How is despair useful? Not advice from psychologists, but the experience of real people

The state of despair is very difficult to describe. It’s so bad that it seems like if I die it won’t get any better. Well, how can we talk about this? One endless pain.

Extreme despair and hopelessness burned from within. An unbearable, incomprehensible feeling. Confusion. Impotence. Dejection. Depression. Where is the beginning and where is the end? Lost. Weakness. I'm hitting the walls of my mind and I can't break out. All attempts are in vain.

Who am I? Why do I live? Where is the answer to all questions? How to put your life in order, what to do with despair?

I am a stranger in this world. I only need meaning. But where to find it? Everyone around is stupid, all of them, there is no one to talk to about such topics. The books have all been re-read, all the seminars have been listened to, even the music is already disgusting, the films are insipid. Where are the answers? Such emptiness inside. Despair. Gray, dull, hopeless, deep despair.

I am ready to give EVERYTHING for a tiny grain of insight. Only everything around is the same. Nothing makes sense. I want to go to sleep and never wake up again. I'm so tired. Tired of thinking. Tired of searching. Tired of living. I'm on the edge. I'm desperate, what should I do?!

Despair: what to do, where is the way out?

Existential despair in a person is felt as the quintessence of the mental pain of all humanity inside one head. I just want eternal peace, silence and serenity. I want to die. But it's scary.

No, it is unlikely that a person gripped by a state of existential despair is afraid of physical pain. Mental pain is hundreds of times greater than physical pain, and when the soul hurts, everything else becomes unimportant. But such a person is afraid that he will not take advantage of his chance to live.

Existential despair is characterized by the fact that a person constantly asks himself: “Why do I exist? For some reason I was given all this... Perhaps I am part of something bigger, perhaps there is a reason why I am here, but the answer is beyond my understanding, and I suffer because I cannot fill my questions. There was almost no strength left to fight. Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? And why, in the end, does it hurt me so much?

A person is constantly trying to build a bridge to reality, to overcome his despair. But he can't.

You need to understand that existential despair is not sadness, not melancholy, not a bad mood. It can drag on for years, preventing you from living a full life.

Let's sum it up

So, when you know the definition of the feeling of despair, and fully understand what it is. It is safe to say that it is necessary to get rid of this feeling as quickly as possible.

Despair is an emotional state of a person that occurs when some material or intangible value is lost.

To prevent despair from developing into chronic illness or mental disorder, you need to clearly understand your condition. And find any ways to cope with despair in order to make your life much better. If you don’t know what helps a person cope with despair, then you can seek help from a psychologist or other specialist.

Signs of desperation

This condition is almost always accompanied by accompanying phenomena, such as:

• depression;
• insomnia;
• headache;
• feeling of loneliness, loss;
• loss of objective perception of events;
• desire to isolate from society;
• inability to concentrate;
• confusion of thoughts;
• constant desire to sleep;
• weakness;
• the belief that life has no purpose;
• need for alcohol and drugs;
• a feeling of the illusory nature of what is happening;
• selective contact with people;
• decreased mental and physical performance;
• suicidal thoughts.

When one person exhibits all or most of the above symptoms, the overall condition is felt to be practically incompatible with life. This is despair to the highest degree.

Despair of despair: why it is vital for us to suffer

A person turns to a psychologist or psychotherapist, despairing of finding the purpose of life, Viktor Frankl believed, and based his treatment method on this - logotherapy. In his book “The Doctor and the Soul: Logotherapy and Existential Analysis,” which was published by the Alpina Non-Fiction publishing house, he writes that the ability to suffer is no less important than the ability to rejoice: without grief, our life would be incomplete. T&P publishes a chapter on the meaning of suffering and “noble misfortune.”

When discussing the question of the meaning of life, we divided all values ​​into three possible categories: we talked about creative values, experiential values ​​and attitude values. The first category is realized in action, and the values ​​of experience are realized in the passive perception of the world (nature, art), in which the “I” realizes itself. The values ​​of the position are embodied everywhere, where the fatal, that which cannot be changed, is accepted as such. There are an inexhaustible number of possibilities for how
to accept such a situation. This means that human life becomes complete not only in accomplishments and joys, but also in suffering!

