Werte: Mentaler Absturz

Also the episode 3.1 from Black Mirror shows a dystopian future. In social fiction, social media has permeated all areas of life. You can only see people who have a smartphone in their hands and evaluate other people. So as we are today products, hotels, bike rides, etc. with up to five stars, in this illustrated society, the people are also evaluated. Those who also have higher points, get better cars, cheap apartments and creates the step into higher strata of society. Of course, the gilt also turned around. Those with fewer points are lower-class and need to point out many amenities.

A young woman Lacie Pound is very affectionate and has 4.2 points at the beginning – which is not bad. Now she could get an apartment, but only gets a 4,5er place. You also have to edit a profile. With the help of a coach that works very well. After all, she reaches 4,429. The road to success seems preferable, an older school rain, now in the upper social class, invites her to her wedding and earns her to earn so many likes and soon reach the desired goal.

Unfortunately, it does help that life does not just play the hit channel, but it’s also very important. Everyone has experienced something like this before. You are not always “in a good mood”. If one thing is very slow, then it is clear, man, it cannot really get any worse now. That’s exactly what happened. Unless we take good care of ourselves, we come in a down spiral, from which there is no way back. Genoa this way shows the episode Nosedive. The protagonist Lacie Pound experiences a dramatic drop after a very long flight. After all, she has less than 1 point on her profile. This crash is not immediate, but special. There are signals that indicate this. Exact signals we must get to know in our lives to avoid the observed crash. Such crashes are not only in the mental, social, we know a stock market crash, an economic recession or a traffic collapse.

A down spiral could be something like the following:

1. Lack of awareness: ongoing success, always being in a good mood, good results, obscuring the view of reality
2. Lack of attention: Now there are clear signs of a turnaround. There are already negative experiences.
3. The alarm bell is already ringing: These cannot be ignored even with little attention.
4. Now the Münchhausen Effect comes into force: We still believe and can pull ourselves out of the swamp.
5. Crash: Münchhausen almost never works. The fall into the bottomless is inevitable.
6. The end: is inevitable and very rarely manages to leave this absolute low point again.
7. The Phoenix: Yes – in very rare cases there will be a second coming.

The episode shows Lacie Pound understandably six of these seven stages.

Lack of Awareness: Lacie moves in an environment of equally valued quads. Everything is the same, easy and everyone is happy – at least outwardly. She has a mental high. People just show off their best side so they get good reviews from others. Similar to what we want Likes on Facebook today. Lacie takes a coach to improve her profile. The Coach: “Most of their actions are limited to their inner circle – people from the lower classes”. He recommends getting in touch with people of higher rating. In fact, she gets an invitation to the wedding from her former schoolmate (Naomi a 4,7) and this takes place on a very high social level. Blinded by this, she already overlooks the first indications of the countermovement. She often rides in the lift with the same woman. From this she always gets bad values, which she ignores.

Lack of attention: Lacie Pound is now busy preparing for the wedding. After all, she is asked to give a speech there. She now wants to do it so well that she succeeds with the help of the expected positive reviews of the step to 4.5. Only a little quarrel with her brother makes her miss the taxi. Accordingly, she is irritated to the driver of the second taxi, which then rates her bad. So she comes to the airport late, at check-in she learns that she has no more space in the plane because of a lack of points. She has dropped to 4.183 in the meantime and is therefore not allowed to fly any more. Their behavior is the same as that of many people in such situations. She becomes aggressive, demands the superior, insults other passengers. In the end, she is taken away by the security and gets deducted a whole point. At least now she should realize that a crash is imminent. This is a situation in which we are already bad and we believe we have already reached the low point. Now it can only go higher. We continue to pursue our goals, although it is hopeless to achieve them now.

The alarm bell rings already: After Lacie now has not got a flight, she tries to come to the wedding with a rental car. Because of the distance actually an impossible venture. Again, the bad ranking beats – she gets the cheapest car and the landlord on bad points. After a short drive, she feels that the battery is empty. At the gas station, the charging cable does not fit. She gets no adapter, whereupon she insults the gas station attendant, who revises herself with a bad rating. Now she has fallen to 1.4. If something happens in real life, we say “it cannot get any worse”. All signs are pointing up, which is of course an Illusion.

Now the Münchhausen effect comes into effect: Lacie now has no more cars and continues by car stop on the way. She is taken by a truck driver and is still deeply convinced that she can turn things around at the wedding. It is a complete self-overestimation such phenomena we experience for example in alcoholics and smokers who say of themselves “I can stop at any time”. Similar things are happening today with insolvent companies, which have a product in this situation, which is a bestseller. Physically, self-help is not possible in this situation. Similar to how you cannot move a sailing ship by firmly blowing on the sail. But life is not just physics – there have already been cases of Münchhausen. The truck driver gives Lacie an emergency plan – a thermos with coffee and lots of whiskey. She drinks them, regains her courage and continues her journey to the wedding.

Crash: The bride Naomi of course gets the social crash of her planned maid of honor. Naomi answers on the phone and demands “do not come – no way”. Nevertheless, she sneaks over the garden wall in the wedding party. Shortly before she fell into a mud puddle. Dirty and completely drunk, she starts there with the speech. Not the planned, but she expresses her current feelings. Insults and accuses everyone else, especially their friends. After a short time she will be picked up by the security.

The End: The episode ends with Lacie being locked up in a jail cell. There is no way out now. She does not even get bad reviews. Once again pick up the problem of alcoholics. This has now arrived under the bridge and there is no help. Self-help is excluded anyway. The state thus achieved remains.

The Phoenix: In very rare cases, it succeeds people, companies and organizations to get out of it again. Repeatedly, there are examples of people who get into a bad burnout and after a certain time reappear as highly successful book authors. Similar, very rare, there were obesity patients, who later became high-performance athletes. These are coincidental and happy circumstances that are responsible for a resurgent one. With our Lacie Pound this is not to be expected although a very small signal for it there was. She shouted in prison with a fellow prisoner and shook off all the frustration. It is all that came out, what is inside man and what is dispensed dosed in normal life.

Once the down spiral has started to turn, escape is only possible with the utmost consistency and discipline. Therefore it is even more important in our mental life to take care of yourself very well. Persistent Awareness is the recipe for it.