Every day we experience at least momentarily, three emotions we do not like: anxiety, depression, and anger. These are the three faces of dysphoria - bad feeling. These same three common emotions, when out of control, cause most "mental illness". When we experience one, we want to get rid of it. Indeed, that is there very point.
When should you not try changing? When should you listen to the message of your negative emotions, as uncomfortable as it may be. And change your external life rather than your emotional life?
Bad Weather inside. People by and large astonishingly attracted to the catastrophic interpretation of things. Not just neurotics not just depressives, not just phobics, not just explosives personalities, but most of us much of the time.
Goethe said that in his entire life he had only a couple of completely happy days. I am astonished that when my own life is going smoothly - work, love, and play all in place, which is not very often - I begin to fret about anything I can find that is wrong. what, the micro way is not the blink? this disaster is followed by repeated angry calls to the appliance service, worrying at 4 am busy signals, cursing and blaming. I experienced just about as much total dysphoria over this triviality as I do when the big things, all of them go badly. I call this common irrationality conservation of dysphoria.
Why is dysphoria so common? why is it conserved? why do anxiety, anger, and sadness pervades so much of our lives - concurrent so much success, wealth and absence of biological needs in the life of so many people. the Russian Blyuma Zeigarnik discovered early in this century we remember unsolved problems, frustrations, failures and rejections much better than we remember than our successes and completions.
