Anguish is an inevitable experience in our human experience. It is universal and ubiquitous. It is also known as misery. Although it is subtle it underlies our everyday experience. On the surface we look all right. We smile, joke and seem to have our wits about us but if we are really honest we sense something is just not right.
Anguish is one of the reasons we frantically search for distraction. Eat more, drink more, work harder, buy more things but, above all, stay busy. Patients tell me that they can’t afford to be in quiet solitude for fear of the overwhelming uneasiness. Some call it anxiety. Others call it depression. But is it really either? They come for treatment. But is it a psychomedical problem or is it anguish?
We set ourselves up to experience anguish when we consider the quality of our lives to be directly related to the intelligence and perseverance of the personal effort we bring to it. We assume we are to learn from our mistakes; therefore unpleasant or unexpected situations and experiences inevitably raise the question of some flaw or failure on our part. We fall prey to deep-seated perception of chronic “too-little and too late,” which re-enforces the concept that if only we had known something that we did not know or if only we had done something that we did not do, the outcome would have been compatible with our expectations. We would then not appear to ourselves to be so lacking.
This concept of perfection taunts us. If only we had tried harder or been better. If only we could have been in exactly the correct place at exactly the right time, this personal power and control, which we indeed believe we ought to possess if we were fully adequate, would be ours. The disparity between that which we experience ourselves to be and this illusion of personal perfection haunts us and appears to reflect weakness and personal flaw. The flaw is repugnant and the source of frustration and shame. This is anguish.
Our continuous push for social approval, for self-confidence, and good self-image suggests that this process is going on behind the scenes. We think ourselves inadequate and we strive to fix us. Unfortunately within this type of atmosphere individuality, personal uniqueness, is often taken as evidence of this basic flawed condition and the most profoundly individual elements of our make-up are cast in the light of a personal pathology, a fault, a weakness. We are pitted against self, our ideal fighting our manifest nature. We are fragmented. We are in anguish. And we are miserable. This is no way to experience living.
