How to live if there is nothing left except longing for the past

My soul is dreary and chilly, as it happens in the fall in the slush. Like nature, frozen in anticipation of winter hibernation. Cold. Yearning. Loneliness. Hopelessness and emptiness. I don't want to live. Feeling of longing. It seems that all the good things in your life have already happened. And nothing further is expected. Only dull melancholy. Routine. The rustle of days going nowhere.

My soul feels like a stone slab, cold and heavy. I have no strength to carry this weight.

What to do when sadness hits? How to deal with apathy and despair?

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan reveals how to get rid of melancholy, depression and depression.

For what? For what?

If a person is overcome by spiritual anguish, he constantly asks himself the same question: “Why?” It seems to him that the whole world has turned against him, that fate is unfair to him, that he is the only one so unhappy. He begins to think about why he was abandoned (betrayed, exiled, excommunicated, fired, etc.), gradually overthinks himself and comes to the conclusion that he became a victim of some kind of evil fate, this is what the unknown Higher powers decided, such is his lot, which he cannot change, as a result he gives up, there is no desire to fight.

To get rid of the feeling of melancholy, first of all you need to get rid of obsessive thoughts and stop asking this rhetorical question, which creates a dead end. How to do it:

• use a visualization method: imagine a red panic button with the inscription “For what?” and mentally forbid yourself to press it;
• paraphrase it into “For what?” (“Why?”, “What has changed?”) and try to answer it first - to yourself, and then - on paper;
• distribute the recorded answers into 2 columns - positive and negative consequences;
• think about this more often and fill the columns daily.

If you apply this method correctly, after a week the question “Why?” will disappear from my head. After all, it will be replaced by another - the light at the end of the tunnel, the way out of the dead end, the sun among the clouds. But the work doesn't end there. In order to finally free yourself from the melancholy in your soul, you need to more often re-read the column in which the positive consequences of the event that caused this state are recorded. If you focus on them, you will gradually realize that everything is not as bad as it initially seemed.

For example, a girl suffering from lovesickness cannot understand for a long time why (“Why?”) her boyfriend left her. What thoughts come to her mind:

• "I `m ugly";
• "I am fat";
• “I have a potato nose”;
• “I don’t have an apartment”;
• “I don’t suit him in bed”;
• “he feels bad with me”, etc.

As a result, internal complexes are formed. In fact, the reason for the separation may lie in something completely different (this most often happens). To get rid of the melancholy, which only intensifies from all these thoughts, she should answer another question - “For what?”:

• to have more free time;
• so as not to cry from his eternal delays and inattention;
• so as not to be afraid of losing him anymore;
• so as not to suffer from attacks of jealousy;
• to truly find your person who will never leave or betray, etc.

Understanding that everything that is done is for the better will help you survive the longing for your loved one, but already an “ex.” You just need to let go of the situation and stop holding on to relationships that have already ended. This technique is taken from the psychology of positive thinking. It will allow you to leave the past and start living from scratch - without despondency, anxiety and disappointment.

How to cope with sadness?

And we are not talking about bad habits, although this is of no small importance. We are talking about life goals, the ability to quickly get rid of negative experiences, cope with internal conflicts and the ability to rest on time.

If you feel that you have lost the pleasure of life and have been in depression for months, then perhaps the reasons for your condition lie in the following:

1. Suppression of feelings. If you bottle up your emotions, you deprive yourself of the energy you need to live a full life. What was not released outside will be directed inside, causing all sorts of psychological and physiological disturbances. First of all, well-mannered, intelligent people are at risk. Maintaining external decency where you want to cry and scream takes away a colossal amount of strength and health. The main place of accumulation of suppressed negative feelings is the solar plexus area. Therefore, against the background of a general depressed state, you may encounter quite definite pain and cramps in the chest.

What to do? The most accessible way to deal with accumulated emotions and stress is to “go out into nature.” Send into the forest, lean against a tree and scream at the top of your lungs until you feel relief.

2. Psychotrauma. If you have experienced a lot of stress - attack, rape, captivity, then this can significantly change your worldview

What to do? To get out of the internal crisis, the traumatized part of the personality is identified and something like this is said to it: “I see you, I feel you and I regret that this happened. I will not blame you, criticize you, evaluate you or feel sorry for you. From now on I will love, protect and care for you.” Some people get stuck in self-pity and are extremely reluctant to make changes. This may be due to deep feelings of guilt or the presence of secondary gain. In any case, the choice is yours.

3. Wine. If you constantly blame yourself, underestimate your merits, try to please, then you gradually fall into depression. Your inner critic is most likely a reflection of your parents' opinions and has been living inside you for decades.

What to do? To get rid of constant dissatisfaction with oneself, the method of paradoxical resolutions is used. You address the critical part, stop ignoring it and acknowledge its right to exist. It roughly says the following: “I will no longer blame you, scold you, punish you, accuse you...” After internal reconciliation, an improvement in well-being occurs. If you feel guilty about a specific reason, then you should mentally imagine the person with whom you acted unfairly, ask him for forgiveness and take away all the evil that you caused him. As a rule, the negative appears in the mind’s eye in the form of an image: stones, a heavy bag, a rotten stump, thorns, etc.