Such reasoning will remain incomprehensible to the trivial ethics of success. It is worth taking a closer look, and we will be convinced that in our primary, everyday judgment about the value and dignity of human existence, such a depth of experience is already revealed in which events retain significance regardless of success or failure, and generally regardless of effect and consequences. The wealth of inner fulfillment, despite any “failure”, is truly revealed to us in great works of art. It is enough to recall such examples as Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”: it describes a bourgeois existence, the meaninglessness of which becomes clear to a person only immediately before unexpectedly approaching death. Having realized the former meaninglessness, this person in the last hours of his life grows far beyond his limits, to that inner greatness that retroactively fills his entire seemingly futile life with meaning. That is, life can receive final meaning not only through death (heroic), but also in death itself. And sacrifice not only gives meaning to life, but at the moment when life collapses, it can achieve completeness.

Lack of success does not mean lack of meaning.

This becomes obvious if you look back at your own past and go through your love stories. Ask yourself honestly whether you are ready to forget sad love experiences, erase unhappy or even painful episodes from your life. It is then that a person understands: this fullness of suffering is by no means an empty place. On the contrary, he grew up in suffering, in suffering he reached maturity, it gave a person more than successful erotic adventures would have given.

In general, a person tends to overestimate the positive and negative shades of his experiences, pleasure and displeasure. Giving them such great importance, he becomes imbued with unfair claims against fate. We have already discussed how man in every sense is “not born for pleasure,” and we have already understood that pleasure could not give meaning to a person’s life. And since they do not give meaning, then the lack of pleasures cannot deprive life of this meaning. And again, art provides us with convincing examples of the value of a simple, direct experience without coloration - remember how little it matters for the enjoyment of music whether the melody is in major or minor. And not only Beethoven’s unfinished symphonies belong to the most precious musical treasures, but also the Pathetique Sonata.

“Desperation itself frees a person from the reasons for despair”

We said that in action a person realizes creative values, in experience - the values ​​of experience, in suffering - the values ​​of position. But suffering also has an immanent meaning. Paradoxically, language leads us to this meaning: we suffer “from something” and “cannot bear it” - that is, we would like to prevent this from happening. Resistance to what is given by fate is our last task, the requirement of suffering itself. When we suffer from something, we internally distance ourselves from it, creating a distance between ourselves and the cause of suffering. While we suffer in this state that should not be, we are torn between actual being on the one hand and ought to be on the other. This, as we have seen, also applies to people who despair in their lives: despair itself frees a person from the reasons for despair

, because it means that he compares his own reality with the ideal, yearns for the ideal, that he has realized certain values ​​​​(remaining unembodied) - and this gives a certain value to the person himself.
After all, a person could not judge himself if he did not have the dignity and status of a judge - as a person who realized what should be and contrasted it with what is. Suffering creates
a fruitful, one might even say,
a revolutionary tension
, helping a person to realize the wrong as wrong.
To the extent that he identifies himself with a given situation, a person eliminates the distance from it and thereby relieves the fruitful tension between what is and what should be
.

Thus, in human emotions, a deep wisdom is revealed above all rationality - it even contradicts rational usefulness. Let's take a closer look at the affects of grief and repentance: from a utilitarian point of view, both may seem meaningless. After all, mourning something irretrievably lost is just as useless from the point of view of “common sense” and even contrary to logic, as repenting of indelible guilt. However, for the inner history of a person, grief and repentance are very valuable. By mourning the person we loved and lost we somehow prolong his life, and repentance resurrects the culprit and frees him from guilt.

The object of our love and our grief is objectively, in empirical time, lost, but subjectively, in internal time, preserved: grief keeps it in the present. Repentance is capable, as Scheler writes, of melting away guilt: the guilt will not be removed from the one who has done wrong, but he himself, having been morally reborn, will be resurrected. This opportunity to fruitfully transform events in internal history does not contradict human responsibility, but is in a dialectical relationship with it. Guilt awakens responsibility, but a person is responsible from the point of view of reality, in which not a single step can be taken back, the smallest of his decisions in life and the greatest remain forever. Nothing done or missed can be washed away. But only at a superficial glance may it seem like a contradiction to be able to internally dissociate oneself from some act in an act of repentance and, while experiencing the internal event of repentance, make the external event morally seem to have never happened.

