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Sadness is not a mark of sincerity — it is the yetzer's chief tactic. The tell: if guilt saps your energy for Torah, it is the yetzer, even dressed as fear of Heaven. The prescription is not to wrestle the thought but to begin a concrete act. Daily self-accounting belongs to Elul; the rest of the year, the Rebbe says, the audit does “more loss than gain.”
The same lever that appears as an exception in the faith and health letters turns out, pulled together, to be a standing doctrine. Its center of gravity is the 1950s — letter after letter to broken, self-reproaching correspondents — and its counsel is strikingly consistent: the melancholy a person feels over his own failings does not come from holiness. It comes from the yetzer, and it is to be diverted, not honored.
The recurring moves, by how often each surfaces across the 340 letters.
Against these stands the one positive command he keeps returning to — עבדו את ה׳ בשמחה, "serve G-d with joy" (70 letters): joy is not a mood but the engine that makes the avodah itself greater and more successful.
He treats melancholy the way a physician treats a symptom: name its source, refuse to argue with it, and prescribe action. Even guilt that wears the mask of piety is unmasked by one test. Here, verbatim.