What do you call a person who is capable of handling the world on her own but can’t take care of herself? Is she a hypocrite? Is she strong or is she weak?

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me talking about myself while feeding the obsession of sentences with the third person (which is generally the case with a lot of people these days). No. This is just me trying to pull out some questions. Are my problems seriously that complicated or is my brain just tired? How does one release the energy piled up inside? Talking? Drinking? Confiding in someone? “Don’t worry”? “Forget about it, listen to some music”?

These are all the suggestions we get from people when we start speaking about something that’s troubling us. Also, these are absolutely useless when your mind’s screwed to the highest of all limits.

One of the major problems with people now is that they’re used to calling their pile of dust a gigantic mountain. For instance, we’ll call ourselves insomniac when we couldn’t sleep one night, or designate ourselves as depressed when we’re just pissed about how we can’t have a cheeseburger for dinner.

Come to think of it, there is a thing common between anxiety, depression, and sadness. The moment any of these three takes over our brain, there is a need for some serious strong happiness to bring us back to our normal, not so depressed self. Something like a Patronus charm. As a matter of fact, J.K. Rowling created the concept of ‘Dementors’ as a symbolic representation of the depression she fought in her early years. One of the questions I ask people who I’d just met is, “What memory would you think of if you had to make a Patronus?” More or less, what’s the one thing that makes them excited in their oddness, that takes away the pain of holding all the cluster of emotional drama and insecurities in their bag, that makes them secure and not stuck in what feels like a tiny metal box. I, for one, can never choose, or honestly, even figure out what it can possibly be for me.

Talking about things taking over our brains, sadness, anxiety, and depression, all of them, trigger our insecurities and then it is only a matter of time that we sink deep into them. This is the point where one should think about The Law of Lesser Evil. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Law of Lesser Evil states that when faced with selecting from two dangerous or immoral options, the less threatening or the least immoral should be chosen. Because, obviously. Crying is sometimes the lesser evil. The other times? You just have to buck the hell up and get over yourself. Sounds very harsh and one of those easier said than done things, but, desperate times call for desperate measures.

People say that it’s okay to be not okay sometimes. But unless we determine the time span of ‘Sometimes’ there is a whole world of things that can go wrong with someone. Something that adds to the world of wrong things when we’re left alone in our own share of living hell is our knowledge of the fact that people are not set in stone. We know that the rate of change in people’s behaviour is variable and can change any minute, whatever so rapidly. And it is, more often than not, one of the causes of the biggest pits in our stomachs. This generally comes from ‘a seemingly random change in the behaviour of an individual’ who matters to us and who we feel has an important part to play in the wellbeing of our otherwise sinking mental health. What feels random and out of the blue to us, is actually pretty orderly according to C. B. Jung’s conceptual theory on Psychological Types.

Also Read: Defending Your Captor – The Stockholm Syndrome

The reason for the random change, scientifically speaking is Pattern of Behavior. The same pattern between two people creates co-ordination. A mismatch, however, leaves people insecure and unloved. To sound more understanding, you know how sometimes, despite them being simple, somethings look pretty much like a complex algorithm to some people, whereas others get it in under a second. It is because of the way an individual sees the thing and how every person has a different perception of things, giving rise to a difference in opinion.

This, more often than not, leaves us feeling plucked out and thrown away. Leaving us to consider living life in Quiet Desperation; Thinking about all the potential negative scenarios that could happen to us. Our mind believes thinking about all the negatives will somehow prevent them from happening.

This puts us in a position of fear. Fear of being left alone and unloved despite our bold and daring acts of candour. And the fact that when the intoxication of this fear wears off, all we’ll be left with is the reaction that we’re afraid of.

Think about it: Are we really strong enough to handle ourselves or are our pretentious selves just too afraid of needing to belong to someone?