Sometimes we get so carried away by depression that we even begin to like this condition. Some people literally become addicted to sadness. Where does psychological masochism come from, and why are we in no rush to get rid of the need to suffer?
I’m afraid of emptiness
Unrealized ambitions, total loneliness (moral or physical), intrusive memories, or unhappy love – all of this can cause a difficult moral state, which often lasts for years. At the very beginning, it might seem that you are pitied, but your despair causes irritation rather than sympathy. This irritation, by the way, provokes more painful experiences that you cannot cope with. Maybe, you don’t want to cope with them because, oddly enough, you feel good living in a sea of pain.
Surprisingly, a deep spiritual wound, which could have formed in the place of a great love or a failed career, is capable of working for replacement. The suffering, which you experience far less often than every second – for example, in moments of idleness – fills an emptied part of the body, preventing you from relaxing and falling into a real, severe depression. The latter, by the way, absolutely excludes clearly manifested mental pain – on the contrary, emotional atrophy may be the first sign of a serious illness.
Suffering vs inspiration
The situation with an emotional background, and therefore with experiences, is somewhat different in creative people. Many creative people say that when we feel bad, we write good poetry, songs, and pictures. It is true. When everything is good, we do not need to “cry on paper,” we generally do not need anything except the joy that we already have.
When we are happy, we have no time to be creative. Melancholy with painful reflections at night is capable of provoking the birth of truly amazing work, no matter whether it is a film or a book, music or dance.
Finding themselves in a state of slight nervous breakdown and sadness, even the people distant from the art world, are sometimes saved by creativity, so there is a certain moment of reciprocity: sadness helps in creativity, and only creativity can heal or at least alleviate mental pain.
It serves me right
Another reason to love your pain is to consider it a punishment. Such an explanation of love for one’s own suffering may be due to a superstition: if I feel bad now, I will feel good later. As they say, no one ever canceled the universal balance.
Or: I am crying because of having done something wrong before. Such an idea promises some bonuses in the future for suffering in the present, or it justifies the unseemly actions of the past and allows us to revel in our failures with full force.
This impression is extremely misleading, because if you understand that neither the past nor the future actually exists if you are interested only in the present, the entire illusory nature of such aspirations becomes more than obvious. You can hardly expect grace in the future if you consciously choose the path of a sufferer for yourself.
If you can’t cope with pain and suffering on your own, talk to the loved ones or even to a specialist to work through these moments of addiction to sadness. It is quite possible to get rid of it.
