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Hell
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
―Helen Keller
Hell is defined as the life-condition of suffering. When fully immersed in it, all we know is misery; our energy falls so low we become nearly incapable of taking any action to help ourselves feel better.
In such a state, we tend to view almost everything, even positive events, in a negative light. When our suffering is extreme and prolonged, we may become inconsolable, leading to one of the worst consequences of being trapped in the life-condition of Hell, social isolation.
The more isolated we become, the more we flatten out, eventually becoming mere two-dimensional versions of ourselves―lethargic, sometimes even paralyzed versions that we hardly recognize―as we lose our ability to think clearly and with good judgment. We begin clinging to reasons why we can't solve our problems and blame our unhappiness on the problems we can't solve.
Sometimes we even come to feel we're worthless or disgusting and try to numb ourselves with alcohol, drugs, food, sleep, and the like. Alternatively, sometimes feeling worthless causes us to lash out at others, the impulse to destroy ourselves expanding to include those around us as well.
Sometimes, on the other hand, we suffer in silence, living a life of such quiet desperation that no one, not even our closest friends and family, suspects how overwhelmed we've become. At other times our suffering is so awful, so intense, it leaks out of our every pore, preventing us from hiding its existence from anyone.
But whether expressed or concealed, mild or severe, lasting decades or only the briefest of moments, the one constant feature of the life-condition of Hell―of suffering―is that it prevents us from thinking about anything else. All we have room left to want―in fact, what we want sometimes even more than life itself―is to escape it.
Though she no longer wanted to kill herself, when April followed up with Ash in his office three days after being discharged from the hospital, she still felt worthless and hopeless and had difficulty finding pleasure in anything. She felt little motivation to take care of herself. 'I have no reason to move on,' she told Ash.
She was still convinced that her ex-husband was the reason she was depressed. For the year and a half since he'd left, she'd persisted in her attempts to reconcile with him but had succeeded in provoking only one response―a handwritten letter mailed in an envelope with no return address in which he explained that he'd moved out of state specifically to get away from her. Despite this, April still felt it was possible that their marriage could be saved.
'How exactly do you envision that happening?' Ash asked her.
'I'll move wherever he is. I'm sure I could get a job at the local hospital.' When he pointed out that her answer failed to address the real issue―that her ex-husband no longer wanted to be married to her―she insisted she could make him see that they were still right for each other. Yet when she went on to describe what she hoped their reconstructed relationship would look like, she talked only in vague platitudes, her voice devoid of emotion. Even when Ash got her to admit just how angry she was about the way her ex-husband had left her, she didn't actually sound angry. In fact, to Ash she seemed switched off in the same way she'd described her ex-husband had been when she'd confronted him in person after he'd left. When Ash remarked on it, she said that this was the way she'd always sounded, which made him wonder just how long her depression had been going on prior to the dissolution of her marriage.
'What made you decide to marry him in the first place?' he asked her after a moment.
'He asked,' she answered simply. Though they'd known each other for only two months, she'd said yes before he could change his mind. 'He was just so generous.'
But almost immediately after they were married, his generosity seemed to evaporate. He began to abuse her verbally, calling her fat and stupid. She'd completed her master's degree in education and worked with physically disabled children at a local children's hospital, a job she loved. But he'd tell her she worked with disabled kids because they were 'at her level.' He seemed to have no interest in her needs or in pleasing her. She wanted children. He wouldn't even consider it.
She'd been able to refuse him nothing, however, no matter how immoral or unethical his request. She'd been reluctant to act against her principles, she said, but she'd found herself able to bear her own disgust more easily than his.
This imperative to avoid all conflict with him soon bled into other areas of her life. She began to dread crowds―a problem that had plagued her mother―and became shy and nervous in social situations.
Intrigued to learn that her mother had been agoraphobic, Ash began questioning April about her childhood. How had she grown up? What had her relationship with her parents been like? She told Ash she'd been an only child and had felt anxious as long as she could remember. Her father had worked at the loading docks of their small New England town and had hardly spoken to her at all during her childhood. Her mother, in contrast, had demanded that April remain at her side constantly. April would have to come home from school immediately every day to be with her―to buy her food, to cook her meals, to clean up around the house. She used April, in sum, as a shield against the world.
A shield, April said, that she held close only so she could get a better view of the things she wished to criticize: Why did April bite her nails so incessantly? Why did she suck her thumb until she was nine? Why didn't she try harder to make friends? Why was she so fat? April hated that she couldn't stand up to her mother, that she couldn't answer these criticisms. But no one ever knew it. Despite her mother's constant belittling, April remained incapable of becoming angry with her.
'Why, do you think?' Ash asked her.
'I didn't want to make her even more critical of me than she already was. I still don't. There's only so much disapproval I can take.'
'And her criticisms don't make you angry?'
She shrugged.
'Seems hard to imagine they wouldn't,' Ash said.
'What good would getting angry do me?'
'Feelings are rarely that rational. It's hard to just turn them off.'
'I don't think I'm having any feelings I turn off.'
'Maybe. Or maybe you're turning them off so quickly you don't realize you're having them.'
One corner of her mouth curved in a half-smile. 'How would I be doing that if it's as hard as you say?'
'Touché,' he said. 'So here's another thought: If you won't let yourself get angry at your mother but you are actually angry at your mother, what can you do? Get angry at someone else. Someone safer.'
'Who?'
'Yourself.'
He reminded her she'd said to him in their first session that she knew she was overeating at least partially to punish herself. But now he was wondering if there was more to it, if she was feeling so much rage that she was overeating to transform herself.
'Into what?'
'Into the ugly beast your mother spent so much time deriding,' Ash said. 'The ugly beast your husband ran so fast and so far from. The ugly beast you believe yourself to be.'
'She could be depressed just because she's overweight,' Ash told me. 'But what would that make the core delusion of the world of Hell? That you can only be happy if you're thin?'
'No, I agree, not broad enough,' I said. 'I do wonder, though, if it's connected to her low self-esteem.'
Ash shook his head. 'That doesn't seem likely either. Poor self-esteem may increase your risk for depression, but people with healthy self-esteem get depressed all the time.'
'True.'
There was a pause.
'Okay, what about this,' I said. 'What if she isn't just afraid of her mother's disapproval? What if she's afraid her mother is going to abandon her? Maybe that's why she's never been able to get angry with her. Maybe she figures having a terrible mother is better than having no mother at all. And maybe that's the same reason she became suicidal when her husband left. Maybe having even a jerk for a husband is better than having no husband at all―because maybe she believes she can only be happy if she's loved.'
Ash thought for a moment, then shook his head again. 'For one thing, it's probably true that she can't be happy if nobody loves her. It's probably true for all of us. But even if it weren't, the belief that you can only be happy if you're loved can't be what creates the life-condition of Hell.'
'Why not?' I asked him.
'Because people who feel loved suffer all the time,' Ash said.
©2018 Alex Lickerman and Ash ElDifrawi. All rights reserved. Reprinted from The Ten Worlds: The New Psychology of Happiness. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.