How do you understand despair?

Answer 1

I don't. And I STRONGLY advise against trying to understand it.

I do recommend sympathy, or empathy, or preferably providing some form of assistance if one knows someone in a state of despair. Someone has to remain rational, and the one in despair is not going to be the rational one. Despair enters when fear, pain, harm and emotion create a chemical situation in the brain. Despair is a warning sign, to change behaviors or situations.

If feels too much heat, one moves away from the source of heat. This is a protection mechanism of the sense of touch. Yes, technically, it really is touch, because the skin surface receptors are stimulated in a certain way.

By the same token, or by metaphor, despair is pain in the psyche. One could take a pill to change the brain chemistry, and risk other problems, or one could distance oneself from the source of the despair.

Don't try to understand it, it isn't truly contagious in a medical sense, but it can spread, nevertheless.

Namaste.

Answer 2

You can understand despair with empathy (if you've ever been there, been in a despair situation), otherwise it's just textbook rhetoric. Perhaps it's better for the person in despair to talk out their feelings so others can try to solve them. Changing the feeling of despair can only come from within.

Answer 3

Heartfelt.

Answer 4

By having experienced it in some way. Either yourself or someone you know....living through it.