Clients with serious depression tend to ruminate over how bad they feel most of the time. Many of them imagine that non-depressed people are lucky because they go about their lives feeling good or at least OK. The truth is everyone feels disappointed, discouraged or defeated at times, and that it’s both normal and appropriate to feel that way. As humans we are not obligated to feel wonderful all the time. Indeed, without the occasional low mood, we cannot fully enjoy moments of pleasure, brightness, hopefulness or awe. Clients of mine who were invalidated emotionally as children long to be more emotionally expressive. The rewards of emotional expressivity come from expressing the full canvas of human emotions, which include not just exuberance and celebration, but also yearning, longing, sorrow, and pain. I have begun to see depression less as a darkness that engulfs people but more as a layer of thick insulation which traps and stuffs one’s emotional life in a lockbox. Indeed, the defining characteristic of depression is indifference, apathy, and lack of interest – the polar oppositive of aliveness. When one is alive, one feels the entire rainbow of emotions, even the darker ones. Hence, balancing moods is a far better thing than aiming for endless euphoria. Mood balance produces life balance and vice versa.
