I know what I want to say here, but I fear it may come out all wrong so I hope you will try to understand what I mean. Just these last few days within a couple of miles radius of where I live there has been the inquest into the death of a teenage boy who threw himself over a balcony at his school, a young woman who used to work on the Jeremy Kyle show was found dead after having been made redundant and just yesterday a motorway was shut because someone jumped off a bridge. Suicides seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. Mental health issues fill every news programme. Everyone , from royalty down, talks about it all the time. Yet it wasn't always like this. I wonder if our society is becoming so obsessed by having a perfect happy life that people can no longer cope with anything less and forget that negative emotions are as much a part of life as the good ones. I have a very dear friend who suffered from severe depression (caused by memories of being abused by an adopted brother) that she was sectioned several times for her own safety. She is now recovered but during her recovery period , every time she felt low or depressed she was terrified that her illness was returning. We had to tell her that those feelings were normal and natural and that "normal"( her word) people did feel down sometimes. That sometimes feeling low, unhappy, lonely , guilty, depressed, a failure etc etc etc were actually part of normal everyday living and life just as much as feeling happy, fulfilled, contented etc. So shouldn't we be learning that feeling negative emotions are not a sign of illness but a sign of being alive and that they will probably pass and that life is a journey of peaks and troughs, hills and valleys and not a trek along a flat plain. Of course there are always exceptions, like my friend. But wouldn't a more realistic view of lifes ups and downs help? Oh dear! I can already hear the accusations of me being heartless and not caring or understanding being hurled in my direction.
