.

[diony]

Okay, I can see that; I may need to use it in my next class. And it fits together with things I already know/believe, which is always pleasant.

I had a therapist once who said that she saw anger as a signal that we want someone (or something) to change its behaviour, and depression as a form of anger turned inward -- wanting ourselves to change our own behaviour, or feeling like our anger towards the world is so enormous that the only thing that can be done with it is to turn it against ourselves. Not necessarily 'true' but helpful through constructs for me, especially as I do see a lot of my anger towards objects because the objects don't do what they want. And thinking of it that way lets me both resolve anger towards people (because there's something I can address) and be forgiving of myself.

[xiphias]

I would agree with that for one form of depression. "Depression" is a catch-all word for all SORTS of mental disorders that present in similar manners, but which, I strongly suspect, have all sorts of different causes, some physical, some in how we think, some in how we react.

But, yeah. I can see that, for one kind of depression, that makes a heck of a lot of sense.

[diony]

Oh, absolutely. It's, well, it's a metaphor even to the extent that for *some* people it's true. Whereas when I was depressed it didn't work at all for me, because I was very distinctly chemically depressed as a side effect of a medication and there was nothing about my own viewpoint of the world that had anything to do with it.

So yah, that's a good caveat.