Schopenhauer famously lamented the human life suspended on a pendulum between need and boredom. In fact, both states are filled with deep meaning. Boredom is a constant memento*

.
* Memento mori - reminder of death (latin).
Without specification - a reminder of something unpleasant, scary. What causes boredom? Inaction. But action is not performed in order to save us from boredom, but boredom is given to us so that we try to avoid inaction and be true to the meaning of our lives.

The struggle of life keeps us in constant tension, since the meaning of life is established and disappears depending on the fulfillment of tasks; this “tension” is essentially different from a neurotic thirst for sensations or a hysterical need for stimuli.

The essence of “need” is also a reminder. Even on a biological level, pain plays an important role, protecting and warning. Pain has a similar function on the mental and spiritual level. Suffering warns us against apathy, the deathly numbness of the soul. In suffering we grow, we reach maturity, suffering makes us stronger and richer. Repentance, as we have seen, has the meaning and power to undo (morally) an external event in internal history; grief has the meaning and power to somehow restore the past again. Both of them, grief and repentance, somehow correct the past and so solve the problem, in contrast to attempts to distract or drown out the pain: when a person tries to distract from or drown out his

, he does not solve the problem,
does not eliminate his misfortune from the world - from the world he eliminates only the direct consequence of unhappiness
, his state of dissatisfaction or pain.
By distracting himself or drowning out the pain, he “forces himself not to know.” He tries to escape from reality and seeks refuge in one form or another of intoxication. At the same time, he falls into a subjectivist, even psychological, delusion: it seems to him that, along with the emotions that he suppresses, the circumstance that caused these emotions will disappear, as if what a person has expelled into the region of the unconscious is at the same time expelled into the region of the non-existent. But just as by looking at an object we do not bring it to life and by looking away we do not destroy it, so by suppressing grief within ourselves we cannot eliminate the circumstance that prompts us to grieve. Grieving people often choose the right path, refusing to drown out their grief, for example, they prefer to “cry the night away” rather than take sleeping pills. Grief rebels against the banal prescription of sleeping pills: just because I sleep better, the dead man I mourn will not rise again. Death - an extreme example of an irreparable event - will not become non-existent if it is driven into the subconscious, and will not become non-existent if the grieving person plunges into an unconscious state, even into complete unconsciousness of his own death. * Insensitive melancholy (lat.)
** Logic of the heart (fr.)

How deeply rooted in a person the belief in the meaningfulness of emotions is shown by the following fact: there is a type of melancholia in which the main symptom is not constant sadness, as is usually the case, but, on the contrary, patients complain that they never feel sadness, cannot cry, that they are cold and internally as if dead - this is the so-called melancholia anaesthetica

*. Anyone who has encountered similar cases knows that greater despair is hardly possible than the despair of a person who has forgotten how to be sad. This paradox again convinces us of the artificiality of the principle of happiness - it is a psychological construct that has no correspondence in reality.

Obeying the emotional logique du cœur

**, a person always strives to be either in joyful or sad excitement, but always to experience something, and not to plunge into emotionless apathy.
The paradox of melancholia anaesthetica, in which a person suffers from the inability to suffer
, is a paradox from the point of view of psychopathology, but existential analysis resolves it, because existential analysis recognizes the meaning of suffering, recognizes it as a meaningful part of life.
Suffering and unhappiness are as integral to life as fate and death. They cannot be removed from life without destroying the meaning of life itself. If you rid life of misfortune and death, of fate and suffering, it will lose its form, its gestalt. Only under the blows of fate, in the red-hot flame of suffering, does life acquire form and meaning
.

The fate that torments a person has a double meaning: firstly, if possible, it needs to be given shape, and secondly, it must, of necessity, be endured.

On the other hand, we should not forget that a person must constantly be on the alert and not rush to capitulate, not recognize too early a certain state of affairs as fatal and not bow to what he mistakenly perceives as fate. Only when there remains no possibility of realizing creative values, when a person is truly unable to give shape to fate, only then does the turn of positional values ​​begin, only then does it make sense to “accept one’s cross.” The essence of position values ​​is how a person adapts to what he has no power to change. The sine qua non for the true realization of the values ​​of the position is that the situation really cannot be changed: what Brod called a “noble misfortune”, as opposed to an “ignoble” one, which is not fatal because it can be avoided or because the person brings it upon himself.

