Depression

The persistence of unresolved emotions or feeling states is what leads to things like Anxiety and Depression. Anxiety occurs when I don’t know what is threatening me clearly enough to know where or how to run and get safe. Depression results if I’m unable to get safe or end the threat. In this way, chronic anxiety is another common causal pathway that results in one being depressed.

Anger motivates me to move against someone or something. All of the feeling states will move me to fight or engage in a domination struggle (fight) with that someone or something. When a fight or a conflict doesn’t have an “ending” then it can devolve into depression. Indeed, one pathway to depression is, as they say, from “anger turned inward.” But “anger turned inward” is also a common “outcome” of unresolved guilt. In the absence of an action program for “repairing what was broken” guilt feeling states persist, and they move the person by default into self-punishment.