Depression is cruel and although I’ve dealt with it for most of my life it’s been a rare thing that it hasn’t been manageable. I can certainly count those times on one hand and am thankful that I have support and love from people in my life to help me through.
2013 didn’t have a great start. In fact, for a lot of people I know it’s been a rough time. There is a lot of stress, illness and general misery going around it seems! I am no exception in this and allowed myself to get to a state of stress where I physically was becoming ill and was unable to cope. I am pretty sure I spent part of January and the whole month of February in tears.
I spent a lot of that time listening to what my head kept telling me – and this is when things get difficult – knowing they aren’t real but believing them anyway. Things like…
– I am not good enough.
– I don’t deserve to be happy.
– I’m not strong enough.
– I will never have the things I keep striving for and failing, so why bother trying?
And on and on it went.
Work-related stress was a huge factor. Instead of trying to muddle through, I took a few days off and was able to deal with some real life things that helped me to cope: cleaning, clearing out the living room, getting enough sleep and not thinking about anything work related. Taking that time, it was only 3 days off, made a huge difference and allowed me to go back to work and tackle my previously insurmountable workload with renewed energy.
The ability to deal with work and that stress allowed me time to start to deal with my depression. It was the better part of a month before I felt any hope that I would come out of it. My time was spent working, sleeping, dealing with a nasty case of asthmatic bronchitis and trying to find joy in anything – fighting my head and all the lies that depression tries to convince you are true.
The last couple of weeks I’ve started to feel hopeful that I will come out of it and I am feeling more myself every day. There are a LOT of good things happening in the coming months and I don’t want to miss them because I let myself get beaten.
Things are starting to improve and I’m thankful that even though both Hubby and myself have had a rough few months, he was as supportive as he could be and I’m looking forward to Spring and spending more time with him without all the work, stress and illness!
Spending the past couple of months reflecting and thinking about how outside forces affect me has made me more conscious of how my attitude can affect others and I’ve been able to identify specific triggers of stress and I’m working to eliminate what I can and find more peace!