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akuji1993

My therapist said to me once: "I really like pessimistic patients a lot more than overly optimistic ones. A depressed, pessimistic person is judging the world very accurately and is not crushed by a negative outcome, as they have already thought about exactly that. They might even completely circumvent the negative outcome, because they thought about every possibility beforehand. Optimists on the other hand can be crushed and become very depressed when the positive outcome is not the result they are presented with."

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>A depressed, pessimistic person is judging the world very accurately.

Absolutely not. I've dealt with a lot of pessimistic, depressed people--I've been clinically depressed, as well, in the past--, and we can be the most closed-minded, whiny, oblivious people out there. I think that's exactly how depression actually works: one is enslaved, kept away from experiencing the world as it is, by their extraordinarily reduced perspective, which is seemingly unescapable to the depressed individual.

I don't think it's reasonable to conflate negativity--which leads to bad outcomes--with a realistic mindset--which takes into account potential bad outcomes. I find the opposite to be true, in my experience: the more positive and proactive a person is, the stronger they can become--and not crushed by a negative turn of events.

This is absolutely true in my experience. Going to my therapist I realized that I spent all my time focusing on negative outcomes for a given life problem of mine. So much so that the failure to imagine a more optimistic outcome left me paralyzed to act. This paralysis left me feeling hopeless and depressed. As I talked things over I realized that:

1) We have a perverse tendency to reinforce our existing views in new experiences. For example, if one believes he/she is not a very charming and likable persom, every opportunity to make a new friend may thrown away because the person doesn't have confidence to present themselves in an interesting way or the person may misinterpret another's neutral body language as a negative signal during a conversation.

2) Experience is the best teacher. Experience etches things into our subconscious. If negativity is etched in our brains then it takes a strong conscious effort to over turn it. This can potentially scary because the effort to experience a positive outcome may result is us being beat down further. But we have to see it for what it is, one experience, the next may end differently. Overcoming depression requires concious effort, hope and resiliencey. This is not something that happens overnight.

I can confirm. There are simply different ways how you can view life; positive, negative and probably many more. And all of those see only a projection of reality.

I have been mildly depressed in the past and sometimes it struck me how narrow my view of the world was in those days. Sometimes literally, it seemed as if I was looking through a tunnel and that I was more busy with all the negative thoughts that were going on in my head than with what was really happening around me.

There is a difference between predicting the odds of good and bad stuff accurately. If you take someone like Warren Buffett, he's known as a cheerful optimist and focuses on stuff like the economy making everyone richer over time but he's in the insurance business and better at figuring the risks of death, illness or a nuke taking out NYC more than most.

I find people who look at the world thru "shit colored goggles" tend to be self defeating and will often convince themselves it won't work before starting.

I suppose the next level is to learn to enjoy the negative outcome, from an observational stoic perspective, every experience has a unique quality.

Exactly; take every thing good or bad as a life challenge or experience to be fully engaged with and do not give up! Learnt the not giving up as a teen while race sailing; not giving up ever, resulted in a stack of trophies - but also a few submerged boats - in retrospect the submerged boats were more interesting. Winding years forward and experiencing many "challenges" I now have cancer that I am told cannot be cured - but its just another life challenge that I am experiencing and is quite interesting - like boats sinking, and I carry on doing what I like to do...

As a pessimistic person that does tend to analyse everything that can go wrong. I have to say it can still turn out worse than what you think.

From what I have seen, it seems that the pessimistic person is likely to stay depressed even despite unexpected positive outcomes. It's easy for them to dismiss good things as a fluke. Meamwhile a truly optimistic person can rationalize any event as being for the best somehow and stay positive even if something negative happens unexpectedly.

My (very personal) differentiation of pessimism and depression - pessimism is focusing on anticipating potential negatives (what you described) and depression - is where one would get into the endless loop thinking over particular set of negative outcomes. First one can be practical, although tough. Second one is just harmfull, sorta like personal mini-hell. Would not wish it to even my enemies to get in such state ever.

> They might even completely circumvent the negative outcome, because they thought about every possibility beforehand.

This can get out of hand when circumvention becomes a lifestyle.

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