A friend of mine recently expressed something to me that I think many people experience during down times and I wanted to share and talk about this openly.
She is having a bit of a hard time with her work at the moment and can feel quite a bit down. We can all relate to this I’m sure. However, while she is down, she then makes herself feel worse by saying to her self things like…
“I am being stupid… I have nothing to be down about…. There are so many people who are worse off than me… who have worse lives than me etc…”
This thinking, whilst sometimes can be helpful is often times more damaging.
My friend is not a selfish person: in fact she is probably one of the most selfless people I know. She is always looking out for other people and is conscious of how others feel.
It is true that there are always people who are worse off than us, but… there are always people who are better off as well. The important thing to remember is that it is not about those other people. Our happiness depends on us… not anyone else or their circumstances. If we feel down, it means there is something wrong that needs to be fixed/helped. It could be something as simple as needing some positive re-enforcement or something as complex as requiring medication or hospitalisation. Whilst we can all choose to be empathetic, compassionate and selfless, we are always the only star in the feature film of 'our life'. Other people don’t really feature in the feature film, so they cannot therefore be useful in the mending of our own torn feature film tape.
Beating ourselves up and making ourselves feel bad while we are already feeling down is just going to exacerbate the situation. Don’t feel guilty about realising that you are down - its our brain's way of telling us that something needs to be done to help ourselves.
We are all human beings worthy of help, happiness and love.
Let’s commit to:
- empathise with those that are in worse situations than us,
- accept that there are also those that are better off than us; and most of all
- to make sure we appreciate what we do have by ensring that if we aren’t feeling 100%, we all we can to work towards feeling happier and mentally healthier again…
... NO GUILT...!!!
