What You Can Change and What You Can't

Transsexuals have had their “wrong sex” belief for as long as they can remember. And they are doomed to have it for the rest of their lives. Every kind of psychotherapy has been tried on transsexuals. So rare is any success that the single clear case in the archives of successful change calibrates just how intractable this problem is.2

The second hallmark of anxiety out of control is paralysis. Anxiety intends action: Plan, rehearse, look into shadows for lurking dangers, change your life. When anxiety becomes strong, it is unproductive; no problem-solving occurs. And when anxiety is extreme, it paralyzes you.

Anxiety warns us that danger lurks. It fuels planning and replanning, searching for alternative ways out, rehearsing action.
Depression marks the loss of something very dear to us. Depression urges us to divest, “decathect,” fall out of love, mourn, and ultimately resign ourselves to its absence.
Anger, highly opinionated, warns that something evil is trespassing against us. It tells us to get rid of the object, to strike out against it.

The Russian psychologist Blyuma Zeigarnik discovered early in this century that we remember unsolved problems, frustrations, failures, and rejections much better than we remember our successes and completions.

EVERY DAY WE EXPERIENCE, at least momentarily, three emotions we don’t like: anxiety, depression, and anger. These are the three faces of dysphoria—bad feeling.