Ebony's Pearls

Rock
Originally uploaded by nodigio

http://www.newsweek.com/id/107569


Being sad, being depressed, being unhappy – these are healthy conditions that shouldn’t be drugged away with Zoloft. If a loved one or someone important dies, even if the person is simply a common face with no name – that’s a valid reason to be sad for a while, and to periodically remember being sad. So is losing a game, getting hurt, getting ill, or encountering any of a number of life’s obstacles.

Normal sorrow is not a depressive disorder.

The World Happiness Index is a valuable tool – it details why people are happy as well as how happy they are. It indicates that happiness, while a desired trait for a country, isn’t necessarily a good trait for each person. The country charts the overall happiness of all the people, who individually experience ups and downs. An overall happy country is a good place to be.

Some people are by nature melancholy, or dour, or pessimistic. Oddly enough, it makes them happy to be that way. They feel they experience more of life by embracing their sad side. It gives them something to anticipate and to strive towards.

Being is a constant state of high happiness (on a scale of 1-10, anything over 8) means that any least obstacle is seen as monumental, and even paralyzing. People in a relationship they rate as a “10” means that if it falls below that “10”, they will become unhappy and start looking for a new relationship. It’s possible to achieve a “10” for specific one-time events, but to sustain it is every bit as debilitating as clinical depression.

Being “up” all the time can cause people to downplay very real threats (like a boss not pleased with your work, or overdue bills).

Happy is good because happy people want to share their happiness. They often go to great lengths to help others to be happy. They are more charitable, both in their thoughts about other people and in their actions towards other people. A happy country – a country where the majority of the people fall between 5 and 8 on the happiness scale – is a country where the people experience autonomy and freedom and have enough wealth to share.

Melancholy, pessimism, sadness, grief, gloom, dourness – these all have their place in our range of emotional needs. People in a negative state of mind are more analytical, more critical, and more inventive as they view various situations. Dark moods have not hobbled or hampered such great people as Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, and Aristotle. Sometimes, the most appropriate reaction to life’s events is sadness.

We in America have labeled sadness as a disease, controlled by drugs, so when a person is appropriately sad, we no longer offer them empathy and support. Instead, we are likely to tell them to “take a pill and get over it”, and we react to sad people with hostility, anger, and rejection.

Happiness is good for us, just like chocolate is, but too much becomes a bad thing. This is the same with any of the range of unhappy emotions. Being unhappy is good for us. Working our way through the unhappiness strengthens our character, makes the happy times brighter, and allows us to reconstitute our lives in a new way.

The extremes of both ends of the emotion spectrum are ours to appreciate, but dwelling at either end for too long is damaging. We need to stop treating the unhappy end of our emotions as a clinical disease, as a social pariah.

There are times when it is completely appropriate to be sad. When we experience dashed hopes and dreams, when loved ones die, when our near and dear are very ill, or hurt, when we fear for those we care about, when we are by nature gloomy people, it’s normal to be sad, to feel weighted down by life.

True clinical depression doesn’t always have a triggering event. Many people who experience such a depression say they don’t always feel sad when they are depressed. They feel lethargic, disinterested, distanced from those about them, walled off, and uncaring. They want to care, they just can’t seem to remain focused on it, or to make the effort to do something about it. They can often make themselves do the things they must, and may even appear normal to others, but inside, they are deeply depressed. Externally, the symptoms between sadness and depression may be similar – lethargy, insomnia, difficulty concentrating, feeling empty, and being distressed or impaired by the symptoms, but internally, they are very different. True depression may respond to medication.

Medicating normal negative emotions can lead to true depression, because the person no longer trusts their own emotions. They can’t tell how they really feel anymore.

Here’s the difference as I see it: a person experiencing normal sadness is drugged to cover it up – and they feel as if they’ve been locked into a sensory deprivation chamber – their emotions are taken away from them. A clinically depressed person feels as if they are living in a sensory deprivation chamber and drugs open the lid to let them experience their emotions. One is locked up, the other is released.

Emotion – positive or negative – is essential to our overall well-being as individuals and as a species. We need to naturally react to life’s events. It’s only when the emotions become extreme and sustained, far in excess of the triggering event - or when there is no identifiable triggering event, that we need to consider any treatment other than empathy and support.

Be happy. Be sad. Live life to the fullest by embracing the complete range of your emotions.