“There are situations when a person is able to realize himself only through genuine suffering”

One way or another, any situation provides a person with a chance to realize values ​​- creative or positional values. “There is no situation that a person cannot ennoble either by action or by patience” (Goethe). One could even say that in patience there is a certain “action”, since we are talking about genuine patience, the ability to endure a fate that cannot be changed by action or prevented by inaction. Only such “correct” suffering is a feat, only this inevitable suffering is filled with meaning. This moral feat of suffering is not alien to the everyday experience of the ordinary person. For example, he will fully understand the following story: many years ago, when awarding English scouts, the highest award went to three boys who were in the hospital with a fatal illness, but remained courageous and cheerful and steadfastly endured suffering. Their suffering was recognized as a real “feat” that surpassed the achievements (in the narrower sense of the word) of all other scouts.

“Life is not something, it is always just an opportunity for something” - these words of Hebbel are confirmed by various possibilities either to give fate (that is, initially and by its nature unchangeable) a form, that is, to realize creative values, or, if this turns out to be truly impossible, to realize the values ​​of the position, to relate to this fate in such a way as to accomplish the human feat of “correct” suffering. It may seem like a tautology if we say that an illness provides a person with the “opportunity of suffering,” but, understanding “opportunity” and “suffering” in the above sense, we get a completely non-banal statement also because between an illness, including a mental one, and suffering there is a significant difference. The difference is not only that the patient does not always suffer. There is also such suffering that is in no way connected with illness, fundamental human suffering, that suffering that, in essence and meaning, is part of human life. There are even cases when existential

analysis is used to return to a person
the capacity for suffering
, while psychoanalysis is ready to return to him only
the capacity for pleasure
or
the capacity for achievement
. There are situations when a person is able to realize himself only through genuine suffering. And just as they sometimes miss the “opportunity for action” that life provides, they also miss the opportunity for true suffering and the opportunity to realize the values ​​of a position. It becomes clear why Dostoevsky was afraid of being unworthy of his torment. We also now understand what fulfillment there can be in the suffering of a patient who struggles to become worthy of his torment.

Existential paradox

It is very difficult for a person who is in such a difficult mental state to believe that there is at least one other soul in this world who suffers just like him. And it is absolutely impossible to believe that you can find a way out of this state and solve the problem forever.

At the “System-Vector Psychology” training, Yuri Burlan confidently says: you are not alone, and there is a way out.

This article is aimed at helping you understand the mechanism of your psyche, revealing cause-and-effect relationships and leading you to a conscious understanding of the solution to the problem.

First, let's figure out what the reasons for your despair are.

In fact, everyone is capable of experiencing despair throughout their lives. The reasons may be different: the loss of a loved one, a real threat to life, loss of material savings, general long-term dissatisfaction with oneself or one’s life, and the like.

But of all the people, only 5% of the population of the entire planet have objective prerequisites for a state of existential despair or, as it is also called, an existential crisis. These are people who have received the properties of a sound vector from nature. They are far from everything material, the main thing for them is to understand the meaning of their existence, their task is to reveal the root causes.

They have a special sensitive ear, it picks up subtle vibrations, picks up intonations, voice timbre, notices accents, interesting turns of speech. But most importantly, for a sound engineer, the words spoken are not as important as the meaning of what is said. At the same time, for the vast majority of sound professionals, the most pleasant sound is silence.

Despair in a person with sound vector

Often, unfortunately, the sound engineer’s delicate ear is exposed to unwanted noise. Be it the noise of a big city, the scream of parents or offensive meanings addressed to the sound engineer. All this damages the hearing.

The sound guy loses the desire to listen to the outside world - he is simply in pain. The result is an inability to realize one’s innate properties. And so, being an introvert, here he completely withdraws into himself, begins to listen inside himself, to his states. The inability to get out of the vicious circle of your thoughts entails despair and unwillingness to live.

Six thousand years ago, a sound engineer, left alone with silence and the endless night sky, for the first time formulated in his mind the first existential question: “Who am I?” This one question marked the beginning of the development of all world philosophy, religion, literature, music and subsequently all the exact sciences. The sound artist sought to answer this question and understand the essence of his existence in the world, to understand the essence of existence, being.

Existential questions have not disappeared and have not exhausted themselves to this day. On the contrary, they have intensified and are plunging most sound workers into complete despair.

