Stalking the Depression Monster
Feb 26th, 2008 by spaceagesage
The Depression Monster crawled into my life during the teen years, tried to kill me early in the 90s, and has stalked me into my 48th year on this planet.
Now I am stalking it back.
I have finally tracked it to its origins, documented its feeding habits, and found how to take it down and finish it off.
The journey took me through years of rarely having a feeling of well-being; of mindless and mind-numbing hours I hated myself because I was not “being productive enough;” and through fatiguing times where I had to mask my depression and act “normal” for my family and others.
The Depression Monster originated in my life from a sense of anger, but from an anger I did not feel I had a right to have. My parents did not allow anger to exist in any way, but instead squelched it entirely, so I was left rather clueless about the deep-seated emotion and how to release it in healthy ways. I grew up fearing the anger inside and fearing anger when I saw it — or any strong, negative emotion — in others.
Only recently I realized that once born, the Monster fed on negativity big or small, such as:
- “I should get more writing under my belt.”
- “Oh, I don’t really need you to do that for me.”
- “I have all the skills, but no confidence so no one will listen to me if I get that promotion.”
- “It’s all the government’s fault I don’t have health insurance.”
- “I don’t want to make the situation worse.”
- “Why can’t I get things right?”
- “Dang. I went and said the wrong thing again.”
- “What will people think if I fail?”
- “OK, I got the promotion, but when is the next bad thing going to strike me?”
All those may seem to be normal thoughts that hit everyone from time to time, but image feeling the emotional impact of those thoughts ramped up a hundredfold. Add to that the fatigue of hiding the emotional storm within from others while physically feeling like an energy leech is sucking your life force out of you.
In me, the process created a nasty downward spiral that fed on itself. A negative thought flowed to a crappy outlook, which flowed to feeling emotionally and physically drained, which flowed back to another negative thought, and so it went.
Exercise, sunshine, and medications both medical and alternative sometimes made the Monster more manageable, but always it remained. Finally I decided to explore leading edge healing therapies that let the mind heal itself. I have made huge strides with them, especially recently, because I am starting to see them all connect in a way that is profoundly life changing.
My intention is to find the words to explain the process I am going through in future postings.
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