Editor’s Note: I had said that my last post, “Sinking Deep – Into
Light” would be my last post on my journey with depression. Yeah, I lied.
Seriously, I had some really incredible revelations recently that I
needed to share. So one last post. Maybe.
“It really concerns me how afraid you are of going back.”
Uh-oh.
That look, the concern in her voice told me that I wasn’t
going to enjoy the road we were about to be traveling on.
If you’ve read my last post, “Sinking Deep – Into Light”, I
felt like I was finally moving forward, ever so slowly, but I was moving
forward. I was making progress, and I
was starting to feel like I was moving forward on my road to self-forgiveness.
I was feeling really good, but as the week went along, I was
starting to slide. My brain, or as
Hailey keeps correcting me, part of my brain, keeps pulling me back, wanting me
to go back to where I was. While I
personally don’t know what it’s like to be a drug addict or an alcoholic, I
would tend to believe it’s similar. I
know that drug addicts and alcoholics are told to stay away from those who are
bad influences, but in my case, it’s my brain that is the bad influence. It keeps telling me, “It’s OK, come back to
what you know. You can be so much better,
when you sink deep, that’s where you find God, He’s waiting for you there.”
And it is what I know, what I’m familiar with. It also is strangely comfortable and in a
weird sort of way feels good. As noted,
I’ve told myself sinking deep ultimately makes me a better person, and I also
get closer to God when I go deeper. Maybe
it’s just that I’ve done this all my life, but as crazy as it sounds,
depression is a safe place, a perceived good place to be, or at least it
was. As I noted, it started becoming
longer and deeper, and I’ll admit, scarier, and that is when I decided, with
strong advice, it was time to seek counseling.
I just couldn’t do this alone anymore.
When I started moving away, when I started to work toward
recovery, my brain intervened and wanted to bring me back to a way of life I’ve
known and felt comfortable with for at least 30 years. So when Hailey expressed concern about being
afraid to go back, yes, I’m afraid, I don’t want to go back, but my brain keeps
dragging me back, dragging me back under the waters.
I think the reality that Hailey knows, and the reality that
I knew but somehow had forgotten, is that my depression is a life-long illness
that isn’t ever going to go away completely.
Similar to Patrick with his club foot that he’s had since birth, we will
have to deal with what we have all our lives.
What it comes down to is figuring out how to deal with it. I had briefly lost sight of that as I progressed
and grew in my journey of self-forgiveness, I had mistakenly thought that I’d
eventually grow out of my depression.
“We should do three things every
day of our life. Number one is
laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is to think, we should spend some
time in thought. And, number three is
you should have your emotions moved to tears….If you laugh, you think and you
cry, that’s a full day.” - Jim Valvano
So the road took an unexpected twist, which was my own
fault, Hailey never told me I would miraculously be cured, I just got a little
too excited and thought we were heading somewhere else for a brief period of
time. We were and are headed toward a
road of self-forgiveness, as she keeps pointing out to me, I can do this, I
just need to let myself do it. We are
working on that, and while I’ve always doubted myself in this regard, I do
believe that with help, I can do this. I
know, I should be saying I will do this.
In regard to depression, all is not lost. Hailey actually is working with me on coping
skills, and I have learned some ways of dealing with my depression when it
starts setting in. Yes, I’m still
scared. While Hailey tells me I have
great coping skills, I’m not quite as confident in myself. I do believe I’m heading in the right
direction, even if I lost the view of my compass for a few moments.
One of my favorite quotes is shown above from Jim
Valvano. I’ve shared before that every
time I take a yoga class with Megan Kearney, I laugh, I think, I cry. Oh, I work my ass off in between, I sweat, I
hurt, I push myself, but most importantly, I laugh, I think, I cry. I get a full day out of an hour’s class with
Megan Kearney. That’s the same with my
time with Hailey. I laugh, I think, I
cry. I also work my ass off, in a
different way, and I also work my ass off in between sessions. But I get a full day out of my hour’s session
with Hailey.
I can learn to deal with my depression.
No comments:
Post a Comment