Why Do I Feel Empty After The Festival Ends
Zena Yarde, psychologist, The Thought Co. · about zena
You feel empty after the festival ends because your body ran hot for eleven days, and the counterweight it built to steady you is still running. Nothing is wrong.
Psychologists call this the the opponent process. Richard Solomon and John Corbit wrote it up in 1974: every strong feeling wakes a slower, opposite feeling underneath it, one that starts late and outlasts the first. take away the drums and the opposite is all that is left.
Eleven days of aarti. Of the flat smelling of modak. Of the doorbell. Of the house never once going still. That was the first feeling. The second was already brewing under it, waiting for friday.
Visarjan is the only goodbye we do on a schedule. We walk bappa to the chowpatty, shout pudhchya varshi lavkar ya, and then all of us go home to a flat with a gap in it the exact shape of him. You say it was just a festival. You said that in the cab too. The chowpatty live stream is still open in a tab you keep meaning to close.
I started a death café in this city in 2019 because I think we are bad at goodbyes. This is the one we are good at. The trouble is Monday.
Solomon's data says the second feeling fades slower than the first. It does not say when.
There is a two minute thing we made for when nothing happened and you feel awful anyway. It finds where the flat sits and loosens your grip on it. Nothing to type, nothing stored. no need to do anything with it, just see what comes up.
Find where the flat sits. Two minutes, nothing stored →The mandap comes down in a morning. You take a little longer. Nobody prints that on the banner.
More Names for It
Why does everyone my age seem ahead of me Why does my sibling feel like a stranger now All the two minute things, free →People also Ask
Is feeling sad after a festival a real thing?
Yes. It has a mechanism, not a diagnosis. psychologists call it the opponent process: the low is the tail of the high, and it arrives late.
Why do I feel sad after a happy event?
Because a strong good feeling wakes its opposite, which starts slowly and outlasts it. The bigger the high, the longer the tail. Nothing went wrong.
How long does the flat feeling after a festival last?
Usually days. If it settles in and starts shrinking your days rather than your nights, that is a different thing, and worth saying out loud to a person.
