I don’t see a massive flaw in your theory but I think it needs some refinement.
I’ve been trying to understand how „healthy“ people’s minds work and I think it comes down to straight up denial of the state of the world.
The people who have been through THE SHIT as you say have probably all had some traumatic experiences in their lives that dragged them face first through how shitty and cruel this world can be and once you see it you see it everywhere and it becomes a downward spiral if you don’t find a way to catch yourself.
And then there are people who somehow managed to not look too closely all their lives, you will recognize them by their unwillingness to discuss any downer topics. They manage to live in blissful ignorance and by just copying each other they stay in their happy ignorant bubble and voila life is good?
Since this seems to be almost a 80/20 split I’d also like to throw in that about 20% of the population fall into the category of being highly sensitive and thereby prone to notice all the shitty wrong things happening around them. We just can’t ignore it and its wearing us down.
To me it feels like people that have been through THE SHIT face a point where they make a choice:
Wallow in defeat with the crushing knowledge that the world is unkind and unfair. Give up and angrily yell at others that haven’t realized this yet. Lash out at those that are (at the moment) doing okay, because it is unfair that they are not also following choice #1.
or
Understand that things going well isn’t the normal. Things going poorly is the normal, and for the brief periods of time when things are good, you celebrate them. You save your excess resources for the inevitable bad times. If you can you also help others that are in the bad times to ease their burden a bit. You prepare for things to go poorly again, because “poorly” is actual the normal.
how shitty and cruel this world can be and once you see it you see it everywhere and it becomes a downward spiral if you don’t find a way to catch yourself.
I think you’ve touched on the crux of the matter here. The world can be utterly overwhealming, but the healthy response is, in fact, “to catch yourself” before you start spiraling, or to pull yourself out before it gets too hard to do. That is nothing to do with “denial of the state of the world”, but having the mental facility to acknowledge the state of the world and realising that the most effective thing you can do to improve it is to not let it crush you. When the world, and all its multitudinous troubles have already ground you down, it’s going to be difficult to separate your thoughts from it and build that mental structure, but I think that having it is probably the hallmark of being mentally ‘healthy’.
I don’t see a massive flaw in your theory but I think it needs some refinement.
I’ve been trying to understand how „healthy“ people’s minds work and I think it comes down to straight up denial of the state of the world.
The people who have been through THE SHIT as you say have probably all had some traumatic experiences in their lives that dragged them face first through how shitty and cruel this world can be and once you see it you see it everywhere and it becomes a downward spiral if you don’t find a way to catch yourself.
And then there are people who somehow managed to not look too closely all their lives, you will recognize them by their unwillingness to discuss any downer topics. They manage to live in blissful ignorance and by just copying each other they stay in their happy ignorant bubble and voila life is good?
Since this seems to be almost a 80/20 split I’d also like to throw in that about 20% of the population fall into the category of being highly sensitive and thereby prone to notice all the shitty wrong things happening around them. We just can’t ignore it and its wearing us down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity
To me it feels like people that have been through THE SHIT face a point where they make a choice:
or
I think you’ve touched on the crux of the matter here. The world can be utterly overwhealming, but the healthy response is, in fact, “to catch yourself” before you start spiraling, or to pull yourself out before it gets too hard to do. That is nothing to do with “denial of the state of the world”, but having the mental facility to acknowledge the state of the world and realising that the most effective thing you can do to improve it is to not let it crush you. When the world, and all its multitudinous troubles have already ground you down, it’s going to be difficult to separate your thoughts from it and build that mental structure, but I think that having it is probably the hallmark of being mentally ‘healthy’.