Note: this one is written dedicated to “R” who comes in once a season for a ‘med check’ and to tell me how awful is life. Not just hers, but all life. A Dementor could do no better to bring me down. This essay is what I want to tell her, if she was open to hearing it. Spo
I have a handful of patients who play a sort of game called the ‘What’s the point?’ game. The goal is to defeat me in my meager means to help them. They list their woes and circumstances, and it’s my role in the game to try to come up with why their convictions are not so. Mind! This is not the hopelessness commonly seen in clinical depression. This is something else. There is almost a defiance to it, a ‘just try me” emotion, done with a slight smirk when I don’t ‘win’. My attempts to get them to see things differently or to persevere/something will work out, are deflected faster than bullets off of bracelets in ‘yes, but’ replies or other rationales. This is often the result of anger, turned-in: they feel much pain and they want me to experience their rage and helplessness – not assuage it.* “Yes,” they want me to admit in a defeat, “You’re right. It’s all pointless. Let’s give up”.
Many times in my life my mind has played “What’s the point?” with myself, so I recognize the game when it happens.
Once brains start playing the game, they often can’t find a way to stop. Everything hurts. The present has no value and the future has no point. Both my mind and patients distill all endeavors down to the universe not caring if we are here or not. They hold onto nihilism and think me stupid for thinking otherwise.What kind of idiot looks at the state of mankind and responds with anything other than despair?
Despair (I tell my patient and myself) is a certainty and I haven’t met a certainty that isn’t so. To look at it otherwise, one doesn’t pretend meaningless isn’t there, nor does one go the opposite direction that is all there is. We are wrong about meaningless when we wear it like a helmet against life.
“Meaning” I tell them “is what you do next”. ‘What’s the point?”: The answer is what we do in response to this emotional question.
I was recently reminded the word ‘believe’ stems from a Germanic-like word for ‘to care’ . I choose to care, to do something/anything that may nurture love and good work. I choose not to play this game. I choose to believe and persevere towards answering the question. The answer may not be at the destination but along the way when we were least expecting to encounter it.
*This is one definition ‘projective identification”. The therapist feels the emotions of the patient as if they threw a beachball and you caught it. One is on guard to see these coming and not catch or hold onto them.
32 comments
September 27, 2021 at 4:43 AM
Parnassus
I know some people like that who are so vested in their negativity that they become defiant about it. Some of them are people who have set a bar for themselves and not achieved it, so they dismiss all other outcomes as worthless.
–Jim
September 27, 2021 at 6:52 AM
Urspo
Yes we all know folks like this. In my job they are coming to see me in theory to better things; what I have learned some folks do not want things better. Worse they want to drag the world down to ‘their level’. This cannot happen.
September 27, 2021 at 5:05 AM
Debra She Who Seeks
Is there a greater prison than negativity and nihilism? What a terrible way to live.
September 27, 2021 at 6:52 AM
Urspo
It is a horrible prison – locked from within/lock on the inside not the out.
September 27, 2021 at 5:17 AM
David Godfrey
Why, for the moments of pleasure, the sights of ah and wonder, for others who need us, for the kindness we can do for others, for the tiny difference we can make, in making the world a better place. We are here because we are, not our choice, while it may not be the party we hoped for, while we are here we might as well enjoy the music and dance.
September 27, 2021 at 6:52 AM
Urspo
Well said !
September 27, 2021 at 5:17 AM
Dwight W.
I kept re-reading this this morning, once a season so I assume she comes every three months. I have known people exactly , who behave how you speak but in my case had more information. When my Grandfather died, Maternal, my Grandmother announced out loud , “He’s dead and I’m never going to be happy again” , what she didn’t say was she was going to do everything in her power to make sure everyone around her was never gonna be happy again. She was a good person , Proverbs 31 10-31, material. She went on like this , until one day a small white dog walked around the corner of her house*. His name was to become Sourdough, and he was to stretch her life for 8 years , my Grandfather having died at 92. She still was never one to miss a chance to complain. Your person may not have any other life than your visits, if she does , she is playing you like a slot machine. If her circumstances were so dire, she would have acted to end her abject misery. Let’s hope you are the only one she tortures this way, but I’ll bet a hundred bucks you’re not. Happy Monday,Dr. Spo😊* This story is very close to a story Called “To Dance with the White Dog ”, but it is true.
September 27, 2021 at 6:14 AM
Debbie W.
This puts words to a time in my childhood/young adult life, when we shared our household with my paternal grandmother, whose husband had died at age 40. My grandmother was defiantly negative about life, and wanted all those around her to confirm her feelings, and feel just as she did. It is truly an awful way to live. Although it must be a challenge for you, your patients are fortunate to have a physician like you, who can recognize their situation, even if you cannot help them to put things right. Since you mention that these patients come to you for a “med check”, I am curious as to what, if any, difference said medications make in those patients’ lives?
September 27, 2021 at 6:55 AM
Urspo
Curiously they always say ‘the meds help’ and don’t want them stopped on the sensible grounds ‘they don’t helpful’.
I have to see the forest for the trees. This patient, who fights like a cat if I try to show optimism, still comes in every 3 months. At some level the therapy is I am on her journey with her, a companion. This is something; this is therapeutic – just don’t point it out.
September 27, 2021 at 6:53 AM
Urspo
Thank you for sharing.
September 27, 2021 at 6:16 AM
Lori Hawkins
How sad to live life this way. There is always something to be thankful for.
September 27, 2021 at 6:56 AM
Urspo
It is hoped one can always find hope, gratitude, growth, ‘a lesson’ in all events no matter how awful.