Every sound artist is faced with a difficult internal contradiction to bear. On the one hand, he knows: he has been given life, and he really wants to believe that it is important, that he, as an individual, is important and unique. On the other hand, he thinks that his existence has neither a given purpose nor an objective meaning.

This conflict plunges a person into a state of existential despair, detachment from reality and leads him to the desire to get rid of the physical body (relatively slowly through drugs or directly through suicide).

Despair - when I blame with all my heart my parents, society, God, all the forces known to me and even unknown, and I do not find the strength to justify anything.

The sound artist really wants to understand this whole process of life, to accept, to love, to be happy. But in the sound sense, love does not mean loving flowers, animals, or a specific person. This means to become aware of all processes, to understand oneself and to understand others, to merge with them in mind, to fully accept everything that is. The inability to do this entails despair.

How to deal with despair

No one can completely prevent despair in their own life, but it is possible to edit the factors that influence the likelihood of falling into despair from any situation. First of all, the example of the parental family, which a person saw and unconsciously absorbed behavior patterns, contributes to such a state. Thus, if at the slightest failure you saw how the parent fell into despair, and did not look for ways to resolve the current situation or restructure their own life, then the chances of repeating this scenario in your performance increase. Not because of a reluctance to look for other options, but because of the lack of an example of how to look around. Perhaps a parent of the same sex was prone to momentary loss of hope and was preparing for the end of the world, while the other decided a lot for him and showed him the way out. Then, when identifying with the first, panicking will be a familiar stereotype, and it will also be beneficial, because you can not accept responsibility on your own, but wait for salvation. In this situation, there is a hidden resource - this is the behavior of the other parent and his coping strategies, which, like a slight fall into despair, are part of your inner experience, which needs to be awakened and updated. By the way, this is also true for those in whom such behavior in the family was the norm for the majority - find an example elsewhere, among friends and heroes.

The next feature of the psyche that can lead to despondency is the tendency to constantly replay events, a kind of stuckness not so much for the sake of extracting experience, but for the sake of repeating the experience of emotions. This may concern positive aspects, and then a person’s strength and confidence increase, but this same feature, when dwelling on negative aspects, can plunge one into the abyss of hopelessness and develop deep depression. Usually, another vivid impression distracts you from repeating the situation, but relying entirely on the will of external factors is not rational, because after being in despair for quite a long time, a person loses the ability to notice external changes in the situation, concentrating on internal suffering, or these changes become insignificant. Finding your own effective technique for switching attention and shifting the emphasis of thoughts will help reduce the severity of the experience of negative emotions, as well as look at the world with a sober look when repeating positive ones.

In a situation of a negative event, an important point is to feel your internal supports in order to maintain your condition at the proper level. With low self-esteem, uncertainty, and the habit of self-flagellation, a person only digs deeper into the hole of depressive disorder and a feeling of impasse. Thus, not only does the world become imperfect and terrible due to the destruction of an important part or aspiration, but also the lack of self-confidence quickly kills the remaining drops of hope for improvement. So it’s worth starting to normalize self-esteem and fill your internal resources in advance, and not when a crisis has torn your life apart; it’s better to start when the life situation is still stable - for prevention and development of resilience.

It helps to strengthen meaningful connections, i.e. communication with those people who are able to truly understand and accept you, where there is no need to keep face. Talking openly about your condition and problems with a sense of security is a fairly therapeutic practice, as a result of which affect is reduced, it becomes possible to receive feedback on your own emotions or events, from which, if not a new way of being is born, then a support resource will appear that reduces despair. If there are no such people around, then you can go to a psychologist for individual or group therapy. There is also no opportunity for therapy - write a diary, describing all your thoughts, feelings and events - periodically re-read what you have written, this will allow you to trace the dynamics, lead to a new vision, in extreme cases, it will simply help to throw out emotions.

But in your classes you should look for something new and exciting; avoid looking at a blank wall and replaying what happened. Remember what fascinated you in childhood and try to realize your inclinations now - it is in childhood desires and memories that contain a lot of energy and potential, in addition, they are devoid of external imposition and expectations of others, so there is a chance that you will begin to do what exactly your soul longed for confidently increases.