4. Illusions. If you accept as truth something that is not, you lose touch with reality and experience pain. This condition can be triggered by erroneous thoughts or being stuck at a certain age. For example, at 40 you feel 18. Your expectations correspond to your own ideas about yourself. But people behave completely differently and evaluate you “at 40”. It seems unfair to you, and you go into your own world, where it is cold and lonely.

What to do? To get out of this state, it is necessary to add a third, “adult,” to the two already existing components “child” and “parent.” The “child” requires attention and treats everyone with a consumerist attitude. The “parent” monitors behavior, criticizes, scolds, and sets rules. And only an “adult” can be truly reasonable, objective and flexible. When faced with life’s problems, he will not fall into despair, like a child, and will not condemn himself, like a parent, but will calmly say: “It’s not working out? It's OK. I have 99 more ways to solve this problem.” Purposeful development of an “adult” in oneself will help restore contact with reality and find inner harmony.

5. Making life meaningless. If you suddenly realize that your goal is unattainable or is not as significant as it seemed, then you lose interest in life. Also, such a state can be provoked by a sudden reassessment of values, the destruction of previous ideas about the world and the loss of what seemed unshakable.

What to do? To find the meaning of life, you need to decide on your values ​​and imagine how you see your life in 10−20−50 years. It will also be useful to read books by the famous Austrian psychologist, former prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Emil Frankl.

If you feel a constant loss of strength and melancholy, then start with yourself. Pay attention to how you live, what you think, what you strive for. You may be long overdue for an internal spring cleaning. After getting rid of the beliefs that are squeezing you, developing a new behavior and attitude towards life, you will feel incredible lightness, and every next day will bring you only joy and a desire to open more and more new horizons.

Tags: working on yourself, problem solving, emotions, psychological problems, feelings, depression, melancholy

Filling the void

The psychological technique of right and wrong questions described above does not always work. Especially when you are tormented by despondency and sadness from the loss of a loved one. In such a situation, a technique for filling the void that is formed with loss will help.

Previously, we shared joy and sorrow with him, walked and traveled together, helped each other, understood each other perfectly. When he disappears, the ideal world that was held together by two collapses. Unbearable loneliness hits you headlong. There is nowhere to go, no one to talk to, no one wants to see, no one can understand.

You can get rid of the feeling of loneliness only by gradually filling the resulting emptiness. Psychologists immediately warn: alcohol, drugs, dubious companies, daily parties - all these are pseudo-pleasures that allow you to forget only for a while. They should be abandoned immediately.

What can you do to fill the void?

• go on a trip: psychologists say that new positive emotions and a change of environment are the best way to get rid of melancholy;
• find a pleasant company, don’t be alone, try to constantly be with someone who is nice, unobtrusive and not annoying;
• do what you like: hobbies, sports, volunteering and other things that will bring satisfaction;
• throw yourself into work so that there is no extra time left for longing for the past;
• to care for someone: a child, an old person, a pet, a sick or suffering person.

The main thing is not to feel guilty before the deceased person, as if you are betraying him by continuing to live. This technique works slowly but surely. It can also be used in cases where hopelessness and sadness are associated with other events: separation, loneliness, a feeling of uselessness, etc.

Own life script

To understand why a person is sad, you need to carefully remember your past life and try to find out the cause of mental pain, because it does not just arise without reason. We cannot change someone else, but we can change ourselves. Often people become depressed because they live in some kind of fictional world that does not meet their needs, and when reality shows its true face, such people begin to feel sad, offended by everyone and fall into depression and even despair.

Concentrating vital forces on a certain scenario of one’s own life forces a person to experience pain and does not answer the question of how to get rid of melancholy. But instead, you could enjoy life. And we need to be attentive and accept everything that life presents to us, and not put our demands at the forefront.

"Gold fish"

All people have at least once dreamed of a goldfish appearing in their life and fulfilling all their desires. Melancholy is exactly the state when it’s finally time to turn this fantasy into reality. What is the point of this technique? The problem is that a person crushed by hopelessness has practically no goals, aspirations, or hopes. All he wants is to be left alone and not be annoyed with unnecessary worries and stupid questions. As a rule, with the advent of despondency, time seems to freeze: career, development of personal relationships, communication with friends, self-improvement - everything freezes. This happens precisely because of the lack of desires.

They need to be awakened within yourself. As soon as you want something bright, good, positive, it means the ice has broken. But how to do that? To begin with, write down what could please you at the moment. Then distribute everything into two columns: positive and negative.

For example:

Write down in the columns everything that comes to mind - even the wildest and most unrealizable fantasies. At this stage, the main thing is to find them in yourself. Fill out the tablet for 3-4 days, catching desires and remembering what you love and what brings you true pleasure. Now is the time to give them to the goldfish for sale. Proceed according to the following algorithm:

1. Re-read the column with negative desires. Realize that each of them brings false pleasure.
2. Tear this part of the sheet and throw it away (burn it/throw it to the wind).
3. Re-read the column with positive desires.
4. Choose from them the one that can be implemented right now without any problems.
5. Make sure that it will truly become a source of positive emotions for you.

