'I'm down': 3 tips to overcome that feeling

Our mood is like a roller coaster: in some sections we are up and in others down. Human beings experience a wide range of emotions, including positive and negative.

Joy, euphoria and happiness are emotions that we like to feel, while sadness, lack of motivation or reluctance we consider as unpleasant.

When we say "I'm down" many see it as something bad, but it really is totally healthy to feel it, much more than to convince ourselves that we should be happy all the time. Let's see why.

• Related article: "The 6 types of mood disorders"

I'm down: what do I do?

Our mood is never stable. There are times when we are more animated and at other times when we feel more sunk. It may only be for a few hours, it may last a few days, weeks, or even a few months. however, there will always be some moment, full of demotivation and sadness, in which we will say to ourselves "I'm from bassoon".

The illusions have been turned off, we don't feel like it and we don't want to do anything at all. We are lazy about everything, but not because we are lazy or because we want to procrastinate a bit

. 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 rhythm that we had before.

It is completely normal and healthy to feel this way from time to time.. We cannot feel joy 24 hours a day. Feeling sad, unmotivated and not wanting to do things at some point of the day or for a few days in a row is a sign that we are alive, and that we are not people trapped in a constant whirlwind of euphoria pathological. Everything that goes up has to come down, that's why there are many ups and downs in life. Do not despair, that 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 make the rest of our life happy lifetime. They promise us not to live 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. Retro wade, sadness.

We live in a world where negative emotions have been demonized., making us ignore the fact that, as unpleasant as they may be, they are necessary. As we said, they are a sign of having good mental health, and we cannot pretend to hide or ignore our emotions. The tyranny of happiness promoted by self-help gurus and other seemingly 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 promoting these ideas is that they offer strategies that are neither realistic nor work in the long term. In addition, being against the experience of negative emotions is to neutralize human nature itself. It is not possible to be happy in extremely 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 yes or yes in the face of adversity, always try to see the positive side of things and ignore the bad is to anesthetize our way of being.

It is for this reason that we are not going to talk about ways to avoid or get rid of the downturn below. The idea is not to eliminate this emotion or prevent it from happening again..

Tips to manage this feeling

Although it is possible to avoid feeling sadness in the future for some things, it is normal that we feel a little down from time to time and, far from fighting it, we must live it. It may be because of something we have done or because we have simply woke 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 often the first reaction to this emotion is to deny it. For it we do everything to distract ourselves, fighting this unpleasant feeling. Nobody 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 The only thing it will achieve is that when we pay attention to it in the future it will come back with more force, making it more difficult hide it.

In fact, one of the fundamental pillars of psychotherapy is that negative emotions surface, that the patient re-experiences them in the He consults with the objective that he is aware of them, accepts them, can identify them and, consequently, can work on them.

• You may be interested in: "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): principles and characteristics"

2. Lean on our social relationships

Improving the quality of our social relationships has a direct impact on our happiness, helping us better manage our negative emotions such as sadness or anger. Healthy friendships are a great motivator when you're going through a slump., encouraging us to feel better without ignoring what has led us to be as we are.

A good friend supports us by being there, listening to us tell him how our partner has left us, how they have fired us or what has happened that has 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 simply by conveying how we feel. He won't force us to be better off giving us empty "don't forget to be happy" advice.

Therefore, we must have other people we trust and who make us feel supported, essential to feel good. It can also be said that social relationships will help us avoid falling even deeper, since loneliness can contribute to making our downturn even lower.

3. Do not abandon our goals

We have commented that we should live our emotions and not actively try to distract ourselves to hide these feelings. His 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 particular 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 be distracted, but trying to be constant, live the emotion but at the same time live our life. We may need to take a break from time to time, but we must not hide behind that we are wrong to give up.

In case 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 we continued doing what we wanted to achieve. We were feeling negative emotions, but they didn't stop us from being strong and moving on. It is this mindset that will make us happy in the future, and not the cheap self-help philosophy that we should be happy just because.

• You may be interested in: "The 8 types of sadness: characteristics, possible causes and symptoms"

Differences between being down and having depression

In popular language it is common to say "I'm down" to refer to being sad or down. It is difficult to combat this expression and try to educate everyone to stop using it in their everyday language, even if we make allusion that it may be disrespectful to compare having a bad day with suffering from a psychiatric disorder that involves a lot of disability for people who do it. suffer. In any case, we recommend not using it out of respect for those suffering from depression.

It must be taken into account that clinical depression is a pathology, a mental disorder, something that implies a significant gravity and that nobody wants to have. Depression is not adaptive, since the sufferer sees significant areas of her life severely impaired, such as her family, employment, studies, and even her hobbies. A depressed person doesn't get out of the pot trying to cheer up, do a little sport, or just go out partying one day.

Depression is a dark and bitter company that can plunge you into your 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 picture we can find cognitive distortions, lack of initiative, suicidal thoughts and, above all and as the most characteristic symptoms, constant sadness and apathy.

A "downturn" differs from clinical depression in timing and intensity. The lows last for 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 or motivated, but it does not imply a high degree of alteration and we can stop feeling it in a matter of a few minutes. In addition, being down does not prevent us from continuing our normal life, although it is undoubted that we do not feel well.

What we must understand between the two is that depression requires psychological intervention for the patient to acquire the tools necessary to manage his psychopathology, improving his health and learning to overcome the adversities. On the other hand, if we are suffering a downturn, it is not that it is not advisable to go to a psychologist, it is always psychotherapy is recommended, but it is a much smaller problem, which will surely end up fading with the passage weather. The lows are just the valleys on the roller coaster of our life, and always come before a rise, the joy.