Depression is not excessive sadness, but rejection of sadness

Happiness is justified, sadness is useless. This is the logic we are used to.

When we encounter the tragedy of life, we will persuade ourselves, or be persuaded by others, want to open up, think more about those beautiful things, and see more of the sunshine of life...

So, it seems, we quickly recovered and began to laugh at life.

However, the sadness created by the tragedy of that life will spread widely in the depths of the subconscious.

As a result, during the day, you smile at life and seem to be sunny. However, in the dead of night, you are always attacked by some inexplicable sadness, and you can't help but cry.

You suspect you're suffering from depression, but why did you get to this point?

You can always find some realistic, obvious reasons for this.

But that real reason is often hidden in the depths of your subconscious that you dare not touch.

Depression is easily understood as excessive sadness

However, the Swiss psychologist Verena Castel wrote in her book Experiencing Sorrow:

The reason why a person suffers from depression is often not because of excessive sadness, but precisely because of rejection of sadness.

She believes that depression often arises because of the situation in which tragic event A occurs, and the person concerned is too sad to bear it for a while, so he uses the "sunshine strategy" to fight the sadness, pretending to be like no one else.

And, as if he had succeeded, he had recovered quickly from tragic event A, and could laugh again, even more happily than before the tragedy.

Years later, tragic event B occurred, which did not seem serious, but caused a strong emotional reaction from the person concerned, and he was deeply immersed in grief and often cried uncontrollably for a long time. Consciously, he will think that he is sad because of B, that he is sad over.

In fact, he was sad because of Event A.

From this point of view, depression, this kind of indulgent sadness, is actually unfinished sadness, or rather, misplaced sadness.

Consulting stories

Luna, 26, works for a European-owned company and works very hard, often working at night after 22:00.

The company doesn't encourage overtime, so department leaders talk to Luna several times and tell her to pay attention to her body.

Luna always said yes, but she would still stay in the office until midnight.

When the leader tries to persuade her again, she will say that she can't help but work overtime, which is a habit of hers, please understand the leader.

Because Luna is extremely good at work, coupled with the company culture is very tolerant, and overtime seems to be a good thing after all, the leaders no longer care about her.

Why is overtime necessary?

On the one hand, Luna has perfectionism and must do her job as well as possible to be at ease. On the other hand, she uses work to "kill time."

Luna was afraid to go home, afraid to be alone in an empty room.

Occasionally, she would "kill time" with friends in bars and other occasions, but she didn't like the kind of hustle and bustle, she felt that it would be more empty, and the work would be more meaningful in comparison, so she preferred to work overtime until midnight before dragging her tired body home.

In the beginning, her overtime tactics were more successful, and she could basically exhaust herself physically and mentally every day, and when she returned home, she fell asleep on her head.

However, over time, this tactic gradually lost its effectiveness, and now, she either has difficulty falling asleep no matter how tired she is, or she often wakes up suddenly in the middle of the night and falls into a state of insomnia.

When she couldn't sleep, she couldn't help crying.

In fact, in her sleep, she often cried, and when she woke up, she found that she was in tears, and her pillow was wet with tears.

"Am I depressed?" Luna asked me.

"It sounds like that, but let's not make a diagnosis first, you first talk about why you are so sad."

The reason is simple: the fear that her boyfriend will dump her again.

Luna and her boyfriend are middle school classmates and began to fall in love in college, she is in Guangzhou, and he is in Shanghai. During the relationship, once she ran to her boyfriend's school without saying hello, wanting to surprise him. Unexpectedly, the boyfriend actually proposed to break up, and refused to say anything.

This breakup caused luna a great deal of damage. At that time, she had a time when she couldn't stop crying every night, and the feeling of sadness was so sad that Luna wanted to overcome this emotion, and then found a way - high-intensity study.

After graduating from university, she stayed in Guangzhou, while he stayed in Shanghai.

Last spring, he suddenly got in touch with Luna and told her that he longed to get back together with her because he had always loved her, and that he had broken up because he was worried that he would not be able to find a good job after graduation, so that he would not be worthy of Luna, who was excellent in every way.

Unexpectedly, he successfully found a good job after graduation, and since then he has always wanted to reunite with Luna, but he did not have the courage to propose. After years of hesitation, he finally plucked up enough courage to decide to tell her the truth—he had always loved her.

Luna still loved him, and the two came together again. The compound love is very sweet at the beginning, and the boyfriend knows how to take care of Luna, often creating some unexpected romance and warmth for her.

However, after a year of love, from this spring, Luna often fell into inexplicable worry, and she often reproduced the image of the abandonment in her mind: she rushed to his school, but he coldly told her that he no longer loved her, and it was all over.

As soon as this picture appeared in her mind, she would worry that this scene would repeat itself, so she was so sad that she couldn't help but cry.

