And others I feel the unbearable weight of every doubt & fear I have ever harboured in my mind, it is an indescribable heartache, every inch of my body terrified.
These are described as the highs and lows of depression.
I disagree. I believe this is just life.
I am not a doctor, so I guess i'm in no position to disagree with a medical professional, but I am a human being & as such I am entitled to an opinion. And in my opinion, it is human feel the lows. You're just not meant to unpack & live there. It's like creepy uncle Franks house, you stop in just for good measure so you can appreciate the fact you don't have to go back until next Christmas.
My experience has been just that, MY experience & others have had THEIR experience. I often hear the line "oh but there are people dying in *insert 3rd world country*" given as a perspective point, but i personally find this statement an insult. You cannot discredit someone's worst by comparing it to something they haven't experienced! In fact, who are you to discredit how they feel at all? Their worst is the worst they have experienced, it doesn't make it less or more than the worst that I have experienced. Im not saying this in relation to war, so don't roll your eyes just yet - that is my exact point, you cannot compare my worst year to a moment in theirs, it is incomparable. So i feel like people who say this are also somewhat discrediting the immensity of just how bad it is in those countries! ANYWAY, back on subject. My point is comparison is not the key to perspective.
Depression is a huge umbrella, there are different kinds, different triggers, different reasons and different "fixes". I do not believe that depression comes from nowhere, I believe it is our body and mind's way of telling us that we have something in our past that we need to resolve, whether we consciously are aware of it or not. This is not always the whole truth, for some I do believe that they may have a chemical imbalance that makes their lows unbearable & in those cases, sometimes medication is needed to help - alongside a life coach or psychologist. I say "I believe it" because I am not a doctor & I can only base my opinion on my experience, and the lows that I have experienced have been insanely scary. There where some very close calls for me and I am, by my own judgment and many others, a very strong person. What scared me the most though was feeling nothing, of being in an almost catatonic, blank state of mind. In all of these times I can remember feeling worried for myself & simply desperate to feel something again. I have had 1000 moments where I have felt so exhausted, so depleted and just tired of having to be so strong all the time, wondering what "test" the universe had in store for me next - I had nothing left to give. I wanted to give up & give in to the darkness. But I never did, my fire never completely went out & each day I woke up and willed my heart to beat another day and promised myself that it would get better. And it did.
I have had a life coach since the age of 15 to deal with my catastrophe of a childhood & I am still learning now about what a complex web my parents weaved for me. My waves of depression can come at any moment on any day, even if absolutely nothing is wrong. It used to be pretty scary for me, I would shut off from people as I didn't want to burden them with my misery. I would simply wait it out. It took me an incredibly long time to learn to let someone in, to learn that just opening the door will let a little light in. In the last year I have had the least low swings of my entire life. They have still come here & there, but they have been shorter & less heavy each time. My heart has been winning the war against the tricks my mind likes to play.
We have unconsciously trained our minds to revel in misery, to wallow in self pity and focus on what we don't have or what we wish we had. We need to RE-TRAIN our minds! And it really isn't that complex. Finding just three things each morning that you are grateful for, that you appreciate & feel lucky to have will change your days, maybe you wont see it at first, but if you commit to this for 30 days, I promise you will start to feel a little lighter. Slowly, but you will feel it. By acknowledging the good, you are setting your mind up to continue noticing the good throughout the day & to not give so much power to the bad things that happen.
Our journeys are all different, so i guess technically we are alone in it, but if we're all alone then we're all alone together.
If you are feeling totally and utterly lost, don't trust in me & my words, trust in you & how amazing & special & incredible you are. You are heartbreakingly beautiful, undeniably irreplaceable & so so loved
Our journeys are all different, so i guess technically we are alone in it, but if we're all alone then we're all alone together.
If you are feeling totally and utterly lost, don't trust in me & my words, trust in you & how amazing & special & incredible you are. You are heartbreakingly beautiful, undeniably irreplaceable & so so loved
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