Give the goldfish the task of making your chosen wish come true. Have you already guessed that you will play it yourself? Go and buy yourself a bucket of ice cream. Turn on a funny comedy and eat your favorite treat while listening to it. The main thing is to feel this moment, catch a little happiness, remember a pleasant moment, and be filled with positive emotions. This is the first step to getting rid of melancholy.

Tomorrow go for a walk, the day after tomorrow play your favorite online strategy game. Then take on more difficult desires. Do you want to be understood? Then you need to open up to someone, and for this you will at least have to go out into society and start communicating. Have you always dreamed of buying a pug? So what's the deal? After all, you are a goldfish yourself. Get a job, climb the career ladder, save money - and soon you won’t have to get rid of boredom yourself. After all, a little fluffy bundle of happiness will do a great job with it.

How to get rid of missing a loved one

This is the most difficult problem. If a loved one has passed away, you need to understand that this was God’s will and no one fully knows why this happened. The pain of parting, mental pain, the experiences that a person experiences when faced with death is a good state for the soul of the one who experiences it.

Many people, especially women, fall into prolonged depression after the loss of a loved one. They live only in their pain, not noticing anything around them, and thus drive themselves into a dead end. Such people seem to voluntarily stop their lives and freeze at one level. They have no joy and happiness, they only have pain.

This condition is similar to the condition of people with psychological trauma of consciousness, but, unlike patients, such people voluntarily doom themselves to a dependent state. Having become accustomed to living in such a state, people gradually feel the need for it, get some taste for it, and for them mental pain becomes a comfort zone. Under the pretext of tragedy, they hide from real life and do not want to solve the problems of both their own and their loved ones.

Taste of Joy

How can we get rid of longing for a person who either passed away or rejected our love for him?

You need to feel the taste of joy and happiness, already forgotten by a person. Try to look beyond the dark streak in order to feel all the joys of the bright streak, in a word, learn to enjoy life again. In fact, no one suffers all their lives, it’s just that people prone to depression forget about the state of happiness, joy, they say that they don’t need anything else in life and so on, but if they look inside themselves, they will understand that a person created for a full life, where there is both grief and joy.

Any pain makes us wiser; an attentive person, having experienced mental or physical pain, learns from it, examines the reasons why the trouble occurred, and tries not to repeat it again.

Causes of melancholy

Every girl knows that as soon as a relationship with a young man ends, a period of snot and tears begins. Alas, this is true. The main reason for melancholy is the absence of something close and familiar, for example the person himself, the evenings spent with him or the places where you liked to relax.

At these moments the thought arises that it will no longer be the way it was before. Hence, uncertainty about the future is another reason for melancholy.

Psychologists say that such a state is normal for a person. But as soon as he begins to fall into despondency, apathy, there is a chance that the person will plunge completely into a state of melancholy, which will lead to depression.

You can’t be in this state for a long time, because depression can become habitual, and you won’t want to change anything, life will seem meaningless.

Depression, in turn, can become a starting point for the development of nervous or mental illnesses. You don’t have to look far for an example. The paintings of the eccentric Salvador Dali are famous throughout the world. But who would have thought that this talented surrealist would become withdrawn and silent after the death of his beloved Gala.

Therefore, it is necessary to fight melancholy, depression and despondency. The question is: how to overcome these conditions?

Workout

Sport is a panacea for many emotional experiences. The main thing is to have fun and without harm to health. Hours of strength training or jogging in the fresh air will work like antidepressants. In addition, during sports, the body produces endorphin - the hormone of joy. As a bonus - good health and a toned body.

It is natural to experience sadness after a breakup with a loved one. To get rid of this feeling, you need to learn to love and hear yourself, understand your life goals and strive to realize them.

Reasons for sadness

If you are constantly sad, sit slouched, nothing makes you happy, no matter what you look at, everything causes sadness and melancholy, this is the need of your psyche to compensate for the loss. This means you need to understand what exactly you have lost.

The psyche perceives this as the disappearance of a significant piece of your life. Maybe it’s some person, a job, another important criterion that used to exist, but now it’s gone.

Women on maternity leave are often subject to such emotions, because their lives went on as usual, and after the birth of the child everything changed dramatically. I don’t have enough strength for my husband, everyday life, raising and caring for the baby, it becomes sad. This is the experience of losing a past way of life.

Another option is that you broke up with your man a long time ago, you already have another partner, and you feel good with him. But he doesn’t have some quality that you need, and as a result, sadness appears. Not by the ex-man, but precisely by the quality that was in him and brought you joy.

Women over 30 often feel sad for the self they were at 18. This is a worry about the loss of a resource, figure, health, or some character quality from the past. Life is not the same as it used to be, and it becomes sad that you no longer receive pleasure and enjoyment from the activities that you did then.

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