The Sickness of Gloom and Despair — How Do We Overcome It?..

The feeling of gloom and despair is a natural thing that every individual feels from time to time. Every person has his gloomy spells, but we must not bind ourselves to them for long, for alongside the states of despair and gloom there lie within us the seeds of other states, such as confidence, hope, and gratitude. Some people pass through this feeling and it soon vanishes, so that their thoughts become free of every old influence and capable of taking up new matters. Others sink into it until it takes hold of them, and they appear scowling and pessimistic about life and everyone in it. Before long such a person becomes prey to the disease of chronic gloom, which diminishes his life, causes him psychological and nervous shocks, and robs him of his contentment and cheer; the world appears sorrowful to him, and everything in it terrifying and frightful. His hopes and resolutions are shattered, his ambition is destroyed, he finds all things ugly and creates gloom out of every circumstance whatever it may be. This condition very often leads to diseases of the heart and stomach and to headaches, and some people set about treating it with medicines and drugs without realizing the truth of its psychological causes.

A person's happiness or misery is bound in relative measure to his mental attitude and psychological state. If his thoughts are bright, his soul fills with cheer, resolve, and vigor. Milton, the blind English poet, disclosed this truth when he said: "The mind can turn the paradise in which we live into a hell, just as it can turn hell into a paradise." As for Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and mute, she said: "I have found life exceedingly beautiful."

Milton, Keller, and others left no room for despair and sorrows to work their way into their souls and poison their thoughts and spirits; rather they faced life with a laughing face. And as the psychologist Alfred Adler concluded, after years spent studying human conduct, man is able, whenever he wills, to turn the deserts into which fate casts him into gardens and beautiful paradises. That is done by the mind's not surrendering to the accomplished fact and not bowing before difficulties. So let us pursue our journey through this world with steady steps, for in the depths of the soul there are latent powers and successful ways by which one may easily free himself from the nightmare of gloom and overcome it, even if he imagines that he could never do so.

Among these powers and ways:
1 - Creating the sense of being able to vanquish the raids of gloom and despair.
2 - Feigning cheer and gladness, so that before long the sad and gloomy person becomes merry and pleased by nature.
3 - Occupying oneself with some other kind of activity when feeling dejection and weariness, so that we leave no void in our souls for gloom then to fill.
4 - Taking part in humanitarian works, helping the poor, and other branches of social activity.

This is the successful road to vanquishing the raids of gloom.