You can be walking along feeling good about yourself, your connections with others, your work and hobbies, and all the rest, and all of a sudden, you are flat on your back looking up and wondering how you got here.
Something hijacks your mind and inserts emotions and thoughts that suck hope out of the air.
Simple interactions with normal people become irritants and feed the idea that nothing is good, everything is bad, and nothing will ever change.
You have entered the Discouragement Zone.
So what to do?
I don’t have the answer you are looking for because I am not you and don’t know your circumstances. Having stated this, I can help.
First, you are not alone. Discouragement hits all of us, even those in denial, trying to talk themselves out of it. Think of every exciting game in whatever sport you love and you are watching the battle with discouragement. Your team was winning. Now they’re losing. Can they come back? It’s an opportunity to watch, played out in a few hours, in between too many commercials, the great struggle of life itself. We watch the struggle without having to personally feel the physical pain involved.
Second, you can’t change the discouragement you are experiencing by luxuriating in it.
What do I mean?
Tragedies draw people together in the short run. Tragic characters, those who elect to identify with whatever the tragic thing is or was, tend to repel others who intentionally or instinctively understand that they are not here to carry our burdens along with their own forever. It will always be that God and others we find even in our darkest moments will do incredible loving things for us but, none the less, to overcome discouragement requires that we ourselves face our problems and make positive liberating choices only we can make.
Finally, discouragement is for a season not eternity. I know it doesn’t feel this way. Work spiritually with the help of the God of your understanding to break agreements with any voices in your head attempting to discourage you by telling you what a piece of trash (or worse) you are.
Trust God because promises he will never to leave nor forsake you.