It’s Okay to Feel Bad For No Reason

I grew up believing you had to have a reason to feel bad. Something had to have happened. You saw a scary movie. Somebody hurt your feelings. You’re coming down with something. You aren’t taking care of yourself.

When you believe your mood necessarily means something is wrong, that something can only be you, or the world around you. You feel like have to fix one or both, and of course you don’t know how, so you feel worse.

It’s not that moods and mental states don’t have causes. Presumably there are genetic, neurochemical, and situational factors behind every feeling we have. But those hidden mechanisms don’t always produce a knowable, expressible reason for feeling bad.

Those major mood dips don’t happen to me very often anymore, thanks to two godsends: meditation, and friends who are willing to talk about how shitty they (or you) feel. Most people don’t seem to want talk about feeling awful, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because they also believe they need a reason to feel bad.

Sometimes there are discernible reasons for low moods, of course, and it makes sense to act on them. (I don’t have a plan for my consumer debt, and I need one. My relationship is stagnating and I need to address that.) There are also serious, diagnosable mood disorders that need treatment.

But we know human moods can fluctuate independent of our circumstances. We’ve all experienced it: your life can seem bright in the morning and bleak that same evening, even if nothing objective has changed.

The assumption seemed to be that human beings normally feel good, or at least fine, and only an affliction of some kind, either short- or long-term, could explain why someone would feel bad.

Each type of sky has its own benefits and liabilities, but none of them are “wrong.” We no longer assume rain means we’ve displeased the gods. We don’t (usually) shake our fists at the sky in protest.

We acknowledge the conditions, and make adjustments. Put on a sweater, postpone the party, watch a movie. It’s okay to feel bad.