She will tell her boyfriend, and he will try to persuade her: What you fear will not happen...

However, whether the boyfriend is around to comfort or through the phone, it has not had much effect. Luna is rationally willing to believe that what her boyfriend is saying is true, but she just can't control the picture she was abandoned in college not to appear again.

Of course, it's not that there's nothing to do about it. When Luna was in college, she overcame the sadness of the time by studying hard. So she picked up the idea again and worked hard to overcome her current grief.

This approach worked once, but it doesn't work anymore.

Natural sadness is a treatment

After listening to her story, I felt that Luna's sadness was indeed an excessive sadness, and it was also an inappropriate sadness.

Because, apart from being separated, her relationship with her boyfriend is not a big problem, but she is deeply sad about this, which is excessive and inappropriate.

In short, it's inexplicable sadness.

The so-called inexplicable, almost necessarily because the subconscious thing plays a role.

The person concerned consciously thinks that there is some emotion because of event B, but in fact, what really causes this emotion is the subconscious event A at play.

Because the subconscious is not perceived by the parties, the emotional and conscious reasons found by the parties are obviously mismatched, and this mismatch is often referred to as inexplicable.

Because of this realization, I believe that Luna's indulgent sadness must have other reasons. After affirming this, I asked Luna, "Now, you overcome your sadness with hard work; in college, you overcome your sadness with hard work." This seems to be your usual way of dealing with sadness. Has this method been used earlier? ”

Luna thought for a moment and said a little hesitantly, "I used it in high school." ”

"What happened then?" I continued to ask her.

"Oh, Dad died suddenly because of a car accident." Luna replied calmly, "At that time, it was very painful, and then I thought that I could not live up to my father's expectations, so I studied hard and decided to comfort my father's spirit in heaven by entering a key university." ”

"I was sad at the time, and now you're sad to talk about it?" I asked.

"It's sad, it's been so many years since this happened, and I'm no longer sad." Luna continued to say to me in a calm tone.

Next, I asked Luna to tell me in detail what had happened and how she and her family had weathered it. As she told all this, Luna's mood was as calm as it had been, and her tone became more and more natural.

"It's all over." I conclude.

"Yes, it's all over." She said.

"Well, in that case, now, please tell me: Daddy, I confess, you're gone." When I said this, I deliberately intensified the tone.

Luna Nono said, "Dad... Before the second "Dad" could finish speaking, she was already in tears, and almost at the same time she began to cry softly and wantonly.

After crying for a long time, she tried to stop crying, wiped her tears, and asked me, "I haven't accepted the fact that my father is gone, have I?" ”

Yes, apparently, and that's the root cause of her depressive state.

Thinking that depression is unfinished sadness is not the originality of Verena Castel. Many psychologists hold this view, and psychoanalytic psychotherapists often help clients through the "process of grief" when doing psychotherapy.

Psychoanalytic theory holds that natural and simple sadness is a treatment.

This view is based on a most basic truth -

Most mental illnesses stem from a distortion of the truth of life.

If you want to be a healthy person, you must embrace the truth of your life.

It's just that life is too hard, and we are prone to some tragedies in life. If there is no teaching, then our first emotion must be sadness.

This natural emotional process is actually the most natural healing. When we cry for the tragedy of our lives, it is the most natural process of embracing the truth of our lives.

And, when we truly and completely embrace this truth of life, that is, completely admit that this tragedy of life has indeed happened, then our hearts have reached a tacit understanding with this tragedy of life, and we can coexist with it.

Once a tragedy has happened, it is the irreversible truth of life, and we have no other way but to acknowledge it and coexist with it.

However, because the pain caused by some life tragedies is too heavy for us to accept for a while, we will be eager to stay away from these life tragedies, and there are two common ways:

Denial, that is, denying the occurrence of the tragedy of life, and even completely forgetting its occurrence;

Emotional isolation, we remember it intellectually, but it no longer evokes our corresponding emotional response.

In these two ways, we are consciously at great a distance from the tragedy of life, so that we can no longer suffer for it.

But this is only a conscious process. In fact, we are still suffering, but these pains are suppressed to the depths of the subconscious.

If a kind of suffering can still be realized, we will do some work on the level of consciousness on the suffering level.

If suffering is completely suppressed into the subconscious, then they will continue to function in ways we cannot understand.

That's the case with Luna, consciously, she no longer suffers from the loss of her father.

But, subconsciously, she was miserable about it. Moreover, this kind of pain buried in the depths of the subconscious mind must be expressed in some ways.

Breaking up with a boyfriend is, psychologically, much like losing your father again. So, it seems, every night for the year, she has been agonizing over the possibility of being abandoned by her boyfriend again, but in reality, she is grieving again and again about the loss of her father.

On the surface, she was too sad. In fact, she was not finished with grief.

Natural sadness is a treatment.

Finish the sadness, and then there is a real sunny day.

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