You must have observe how a single defining negative thought or emotion, rapidly snowballs into a huge depressing emotion. Within a matter of two hours, you would go from being Happy to being Grumpy.
Negativity, similar to madness, is like gravity. All it needs is a push. It doesn’t matter if it is career related or home related or friends related. One problem leads you to see all other problems with a magnifying glass and soon you will be crushed under a whole bunch of them. You would feel that you are suffering from way too many problems at that particular moment – you have always been suffering from them, but everything gets magnified at this juncture. Now if you are a 20 something, add quarter-life crisis to that. Congratulations, you are now a complete wreck.
So how does one come out of such a situation. Most of these situations are caused by small small things. They could ve been easily avoided. Some of them are massive – you need someone else’s material help, otherwise you are FUBAR. What i am about to suggest is for 90% of the cases of downward mood swings.
Common wisdom suggests that when you are feeling down, you must go to your friends and speak your heart out. Your friends would encourage you and will help you bounce back. Lets rubbish all that – if you are down, shut the fuck up. Start your maun vrath (fast of silence). Do not speak to anyone – that includes facebook, twitter and whatsapp. close your doors and sit in silence for an hour. Brood over this silence and how your life sucks. Stop being an attention seeker and going to friends for consolation. You have no right to spread this negativity around in such a happy world.
Now what happens is beautiful – you realize that the basic nature of every human is to be happy and not miserable. When you are miserable and you go to your friends for venting, you are basically leaking your emotional energy and theirs as well. Once you arrest that, you realize that there is no one who will help you better than yourself. You do not need someone else’s hand to pull you out of the mess you yourself jumped into. All you need to do is standup and get out of that place. There is only a limit of negativity someone can bear. When you stop connection with the outside world, this negativity becomes too much, that you snap. You decide, in that fraction of a second, to fuck everything and become happy again. no matter what. no matter who says what. screw society. screw family. screw relationships. No one can stop you from being happy. You can go to friends for counsel at this stage, but not when you are depressed. Else, whatever they say will fall on deaf ears.
You will be out of the mess in less than two hours – the same amount of time it took you to get into the depression. If you speak to your friends, you will be cajoled and coaxed. That’s what you have been doing all your life. Coming out of this mess will take around two days. And then on the third day, a new mess will pull you in and you are back to square one. Following this is a very difficult thing – it took me quite sometime to get out of messes on my own. I have always seen that the moment i confess to a friend, it gets far far worse. I start liking the feeling of attention I get and keep wallowing in self pity. Stop that cycle. Get your ass off the ground and keep walking. Only you alone can help yourself.
Try it and let me know if it works!! I would love to see, if an insight i have gained through experience works with everyone else as well.
Ideas Without Boundaries 