I have a lot of days, possibly the majority of my days, when I feel more negative than positive. Lyteforce has a post wherein they talk about their own experiences with these kinds of days. Their premise is that it is important to open up about these feelings and to have a receptive audience such as close friends, family, or a therapist who can be good listeners.
I don’t always have access to a good audience that wants to listen to my sad tales. I have family members who are excellent listeners, and that helps. And I have a best friend who I can squeeze in some discussion of deep matters with around the sarcasm and cynicism. But it is unfair of me to ask these people to tolerate my never-ending list of sadness bordering on despair that seems to often be my emotional state.
So what do I do to keep my head figuratively above water? I read, I try to learn new things, and I write. These are distractions rather than solutions, with the possible exception of writing which can be more therapeutic. But they help and so they are worth a bit of discussion.
Reading
I have always been capable of getting lost in a good (to me) book. Time starts to lose meaning and I begin to inhabit the story. A good bit of fiction can transport me away from my problems, place me in a different scenario and allow me to see someone else solving or progressing through their challenges.
These factors are probably why I prefer a form of heroic fiction where the protagonist progresses and overcomes obstacles. Stories filled with unresolved tragedy are a bit too close to the life I live to provide me with the escape I desire. And I’m self-aware enough to recognize that the reading is an escape: it isn’t addressing the source of my “down” state, the sadness or anxiety that sometimes dominates my thinking. But it does silence the negative voices for a while and, in that sense, it is helpful.
Modern fantasy and science fiction books are often thick enough to be used as effective doorstops. If I can get engaged by such a story I can be assured of ten or twenty hours of reading spread over several days, possibly even a couple of weeks if I ration myself. That is a good return on my investment in the book itself. And the time I spend thinking about the story outside of actual reading also has an uplifting affect on my mood.
Learning things
Another form of escape that from my self-negativity that I find helpful is to learn something new. Currently for example I am learning Python coding and am progressing slowly through a Udemy course called 100 Days of Code. This kind of thing challenges my mind and forces me to apply my focus to something for hours at a time.
I am retired of course so my learning is of limited use. But it is still effective in pulling my mind away from whatever is bothering me for what sometimes amounts to substantial blocks of time. The hours I spend listening to the Python lesson material and then actively writing the code examples themselves is not the only time I spend. There is also all the time I spend purely thinking about how I might address the current coding challenge.
Writing
Writing as a form of therapy that I’ve found quite useful recently. Just the act of assembling my thoughts and putting words down on paper or, more commonly for me, here in this blog can be beneficial. The action of writing itself becomes a distraction.
A life journal is a valuable tool for expressing private thoughts about your own life in written form. Also valuable is a gratitude journal, celebrating the daily things that we have to be thankful for. I’ve tried both and have had limited success with keeping up the habit of filling out the pages. I don’t get the sense of obligation to write in those private journals that I do with blogging.
Blogging can have a more therapeutic value than the other distractions as I can actually write about my problems and down days themselves. I can imagine people reading such posts and thinking of possible ways to address their own problems, and perhaps I can get a comment or two that is constructive in some way for my own issues.
I suppose in that way you, the reader, are akin to my therapist if I had one. You listen to my lengthy or short posts and formulate your own opinions about my mental state. For most of you this will be a silent sounding board role and I will never hear your advice. But I can imagine your words and that, in itself, has some purpose. I might, by writing some words here, find the thinking required to write actually helps me formulate an action plan to make my day better.
Summary
I have two purely distracting ways of addressing my “down” days: reading and learning. And one somewhat therapeutic method: writing, including blogging here. But none of these approaches are as good as having a network of human beings to listen patiently and provide support. Not all of us have that, however, and we have to make do with the tools we do have access to.
The header image for this post was AI generated using ChatGPT
I try and fight my inclination to true cynicism, it is corrosive to the soul and I have seen what it did to my father. I actually think I’m more optimistic than you. That doesn’t mean I don’t look for how things can go bad, so I can plan accordingly. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Sarcasm, guilty as charged. It’s a defense mechanism against unrealistic expectations and a lack of critical thought. For me in any case. And I’m half English, so sarcasm is the humour form of choice. It’s genetic 😉
You talk mention self negativity. I am fortunate in that somewhere between my semi suicidal adolescence and today I learned self acceptance. “Learn to love yourself”. Nah, that’s a bit much. But I’m content. I’m neither tortured by my flaws nor preening over my virtues. And I am generally aware of both.
The vast majority of my stressors are external. And those often can be dealt with in a rational manner, though I recite the serenity prayer a great deal :-). Internal emotional imbalances are not something that responds to reason. Reason can keep you from turning into a mass shooter or going from contemplating suicide to commiting it, but reason can’t make you feel better. And when truly depressed, nothing makes you feel better. That’s what depression is: Your friends and family call you up to spend time with you – they are just feeling pity and you are a burden they would be better off without. They don’t call and are busy – they are off having a good time and don’t care, no one cares, why bother. Everything is a negative. Intellectually one knows that isn’t true, but it’s the way it feels and all the reasoning in the world won’t change it.
There is the thought that you can train yourself to see the positive, form a habit of optimism vs a habit of cynicism. And I believe that is true, to an extent. But I can say that in my days of suicidal thinking that none of that would work for true depression. It’s biochemistry.
I outgrew my depression, don’t think that’ll work for you 🙂
Well said, Chris. Your description of depression is pretty much spot on.
In my case all of my treatments for depression were “cut off” recently due to the need to avoid the manic phase of manic-depression. The mood stabilizers are supposed to help, but I don’t find they are doing very much for me and the depression and anxiety is hitting fairly hard. I’ve been started recently on a low dose of anti-depressants but they are not yet at the right levels.
You can definitely reduce depression through activities like cognitive behavioural therapy, but I find that to be rather ineffective as it is hard to be motivated to do the work. Things like meditation and mindfulness can also help, but I find the same problem of motivation when I’m depressed.
We all face these kinds of problems to varying degrees. Not everyone experiences real depression thankfully, but most can relate to simply feeling down. Nothing I do to address being down “solves” my depression, but it helps- mostly as a distraction, but they have value for that purpose.