I had a setback in my recovery when I woke last Tuesday in a deep, dark fog. Depression had finally hit me.
I can clearly see the different phases I’ve moved through so far. Initially I just felt utterly harrowed, which lasted a couple of weeks or so before mercifully melding into a sense of total blankness and disconnection. I began my morning healing regime and was only a few days into it when a new phase began. I started to reconnect with myself. Every day I felt a little better. Small steps but forward-moving and I was doing well. This happy episode held out for an amazing eleven days until last Tuesday. It had to happen I suppose. Reconnection with myself meant that the blankness was replaced by an ability to feel my feelings again, and this had to include feeling my depression.
It’s odd because I knew I was depressed as I had all the symptoms but I didn’t feel anything. Now that I do I have to embrace my feelings in order to get better. So however awful it is to feel depressed, I know that it’s better than feeling nothing at all, so it’s all good healing and I know I will get through it.
Tuesday and Wednesday passed in a dark fog - unbrushed hair and teeth, crapola daytime television, force fed toast as I couldn’t be bothered to eat and upsetting myself that I felt so low when I had been doing so well. I woke on Thursday feeling no better and checked my emails. My friend Ziggy, who lives and works in Afghanistan, had sent me a touching mail a couple of weeks before in which, amongst other things, she’d written “You really need to take proper time out, mentally and physically and realize that you can’t rush your recovery if you want it to last. Now you’ve got all that awful paperwork out of the way .......... you should switch your mind to something else. Put your feet up. Watch daytime tele and make yourself some nice snacks like you do!”
(The paperwork she refers to is the pile of forms you have to complete in order to claim benefits, mortgage insurance etc. It’s very many years since I claimed anything and the whole process totally overwhelmed me. Imagine that you are expected to accurately complete claim forms and enclose photocopied proof of this, that and the other when you are at absolute crisis point!)
Ziggy is right of course. I have to accept that getting properly better may take longer than I’d hoped and this acceptance is hard for me because I so desperately want to be well and fully resume my life. Once again this will be a lesson in patience for me, and this time around it’s a big lesson that I can’t afford not to learn.
I took her advice and changed my mindset. I stopped fighting the depression and accepted it. I watched rubbish daytime television and laughed (endless auction and property programmes, some with a bizarre competition element), I went back to bed with a good book (Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’, a birthday present from my friend Mark, about the devil and madness, and people ending up in the asylum – it seems very timely!), and I got up again to make proper food. Instead of fighting them I accepted my low feelings and immediately felt less stressed. I’ve continued in the same vein since then. I spent most of yesterday up at the allotment where I always feel good. The fog is lifting as I accept that I need time to heal.
On reflection I can see that I’ve been depressed for a long while but have been doing a very good job of keeping it at bay, but some things are too strong to fight forever and that is no doubt why it crept up and overwhelmed me now. But as the old saying goes, this too will pass. And I will blow the dark fog away.
Love acceptance
Love Life
XXX
I can clearly see the different phases I’ve moved through so far. Initially I just felt utterly harrowed, which lasted a couple of weeks or so before mercifully melding into a sense of total blankness and disconnection. I began my morning healing regime and was only a few days into it when a new phase began. I started to reconnect with myself. Every day I felt a little better. Small steps but forward-moving and I was doing well. This happy episode held out for an amazing eleven days until last Tuesday. It had to happen I suppose. Reconnection with myself meant that the blankness was replaced by an ability to feel my feelings again, and this had to include feeling my depression.
It’s odd because I knew I was depressed as I had all the symptoms but I didn’t feel anything. Now that I do I have to embrace my feelings in order to get better. So however awful it is to feel depressed, I know that it’s better than feeling nothing at all, so it’s all good healing and I know I will get through it.
Tuesday and Wednesday passed in a dark fog - unbrushed hair and teeth, crapola daytime television, force fed toast as I couldn’t be bothered to eat and upsetting myself that I felt so low when I had been doing so well. I woke on Thursday feeling no better and checked my emails. My friend Ziggy, who lives and works in Afghanistan, had sent me a touching mail a couple of weeks before in which, amongst other things, she’d written “You really need to take proper time out, mentally and physically and realize that you can’t rush your recovery if you want it to last. Now you’ve got all that awful paperwork out of the way .......... you should switch your mind to something else. Put your feet up. Watch daytime tele and make yourself some nice snacks like you do!”
(The paperwork she refers to is the pile of forms you have to complete in order to claim benefits, mortgage insurance etc. It’s very many years since I claimed anything and the whole process totally overwhelmed me. Imagine that you are expected to accurately complete claim forms and enclose photocopied proof of this, that and the other when you are at absolute crisis point!)
Ziggy is right of course. I have to accept that getting properly better may take longer than I’d hoped and this acceptance is hard for me because I so desperately want to be well and fully resume my life. Once again this will be a lesson in patience for me, and this time around it’s a big lesson that I can’t afford not to learn.
I took her advice and changed my mindset. I stopped fighting the depression and accepted it. I watched rubbish daytime television and laughed (endless auction and property programmes, some with a bizarre competition element), I went back to bed with a good book (Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’, a birthday present from my friend Mark, about the devil and madness, and people ending up in the asylum – it seems very timely!), and I got up again to make proper food. Instead of fighting them I accepted my low feelings and immediately felt less stressed. I’ve continued in the same vein since then. I spent most of yesterday up at the allotment where I always feel good. The fog is lifting as I accept that I need time to heal.
On reflection I can see that I’ve been depressed for a long while but have been doing a very good job of keeping it at bay, but some things are too strong to fight forever and that is no doubt why it crept up and overwhelmed me now. But as the old saying goes, this too will pass. And I will blow the dark fog away.
Love acceptance
Love Life
XXX
3 comments:
Hi Scarlett, At least you are able to recognize that it was just a temporary set back on your road to recovery not the whole thing beginning all over again. Take time out for yourself pottering in the allotment if the weather improves there is only so much day time tv I can take!
You already know how to heal yourself - as you have shown in this post! All you need now is patience, especially with yourself.
Ah, so true Peggy. Daytime tv in small doses only, and fortunately the weather has been pretty good here so there's been much pottering at the plot. It really is the best healing.
As for patience timx, it's ALWAYS my lesson! But this time I've got to really take on board that I am a human be-ing and not a human do-ing.
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