How to recover the illusion in a bad moment: 5 recommendations

Feeling excited about any matter is the engine that keeps us motivated, alert, happy and hopeful for the future. However, when this illusion is lost, our reality is perceived as gloomy and pessimistic and not we find the energy to do our daily activities, much less to think of plans for future.

How can we recover the illusion? All of us have passed or will go through a similar stage and there are resources to be able to get out of this dark state and regain the illusion.

• Related article: "Emotional stagnation: when nothing seems to change"

5 Tips to recover the illusion

Like many feelings and stages of the human being, the loss of illusion has its own process, and we must understand that what we are feeling is normal, has an explanation and has a solution. Here we will review the most effective tips to recover the illusion.

1. Express what you feel

A complicated step for some but very necessary in the recovery of any grieving process, is express our emotions openly.

There are people around you, friends or family who will be willing to listen to you. However, if you think that to speak freely you would prefer not to do it with someone close, you can go to a therapist or self-help group, where there will always be people willing to listen to you.

There is no need to fear expressing our emotions. We think that anger, resentment, sadness or even envy, are feelings that we must hide and repress and so that no one knows that we feel them, but the opposite happens. If we want to recover the illusion, we must begin by venting and learning to express, dominate and channel our emotions so that they are not the ones who dominate us.

2. Reflect on the cause of our loss of illusion

In addition to emotions, there is a rational part that we must find in the middle of all this tangle of sensations that we experience when we have a loss of illusion. This rational part is to look for the root of the problem.

In some situations it can be very obvious: having suffered the death of someone you love, a divorce or love breakup, facing an illness or losing a job. But there are other circumstances that do not jump to the eye so easily and that have us in a state of reluctance and disappointment without even knowing how to explain what it is that has us like this.

It is time to sit down and think. Make an analysis of our life. If we have practiced the step of talking to someone about what we feel, surely the picture about the cause can become clearer.

These causes can be diverse, such as feeling dissatisfied in our work or some unresolved problem with our family or partner. Everyday life leads us to get up every day and carry out our activities without time to stop and think if what we live is what we want and if we can change it. Reflecting on this will help us find what we must change to get out of emotional stagnation.

• You may be interested: "Types of motivation: the 8 motivational sources"

3. Seek support

These types of processes are not stages that we must overcome alone. Extreme self-sufficiency makes us think that we must solve it without the help of others and without them realizing what is happening to us. There are those who find it difficult to be vulnerable in front of loved ones, but when we have lost hope and motivation, we must consider that the support of friends and family will be a very powerful tool to feel again delusion.

Talk to a friend or family about how we feel, ask for their understanding and support, go to therapy or find a self-help group where people who have been through the same things meet U.S, will eliminate the feeling of loneliness which is often overwhelming when we feel in a gloomy state without motivation.

Asking for support from the people around us is not just to make them listen to us. We may require that they accompany us to carry out procedures when someone has died, to find solutions to the loss work, to move in the event of a divorce and carry out these activities with the help of someone Dear. It is a good way to reduce the feeling of desolation in us and disappointment that is afflicting us.

In this sense, we must think that if we would be willing to provide support to someone we love and who needs it, surely someone will do it for us as well.

4. Find the positive aspects of your life

When we are in a state of sadness, doing this exercise is more complicated than it seems, but it is necessary to do it.

With pen and paper in hand, Make a list of the good things you have today and the achievements that at some point have made you proud. There are no more explanations or "buts" here after scoring a positive.

We must focus on the concrete facts. Nothing about "I have my children but what good is it if I no longer have my partner." No, we must focus on what we do have and what is positive and what has given us joy, stability and hope.

The objective of this exercise is to "return" our mind to the reality that is full of things. good and not so good and that it is full of nuances, so if at this moment we feel that everything is bad, do a review of the good things will bring us back to reality.

5. Plan ahead!

When we lose the illusion, the least we want is to think about the future. Meaning and motivation are lost.

Precisely because of this is that an important point to recover the illusion is to return to plans and tastes that excited us and to raise them again as goals.

While it is true that we must live in the here and now, future plans are often a powerful engine to get up and work today to getting things done tomorrow, so putting back on the table activities that had previously excited us, is an essential step to recover the delusion.

Bibliographic references:

• Cuijpers, P.; Muñoz, R. F.; Clarke, G. N.; Lewinsohn, P. M. (2009). "Psychoeducational treatment and prevention of depression: The 'coping with depression' course thirty years later". Clinical Psychology Review. 29 (5): 449–58.