What if biggest risk to our lives comes from our own unhappiness?

By David McElroy · September 17, 2017

I like to pretend death doesn’t exist.

When reality forces me to admit death is waiting — even for me and for those I love — I like to at least pretend that life and death are purely mechanical processes. I like to pretend our bodies are just sophisticated biological machines.

Most of all, though, I like to pretend I don’t understand the role my emotional health plays in the physical health of my body. I like to pretend I don’t know that what goes on in my heart can kill me.

It’s as though there’s a self-destruct sequence in each one of us. When acute emotional distress hits us, that self-destruct sequence is activated. I’ve felt a nagging suspicion lately that the sequence has started for me — and I saw evidence this afternoon that terrifies me, because I’m not ready to die.

It’s not hyperbole to say that emotional distress can destroy the human machine. In the 1990s, Japanese scientists identified one specific way that Broken Heart Syndrome can kill a person. (This particular condition mostly affects older women, but I’m certain there are plenty of other pathways through which emotional problems achieve the same thing.)

Humans seem to have known for a long time that there’s a connection between emotional pain and physical problems. How else would we have come to see love as being in the heart? And how would we have come to see loss of love leading to “a broken heart”?

Why did the writer of the biblical Psalms say, “Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless…,” in the first part of Psalm 69:20 (NIV)? There’s a lot of knowledge and wisdom which we somehow know — things which rational people might write off as “old wive’s tales” — that come to us instinctively.

For me, this is one of those things. It might be for you, too.

Why does extreme emotional hurt lead people to want to kill themselves? Why does unhappiness cause people to act in ways that are self-destructive and will lead to their own deaths indirectly?

How much of our behavior is an unconscious form of slow suicide? How many of the physical problems we see happening in our bodies are warning signs? What if something inside our bodies is saying, “Hey, you’re going to kill yourself with the path you’re on, so change your mind and your heart before you destroy both of us”?

For the last couple of years, I’ve been experiencing that nagging feeling that the self-destruct sequence has started for me. The warnings have mostly been subtle, but the blood clots in my lungs 18 months ago spoke very clearly.

Lately, though, it feels as though the process has moved to another level. It’s not that I am ignoring the warnings. I simply haven’t known how to change the internal heartbreak that’s pushing the process forward.

For the last month or so, I can’t sleep well. No matter how much sleep I get, I wake up exhausted. I feel listless and purposeless during the day. It seems as though I’m just staggering through each work day, barely staying awake long enough to fake normalcy until I can get home and collapse in unhappiness. And then the sequence starts each morning all over again — with a growing sense of unease and even panic.

Today, my blood pressure is 157/104, which is considered serious hypertension. It’s just below the level at which you’re advised to immediately go to an emergency room. (The second number is apparently the more critical number and 110 is the level at which the online guides say you’re in an immediate emergency. Just a few weeks ago, I was regularly around 115/76.) Oddly, my heart rate was also unnaturally low today at about 60 beats per minute. This is an unusual combination which seems to suggest potential problems, according to what I read online.

I’ve called a doctor friend of mine for an opinion about several issues, including blood pressure, heart rate and hormonal levels. He’s out of town at a conference, but I hope to talk with him Monday.

I appreciate medical science and I’m thankful for those who can help patch us together when we’re having problems, but I’m also convinced that the issue I’m dealing with is far deeper than what he can fix.

I have a heart problem — but it has a deeper cause than any doctor can deal with. My body is taking a cue from my unhappy heart. It seems to be starting to shut down.

Have you ever heard of a “dead man’s switch”? It’s a safety device built into some machines which could be dangerous if they continued to operate after the human controlling them were to die or become unconscious. As long as the switch is held down, the device will work fine, but if the operator were to suddenly die, he would no longer hold the switch down — and the machine would quit.

The heart is like this, too. When something inside of us dies, we quit sending the signal to our bodies to go right on operating in healthy ways. It doesn’t seem to kill us immediately, but if we spend too many days without something inside saying, “I am happy to be alive and I have the love and purpose to go on,” that’s when the body breaks down.

You won’t find that in any medical textbook. Doctors have much more sophisticated biological and chemical explanations for why physical systems fail. I know that.

But I also know the self-destruct sequence I feel inside is real. I know something inside keeps looking for love and other necessary emotional “fuel” to give me reasons to stay alive. And I know I’m not finding it lately.

If I were to die tonight, it would probably be recorded as a heart problem. Doctors can look at my physical heart and maybe even patch me up for awhile — but there’s nothing they can do about the hidden self-destruction that originates in a broken heart.

Share on Social Networks

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

Related Posts