Anti-Depression

Dearest Readers,

Yesterday a friend was talking about feeling depressed. Not clinical depression, the kind that is considered a mental illness, but low-energy depression. The kind that is black and hopeless but situational.

I suffered from this kind of depression for years. It would come, it would go. I always wondered when it would come back. I learned that taking action, any kind of action, would make it go but that's like saying, "Get off the couch!" to the depressive. It's the one thing she needs to do and the most difficult thing for her to do.

Sheer-force of will. That's what I would use to make it go, take that action step to change my energy, get it flowing again. Or Higher Will. Pray like a mother-lover.

Time after time I would use these tactics to get out of the slump. Force myself to do something, anything, or ask for the courage to change because my will wasn't working. It wasn't until a few short years ago that I actually started to see that there were things I could do to avoid going there in the first place.

A gal I knew used to say, "You do good things, you feel good. You do bad things, you feel bad." It drove me crazy! "It's not that simple," I thought, amidst images of strangling her.

But it is. I wasn't exactly doing "bad" things but things that would suck my energy and put me in that low energy-fear-anxiety-depressed state. I needed to identify what those things were and eliminate them from my life.

Eliminate that which is eroding our confidence. What a concept! Again, easy enough to say, more difficult to do. Watching three movies in a row erodes my confidence. Why? I have no idea. I just know I feel like crap after I do it. So don't do it. Duh.

Those days of the ups and the downs, the moving in and out of that depression-state are behind me. This is not so much a miracle as a steadfast commitment to do "good" things. There are still "bad" things I hang on to that I'm not ready to let go of yet. But I'm getting there.

Inspiring Message of the Day: I will identify that which is eroding my confidence today and pray for the courage to let them go. I deserve to feel good.