Feeling excitement about any issue is the engine that keeps us motivated, alert, happy and hopeful about the future. However, when this illusion is lost, our reality is perceived as gloomy and pessimistic and we do not find the energy to do our daily activities, much less to think about future plans.

How can we recover the illusion? All of us have gone through or will go through a similar stage and there are resources to be able to get out of this dark state and recover the illusion.

5 Tips to recover the illusion

Like many feelings and stages of the human being, the loss of illusion has its own process, and we must understand that what we are feeling is normal, has an explanation and has a solution. Here we will review the most effective advice to recover the illusion.

1. Express what you feel

A complicated step for some but very necessary in the recovery from any grieving process, is to express our emotions openly .

There are people around you, friends or family who will be willing to listen to you. However, if you think that in order to speak freely you would prefer not to talk to someone close to you, you can go to a therapist or self-help group, where there will always be people willing to listen to you.

We should not be afraid to express our emotions. We think that anger, resentment, sadness or even envy, are sensations that we must hide and repress and so that no one knows that we feel them, but the opposite happens. If we want to recover the illusion, we must start by letting off steam and learning to express , mastering and channelling our emotions so that they do not dominate us.

2. Reflect on the cause of our loss of hope

Besides the emotions, there is a rational part that we must find in the middle of all this tangle of sensations that we experience when we have a loss of illusion. This rational part is to look for the root of the problem.

In some situations it may be very obvious: having suffered the death of someone you love, a divorce or a break-up, facing an illness or losing a job. But there are other circumstances that do not come so easily to mind that keep us in a state of discouragement and disillusionment without even knowing how to explain what it is that has us in such a state.

It’s time to sit down and think. Doing an analysis of our life . If we have practiced the step of talking to someone about how we feel, we will surely be able to clear up the picture about the cause.

These causes may be diverse , such as feeling dissatisfied in our work or some unresolved problem with our family or partner. Everyday life leads us to get up every day and carry out our activities without time to stop and think if this thing we are living is what we want and if we can change it. Reflecting on this will help us find what we need to change to get out of our emotional rut.

3. Seek support

These types of processes are not stages we have to go through alone. Extreme self-sufficiency makes us think that we must solve it without the help of others and without them noticing what is happening to us. There are those who find it difficult to show themselves to be vulnerable in front of their loved ones, but when we have lost the illusion and motivation, we should consider that the support of friends and family will be a very powerful tool to feel illusion again.

Talking to a friend or family about how we feel, asking for their understanding and support, going to therapy or finding a self-help group where people who have been through what we have, will remove the feeling of loneliness that often overwhelms us when we feel in a bleak state without motivation.

Asking for support from the people around us is not just to be heard. We can ask them to join us in making arrangements when someone has died, in finding solutions to the loss of a job, in moving in the event of a divorce, and in carrying out these activities with the help of someone close to us. This is a good way of reducing the feeling of desolation and disillusionment that we feel.

In this sense we must think that if we would be willing to provide support to someone we love and who needs it, surely someone will do it for us too.

4. Find the positive aspects of your life

When we are in a state of sadness, performing this exercise is more complicated than it seems, but it is necessary to do it.

With pen and paper in hand, make a list of those good things you have today and the achievements that have made you proud at some point . There are no more explanations or “buts” here after you have written down a positive aspect.

We need to focus on the hard facts. No “I have my children but what good is it if I don’t have my partner anymore”. No, we have to focus on what we do have that is positive and has brought us joy, stability and hope.

The aim of this exercise is to “return” our mind to the reality that is full of good and not so good things and that is full of nuances, so if at this moment we feel that everything is bad, doing a review of the good things will bring us back to reality.

5. Plan ahead!

When we lose hope, the last thing we want to do is think about the future. We lose our sense of purpose and motivation .

Precisely because of this, an important point to recover the illusion is to take up again plans and tastes that were exciting to us and to put them again as goals.

While it is true that we must live in the here and now, future plans are often a powerful engine to get up and work today to get things tomorrow, so putting back on the table activities that had previously excited us, is a major step to recover the illusion.

Bibliographic references:

  • Cuijpers, P.; Muñoz, R. F.; Clarke, G. N.; Lewinsohn, P. M. (2009). “Psychoeducational treatment and prevention of depression: The ‘coping with depression’ course thirty years later”. Clinical Psychology Review. 29 (5): 449-58.