I Don't Know and I Don't Care: An Alternative Model for Depression: Doing Without, #2

I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care

From the early aloneness of child Neglect, false conclusions became the ‘normal’ of our life. In Volume 2 of the Doing Without series, we’ll explore the two false conclusions of: ‘there’s no answer’, and ‘I don’t care’, both of which may be contributing causes to a non-descript depression that many feel.

The emotional world dominates the thinking world

The emotional and cognitive aspects of life are different worlds, and with Neglect, the emotional world can often supersede the thinking world. Because this ‘hijacked thinking’ creates more damage in the most important decisions of life, we’ll discuss the emotional world in this first section of Vol. 2.

The big difference between ‘I care’, and ‘I don’t care’

While remembering that ‘Doing Without’ was ‘normal’ in a life where adults couldn’t or wouldn’t take actions to provide the support that a child needed, a foundation of the emotional world is that ‘I care’, is not the opposite of ‘I don’t care’.

I care is about action

A parent-child relationship is a very unequal relationship that starts with a parent being willing to take on the caring actions of parenting. Equating ‘caring’ with actions might be more easily accepted if we consider our expectations about health care, or child care, both of which assume that actions will follow.

Early in life, to the degree that adults couldn’t, or wouldn’t take action, then they didn’t ‘care’. It may sound mean or critical to conclude this, but if we don’t, it leads to false Paradigms which, as we will see, can cause continuing hurt throughout our lives.

I don’t care is about emotion (not action)

When we as adults say, I don’t care, it means that we have emotions (of ‘can’t’ or ‘won’t’), so that we don’t take actions to meet needs or provide answers. The emotions of I don’t care, are very different motivators, than the actions of I do care.

‘Caring’ may stop if self-protection becomes the top priority

If an overwhelmed adult sees no hope to have their demands lowered, or, to get more time or resources to meet their current demands, then caring can fade to provide self-protection. When this becomes generalized to a wide variety of topics or settings, then one can seemingly stop caring about everything.

When parents don’t care for kids, kids try to care for parents

A child with a history of ‘being a parent to a parent’, often fails, and while trying to do so, can learn to neglect themselves. Such a history of repeatedly trying to ‘help’ a parent (who knew what to do, could do it themselves, and still didn’t care), might now benefit from considering the truth that the parent didn’t care. This section of Volume 2 will primarily discuss I don’t care, (the ARC of emotions), and the next section will primarily discuss There’s no answer, (the ARC of thoughts).

DW2 0303 Next: Stinking Thinking I: Pins and Needles

Stinking Thinking 1:

Pins and Needles

Below let’s consider ‘waking up a leg that has fallen asleep’, as an analogy of ‘waking up our awareness of our early life’.

When we are not awake, we lose control of functions

If your leg has fallen asleep for a long time, you might forget the kinds of sensations and functions that should be experienced by that leg. A leg with energy, and a connection to a complex motor / sensory control system, is completely different than a leg not integrated to a functional source of life and control.

Waking up with Pins and needles

If you provide a blood supply to ‘wake’ that leg up, it gives odd sensory signals (often called pins and needles) and your leg now feels worse with many sensations you would rather not have. You might completely stop using the leg, just to prevent the pain of movement. In this way, waking up has made your leg less functional, and perhaps even more useless.

‘Pins and needles’: the reality of waking up

As your leg ‘wakes up’, the sensations for pain, location, and temperature, don't all start working at the same time as your ability to move the leg. This lag means that you could move the leg, without the feedback to let you know if you're using it in a way that may cause you harm. This lag means that your ability to move increases, even as your ability to experience pain or hurt yourself, also increases.

An observer may not understand that you are ‘waking up’

An observer with a model of ‘what it's like to have a leg wake up’, can relate to another person with this. But an observer that could relate to your experience, may not relate to you, unless you use a model to tell them what is happening inside you.

Waking up to the stinking thinking from Neglect

Waking up sensory and motor signals from a leg, is easier than waking up to the reality of your past Neglect. Those who have no model to describe the pain and conflicting emotions of their life with Neglect, have no pattern to understand their own life, and no way for anyone else to know, or empathize with them. As we will see, a model for Neglect that does not include ‘false Paradigms’, cannot be a model that will be consistent, or help to better predict outcomes. Trying to live our life without understanding our bad Paradigms of Neglect, partly results in what I believe some have called, stinking thinking.

A more correct model, gives us a new opportunity

‘Waking up’, is the opportunity to reinterpret the strong, silent emotions of our early childhood, but in the role of an adult. As we slowly become stronger, we can see what protected us from admitting our ‘second class childhood’, and can experience the ‘pins and needles’ of a new beginning. As life begins to make sense, the