One thing that I am noticing about the way I operate in the world when I am suffering from psychosis is that I become extremely RISK AVERSE.

If the average person’s desire to avoid losses is twice as much as their desire to take a risk, then I think that perhaps during psychosis my desire to avoid losses is maybe ten TIMES as much as the desire to take a risk. This risk aversion in psychology can be associated also with opportunity guilt. This makes a nice concoction of thoughts and feelings located in yesterday, rather than the moment and looking forward.

This may be because I am noticing my natural clunkiness in life right now. I understandably want to maintain the status quo in my life, as it gets wobbly. So, by trying to hold my ground, I let opportunities pass by and then my world gets a little smaller and smaller.

It is also caused by the idea that I will ‘frick it up’, or maybe that underneath I don’t deserve it, but mostly because I am terrified of the ‘greater consequences of my actions’ and so I naturally tend to see obstacles, instead of positives, and then this causes me to lose my sense of power, and so my life during a psychosis tends to become an ever trending spiral down.

There seem to be two antidotes to this problem:

1. See positives in every situation – learn to articulate positives about an opportunity and to focus on what could go right, rather than what could go wrong
2. Do things regularly that terrify me, or take me out of my comfort zone. This is the only way to wire my brain to be able to take risks despite the mental state that I am in.

It’s easier said than done, right now. Especially when I am so incredibly weak with psychosis and illness. Risk aversion in psychology obviously has an important function in our survival and evolution.

Risk aversion across different health states

Still, this is a problem for me even when I am well. So, I need to start taking risks, perhaps. The question is whether doing so during psychosis is really a wise plan, given that I am already in a weakened state. But if I keep operating like this, my life will just get smaller and smaller, and I will keep spiralling down and down.

It is not easy. It is fricking excruciating actually!

But what is the opportunity here? To learn more about how to think fast, and think slow. To learn to take more risks and to get out of my comfort zone. In that way, when an opportunity arises, I won’t be so quick to cut it down as soon as it arises.

Under what circumstances do you feel least capable of ‘taking risks’ in your life? Did you do riskier things when you were younger?

Image credit

“risky!” by Lisa{santacrewsgirl} is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.