Why do we so willingly imagine catastrophic scenarios? Professor Michel Lejoieau answers, who has been studying our fascination with evil for many years.
Psychologies: Is it possible to live without replaying your own “movie” in your head?
Michel Lejoieux: Our mind is a machine that works all the time. Thinking knows no pauses. Thinking over in the mind, feeling too much of this and not enough of that, regretting certain things, doubting one’s future — all this is part of a normal mental life. Anxiety and sadness are our everyday emotions. The mood is inherently unstable. If we weren’t worried about the future, that in itself would be cause for concern. If we did not doubt our worth, we would never develop and improve ourselves. Being human is itself a source of anxiety.
So inner peace is not our natural state?
In fact, calls for eternal peace and the search for uncomplicated happiness puzzle me. Running from emotions is a road to nowhere. What is really important is to understand how we can coexist with them. One should not think that mental life can be turned into some kind of pure paradise. In addition, it is useless and even harmful to offer a restless person or a pessimist better control of their emotions.
Judging by the title of your book, Information Overdose, do you think we’re addicted to bad news?
Obviously, we need to be informed, to be informed, and we fall into a kind of collective addiction to blogs and breaking news. This phenomenon is reminiscent of the hypochondria that has gripped the whole society, in which people are worried not about their own well-being, but about the state of health of a world in which everything is very bad. We are already choking on information, but everything is not enough for us, so we are like a hypochondriac who hurries to the doctor to be pitied, examined, encouraged, but even then he cannot calm down. This trend is reinforced by the obsession with «precautions». We are supposed to be ready to defend ourselves against all dangers that may arise. No new epidemic should take us by surprise. However, wanting to protect us, society makes us worry about whether we have done everything to avoid the worst — in personal life, in the family, at work …
Imagining the worst is the way to tame it. Having occupied your mind, protect yourself from even more formidable fears.
What fascinates us in this state of anticipation of the drama, turning us into, as you put it, «pyromaniacs»?
The need to flirt with fear, to evoke it and at the same time cast it out. Imagining the worst is a way to tame evil. There is pleasure in scaring yourself, knowing that there is no immediate danger. This game, in which the mind behaves like a novelist or a film director, helps us drive away deeper anxieties from ourselves. Coming up with scenarios, we occupy our minds and thereby protect ourselves from much more formidable fears: I mean our fate as a mortal being, the fear of losing loved ones and loved ones. This relentless thought about death is very intimate, difficult to bear, you can’t share it with others, but the thoughts that overcome us about catastrophes can be mentioned in a conversation, thereby making them ordinary and harmless.
When does our looping become painful?
As long as it allows us to find strategies for managing our lives, as long as it stimulates us, we are not talking about pathology. Conversely, when the endless scrolling of the same thoughts begins to interfere with us, overwhelm us, poison our relationships with others, our emotional life and work, this already belongs to the field of illness. Both depression and general anxiety are real pathologies that are important to identify and treat in time. I see so many teens coming in after a suicide attempt that could have been avoided if their dark thoughts hadn’t been mistaken for normal teenage anguish.
How to distinguish the tendency to cherish your sadness, sort out your mistakes and failures in your mind from real depression?
The most obvious signs of depression are loss of interest in the world, inability to experience pleasure, sleep and appetite disorders, problems with self-esteem, unrelenting sadness. A depressed person does not change their mood. He gets up in the morning sad and sad goes to bed.
What thoughts do you find most toxic?
Those that revolve around guilt, that I am not worthy to live, that I am responsible for all the troubles of the world. They are among the main symptoms of depression, which often leads to suicide. Yes, telling yourself that you are nobody, reproaching yourself that you were not up to par — this does not always indicate the onset of depression. But still you need to contact a specialist and make sure that this is not the case. And then everyone is free to choose suitable ways to be less unhappy.