Who are you? No, I am not asking about your name, age, occupation or other obvious facts. I am asking about the secret ‘My self-esteem sticker book’ you started a long time ago (or, to be precise, it was started for you).
It might reside in the ‘attic’ of your brain and rarely come out or it might be so ‘cherished’ that you turn to its favourite pages quite often and are even show it to others.
New month… New season… New suggestions to try to alleviate depression.
You might think: ‘What’s the point! How can these simple and ordinary actions possibly help me to escape the dark and thick cloud of depression?’
Each of these ideas individually is unlikely to cure your depression. However, they are capable to give you the momentum to try something else, reminding you each and every time that life should and can be vibrant, exciting, rewarding and very enjoyable.
Even if you don’t feel like doing anything right now, just by choosing to do what you can when you can, might eventually lead you to a tipping point out of this miserable existence.
So, here are my ideas for this September (apology to all my friends in the Southern Hemisphere if they don’t apply).
You have been depressed for so long that you are sick and tired of being depressed. You want your life back! You desire to feel happy, confident, successful, valued, connected, interested and interesting. ‘If only I can break the cycle of this depression and set myself free to LIVE the rest of my life!’
The truth is: it’s hard to break free from depression. It’s almost impossible to talk yourself out of it (Would be nice to hear from people who succeeded this way!) It’s also unlikely that a person, who has been crippled by depression, would find strength, discipline and motivation to do and act differently from one particular moment forward.
Why is that?
We all make mistakes throughout our lives. It’s normal. It’s human. If you try to avoid making mistakes, you will run into all kinds of trouble, ranging from indecisiveness and stagnation to severe depression.
Allowing yourself to live fully would inevitably lead to a few mistakes being made by you and that’s ok. Learn from your mistakes and cherish this knowledge. It is yours to help you recognise the same mistakes in advance and to make the right choices in the future.
Don’t beat yourself up, don’t shame or punish yourself when you mess things up. Of course, you will feel many different emotions arising within you when you know that you were responsible. Don’t try to suppress these emotions. They are there for a purpose! Let them flow and run their course.
Do you remember the last time you felt fascinated? Did you ever feel fascinated by a form or a colour, a reflection of the light or a natural phenomenon? What about by an intricacy of design? Or by people and their behaviour? It is probably not too hard to recall moments of total absorption before you got unwell. But what fascinates you these days?
Looking back at my own experience of depression, the magical feelings of being fascinated with the world around you fade away pretty fast once the depression descends upon you. The world rapidly turns bleak. Day dreaming, imagination and our innate curiosity evaporate. Emptiness invades our heads and hearts. We slow down. We shut the world out. We lock ‘the door’. We throw away or misplace ‘the keys’. Continue Reading »