Do you wish for someone to make you feel better? Are you hoping to reach out to someone who can help solve your problems? Do you find yourself solving your kids' problems for them?
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Feeling helpless is an easy trap to fall into when life pressures mount. These feelings and habits can lead to depression and suffering. So how do we move away from feeling pessimistic and towards hope?
Here's three things that may help:
1. Understand that feeling down is normal. It comes and it goes. We will always be disappointed if we think life should be happy all the time. There will always moments of depression, fatigue and disappointment. That is perfectly OK. It's important to know what it will pass and to build up the skills needed to get through it.
2. Teach yourself and your children to remain hopeful in defeat, failure and disappointment. From a young age, we need to teach our children (and ourselves) that failure is normal. It is a signal to approach things differently, develop more skills, continue to practice and remain optimistic that you can achieve.
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3. Take notice of the positive things in your day or in an experience. When we feel helpless, we think everything in our life is bad or doomed to fail. Avoid generalising and isolate the few events or experiences that were bad. If you can single out your issue, you can continue to see that other parts of your day were fine. You still laughed, you chatted to a friend, you had dinner with your family, for example.
Helplessness is seductive - misery loves company. Spend the next week taking about the things that did go right and see how you feel.