Don’t Sweat the Cyclical Misery

Posted on by theageofthediary

The cyclical misery is that experience where you go into a slump every now and then. It’s mysterious because it’s triggered by nothing, and it’s frustrating when you’re trying hard to make it stop. Now I realize that the best way to deal with it is to let it take its course and trust that it too shall pass.

So how did it start in the first place? I don’t know if I’d always had it, but I definitely started noticing it by 2016. Years before that, I had discovered positive psychology, and it was a completely life changing experience. When I read those books, I felt like I was coming out of a long and dark frame of mind. It was like when Oprah said something about never knowing how bad it was until you come out of it. There was so much heaviness I was carrying, and now, because of positive psychology I was free.

However, there is a perverted kind of interpretation of positive psychology, and this was my next pitfall. It started to feel pressure to be happy all the time, when that wasn’t necessary at all. So whenever I fell into a slump, I would beat myself up about it, and make the entire experience even worse than it is. Now I realize the most obvious thing, human beings are emotionally complicated. I will feel both happiness and sadness, plus every other emotion there is–and that’s ok.

So now, when the periodic misery sets in, I will try to see if I can get out of it through stuff like my cheery list. But if those things don’t work, I just chill out.  I let myself have that day. I let myself sleep. I let myself do nothing. I let myself play. I let myself experience the sadness, and then tomorrow happens, and another emotion sets in.

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