« Only sadness freezes. Psychiatrists talk about the sadness of a "loss of vital momentum." And according to evolutionary psychologists, it is its natural function: to encourage us to be immobility and slow down when we have been injured or bereaved, to help us repair ourselves and rebuild ourselves. But the natural mechanism often goes wrong. That is why there are more dangerous sorrows than others. There are sorrows that enrich us and others that amputate us. Oddly enough, sadness can enlarge or retract us depending on its intensity. To a mild degree, it connects us to the world, but in a painful way, making us hyperempathic and hypersensitive, very receptive to the misfortune of others. But beyond that, when we approach depressive sorrows, it is the retraction that awaits us: feeling helpless first, then indifference, then despair. »

« It is also important to reintroduce the notion of continuum into depressive thinking, using the "graduated rule" technique. This is to avoid all or nothing vision, this distortion called "dichotomy reasoning." She is at work as soon as we find ourselves tormented by moods with snippets of thought such as: "It's a disaster," "It's my fault," "I'm not able to do this job, I'm never going to do it." The therapist then resumes: "What is a disaster? And in this case, here, what is the degree of this "disaster" from 0 to 100? Many of our thoughts expressed under the influence of a negative state of mind are in fact radical judgments, and without nuances. So, in the face of a difficulty, you won't say, "It's a difficulty and I'm having a hard time getting there," but rather: "It's completely unfeasible this thing," "I suck," "I'm never going to make it," "It's always the same," and other pseudo-certainties. Reintroducing the sense of nuance is therefore crucial... »

« Finally, wisdom may be the art of the afterthy: instead of moving on, we first take the time to reflect on what has taken place, without fear that it will destabilize or cause us to suffer. »