For me depression is deeply rooted in my subconscious and the wiring of my brain. Its painful because as soon as I start thinking I've got a handle on the situation and I'm feeling better, I want to take on the world and forgo some of my self care rituals, forgetting how real the struggle is for me, and that managing this illness requires, diligence, patience and self awareness.
Days like today I just feel little haywire mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Not clinically depressed, just off. It's like I've forgotten to keep the guards posted at the door that keep the gremlins at bay, and now they're running loose inside my head. They're pretty small but they cast long shadows. The trick for me at this point is not to activate the fight or flight response, because those yucky chemicals that is releases just make things wo
rse. I need to remember, whatever they're saying to me is BS, a sick part of my brain that doesn't need to be given anymore attention than it deserves.
Self analysis, without an outlet like writing doesn't help to much either. When I'm in a fragile, scared position, and I mentally feel like shit, my ability to see the whole picture is really compromised. Like the people in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave,"I just see the shadows of things, and my point of view is compromised by my mood.
Work has taken it's toll on me. Before going back to work as a landscape company owner, I was surrounded by light and love, doing a yoga leadership course. I wasn't trying to be a yoga teacher, but I really liked what I saw in the course leaders Jess and Sara.
I was doing yoga daily, and feeling pretty ok with my inner and outer landscape. SHit has been getting real lately, and the pressure has been rising quickly. I'm doing ok, but there are some cracks in my foundation. The interpersonal stressors at work and at home from running a successful business with my partner are triggers for stress, which not handled properly can cause the return of depressive symptoms for me.
The truth is, the triggers that set off the bad wiring and depressive tendencies in my brain are probably just unhealed sadnesses from the past. Little Jeanne was sad an awful lot. Yes there were magical childhood moments filled with light and love which have sustained me throughout adult life, but there were also alot of sad, uncomforted, lonely and isolated tears shed in my formative years.
We are social beings and not feeling welcomed and loved by your tribe in grade school can cause deep psychic wounds in a person that they may unconsciously carry into adult life. I bought into the lie that there was something fundamentally wrong with me starting at 5 years old. All this unprocessed, unacknowledged pain and the thoughts, feelings and sensations that went along for the ride, need to be brought into the sunshine, honoured and healed.
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