Is Anyone Else Just Naturally "Sad" as their Norm?

[mommahhh]

I know everyone has a different temperament. But does anyone else just feel that even though there might be ups and downs, you always seem to return to "sad" as your set point? It has been this way for me even as a young child. I would worry about everything. I would contemplate the ways of the world. I would fret over unjustice. After a pet would die, I would mourn it for months (I clearly recall being in grade 2 and just not able to hold back the flood of tears over my cat that had died during the summer....literally months earlier). I often just felt sad.

And now...now I have plenty of reasons to be sad as an adult. But I mean....sometimes there won't be anything wrong in my life at a particular moment. Everyone is healthy. Everything is going well. We'll be sitting around having a family dinner and I look at everyone looking happy and having fun. And I feel so alone because I'm sad. Again. Forever sad, that's me.

[Freedom~Mama]

I so get what you are talking about. That is me as well. It is so hard having that kind of highly sensitive nature. I often feel anxious, depressed and sad, sometimes for no real reason at all. Now that I am actually going through a lot (divorce and the death of a pet) it is feeling extremely overwhelming sometimes. I have to constantly work on feeling happy and positive and it is so easy to slip back into that sad and anxious feeling.

I am trying to get everything in my life as orderly and generally good as possible. By giving myself something to look forward to and work on it helps to occupy my mind and helps to keep me from feeling as overwhelmed and sad. Also reading self help books, meditating, listening to music, praying and laughing, and exercise help me. It is tough though. I wish I was one of those naturally happy and bubbly people but I am just not. It is not that I am super depressing all the time, I love to laugh and have a great sense of humor. I just feel things very deeply and think about things in great depth and it is easy for me to feel sad.

[Smokering]

Maybe? I don't know if I'm sad sad, but I don't default to happy. I spend most of my time worrying about practical or abstract things (anything from finer points of theology to running out of clean nappies); feeling aggrieved by my toddler and guilty for being aggrieved; feeling inadequate and stressed and useless and feeling the weight of a thousand things I want to get around to doing, but paralysed by a laziness (fear? inertia? nutritional deficiency? lack of organisation?) that prevents me from doing them. Seriously... I worry about a sweater I'm planning to knit one day. Thousands of things like that weigh on my mind ALL THE TIME, and it is pretty exhausting.

But sad? I dunno. Maybe dissatisfied is a better word... maybe depressed. I don't usually feel weepy. I don't know if it's the same as how you feel. But I suspect for my situation and yours it's very likely a personality thing, maybe one that will always be part of us.

On the other hand, you could look into natural remedies for depression, just in case..?

[ElaynesMom]

Originally Posted by Smokering

I spend most of my time worrying about practical or abstract things (anything from finer points of theology to running out of clean nappies); feeling aggrieved by my toddler and guilty for being aggrieved; feeling inadequate and stressed and useless and feeling the weight of a thousand things I want to get around to doing, but paralysed by a laziness (fear? inertia? nutritional deficiency? lack of organisation?) that prevents me from doing them. Seriously... I worry about a sweater I'm planning to knit one day. Thousands of things like that weigh on my mind ALL THE TIME, and it is pretty exhausting.

This sounds almost exactly like me. Things are constantly weighing on me. I'm constantly worried about both big and trivial things, and it is exhausting.



I do feel sad a lot. Everything seems to really get to me even when I try hard to stay positive. I'm not constantly depressed, I do have fun sometimes, and things do make me feel happy, but it always goes back me feeling kind of sad. Unfortunately life isn't perfect, and I'm a pretty sensitive (maybe overly sensitive?) person, so it seems like there is always something, even little things to give me that sad feeling, even if in the grand scheme of things everything seem to be going well.

Like you I've felt this way since I was a child, and I don't think of myself as being clinically depressed, though I've been there before. Perhaps it is just personality.

[lolar2]

Some people do have a low-ish setpoint of happiness, but that setpoint is part of a range, and it's possible to stay into the high part of your personal range, circumstances permitting (obviously everyone will be sad right after a death or something). Anything from meditation to medication to reading self-help "be happier" books and whatever else you can think of. It also is possible to have a pathological level of depression and/ or anxiety as a chronic problem; those are the people who end up having to be on meds very long-term, but can do very well on them if that's what it takes.

The number one quick fix for bumping yourself up to the top of your range, if you are a typical sleep-deprived parent, is to get as much sleep as humanly possible, even if it means rearranging a lot of your life.

[Freedom~Mama]

^totally agree! Getting enough sleep and daily exercise to boost my endorphins are critical for me.

[Panserbjorne]

I definitely used to be. I think that there are many things to look at here, but one major one is that it's part of being sensitive, which also serves you in many ways-even if you've yet to really key into them. It's a matter of finding a way to balance. I have the ability to be more affected than most by things. This can be negative if I am stressed or fatigued. Or it can be positive if I put myself in positions where it works for me. I am also more able to pick up on nuances, see things that others don't and anticipate changes before they happen because I'm on such high alert. Now, if I'm too stressed or tired I'm just perpetually wound up internally which is exhausting and ends up being a negative loop.

Because I spent most of my life stressed and exhausted which is DRAINING I was sad for most of it. I only just recently shook that and what a total shift it was for me! I'm still me, surrounded by the same circumstances, but they just don't affect me in the way that they did. I feel less encumbered.

I have come to believe that there are no negative traits IMO. There are only out of balance ways of experiencing strengths. That was the first part of the shift for me. That I was whole, nothing was *wrong* I just needed balance. My response was right given the external circumstances. Since I couldn't change those, I had to fortify myself so that I could respond differently.

[windsorheightsmom]

People do naturally have different "set points." I have a friend who objectively has experienced a lot of tragedy in her life, yet she is one of the most resilient, happy people I know. It's not just an act--she has leveled with me when she is going through a down time, but she bounces back more easily than many other people.

Even if you feel you've been sad as a default setting since your childhood, it doesn't mean you can't change some of your thought patterns. I would look into cognitive behavioral therapy if it's an option for you. If you are a more spiritual person, you may want to consult with an energy healer.