How to find joy when everything feels grey

Photo by Cristian Escobar on Unsplash

The thing I’ve come to learn about joy is that, it can be experienced even during sad and uncertain times, it can exist through grief and loneliness. It’s an inner warmth in our hearts that we can cultivate, despite how grey the world seems.

In my early thirties, my husband and I moved to Thailand, to live and work with my dad at our family’s beach resort. It was the hardest and most exhilarating thing we’ve ever experienced. We wanted the life experience that the UK couldn’t offer us. At the time, my husband needed to get away from the toxic environment of his job as a police officer, and I wanted to explore a different kind of life and reconnect with my roots.

But after two years, my husband’s five-year career break was cut short, he was instructed to return to work or resign. By then, we just got married and thought we should probably think about having a family soon. Returning to the UK - to a secured job, pension, and a more certain way of life felt like the logical thing to do.

My husband went back to work, I got myself a job, and after a short time, we got ourselves a rescued dog - Bella. Our lives were back on track. We had jobs. We’re back with our families and friends. We had our own home and a little dog. We took holidays and had a social life. I had nothing to worry about, I just needed to go along with it.

Despite all the positives, I often felt ‘grey’. It felt like I was starring in my own production of a black-and-white movie, but I had no control over the script.

After almost 2 years, we decided to try Thailand again. This time, my husband quit the police and we were going to travel around and see what we could make of Thailand… with our dog coming along on our adventures.

We did just that for a year and a half. We had some amazing times and formed some deeply meaningful connections. We also had some emotionally difficult times, as well as some heartwarming experiences. But in the end, we concluded that ‘home’ was the UK. Thailand is deep-rooted in our hearts, a place where we’d want to enjoy life, but it wasn’t a place where we wanted to build our lives.

The decision was made and it felt right this time. My husband started his own online business, instead of returning to the police. Our dog Bella was happy to no longer get eaten alive by Thai ticks, or getting jumped on by street dogs on her walks. I was able to return to my old job, pretty much like I never left.

After the excitement of being home subsided, the grey feelings quietly settled back in again. Most of the time, it was just on the peripheral and didn’t affect my day-to-day, but it was a barrier between me and the world I wanted to experience. But this time, it was different, I didn’t have a calling to return to Thailand. This time, it felt more like, I was in charge of writing the script for my black-and-white movie, but I didn’t know what to write!

I later learned about depression and that it can creep up on us after life-changing events - because with every change, we gain something new but we also lose something in the process.

When it’s not a negative change or something we perceive as real suffering, we may not realise the impact of our losses, e.g. friendship, lifestyle, or ideas of our future - ‘what could have been’.  Depression never entered my mind at the time, as I used to associate being depressed with feeling sad and unhappy. I wasn’t quite either of those things. But I learned that depression can also be experienced as emptiness, apathy, hopelessness, and despair. It can put a grey filter on how we feel and our outlook on life and the world.

Here are a few things I’ve learned and personally found helpful for lifting my grey filter.

Talk to someone

Talk about what you are thinking and feeling, even when they’re not clear to you, even if you feel silly and scared. Say it clumsily, stumble over your words, it really doesn’t matter. Take your time over it, describe it in colours, sounds, or emojis, if you can’t find the words. My colour was grey and it felt like ‘meh’. 🫤

Externalising our thoughts and feelings is powerful, no matter how it comes out. It can help us make sense of what’s going on and release some of the stuck emotions, so we have more capacity to connect, feel, heal, and grow.

If I could time-travel back, I would encourage myself to talk to someone about it sooner; the journey didn’t need to be as long and alone.

Acknowledge and grieve our losses

All losses big and small are real, and they can be painful, even when we try to mask them with positivity, numb them with distractions and addictions, or dismiss and minimise them as ‘no big deal’ or ‘other people have it much worse’.

Despite moving back to the UK being the right decision, the move also meant losing my Thailand adventures, my idealised future, time and closeness with loved ones, the lifestyle, and many other things I left behind. All of this needed my acknowledgement, as well as permission and room for me to feel sad for them, so they don’t remain stuck within me.

Gratitude journal

If gratitude journalling sounds like a cliché to you, you’re not alone, I thought so too. But through my attempts to feel joy, I gave it a go and it helped me to connect with all the joyous things and moments in my life that I wouldn’t usually notice.

It’s an exercise that helps to focus our minds on the positive aspects of our lives, even when it feels like there are none. It helps to rewire our brains to see the exceptions in our grey days - and yes - there are always an exception, because nothing stays exactly the same all the time. If we look for them, we can notice them. Keep it simple and real to you. It can be big or small, it can be so small that you wouldn’t even think it’s a thing to be grateful about.

My gratitude journal included things like: my coffee machine, my senses for letting me enjoy my coffee and my lovely diffuser, the sunshine in my office, my dog sitting next to me out of all the places she could be, my husband’s handiwork in the garden so we can enjoy time outside, my memory, a message from a friend, even down to my punctual toilet routine (in fact, this was my first entry!)

Connect with nature

Feeling grey and depressed often stems from feeling disconnected from something meaningful in our lives. Whilst I was feeling grey, I spent a lot of time in my head, but I was also disconnected from myself at the same time.

Being in nature helped me to reconnect with and find meaning in something larger than me, the wonders of life, the world, and how connected we all are - if we want to be. There’s a tree in my neighbourhood with leaves that are always waving with such enthusiasm in the breeze that I always felt like they were waving at me, and saying “HIYA…!” when I arrived in the park. I always say hello back in my mind, feeling pleased with our connection.

Nature is constant in how it’s always changing, through time and the seasons, and with purpose. It’s soothing, grounding, freeing, and it can be challenging all at the same time. It can help us to feel comforted and alive - and that can spark something in us to see colours and have a desire to connect with other areas in life.

Sympathetic joy

If you’re not familiar with the concept of sympathetic joy, it’s a Buddhist practice known as Mudita, which is feeling joy and pleasure from other’s happiness, success and good fortune. Sympathetic joy is vicarious joy. Many studies have shown that vicarious joy can activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with Dopamine, aka the ‘feel-good’ hormone.

Sympathetic joy gets easier with practice, similar to gratitude, it can be something small and simple. For me, it started small with just seeing my dog enjoying the outdoors. I imagined her smiling and being content with what she does best - sniffing. Seeing her enjoying herself brings me a great sense of joy.

This may be similar to how parents experience joy through the happiness and success of their children. But it can also be something as simple as watching a story about a home/life makeover - you want things to turn out good for them and you feel warm and smile at their joyful moments. (Confession time - Queer Eye is one of my favourite shows.)

Of course, envy and jealousy can come up in certain situations, and that’s understandable, if we consider our current situation and life experiences. We can practice noticing those negative emotions, give them empathy and compassion for their feelings, and don’t judge them harshly. Often, with some acknowledgement and empathy, they will start to make room for joy to come through.

We can’t stop grey clouds from passing through our lives from time to time, but we don’t have to stay stuck under them.

There are many things we can do to help us reconnect with our sense of joy and hopefulness. These were some of what helped me kick-start my journey to reconnect with myself and other areas of my life, like finding purpose and setting goals.

How about you? Have you experienced something similar? If you would like to work through this journey together, please get in touch for a free 15-minute introductory chat.