Depression eyes focus on: fear

It's not that depression is a direct cause of everyday fears. It's not even that it intensifies fears really. Added stress in my life is the cause of that intensification.

No. It's that depression magnifies the irrationality factor in the everyday fears I deal with. It warps and twists regular fears into horrible fears that almost convince me that the worst possible thing that could happen will indeed come to pass. And those irrational fears create even more ridiculously irrational fears that lead to added mental stress caused entirely by my irrational "everyday" fears that turned themselves into little mental monsters.

FEAR

It's a powerful emotion...so powerful, I'm afraid of it. I guess it's like many other strong emotions in that sense. Fear feeds itself to create more fear, if left unchecked, just like happiness produces more happiness and anger brews more anger. (I say "if left unchecked" only because one can change one's mental state by stopping the flow of a single emotion...this is often incredibly difficult to do, but it can be done, nonetheless.)

No wonder, when I'm experiencing a depressive episode or just simply a "down" mood, I wish I could go hide under some coats for awhile until the problems disappear on their own. It's the irrationality infused into my common, everyday fears and growing into something ugly. And as children, we all learned that hiding generally took away the fear factor of a situation, and allowed us to try and understand from a safe hiding place. I'm not saying that depression reverts us back to childhood. We, humans, simply look for ways to comfort ourselves when we're not feeling the best...and often that search causes us to default back to former practices if no new experience has given us a better or easier option. Hiding under coats, or blankets, was oddly effective, wasn't it?

Ah, digression. Goes so well with my ADD. *sigh* Not that I really have anything else to say on this subject...just another observation through the eyes of my depression...