Hello Friends,
This week I’m compelled to talk about an all too common condition - depression. Thanks to the reader who wrote and asked me for some supportive words. I’m giving you my best shot and thinking of you dearly.
Before I begin, a general message - If you are experiencing low or distressed moods that stay with you and adversely effect your ability to do your normal things in your life, seek individual mental health support, first and foremost.
If you don’t know where to start, tell your GP and ask them to give you a referral. I also have a list of referral hubs for mental health services in Australia on my website.
In the meantime, tell a friend, a trusted person, tell someone. Writing to me was a great start, but it isn’t enough on its own. If your first attempts to get help don’t fly, don’t give up, just have another shot with someone else.
Not everyone knows what to do, or how to connect with others around hard things. That’s not your fault. Sometimes people get scared. You will find someone who gets it.
Meanwhile…
At the core of each of us is a pilot light of aliveness that roars brighter when we feed it with the right kindling for us, things that turn us on. You’ve felt it surge, it’s your energy, the divine spark in you, the essential life force that animates your being.
Depression dulls your flame, but take heart, that flame still burns strong within, un-extinguishable.
When I work with people in therapy, when we get down digging through their pain and contributing factors to their suffering, we’re looking for what stokes their soul flame, feeding their energy to burn off the heaviness that ails them. We’re also trying to understand that heaviness and disarm it permanently.
Often, a key that opens us to that healing is to re-ignite self-compassion - to push back against a harsh inner voice. That depressive blanket is typically made of variations of self-judgment, sadness, shame, anger and hurt, woven together.
Feeling better can start by kindling the spark of self-compassion that we all have in us, that might be sputtering, smothered, wanting for air under the heavy cloud. The job is to find ways to get that spark glowing and firing up more often, more readily, more fully.
How? How? How?
With gentleness. Don’t try too hard. You can’t force yourself to like anyone or anything, including your circumstances, even yourself, if you’re just not feeling it.
Just begin by telling any mean, judgmental or otherwise unhelpful thoughts to back off. Enough already. Just by saying ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ to them, you open the way for more helpful thoughts and feelings to get a look in and start changing things.
Make a list of any stuff that gives you the tiniest window of enjoyment, or just a sense of achievement. Start really small, like wiping the bench, having a glass of water, answering a couple of emails, putting on moisturiser, making a sandwich or getting ten minutes of sun. Slowly do as many as you can. Take as long as you need. Celebrate every single tiny win. They add up, each a little piece of kindling on your soul fire.
Add any activities that have some power to take you into a state of in flow, meaning you get caught up in them, kind of taken out of yourself a little, enchanted. Flow is like communing with the eternal, time is lost, little else exists as the inner fire awakens.
Forgiveness is another huge part of clearing emotional heaviness and turning up the gas on self-compassion and inner ease. We all have unhelpful thoughts, angers, humiliations, mistakes we wish we hadn’t made– they’re facts of life. Let’s not be crushed by them coming to visit us.
When they turn up in awareness, let’s just say
‘Hello old friend! What are you trying to teach me or warn me about by re-visiting? I have other things to focus on right now. Thanks for the reminder, but no more thanks. Your job is done.’
Mixed with action, take time to be – in meditation, in contemplation – give yourself ‘the time of day’, the loving attention to listen to the contents of your thoughts and sort helpful from unhelpful. Be a discerning consumer of your own thoughts, don’t just buy everything whether it’s useful or not.
Thoughts are not facts. Some are nonsense and only warrant a compassionate smile as you see them off, back into the ether.
Talk, write, express. Do anything and everything safe and healthful that works for you, to help your emotional and physical energy move. Your internal fire needs air and movement.
I know that the blanket of depression tries to keep you still and stuck, so just push back gently, consistently, slowly, with love for you. It is not who you are, only a heaviness from things that have happened. It will not win.
Never, ever give up. Keep feeding your inner fire.
So much love to you,
Thanks Deb, very helpful. Curious if you equate resignation to depression?