(no subject)
In the most recent episode of The Vampire Diaries, we saw Elena going toe-to-toe with a very dark and very insidious foe.
Maybe inner critic is too light a word. Her own darkest fears became tangible. They started talking to her, in human form, embodying people from her past, one a person she'd killed, the other a reflection of everything she loathed. She was being driven to suicide by an inner aggressor that, I think, lives in each of us.
It was fascinating to watch the tangible manifestations of her inner darkness beguile her. What's more, you could see how Elena might construe things the way she did in her mind. She was a monster. A murderer. Someone responsible for the deaths of many whom she loved. Someone whose mistakes could never be undone. There was a darkness inside her that could never be made right. The people who might have once loved her no longer did, because of what she now was. The only solution--the only end to her torment and to the torment she brought others--was to kill herself.
It's quite insidious and apt, I think, because one of the main accusations we level against ourselves when we're in pain is the pain we cause others. We somehow manage, by focusing on all that we don't like about ourselves and all we feel we could do better, all our mistakes, all our less-thans, all the hate we might deserve, to construe ourselves as bad people, and as people without hope of doing better. I think it's significant, and maybe ironic, that while mired in our grief over not being good, we somehow manage to buy into the idea that there is nothing good about us. Is not the primary thing we concern ourselves with when someone--even a murderer--has done wrong, that person's remorse? We may think they've committed evil, but most of us don't consider them lost until they prove to feel no remorse. One reason why our own inner critic's girevances are put to the lie, that while we continue to torture ourselves for our wrongs, we could somehow believe we were beyond help, we could somehow ignore that part of us, that will to goodness, that continues to act through us and move us in ways seen and unseen.
I was startled by how many parallels I saw between Elena's experience and what people--myself included--experience when they become depressed. It is arguably the very reason for depression.
We all lose control like that sometimes. We allow our inner bully to demean, humiliate, dehumanize, and emotionally and psychologically destroy us. In this case, Elena's tormenters were the result of a curse, and their goal was to get Elena to kill herself, a poetic analogy not lost on me. I found it sad that that same inner voice, which exists in all of us, when allowed to run the show, will always lead to one end--
Insidious, indeed.
Maybe inner critic is too light a word. Her own darkest fears became tangible. They started talking to her, in human form, embodying people from her past, one a person she'd killed, the other a reflection of everything she loathed. She was being driven to suicide by an inner aggressor that, I think, lives in each of us.
It was fascinating to watch the tangible manifestations of her inner darkness beguile her. What's more, you could see how Elena might construe things the way she did in her mind. She was a monster. A murderer. Someone responsible for the deaths of many whom she loved. Someone whose mistakes could never be undone. There was a darkness inside her that could never be made right. The people who might have once loved her no longer did, because of what she now was. The only solution--the only end to her torment and to the torment she brought others--was to kill herself.
It's quite insidious and apt, I think, because one of the main accusations we level against ourselves when we're in pain is the pain we cause others. We somehow manage, by focusing on all that we don't like about ourselves and all we feel we could do better, all our mistakes, all our less-thans, all the hate we might deserve, to construe ourselves as bad people, and as people without hope of doing better. I think it's significant, and maybe ironic, that while mired in our grief over not being good, we somehow manage to buy into the idea that there is nothing good about us. Is not the primary thing we concern ourselves with when someone--even a murderer--has done wrong, that person's remorse? We may think they've committed evil, but most of us don't consider them lost until they prove to feel no remorse. One reason why our own inner critic's girevances are put to the lie, that while we continue to torture ourselves for our wrongs, we could somehow believe we were beyond help, we could somehow ignore that part of us, that will to goodness, that continues to act through us and move us in ways seen and unseen.
I was startled by how many parallels I saw between Elena's experience and what people--myself included--experience when they become depressed. It is arguably the very reason for depression.
We all lose control like that sometimes. We allow our inner bully to demean, humiliate, dehumanize, and emotionally and psychologically destroy us. In this case, Elena's tormenters were the result of a curse, and their goal was to get Elena to kill herself, a poetic analogy not lost on me. I found it sad that that same inner voice, which exists in all of us, when allowed to run the show, will always lead to one end--
Insidious, indeed.