Our emotional state is like a roller coaster: in some sections we are up and in others we are down. Human beings experience a wide range of emotions that include positive and negative ones.
Joy, euphoria and happiness are emotions that we like to feel, while sadness, lack of motivation or reluctance are considered unpleasant.
When we say to ourselves “I’m down,” many of us see it as something bad. , but it really is totally healthy to feel it, much more than convincing yourself that we should be happy all the time. Let’s see why.
Our mood is never stable. There are times when we are more encouraged and other times when we feel more down. It may only be for a few hours, it may last a few days, weeks or even a few months, whatever the case, there will always be some moment, full of demotivation and sadness, in which we will say to ourselves “I’m down.”
Our hopes have faded, we don’t feel like it and we don’t want to do anything at all. Everything makes us lazy, but not because we are lazy or because we want to procrastinate a little. No, it is a laziness of lack of humor, of “not now, I don’t feel like it.” A laziness that is neither selfish nor restful, it is simply that there are no emotional or psychological forces to maintain the same pace we were doing before.
It is completely normal and healthy to feel this way from time to time. We cannot feel joy 24 hours a day. Feeling sadness, lack of motivation and little desire to do things at some point during the day or for a few days in a row is a symptom that we are alive, and that we are not people trapped in a constant maelstrom of pathological euphoria. Everything that goes up must come down, that’s why in life there are many ups and downs. Do not despair, you are healthy.
The tyranny of happiness
If we do a quick search on how to be happy we will find a lot of articles, videos and even self-help guides detailing the strategies and steps to be happy for the rest of our lives. They promise us not to experience a single second of sadness, they make us believe that it is a very bad emotion, harmful to our health and our personal relationships. Being sad is bad, dysfunctional. Vade retro, sadness.
We live in a world where negative emotions have been demonized , making us ignore the fact that, however unpleasant they may be, they are necessary. As we said, they are a sign of having good mental health, and we cannot try to hide or ignore our emotions. The tyranny of happiness promoted by self-help gurus and other apparently psychological currents have sold the idea that human beings have the need to be happy at all times, and that any “bad” emotion must be eradicated.
The problem with those who promote these ideas is that they offer strategies that are neither realistic nor work in the long term. Furthermore, being against the experience of negative emotions is neutralizing human nature itself. It is not possible to be happy in tremendously unpleasant situations such as the death of a family member, the loss of a job or when we break a leg. The idea that we should be happy no matter what in the face of adversity, always try to see the positive side of things and ignore the bad is anesthetizing our way of being.
It is for this reason that below we are not going to talk about ways to avoid or get rid of depression. The idea is not to eliminate this emotion or prevent it from happening again.
Tips to manage this feeling
Although you can avoid feeling sad in the future about some things, it is normal for us to feel a little down from time to time and, far from fighting it, we should live with it. It may be because of something we have done or because we have simply woken up in a bad mood, but it is an emotion, and as such it will have its function, its importance in our lives.
1. Accept the emotion
I’m down, what’s the first thing I do? Very usually the first reaction to this emotion is to deny it. For it we do everything to distract ourselves, fighting against this unpleasant feeling. No one wants to feel sad, and it is logical that we try to get rid of the experience of this emotion as soon as possible.
But we must do just the opposite. Instead of ignoring that we are down, we must accept what is happening. What is strange? Although it may even seem counterintuitive, we must understand that when we talk about emotions, resisting them will only make it stronger when we pay attention to it in the future, making it more difficult to hide it.
In fact, one of the fundamental pillars of psychotherapy is that negative emotions surface, that the patient re-experiences them in the consultation with the aim of being aware of them, accepting them, being able to identify them and, consequently, working on them. they.
Improving the quality of our social relationships has a direct impact on our happiness, helping us to better manage our negative emotions such as sadness or anger. Healthy friendships are a great motivator when you are going through a down period encouraging us to feel better without ignoring what has led us to be where we are.
A good friend supports us by being there, listening to us tell him or her how our partner left us, how we were fired or what happened that made us feel so bad. Whatever it is that has made us sad, he or she will actively listen to us, making us feel much better by simply telling him or her how we feel. He will not force us to be better by giving us empty advice like “don’t forget to be happy.”
Therefore, we must have other people we trust and who make us feel supported, essential to feel good. It is also worth saying that social relationships will help us avoid falling even deeper, since loneliness can contribute to making our depression go down even further.
3. Don’t abandon our goals
We have discussed that we should live our emotions and not actively try to distract ourselves to hide these feelings. Your thing is to live them, but without this making us completely abandon everything that makes up our daily life something that is quite common to happen to us when we are down.
Anyone has a bad day, and it is normal that on that specific day we do not want to continue with our project, be it getting in shape, learning a language or finishing a degree.
However, you have to make an effort, and even focus even more on that goal. This is not trying to distract ourselves, but trying to be constant, living the emotion but at the same time living our life. We may need to take a break from time to time, but we should not hide behind the fact that we are wrong to give up.
If we continue with our projects despite being down, we will be creating a very powerful precedent. We will have created the memory in which we remember that, despite adversity, despite not having the desire or being in the mood, we were tenacious and continued doing what we wanted to achieve. We felt negative emotions, but it didn’t stop us from being strong and moving forward. It is this mentality that will make us happy in the future, and not the cheap self-help philosophy that we should be happy just for the sake of it.
Differences between being down and having depression
In popular language it is common to say “I’m depressed” to mean that you are sad or down. It is difficult to fight against this expression and try to educate everyone to stop using it in their everyday language, even if we allude to the fact that it may be disrespectful to compare having a bad day with suffering from a psychiatric disorder that implies a lot of disability for people. who suffer from it. In any case, we recommend not using it out of respect for those who suffer from depression.
It must be taken into account that clinical depression is a pathology, a mental disorder , something that involves significant gravity and that no one wants to have. Depression is not adaptive, since those who suffer from it see significant areas of their life seriously affected, such as family, employment, studies and even their hobbies. A depressed person does not get out of the doldrums by trying to cheer themselves up, doing a little sport or simply going out for a day of partying.
Depression is a dark and bitter company that can plunge you into the deepest sadness for years. It involves low mood for a long period of time, without a specific trigger. Among the symptoms that predominate in this condition we can find cognitive distortions, lack of initiative, suicidal thoughts and, above all and as the most characteristic symptoms, constant sadness and apathy.
A “slump” differs from clinical depression in timing and intensity. The depressions last a short time, at most a month and are not at all as intense as a depression. This emotion does not invite us to be productive nor to motivate ourselves, but it does not imply a high degree of alteration and we can stop feeling it in a matter of a few minutes. Furthermore, being down does not prevent us from continuing to lead our normal lives, although there is no doubt that we do not feel well.
What we must understand between the two is that depression requires psychological intervention so that the patient acquires the necessary tools to be able to manage their psychopathology, improving their state of health and learning to overcome adversities. On the other hand, if we are suffering from a depression it is not that it is not advisable to go to a psychologist, psychotherapy is always recommended, but it is a much smaller problem, which will surely end up fading over time. The downs are just the valleys on the roller coaster of our lives, and they always come before an up, the joy.
