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Thursday 28 November 2013

Why Life Can Get You Down

It can be difficult to keep your chin up when everything in life seems to be going wrong. You can find yourself overwhelmed by difficulties and unable to cope. It could be that you're not getting good enough grades at school; or that you are struggling to find the right work-life balance; you may be in financial difficulties; perhaps the relationships you have with other people have become strained. The trouble is that when you're desperate to escape your problems, you may turn to drink, food or whatever your choice of drug is.

In the long run, drowning your sorrows or eating away the anxiety isn't going to make your problems go away. Even you know that, but it is much easier to distract yourself with other, often unhealthy, activities than to confront the issues head-on. Unfortunately, in an impersonal world you can feel isolated and as if you have no one to turn to, so that you bottle-up your emotions until one day you just explode. It helps to have someone to talk to, someone who you are able to share your problems with, especially since humans generally crave social contact.

However, one of the reasons that life can get you down is when you feel that you don't belong and that society is unsympathetic to your problems. Indeed, it is understandable why you would feel like this when there is still a stigma attached to mental illness. It is this stigma which may prevent you from going to see a doctor or seeking help from others. You may not want to admit you have a problem in case others begin to treat you differently, but no matter how much you try to pretend everything is fine, if you don't have the appropriate coping mechanisms you can be overpowered by negative thoughts.

Society has grown evermore competitive and it often seems that people have less time for each other. You can find yourself comparing your success, or lack thereof, to the achievements of your friends, relatives and even enemies. If you don't have a successful career, aren't particularly wealthy, haven't married and don't have children when all of your friends have at least one of those things going for them, you can find yourself feeling down. There is so much pressure to succeed in your career, in relationships and in life that it becomes much harder to be happy with what you've got.

You find yourself striving for more in the belief that once you've achieved great wealth and found a beautiful wife, you will be content with life. This isn't always the case, though, as life always takes unexpected twists and turns, so that you simply find other ways to be unhappy. Clearly, though, it depends what type of person you are. If you're an optimist you may be in a better position to stay on top of things compared to a pessimist, as being pessimistic makes it easier for life to get you down. Yet, even optimists can succumb to depression.

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