On Curing Neuroticism
searchforzero

Frankly, some of us are privileged to such an extreme that we never feel the full effect of bearing a neurotic trait or two. Most folks living in first world countries (or above a certain familial income threshold) wouldn't notice just how much it would bother them to feel too far above or below room temperature, or how impatient/picky they are regarding food, or how much of an aversion they have to getting dirty or doing manual labour. These things, while hidden from view to the lucky of us (and yes, simple luck is all it is¹), are expressions of neuroticism. The intense urge to scratch a sudden itch, the distaste of water when it's not at the "right" temperature, the fear of judgment producing an inability to speak one's mind, even something as trivial as the fear of spiders is neurotic on some level. It's very easy to fall into the trap of accepting these things as inevitably part of life. Perhaps you've had the experience of stretching or massaging a muscle you didn't even know was tight. The relief afterwards is something that you wouldn't have known was possible before stumbling across the tight muscle. In the same way, if you go looking for the things you respond neurotically to, you are taking the first step toward unearthing freeing states of mind that you didn't know were available to you.

If I can make the distinction between feeling itchy and feeling intensely motivated to scratch such an itch, then I can show the important difference between experiencing something as it is and the abstract thought we prescribe to the experience. If the prescription takes the form of an urgent, panicky need to scratch, then wouldn't we want to minimize that? I'm not saying scratching itches is bad (or avoiding spiders, or maintaining proper hygiene, etc.), I'm just saying that if we can minimize the negative nature of our response to itchiness, we will most definitely improve the quality of our lives.

So what can we do with our share of neuroticism? One of my most-used examples to explain this uses the feeling of anger. Say you're angry about something, it doesn't matter what. Now, realistically, the anger isn't helping you dissipate the source of the anger at all (therefore it is useless). In fact you only get angry because it would've scared the other early homosapiens out of stealing your food again–or some other expression of evolutionary selection. You can brainstorm a host of reasons why we might've evolved to be sad about breaking a belonging or jealous of someone stealing your preferred lover. Regardless, here's what is going on: something happened, then you became angry. Why? The "cure" for neurotic thinking really is as simple as recognizing that any justification one might fall back on here is a fallacious appeal to the omnipotence of evolution. In other words, saying "I'm afraid of heights because I've evolved to associate height with danger, and therefore I should be" is falsely claiming that evolution was right about coding this response into you. Remember that we feel almost no fear driving even though it is a highly dangerous activity per the numbers. It is clear that we cannot always fall back on nature if we care about responding to our environment more realistically. Now, anger is simpler than fear in that it is seldom ever useful, and if it was, it would be by chance. So with no good reason to be angry we can–as we hopefully strive to do with any pointless occupation of thought–simply dismiss the anger.

Of course, like anything in life you want to get better at, this needs to become a practice. And the fact that the "cure" is conceptually simple doesn't mean no effort needs to be applied. Continually noticing the emergence of neurotic thoughts and how they are fundamentally unrelated to their sources is a way of training your recognition skills such that you become more aware of the happenings of your mind. With this increased awareness comes the retrospectively obvious understanding of how silly it is to become angry when the anger is useless. This, of course, extends to the full range of negative emotions.

In short, winning the battle against neuroticism is akin to opting out of the fight as soon as you notice you are caught up in it. It is a matter of interupting the signal between your response to an external event, and the event itself. With practice you are able to interupt your neurotic response signals earlier and earlier until their expression in your behaviour is near zero. The next time you are reminded to take a deep breath in a stressful time, take that opportunity to do this type of recognition.