Tatiana Khodakova
“To live and rejoice, only two things are necessary: first – to live, second — to rejoice” (Tatiana Muzhitskaya)
“I feel down” is a trendy cliche that often sounds on social networks, at trainings and even in everyday conversations. And what does the opposite to “I feel down” mean? It is one’s physical and psychological fullness, a high level of internal energy that allows a person to cope with current tasks and move towards their intended goals. This is a state when one can move mountains, as he feels balanced, confident and motivated enough.
But this is not always the case. Sometimes you may find yourself in a state where:
- you have lost interest in everything or almost everything;
- you feel like your life is meaningless;
- you feel a lack of physical and moral strength;
- you feel discomfort on a physical level (drowsiness, pain in the body);
- you are absent-minded, experiencing difficulty learning new information;
- you feel empty inside;
- you avoid communication with others;
- you are overwhelmed by negative emotions (the slightest failures cause aggression, which spills out on your loved ones).
So, what should one do when feeling bad and having no inner power? There are several ways to get out of the “I feel down” state.
First of all, allow yourself to stop being a “good boy/girl” and step into vulnerability. Admit that you are feeling bad now and stop “playing the hero”. Dare yourself to tell your loved ones that you have “fell down” lately and ask for help. Tell them that you are now changing the established rules of interaction: perhaps you will refuse to fulfill certain obligations and ask someone else from your family to take responsibility for their implementation or ask your friends for help. If you run your blog on social networks, then you can honestly admit there that your activity is on pause and maybe share how you experience a non-resource state and what helps you cope with it.
You need to step into vulnerability and see that the world did not collapse because you were not “in a mood”. You should also notice that your loved ones came to help because you openly asked for it, and do not just get angry and offended at them, expecting that “they should figure it out themselves”. You give yourself time to live through a non-resourceful period, and you give your diary the opportunity to notice that positive changes in your mood are happening.
“Joy is a special wisdom” (Nikolai Roerich)
The second way to survive a period of non-resourceful time in your life is to realize that the word “mood” comes from the verb “to tune in”. Sometimes you can’t pause your life because there are things that require your direct participation. What should you do then? Let’s say you divide your life into two parts. You leave this sobbing and sad part of you at home, and you switch to the “working” part. No, you don’t abandon this desperate “inner child,” but you agree with it that you give it the legal right to cry into a pillow, watch TV series, and drink liters of cocoa with marshmallows after work. You promise that a little later you will take your “inner child” to a psychologist, a massage therapist, and to the movies, and it allows you to switch to work now. In other words, you consciously switch the “switch” to the work function, “pulling yourself together” for a specific task. And after work you go to a psychologist, a massage therapist, a cosmetologist and thus give yourself a boost — psychological and physical.
Here it is important not to abandon the “inner child”, pushing its whims far away and through “pull yourself together, wimp” to drive yourself to set records of “successful success”. Otherwise this “abandoned child” will take revenge on you in the most unexpected way. For example, you will drive through a red light and fall straight into the hands of a traffic inspector, you will say something clearly stupid during important negotiations, or vacuum your cat, without even realizing why you are doing such things.
It is better to come to an agreement with a suffering “inner child” right away and honestly fulfill the terms of the agreement.
The third way to return yourself to a resourceful state is to prepare and take a “dopamine cocktail”. Sometimes we expect from ourselves that we should rejoice at certain holidays, certain life events, and we try to “cram” ourselves into celebrating, but in fact, we can be happy with completely different moments in life. Try to start structuring each of your days so as to notice such joyful moments, notice what personally makes you alive, pay attention to the contexts in which you feel a surge of strength, feel expansion in your body, when you slightly straighten your shoulders and your inner light turns on a smile on your face.
Start looking at the world not with hyper-expectations, but with the intention of noticing small personal miracles. And then you will understand that your joy may not be where everyone else has it, but you have it. When you notice small but personal joyful moments every day, dopamine “comes” to you.
Try asking yourself more often: “What makes me feel good?”
Is it possible not to slide into a state of “squeezed lemon” at all? Yes, it is.
Being in a resource means not letting life take its course, but being its active builder according to your own project.
It is common for us to rest after completing a task. You have completed a project or done a general cleaning or renovation in the house, and now you allow yourself to take a vacation, now you allow yourself to reward yourself with your favorite activities. But what if you do it the other way around? “Once you’ve done your work, go ahead and have fun” or “First work, then laziness” – that’s what we were told as children. Of course, “laziness” meant exactly what we liked to do, what brought us joy and pleasure. As we grow up, we force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do, and we put off the activities that bring us pleasure for later. In speech, it sounds something like this: “First, I need to get all the necessary things done, and only then can I rest peacefully, only then can I do what I love.”
Aren’t you embarrassed by anything?
For example, you first charge your phone, and then use it, first fill up your car with gas, and then drive. Why do we do the opposite with ourselves? We perform actions without energy, and then, exhausted, “fall off our feet”, and have to “put ourselves on charge”. But we are not a phone or a car, our “fuel” cannot be reduced to zero – it is dangerous for life.
Charge yourself BEFORE, not AFTER. Try not to rest after you have “squeezed” everything out of yourself, start breathing in the resource before you start taking action. Put yourself on a “wireless charging” with activities that inspire and fill you. A very unobvious, but obvious truth –
from a good state we make good decisions, and from a bad state we commit bad actions.
If you know your methods of recharging and use them regularly, then, look, the resource state will become a permanent life mode.
“Because people know how to suffer, be afraid and behave well in order to avoid punishment without outside help. But to rejoice and not be afraid at all is the hardest thing of all. And that means that this is exactly what a person should learn on earth” (Max Fry)
Photo by Evgeniy Smersh
Translated by Mariya Zayats
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Sun, mountains, beauty and a sea of taste: all this is Tuscany
Татьяна Ходакова
Практический психолог
Интегративный подход