Take care of your own body, since a depressed state changes the chemical processes in the brain, stops the functioning of the nervous system, and, accordingly, the rest - focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, reduce the use of psychoactive substances, and increase the dose of B vitamins (they nourish the nervous system), strictly monitor your biorhythms, give your body physical activity, even if you don’t want to move (during sports, hormones of joy and pleasure are produced, which help reduce depression).

Despair filled everything

We have heard more than once from others that despair sets in because a person has no willpower. Because he is afraid of difficulties or feels sorry for himself. Are these words familiar?

Just the thought that you are a self-pitying, weak-willed coward has never brought anyone out of a difficult state.

People also like to say that a person’s despair arises from negative thoughts, again emphasizing that this is the person’s fault, thereby only worsening the condition.

On the Internet you can see a whole list of tips on how to overcome a state of despair; for comparison, we present some of them.

Advise:

• strengthen willpower through various techniques;
• get rid of your fears;
• accept life's difficulties;
• smile, be in high spirits, be optimistic;
• do not be afraid to take the first step towards change;
• change your attitude towards yourself;
• begin to perceive the problem with wisdom, so that it becomes not an obstacle, but a lesson;
• pull yourself together and take action;
• love yourself;
• open up to the Universe and so on.

This is advice from people with different mental properties, for people with a visual vector. They will definitely say that love is the most important thing in life, that you need to help, live for others. That if you feel bad, you need to calm down, listen to your heart. You need to meditate, do yoga, pray for yourself and your loved ones, be in harmony with yourself and with nature.

Only all this advice remains in the material plane of this world. Earthly love, humanism are the values ​​of the visual vector. No matter how much you repeat these tips, they don’t work for sound engineers, their despair doesn’t go away. You can't fight despair by trying to think positively while reading af. Maybe I’d like to believe it, but you can’t fool yourself.

A sound person strives to break out of this world, touch infinity, hear the vibrations of the Universe. But not through emotions, but with his whole being, he seems to want to absorb everything that is. Therefore, sound desire is dominant over all other desires in this world. Nothing can fill it: not money, not sex, not honor and respect, not the most beloved job or family. To realize such a huge desire, the sound artist is given abstract intelligence and the largest potential volume of the psyche.

Previously, the sound artist was able to fill himself with music, religion, science, literature, poetry, but the desire is growing. And now this is not enough - despair sets in: what to do, the brain is evolving, the need arises to put together more and more complex thought forms.

How long do emotions last?

Have you ever wondered how long a particular emotion can last? Do you think this cannot be calculated? Can!

Psychologists have calculated how long negative emotions last. So a person’s fear and shame lasts 30 minutes, while boredom takes 2 hours. A person feels guilty for 3.5 hours and hates it for 60 hours. But you can be sad for 120 hours.

The experts also paid attention to positive emotions. According to research, it takes a person 1 hour and 20 minutes to empathize, and 5 hours to admire. Enthusiasm covers a person for 6 hours, satisfaction lasts 24 hours. And joy may not leave us for as long as 35 hours!

A person's despair will disappear forever

It is possible to get out of the state of existential despair only by studying the human psyche. In the literal sense of how we were created and why.

The training “System-vector psychology” by Yuri Burlan makes it possible to fully understand this process from the inside.

With the help of the knowledge of system-vector psychology, you reveal all your characteristics, realize why others do not understand you, what your purpose is and how to realize it. Awareness of how the psyche of other people works allows the sound artist to gain a deeper understanding of himself based on his differences from others. This entails incredible volumetric filling and allows you to get out of bad conditions. As a result of the opening of the psyche, the perception of oneself and the world around completely changes.

The sound specialist begins to see mathematically precise cause-and-effect relationships between all processes of the past and present and their development in the future, both externally and internally. By adding up his perception from gradually coming realizations, the sound artist acquires a completely new objective and accurate picture of the world.

Understand your despair. Questions "Who am I?" and “What is the meaning of my life” begin to fill up, and as a result, bad states go away. And then more and more discoveries begin to come, great pleasure from every new thought. This process cannot be stopped by anything.

The sound artist was born to comprehend infinity, but not esoteric, but real. Living in this world, among other people.

The sound engineer has a very important role in this world. In his potential, he is able to experience the greatest pleasure of all from the realization of his natural properties and tasks. Namely, from knowing yourself and revealing the unconscious.