We are told that we are living through a mental health epidemic. The statistics certainly bear that out. According to these measures, we have never been more depressed, more anxious, more drug-dependent. Our troubles seem to be endless and inescapable, because the problem is something that cannot be separated from what we are: we are things that think and it is our minds that are letting us down. It is a serious problem.
We are also living through a time in which we have never been offered more solutions to this problem. We have more diverse and more effective medications than ever before; we have more diverse and more effective therapies; we have more and more ways to make ourselves feel better and achieve ‘wellness’. We will claim that these solutions are effective and successful, and we will point to other statistics that show that to be so. Medication will solve the problem; CBT will solve the problem; mindfulness will solve the problem; cold-water immersion will solve the problem; probiotics will solve the problem; I won’t list them all because the list would be too long. We have our pick of these ‘effective’ solutions. And yet the problem remains as unsolved as ever. Do you feel a contradictory tension?
Anyone who has lived with depression or anxiety, and has at some point or other had it become known to those around them, will be very accustomed to getting a lot of advice. The advice is mostly well-meaning but that doesn’t make it helpful. People want you to feel better, so they will talk to you about what makes them feel better. They don’t understand that you live in different worlds. Because of this their advice misses the mark, often ridiculously so, and it can be unbearably insulting nonsense to someone who is in a deep depression. It is the ‘let them eat cake’ of mental health. It is talk that advertises ignorance. And yet there is a paradox, because what they say is both ignorant and true: they will say that these things will improve your mood, and they are right, because cake is nice.
Of course these things improve the situation. The problem is that they solve nothing. (For me, at least, and I suspect for many others, though I can only speak for me.) If you are anxious, and you take a pill or you focus on your breathing, you feel better: of course it improves things, but it solves nothing. The fundamental problem remains. And now you have another problem: you must take pills; you must focus on your breathing. You remain enslaved to your anxiety and only ameliorate its effects, of necessity, to make yourself feel better. Do we call this a solution?
If you are depressed, and you get up and do a little task or exercise, or achieve something, you feel better: of course it improves things, but it solves nothing. The fundamental problem remains. And now you have another problem: you must keep busy; you must achieve. But what will you do when illness or injury prevents your activity? What will you do when all your efforts achieve nothing but fatigue? You remain as vulnerable as ever. Do we call this a solution?
If you are drowning because you cannot swim, and someone offers you a breathing apparatus, you can sit and breathe underneath the water. Of course this improves the situation and it is certainly better than the alternative. But it doesn’t solve anything. You are still trapped underwater, unable to swim, and now you are trapped by something else too. Eventually the air supply might run out, and then where will you be? If you would be free from what troubles you, you must rise and break the surface and breathe the free air, and to do that you must learn to swim.
Or perhaps you find yourself an inflatable boat. Of course this improves the situation. It carries you along the surface of the water in comfort and ease. But will it stand up to a storm? Will it be a target for predators? And all the while you are surrounded by an endless fear: do not fall into the water because you will surely drown. It is a precarious position to be in.
For any of these improvements, they are not solutions unless they solve the fundamental problem: you cannot swim, and because of that the water will always hold a danger for you. You could learn to swim, if only you were willing to get back into the water. But lazing on the boat is pleasant (in calm weather). You can breathe. You are having a nice enough time; you feel better; you seem to have achieved ‘wellness’. ‘What is the problem?’, you think. And you will have no obvious answer because you are not particularly troubled.
The problem, as I see it, is that these ways of making ourselves feel better enable us to continue in our errors. And in that we never face them, and because of that we never correct them. We end up trapped in them, convinced there is no alternative. We never learn to swim and so we always start to drown when we are thrown into the water. But we never tried to learn to swim: we only tried to stay out of the water or else feel better whilst we drowned.
It’s common for people to hit a point in their life where they become convinced that there is no solution to their problems. They have ‘tried everything’. These people are yet to try philosophy. Philosophy works, not because it gets you what you want, but because it changes what you want: it changes your understanding of what you think you should want. This solution isn’t for everyone but it is necessary for some.
When I was struggling with anxiety, I wanted to feel better. I wanted to be free from the effect it was having on me, or at least free enough to keep up appearances, and CBT and medication bought me this freedom. It allowed me to breathe underwater. But it came at a cost. It improved the situation enough to allow me to continue in my errors. It made me feel better, it made me appear better, and these combined to give the appearance of improvement. Any philosopher should know that appearances can be deceiving. In reality it solved nothing.
Now I make an attempt at being a philosopher, I don’t want to be free from anxiety: I want to be free from my errors. My anxiety is a product of my errors and therefore it shows them to me. It is helpful in that regard. I react to things that don’t matter as if they matter: this is an error to be corrected. I want to correct this error. And so I want to face it, I want to feel it, I want to immerse myself in those waters because that is how I will learn to swim.
Socrates says that he would rather find the truth by losing an argument than remain in error by winning it. Socrates says it is better to suffer evil than to do it. Socrates says that the reality of virtue is better than the appearance of it. I am convinced by his rational accounts. And so I say I would rather find a solution to my anxiety by facing it than allow myself to remain in error by obscuring it with medication or ‘strategies’ or ‘techniques’, however effective these are in getting you through. I would rather suffer anxiety than lie to myself or others. I would rather be calm than merely appear to be so.
I don’t just want to feel better or appear better: I want to be better. And so I hasten to turn away from all those improvements that solve nothing, as soon and as far as I am able, and look only to live as well as I can.
With this approach, I find a real solution. Something has changed. Philosophy hasn’t given me what I wanted, which was to be free from the effects of anxiety. It has given me something better: freedom from the trouble it causes me. I am no longer a slave to these effects; I have taken away their power to harm me. Now, I want the effects, I call them good, because they teach me good lessons. Inevitably, ironically, that change in perspective is often enough to negate the effects entirely.
Of course, even the strongest swimmers will struggle in in stormy waters: in those times it would be wise to reach for the life-jacket. And it’s good to get out of the water and take an occasional rest. But we must do what we can to make ourselves self-reliant, if we want to be free from fear and trouble.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
tobybetenson.com 