Aren't these selves both just... you though? I get that one state of mind is more desirable than the other, but denying that anxiety is part of your psychology makes it more seem like your "true self" is who you want to be than who you are. To be clear I'm not saying anxiety meds are bad or you're wrong for medicating or for wanting to not be racked by anxiety.
There are many states of mind that are unpleasant. Anxiety, grief, doubt, jealousy, anger, and so on; and many behaviors that we may engage in that we rationally realize we should not, various forms of self-sabotage, unhealthy habits, and so on.
I don't think saying because we don't like these things, these things aren't really your true self is helpful. They don't need to be part of us, but if we can't face the fact that they are, they will remain.
I don't think we disagree. It's appropriate to feel grief after experiencing loss, etc; I'm not advocating some kind of Brave New World approach of popping a soma any time you're in danger of feeling uncomfortable.
I do think it's a helpful framing to say, "my intrusive thoughts are not me; they're weather that passes through my mind, no more meaningful than the shapes I find in clouds or the static between television channels." Like, if I'm feeling anxious, I might get a vivid fantasy of bizarre self harm; that's just some weird shit that happened, it doesn't mean anything more than that I'm anxious and that my mind is capable of producing some whack imagery. Before I had this framing I'd have concerns like, is there some deep dark part of me that's trying to harm me? But no, it's just that I'm a very complex machine, my sensory apparatus produces all kinds of weird signals and some of them are just noise; they can be ignored, I don't have to identify with them, and doing so would be dangerous.
What I was getting at was more that sometimes people invoke a naturalism fallacy, sometimes in combination with a "just suck it up" sort of mentality, which I reject for a few reasons:
1. We don't have to accept things because they are natural; we don't have to accept cancer, or our inability to fly, or depression.
2. There is nothing morally superior about being miserable ("just sucking it up"). Improving your life is a small way of improving the world; I think that's a moral good.
3. Consciousness is a reflexive process between you and your environment. You take in input which changes your inner world and you produce output that changes your environment. Your thinking can't be separated cleanly from that environment. For example, the people you regularly turn to for advice provide feedback you use to regulate yourself; they are part of your process for thinking and coming to decisions. If you take in input in the form of a substance that changes your thinking - that can be dangerous, it needs to be done with care, but it isn't actually "unnatural" in the first place. If there's a failure mode of your consciousness and taking an antidepressant helps you to avoid it, that's just a feedback mechanism you've discovered & adopted from the outside world.
Its only true if we are not only sum of our experiences with bit of genetic modifiers sprinkled on.
Otherwise how the feeling of content on christmas eve with family is more true self than suicidal anxiety of existantial dredd You feel day after when everbody has gone to do their mostly pointless things.
I personalny am not sure which is more true - selecting any of those as nature seems like some some sort of rationalization to fit reality into ideollogy we just want, more or less subconsciously, to be true.
"content on christmas eve with family is more true self than suicidal anxiety of existantial dredd"
Both are true feelings, but my point was, that I don't think a general baseline anxiety is something that is part of ones personality. I feel limited in myself, when fear is dominating and free, if the fear is gone and I am no longer blocked to do the things I want.
I think you’ve tapped into something valuable here - really there are many yous; both in the moment and in the holistic.
We are both our best parts and our worse parts, and to take an analogy further if one felt their ‚best self‘ on MDMA‚ that wouldn’t meant to say that taking it every day would make them feel their ‚best self‘ in aggregate.
If a recovering smoker avoids cigarettes are they avoiding their ‚true self‘? I retort both are their true self, and anyway your true self no doubt changes.
'no man steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man'
There are many states of mind that are unpleasant. Anxiety, grief, doubt, jealousy, anger, and so on; and many behaviors that we may engage in that we rationally realize we should not, various forms of self-sabotage, unhealthy habits, and so on.
I don't think saying because we don't like these things, these things aren't really your true self is helpful. They don't need to be part of us, but if we can't face the fact that they are, they will remain.