For some value of ‘thinking’, it can, though I suspect that most people can’t easily do the thing I have in mind.
During my last round of depression, about two and a half years ago, I had a brief period of suicidal ideation—the first time I’d experienced such a thing. I recognized it for what it was, assumed it would be temporary, and basically responded with variations on ‘so what?’ from there: Yes, I want to walk in front of this bus. So what? That’s not what I’m going to do, so it doesn’t matter that that’s the case. (This is very similar to how “even if killing babies is the right thing to do, it’s still the wrong thing to do”.)
I suspect that fighting with the part of my brain that was generating those thoughts—trying to get it to stop doing so—would have been counterproductive. Instead, I took it as a valuable communication that things really had reached emergency status, got myself out of the situation that was causing the problem (yes, I was lucky to be in a situation where that was a relatively easily implemented option), and was fine.
The elephant-and-rider metaphor is relevant here. Just because the elephant is panicking and trying to roll over or run away doesn’t mean that the best answer is to beat it.
For some value of ‘thinking’, it can, though I suspect that most people can’t easily do the thing I have in mind.
During my last round of depression, about two and a half years ago, I had a brief period of suicidal ideation—the first time I’d experienced such a thing. I recognized it for what it was, assumed it would be temporary, and basically responded with variations on ‘so what?’ from there: Yes, I want to walk in front of this bus. So what? That’s not what I’m going to do, so it doesn’t matter that that’s the case. (This is very similar to how “even if killing babies is the right thing to do, it’s still the wrong thing to do”.)
I suspect that fighting with the part of my brain that was generating those thoughts—trying to get it to stop doing so—would have been counterproductive. Instead, I took it as a valuable communication that things really had reached emergency status, got myself out of the situation that was causing the problem (yes, I was lucky to be in a situation where that was a relatively easily implemented option), and was fine.
The elephant-and-rider metaphor is relevant here. Just because the elephant is panicking and trying to roll over or run away doesn’t mean that the best answer is to beat it.