Being Optimistic And Fantasizing About a Better Future Only Leads To More Depression
Psypost - A new psychology study suggests that some forms of “positive thinking” have limited value in the fight against depression — and could even be a hindrance. The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, found people who fantasized about an idealized future tended to have fewer depressive symptoms in the present, but faced more depressive symptoms in the future. The first study of 88 college students found the more positively participants fantasized about the future, the fewer symptoms of depression they showed in the present, but the more symptoms they showed one month later. “Inducing positive fantasies may indeed produce depressive symptoms by encouraging people to enjoy their success prematurely in their minds, thus lowering energy and effort,” Oettingen and her colleagues explained.
I didn’t realize I was a scientist until just now when I read this article and realized I’ve been preaching that exact thing for years. You can’t help but have all these thoughts about how awesome your life is going to be, only for life to actually happen, kick you in the balls, and make you more depressed because for a minute you thought something good might happen. I’ve mostly said it whenever the lottery gets big and I start wasting way, wayyyyy too much money on tickets- I spend all day fantasizing about my new beach house with the water slide that goes directly into the ocean, my house out in the country with 20 dogs running around, my real-life Facility level from GoldenEye to play paintball in. I barely work that day, just dreaming quitting right in Portnoy’s face…and then reality hits and some fat slob in West Virginia wins the lottery, leaving me here to think about how poor I still am and how many better ways I could have used those hundreds of dollars I wasted on lottery tickets.
Same goes for me at the casino. Why play games that you can afford when you can just convince yourself you’ll beat the bigger games for even more money? Dreaming of driving home with 10k in cash in your pocket….and then reality happens and you lose 50% of your bank account in 2 hours.
So clearly the moral of the story is never be optimistic. Never think things will work out for you, because when they don’t you’ll just be even more miserable with your stupid life than you already are. Always expect the worst that way you’ll actually allow yourself to be happy if something good does happen. Buy daydreaming about a better tomorrow? Nope, no thanks. Done that too many times.
PS: Summer in 500 Days of Summer, what a fucking bitch. Just leads Joseph Gordon-Levitt on for over a year even though she knew she wasn’t into it. And he knew she wasn’t into it but in his head he was like “no, I’ll win her over”. But he gets the last laugh because he definitely fucks Minka Kelly at the end.
