A Certain Slant of Light

I think her point is sort of orthogonal to that - it's not that if we accepted sad/unproductive periods in our lives as normal and inevitable, those periods would no longer be miserable, but that current cultural expectations create an extra, added source of misery because many people believe (often more or less subconsciously) that misery is a moral failing (especially if it's accompanied by unproductivity, but even if it isn't) and therefore feel guilty for feeling miserable... which just makes them more miserable... which makes them feel guiltier... and so on and so forth.