My 4 year old and I were talking. She said, “I wish you and daddy never got mad at me.” I explained to her, “Everyone gets mad. Everyone gets sad. These are normal emotions. It’s ok to feel them because these emotions give us and the people around us important information. What’s not normal is when a person is feeling angry or sad all the time.” I then made the questionable decision to ask her if she felt that I am mad all the time. It could have backfired (that grand ol’ negativity bias rearing its head!), but she answered no.

If your friends or family point out that you seem to be frequently angry or sad lately, it’s possible that they are suffering from their own negativity bias, but it’s also possible that you are depressed. Much of my research on happiness stemmed from my own experience with depression. I started looking at what makes us unhappy, and after years of research and contemplation, I’ve found that when we are unhappy, it’s because one or more of six needs (autonomy, physiological, safety, growth, social, esteem) are being unmet and/or our expectations are being unmet. My theory is that depression sets in when several of our needs are going unmet, especially because when we face major problems that affect our well-being, we can become so distracted that we stop working to fill all six needs. And that makes us feel worse. We end up enmeshed in a negative feedback loop.

When you start recognizing the importance of those six needs, you start to see how easily it is for multiple needs to take a hit by a given challenge. For example, bullied teens can feel ostracized by their peers (and sometimes even teachers and administrators) (social), physically threatened (safety), unworthy (esteem), powerless to fix the situation (autonomy), and if physical threats are acted upon, their physiological needs also suffer. And these are just the direct consequences. The stress and distraction of the bullying could also cause the teen to withdraw from their growth activities, which could further impact their self-esteem, withdraw from friends and family (social, esteem), and so on. In this context, it’s easier to see why bullied teens end up suicidal and why it’s a problem that is worth addressing.

On the other side of the coin, it’s also helpful to identify which activities or people fill multiple of your needs in one go. Maybe that’s your fitness community, maybe it’s your church, maybe it’s your therapist, maybe it’s your volunteer organization, etc. When you are facing a major challenge, prioritizing that activity or person(s) may help you to better weather the storms.

If you think back to the times you’ve felt at your worst, how many of your six needs were not being met?