Everyone experiences the blues at some time

"What's wrong with me. I'm just not happy. All I want is to feel good."

As a psychotherapist, I hear this often. When I ask people what they want out of our work together, often they talk simply about being happy or feeling good.

People whose marriages are in trouble or who are in the midst of divorce, whose spouse has recently died, who've just lost a job, who have a chronic illness, who were abused or neglected as children -- all have told me that they can't understand why they feel so bad.

I guess no one really wants to be unhappy. It seems to me that our unhappy feelings often make perfect sense in light of what has -- or is -- going on in our lives. Much of life is not easy, pleasant or rewarding. There are a lot of things that create sadness in our daily lives.

Unfortunately in our quick-fix and feel-good culture, we have little tolerance for uncomfortable feelings of any kind. We work hard to avoid them and whatever we think might cause them.

So when we are unhappy, we'll do almost anything to get over it as quickly as possible. We struggle mightily to present a facade of happiness to those around us.

We assume that we are the only ones who ever feel unhappy, failing to notice that the people around us are often working just as hard as we are to "put on a happy face." Even among some mental health professionals, feeling down in the dumps or sad has become an illness that has to be treated and cured.

Now we certainly need to pay attention to our sad feelings. Often, one of the best things we can do is simply to talk to the people around us -- friends, family, colleagues -- about how we feel.

Frequently, such conversation is all that is necessary in dealing with such feelings. Of course, we may also need to make some changes in whatever it is that is getting us down.

There are other times when we may need more specialized help: when our unhappiness seems to never go away, when we have the blues even though nothing major is wrong, when we get so down in the dumps we lose feeling altogether.

Sometimes psychotherapy, perhaps in combination with medically prescribed and supervised drug therapy, is necessary to help us deal with such unhappiness. And sometimes even therapy will not help us to always feel happy.

This is an especially important time of the year to keep this in mind. December through February, for a variety of reasons, is a peak period for folks to get down. Some of it may be the weather and season. We even have coined a phrase to describe what seems to happen to some of us with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Some of the problem may be the unrealistic expectations for being happy that we bring to the holidays.

Whatever the reason, when we're unhappy we want to talk about it, make changes if needed and perhaps even get professional help. We also want to remember that no one feels good all the time. Life -- everybody's life -- is like that.