not exactly

Continuing the thought from the post below... It's not exactly just self-criticism. The sensation of pain in the chest, that is. It also feels like wanting to do something, wanting to take some kind of action, and feeling helpless.

In the whole "chakra" worldview (which I file in the category of "take what you need and leave the rest"), the head is intellectual thought, the chest is willpower, and the stomach is emotions (that's an approximation from a non-believer—sorry if it's sloppy).

So maybe the pain in my chest is like a mass of willpower, that is so strong in so many directions that it cancels itself out and ends up stuck.

The book on depression I was just reading talks about how depression isn't actually low energy, although it seems that way when you feel like you can't move—depression is actually an overload of energy and emotions that just, like, short-circuits you.

Which does make sense. People who've known me a long time know that I've never been lacking in willpower and determination, and sometimes that leads to bursts of intense activity with impressive results (people who've only known me since I moved to Madison may find this impossible to imagine).

But when I have trouble channeling all this intensity into effective action, it's like, it all builds up and overloads me.