”My eyes open to the new day but I’m not ready to greet it yet.
The alarm’s going off.
I press the snooze button again.
Is it the third time? Or the fourth?
Nine hours of sleep, and I don’t feel like I’ve even started to get rest…
Maybe I’ll just stay in bed today… “
When depressed, we often find ourselves more worn out after sleep than we were the night before.
Would you like to know why? Continue Reading »
Do you feel trapped? Like totally trapped?
Maybe trapped in your past?
Or trapped in your circumstances?
Perhaps trapped in other people’s expectations?
Or trapped in your personal limitations and fears?
Do you feel like no one understands you?
Then today’s 7-minute therapy session is for you.
Let me introduce Brendon Burchard, who after surviving a near-fatal accident, developed his core teaching questions:
So, you’ve opened this blog post and found a rather poor photograph and half a page of solid, black nothingness. There is a point to this, and it’s about finding the light at the end of a long, black tunnel. Allow me to explain.
I was in my home city of York, stuck in traffic and feeling sorry for myself. I’d just had the latest of three disappointments in as many weeks and was wondering if I could pick myself up enough to be a cheery presence at the leaving do I was on my way to.
Pondering these rather gloomy, negative thoughts and staring straight ahead at the back of a car I’d been looking at for nearly half an hour, I suddenly realised I was beneath an arch – Micklegate Bar – and there was literally light at the end of the tunnel. The unexciting image you can see above is that light.
I scrambled for my phone in an attempt to take a photo before the traffic began to move. I must have lurched as I took the photo, and found I’d taken a blurred, wonky photo of a ‘keep left’ sign. I tried again, and the traffic lights obligingly stayed red, as you can see from the resulting image.
The view you’ve just been looking at inspired me. I know it doesn’t look very inspiring, but to me it was a revelation and it changed my mood completely. Continue Reading »
I am a living proof that depression and an accumulation of clutter go hand in hand. I was admired from my early childhood for my natural abilities to make any space organised and clutter-free in no time at all. I had no problems in brief evaluations and confident decisions in regards to what should stay and what should go. My personal space was always tidy, organised and clutter-free.
This has changed. Not overnight, but slowly and surely. My low mood turned into depression over the years, and at the beginning I did not even notice the total chaos in my home. I was falling apart and so did the order in my environment.
Creeping out of depression was not an easy journey. Discovering that I was no longer capable to manage my ‘stuff’ and my home amplified my stress and pain.
Before I knew it, I was on a battlefield. I tried to win the battle by ignoring my clutter and chaos. This strategy did not work and I found myself a casualty of this war.
I tried to convince myself that focusing on decluttering is not important or urgent. Increased stress followed, prompting me to begin addressing my problems…
Then came a shock! Continue Reading »
