The term 'Hypocrite' comes from the Ancient Greek 'Hupokrites' meaning actor. The hypocrite pretends to be virtuous but is a private sinner. He acts out a virtuous life so as to gain praise from others but in secret he is every bit as depraved and debauched as the people whom he condemns.
I used to think that the term 'Hypochondriasis,' the medical term for 'health anxiety' was related to the word 'hypocrisy,' in the sense that the imagination acts out the symptoms of the feared disease.
I consulted en.wiktionary.org and, unfortunately, the two terms 'Hypocrisy' and 'Hypochondriasis' do not share a root meaning at all. The term 'Hypochondriasis comes from the Greek preposition 'hupo' meaning 'below' and the Greek noun 'chondros' meaning 'cartillage.' The ancients believed that the mental disposition of Hypochondriasis had something to do with humours, or vapors emanating from the soft part of the body below the cartillage and above the navel.
Hypochondriasis is the number-one affliction at the moment. It has crippled me and has led to other ailments which are a direct consequence of suffering from Hypochondriasis. I have developed a chronic agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is the fear of leaving the house, or travelling too far from home. I have not left Monaghan in about a year. I have not left Ireland since 2011. Before I relapsed into chronic Hypochondria, in 2008 & 2009 I travelled to Switzerland, and back, on my own. Now I fear to leave Monaghan.
The thing is, though: there is really only one illness/injury whose acquisition I fear. The illness/injury in question is brain damage.
I would probably - God forbid! - prefer to lose all of my limbs, than to have brain damage visited upon me. If some day it should happen that I must lose all my limbs, I do not think that I would be depressed for that long. I could still lead the intellectual life. I could learn to write using my tongue like Stephen Hawking.
The ingestion of Mental-health tablets causes me huge concern in this regard. Mental-health medication works by altering neurons in the brain. A tablet that I am taking at the minute, Seroquel/Quetiapine is known as a dopamine antagonist. It blocks dopamine receptors in my neurons such that they can no longer receive the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Have you ever won a game of snooker? Have you ever won money on the horse? The euphoria that you feel is that caused by dopamine. Dopamine is the brain's reward chemical. If you do something good or useful the brain rewards you with a rush of this euphoric chemical. I get my dopamine fix, primarily, from playing videogames and solving Mathematics problems. Whenever you should happen to learn a skill - even a practically useless one in the instance of playing videogames - the brain rewards you with dopamine.
If you should happen to copulate with a woman, the brain, again thanks you for the marvellous act of passing on your genetics to posterity with a post-coital rush of dopamine to go with your cigar.
But dopamine is not all good. Too much of any chemical - even dopamine - can be bad. Too much dopamine can leave one feeling too self assured; too confident in his own abilities; too impulsive. The mania in manic depression is caused by an excess of dopamine. I have experienced this myself. A couple of years ago, I ran away to England on a whim.
I have lost the thread of what I was talking about. It should suffice to say that I worry a great deal about the changes that medication brings about in the brain, and that this worry is a major source of my hypochondriasis.
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