Like everyone else, I am sometimes subjected to dark moods at moments in life when you see everything in black.
From our psychiatric patients, these low morale moments can have negative consequences, as they are sometimes a warning sign of a depressive relapse. But they exist in everyone. And in some melancholic people, these dark states of mind are frequent.
However, in most humans, the emotional state is like the sky. The climate changes that is, sometimes it's display a great weather while sometimes it's night and fog. You wake up in the morning, and you feel that you are not in a good mood and to make it worse you have already begun to crush black before you even put a foot on the floor.
Often, we know where it comes from. They come from worries, difficulties that we can't easily solve which occupy our mind and vampirate our mental energy. But sometimes it's not so clear. There is an expression for this:"out of the blue", which describes an event or feeling that seems to arise out of nowhere, without a clear cause. And that leads us straight to black ideas.
What to do when black invades our minds?
The first step is to accept and observe it. All emotions are information and they tell us that we are reacting to something that is happening in our lives. Happy emotions inform us that our life is right for us, and painful emotions inform us that there are imbalances or sufferings in our lives which manifest or are hidden. The poet "Rilke" recommend that "we should not be frightened when sadness rises in us".
Instead, breathe, and welcome what makes us sad. If there is a solution to implement it; and if there is no solution, we must stop the spread of sadness, cockroach and spleen. Because the problem is there is black ideas tend to nest in our minds, and then push us to rethink and ruminate them.
That's why, if you feel it frequently, the best internal hygiene is to escape their influence by turning to action (walking is a very good remedy) and to the present moment (often sadness pushes us to return to the past or fear the future).
I know, it's easier said than done, but yet all the studies show that by training regularly, as in meditation or cognitive therapy, it helps, little by little.
As the Chinese saying goes:"You can't stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair". It's the same for our dark thoughts.