Escapism

Notes

Escapism is like a deep personal Distraction. When chosen, often subconsciously, to avoid doing or facing something by focusing on something else. For example, a person with a failing marriage might double down on their career.

Escapism often leads to a Negative cycle. By avoiding our problems and focusing on something else, we usually intensify those problems. We choose Denial over actively trying to solve them. It is a form of Present Bias, where we push our troubles to future us for gaining some peace in the present. For example, trying to drown our emotions over a bad relationship with alcohol will only worsen the state of our relationship, which will increase the need for more alcohol, and so on. It could transform into a harmful Addiction, will lead to bad Positioning, and can easily lead to Depression.

We embrace Helplessness by believing that the situation is too much to handle, that it's bigger than us, that it will destroy us.

A common escapism which seems harmless and even nice at first is Nostalgia, we focus on the "good times" we had, forgetting all the problems we had and try to revert ourselves back to our "happy place". Usually nostalgia is embedded in our childhood, when incidentally we were also safe and happy without a care in the world, exactly the place we want to be in now instead of facing the harsh reality.

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Overview

🔼Topic:: behavioral psychology (MOC) ↩️Origin:: 🔗Link::