彭蒙惠英语：When the Blues won’t Go Away（在线收听）

When the Blues won’t Go Away

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An interview with Biography magazine

Biography: What was the hardest part about handling your own chronic discontent?

Downs: What brought me to the brink was realizing what I had done to so many personal relationships in my life. This was coupled with the obligation I felt as a psychologist to have known better. It was a double whammy.

Symptoms

Biography: What are some symptoms to look for?

Downs: For one, there’s constant disappointment, and also feelings of helplessness, lack of motivation and passion.

Biography: We all get irritable from time to time, and complain about our jobs or want a new house or new car. How can you tell the difference?

Downs: Chronic discontent is an ongoing trend. You can’t find anything that makes you happy for any length of time. That’s different from going through a bad patch for a couple of days, which all of us do. However, the person with chronic discontent never wakes up from that bad patch.

Biography: So what makes someone suddenly realize she has the condition?

Downs: When something hits us—a relationship falls apart, we lose our job—and it throws us into depression. That’s often the wake-up call.

An effective tool

Biography: In your book, you recommend five weeks of journal writing as a way of lifting chronic discontent. Why?

Downs: Journaling has a hidden power that we don’t realize until we do it. Sometimes what you feel doesn’t hit you until you see your thoughts on paper. Think of journaling as a backdoor approach to becoming more familiar with feelings you haven’t allowed yourself to express.

Biography: How does someone get started?

Downs: List the relationships that mean the most to you. Then focus on one relationship a day in your journal. Write what you really feel about that person, looking for a balance between the positive and negative. If you can’t find it, you need to write why that is.

Vocabulary Focus

brink (n) [briNk] the point where a new or different situation is about to begin; the edge

wake-up call (idiom) something that makes one realize he or she needs to take action to change a situation

backdoor (adj) [7bAk5dR:(r)] relating to something that comes from an indirect, sometimes secret approach

Specialized Terms

double whammy (n phr) 祸不单行 a situation when two unpleasant things happen at almost the same time (informal)

当忧郁挥之不去时

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《传记杂志》的专访

传记：在处理你自己长期烦躁的问题时，最棘手的是哪一个部分？

道恩：了解到自己在生命中许多人际关系上的作为，把我带到崩溃边缘。此外还有身为心理学家理当知道更多的责任感，简直是雪上加霜。

症状

传记：有哪些症状是我们注意得到的？

道恩：有一个症状是持续的沮丧感，还有感觉无助，对事情缺乏行动力与

热情。

传记：一般人都不时感觉烦躁，抱怨工作，想要买新房子或新车。你怎么知道如何辨别这跟“长期烦躁”的差别？

道恩：“长期烦躁”是一种会持续不断的趋向。不管时间的长短，任何事物都无法让你开心。这跟每个人都会遇到的经历几天不愉快的日子是不同的。有“长期烦躁”的人永远无法从阴霾中走出来。

传记：那么，什么使有“长期烦躁”的人突然发现自己的问题？

道恩：当我们遭受严重打击，像失恋，或失去工作，而重重地跌入忧郁之中时。通常那就是警讯。

有效的工具

传记：你在书中建议，写5周的日记有助于从长期烦躁中解脱。为什么？

道恩：写日记有一股隐藏的力量，不实际去做是无法领悟的。有时候你的一些感受并不会影响你，除非你看到它被白纸黑字地写在纸上。

传记：该怎么开始呢？

道恩：列出对你来说意义深远的几段关系。在日记中，每天只将注意力放在其中的一段关系上，写下你对那个人的真正感觉，然后在正面与负面的感觉中找到平衡点。如果找不到的话，就必须写下原因。