Depreciation is a psychological protection that protects a person from too much emotion. Sometimes it literally sucks all the joy out of a person's life and blocks any personal development. I will tell you how it happens in one example.
A client came to me once with a very common problem. She reported that she does not get any joy from anything in her life. She wasn't happy about nature walks, no fun, no sex, no family relationships, no money, no other things. As she put it, "I feel like I'm watching some uninteresting movie.
So I asked her if she'd been enjoying these things before. It turned out to be yes. She used to love to walk in the woods for a long time, to go to the sea. Walking through the woods was one of the main resources from which she drew positive emotions.
It was the same with entertainment. She used to love to have fun with her friends, go to the movies, go to the nightclub, but then it all seemed stupid and uninteresting to her.
She didn't have much experience in sex, but she had loved him before, and in general she was fine in this respect until she got bored (she told herself so). Sex began to seem strange and ridiculous to her, and the pleasure, as she put it, was "dubious.
I won't go any further, but she also had the same "cool" attitude to other areas of life. Her attitude to life could be expressed in the words "All is vanity and vanity".
I must say that she was a pretty young and beautiful woman, and it was strange that she lived such a meager life. What happened to her that literally in 3 years there were no things left in her life that would make her happy and give her energy?
The fact is that she consistently depreciated everything that brought her joy in her life.
What is devaluation?
One day a person faces a problem or stressful situation that is very difficult for him or her emotionally. Usually, this happens when a person loses something of value. Then the person starts to convince himself that what he has lost or wants is not really valuable to him.
For example, a girl from our example broke up with a guy. More precisely, he left her by going to her friend's house. Naturally, she had very serious negative emotions about it. In order to somehow cope with her emotional state, she began to convince herself that she was not very well with him. Although, in fact, she loved him very much and she felt very good while they were together.
She loved having sex with him, loved going out with him, loved going to the movies with him, and they met him at a nightclub.
In order to convince herself that she didn't need him and never needed him, she started to devalue everything about him and the situation. When she was confronted with some memory of him, she would say to herself, "It's all bullshit, it's nothing, it's nothing!
For example, she walks through the woods and remembers walking with him. "It's all nonsense, it's nothing, it's nothing! The forest and nature in general began to irritate her. As well as movies, nightclubs, girlfriends and much more.
The time and pain of parting have passed, but the negative attitudes that she has imposed on many spheres of her life have not gone anywhere. When she walked through the woods, she did not even say anything to herself, but the emotion remained. Nature has become a useless nonsense to her.
It was also aggravated by the fact that she began to use devaluation as a universal way by which she coped with negative emotions in all spheres of life. For example, when she faced difficulties with her work, she devalued her work. Unconsciously, but now her profession has become "nothing, nothing" for her.
When she came to the consultation, she was already close to a deep depression, because it is very difficult to live when your whole life is "worthless, empty nonsense".
How to stop devaluing your feelings and experience
We perceive our lives the way we think of them. If we love something, it means that we once decided to love it. If we hate something, it means that we once decided to hate it. It's very simple. The more we made the decisions to love, the more love we have in our lives, the more we hate, the more hate we have in our lives. The more we value, the richer our lives are, the more we depreciate our lives, the dimmer our lives are.
Fortunately, we always have the opportunity to make another decision. At any moment. To do this, you just have to say to yourself, "I really love it, it's not a big deal. I am sure that you already have your own experience of changing your beliefs, at least in the example of gastronomic preferences.
If you don't like something, but you don't have any objective reasons not to like it, you just have to say to yourself, "From now on, I like it" and you'll notice that you feel like you've been switched over by a tumbler and the world suddenly becomes more colored. It's very simple, but that's how it works.
What happened to the girl in the example?
The reason for her problems was simple enough and after she realized what was happening to her, we were able to get rid of the negative attitudes that prevented her from living for a short period of time. The main time was spent looking for areas of life that were struck by "devaluation". She is doing well now and has even kindly allowed her story to be described.