September 27, 2021 at 6:30 AM
Moving with Mitchell
I‘ve been playing a bit of “what’s the point?” with myself today. Even while asking myself the question, though, I’ve had plenty of decent responses. So, this will pass.
September 27, 2021 at 6:56 AM
Urspo
They do pass. At the moment my hunger pains are addressed this way. “My stomach is growling as it is bored. But this will pass” and I don’t eat
September 27, 2021 at 8:40 AM
Robzilla
I used to be this way about two decades ago. It didn’t happen all the time, but I finally got it through my thick skull that you can’t live long like that. But back then, I also felt the people around me thought it was forbidden to have negative thoughts. Screw that.
The fact is, it’s healthy to experience all emotions but in moderation. I didn’t do anything big. I think it’s called becoming middle aged.
September 27, 2021 at 9:09 AM
Urspo
Despair is an emotion like any other; it is the habit of despair that damns.
I am glad you wised up and learned as a lifestyle it isn’t good on the complexion.
September 27, 2021 at 9:28 AM
Linda Practical Parsimony
I have had moments of despair, but that is no way to live. I didn’t like it, so I decided to do something, anything. I figured nothing would get better if I did not find a way out.
My friend was in a perpetual state of despair. Finally, I refused to play that game and told him so. I tried to make him see things weren’t so bad. He like that game, too. He kept me on the phone for eight hours, saying he had a loaded gun and I should stay on the phone with him. That was exhausting.
Honestly, I think he liked despair.
September 27, 2021 at 11:20 AM
Urspo
Despair has a seductive element to it, a dark comfort that wraps around us like a blanket. Ugly.
September 27, 2021 at 10:02 AM
Pat
I went though a phase of “what’s the point” when it came to making the bed every morning. But reverted to norm eventually. I have a sister-in-law who might fall into your category of content malcontents.
September 27, 2021 at 12:17 PM
Urspo
We often mistake no immediate results as supporting the pointlessness of something. True the world does not stop spinning if the bed is not made, but this slow abandonment of regiment and structure evolves into worse things.
September 27, 2021 at 12:13 PM
Paul Brownsey
When I first read this, I felt potential guilt, since I suspect I would be a bit like this if I had an appointment on such a topic with a clinical psychologist.
However, on reflection, i wonder whether, if I were like that, it would be, not a defeatist end in itself, but more a matter of trying to test the strength of what I was being told against the most forlorn objections I could think of. (And that may stem in part from my former job that involved grilling students on their essays and putting the strongest objections I could muster so as to lead them to improve their offerings…)
(I rather annoyed a friend of mine who had trained as a psychotherapist–though not via a heavy-duty course in medicine–and who one day pronounced, “To think of something is to desire it.” I said, “I sometimes think of cancer, but you’re not saying that means I desire it, are you?”)
September 27, 2021 at 12:18 PM
Urspo
I believe in all of us is some part wanting to test the mettle of others hoping to be proven wrong our worst fears.
September 27, 2021 at 1:58 PM
janiejunebug
When I was extremely depressed, it was difficult for me to believe that anything had a point. I might have been defiant about it. I’m not sure. A divorce and medication gradually changed my mind.
Love,
Janie
September 27, 2021 at 1:58 PM
Old Lurker
I am firmly on team R, although I try not to harangue psychiatrists about it.
September 27, 2021 at 6:58 PM
Urspo
you have to pay them to for the services
September 27, 2021 at 2:52 PM
Todd Gunther
I’ll admit I ask myself “what’s the point” with some frequency, but I somehow manage to snap out of it.
September 27, 2021 at 6:58 PM
Urspo
Good for you!
These emotions do not last and they are not ‘truth’
September 28, 2021 at 1:51 AM
BadNoteB
I must be the very odd ball totally comfortable with the notion that there is no real point to any of this. We all appear thrust upon unchosen paths of indeterminate lengths, with little control beyond a modicum of power to influence the comfort of our journey. We observe, interpret, interact, assimilate and emote our way through our various encounters in rather predictable, if not boring, fashion based upon our common nature as humans.
A corollary to this perspective encourages rejecting the concept of a singular answer awaiting discovery at some future destination. It’s the richness and variety of experiences encountered and shared along our paths that provide a sense of comfort and satisfaction with the life we’ve lived as that final breath is savored. Should I be wrong on this, I will gladly welcome that special “Ah ha!” moment as a SuperPowerBall bonanza along the way.
What I admire about this philosophy is that it eliminates “why me-ism” that used to consume so much energy in processing many of my reactions to life’s events. Whatever is encountered along the path is randomly there to discover and experience. While I had no control over its placement, I retain power over my reaction to it and it’s ability to influence/control me. That realization has proven very helpful – in working my way through numerous difficult/unpleasant experiences as well as in permitting full experience of love and unbridled joy.
September 28, 2021 at 7:33 AM
Urspo
I had a teacher who addressed the ‘why me?” to ‘why not you?” in an attempt to get people to stop thinking their lot was due to the curse of the gods but random bad luck. it was hoped this freed them up to do what they could with their sad circumstances.
September 28, 2021 at 7:37 AM
larrymuffin
After reading this latest entry, I admire your ability, though your are a trained professional, to deal with this daily. I think you must have some special abilities.
September 28, 2021 at 8:16 AM
Urspo
Thank you.
My special abilities are not too glamorous. I keep on time; I listen and I don’t patronize. I use words carefully and I give options (not too many).
If I have a special ability it is to quickly intuit what is the matter and how to respond to it, like Bugs Bunny.
It also helps I wear funny shirts.
September 28, 2021 at 12:35 PM
larrymuffin
Bugs Bunny, LOL!!! I like that.