Posts Tagged ‘Depression’
From Nothing
When I spend my days away from the ranch, not taking pictures, not collecting experiences, the relative somethings get a little thin. Four days a week my hours are tied up with commuting and day-jobbing. By Friday, I have to work a little harder to fill this space with words and pictures. I will often be heard muttering, “I’ve got nothing.”
Thursday nights are what Cyndie and I refer to as my “Friday.”
Last night we celebrated with my bringing home Cyndie’s favorite half-baked deep-dish pizza for dinner. I walked in the door, placed it in the refrigerator and collapsed on our bed, falling into a deep sleep with Pequenita curled up on my legs.
It’s a manifestation of accumulated exhaustion. What a luxury.
One of the things that leaves me feeling like I’ve got nothing to write about, is how incomparable my healthy first-world exhaustion is to the suffering I witness others around me going through. How dare I frame my suffering as particularly arduous, when other’s lives are hovering on the brink, when disasters abound, when life challenges won’t be temporary.
I feel lost within my familiar surroundings, an unsettling perception. It’s an instance when I resort to waiting. That feeling doesn’t last. If I don’t fight against what isn’t really there, balance returns soon enough.
One of the reasons I strive to compose something every day is as a push on my ‘swing’ of daily maintaining my mental health. It’s an interesting conundrum for me when the healthy act of writing meets up with the well-known challenges of writer’s block.
One of my “go to” solutions is to simply post a picture. Sometimes, by the end of the week, I don’t even have that.
Before the point in my life when I identified that I was dealing with depression, a moment like this, with no idea what to write about and feeling lost, would have simply stoked a dangerous fire.
I’m thrilled to be able to report that my perspective and awareness are so completely different after treatment that times like this tend to end up being more of an inspiration than an ominous threat.
It’s so simple, it gets misconstrued as not even possible. It does involve some bigger picture observation, but after that, in each moment, it is simply a matter of thinking differently. The secret is in recognizing what is going on in the moment, and then directing my thoughts in an appropriately healthy way.
Through talk therapy, I learned how to recognize my dysfunctional thinking and perceptions. With practice, I have honed skills in changing my thoughts, which alters my chemistry. Happily, no pun intended, it generates a positive feedback loop that strengthens with each cycle.
One last part of my simple secret to overcoming my depression: trusting it can work.
My healthcare providers were convinced they could help me, and I trusted them.
It worked.
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Look at that. When I started writing this post, I thought I had nothing for today.
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Depression Awareness
My experience with depression involved a long, slow advance that could well be compared to the boiling frog parable. I was oblivious to the illness in my head while it was busy crafting all manner of dysfunctional thinking habits.
When my angst would occasionally lead to curious contemplations, the version of depression I would use as a reference involved the stories about people who hit rock bottom and lost jobs, destroyed marriages, became sick from substance abuse, and eventually suffered run ins with the law.
That did not describe my life, so I figured depression wasn’t my problem.
Ultimately, I was lucky enough to discover that depression was precisely the boiling water in which I was engulfed.
Maybe if I had an easily accessible clinically validated screening questionnaire available to me, I could have become aware of my condition a lot earlier than I eventually did.
I’m hoping the progress with de-stigmatizing depression and all it’s related mental health afflictions, along with efforts like the recent partnering between Google and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to offer an online tool to help diagnose depression, will shorten the suffering for all those who aren’t sure about what’s going on with their health.
Check this out: Learning More About Clinical Depression…
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Lost Hope
I have discovered how important hope can be on the journey to optimal health. It occurred to me the other day that I have lost hope.
I’m sure it is still there, I just can’t find it right now.
Having an unfortunate first-hand experience with depression allows me to recognize how it is possible to live without hope. It is not a healthy place to live. On my journey to good health, I have learned that it is not in my best interest to reside in that space. I am regretfully comfortable in that place, maybe from having too many years of practice in existing that way, but I cannot afford to accommodate that outcome.
I will do some digging to find my hope again. It is a requirement.
Of that, I am acutely aware.
We cannot live on love alone. That is another thing I have come to realize.
I’m going to love finding my hope again.
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Depression Podcast
It’s unusual to consider depression something to be laughed at, but maybe laughing at it has some merit. I have discovered a new podcast from American Public Media hosted by humorist John Moe called, “The Hilarious World of Depression.” Through conversations with some nationally respected comedians who share tales of their own experiences with depression, Moe explores a link between the illness and comedy.
The show is sponsored by HealthPartners and its “Make It Okay” campaign. I have long been a fan of the idea that talking about mental health issues is a crucial step toward reducing the stigma normally associated with them.
Depression can be treated. I treat mine everyday. In fact, talking about my experiences is one of the methods I employ to treat my natural tendency toward a depressive mindset.
I think it’s a great thing when humor can be added to the topic that is uncomfortable for most people to discuss. Spread the word about this podcast to people you know. It’s okay to talk about mental illness.
Now we can even laugh at it, too.
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Recovering Slowly
It’s a process. I’m still sad about the embarrassing outcome of our election, but some of the shock and traumatic stress is wearing off. The commodity of a good night’s sleep, which I hold dear, is possible again after several disturbing bouts of disruption. It is a mental illness I know all too well that leaves me wide awake at oh-dark-thirty with unhelpful thoughts running rampant.
I know depression. The events that played out to even allow the President-elect to be a choice in the end was depressing enough, but for the voting results to prove there are that many people in this country who would accept his rhetoric as deserving nearly sent me back to my darkest place.
How can I live with that? I live among them. How do I deal with this disturbing reality?
Love.
It’s all I can do. I know how I recovered from my life of depression. I will work my program. I will send love in every direction. I will strive to love the men and women who believe things with which I disagree. I will find a way to send love to people who find solace in hate and fear. I have fears, too, but we don’t fear the same things and we don’t respond to our fears in the same way.
Nothing is as exclusive and extreme as our minds are inclined to perceive. There is “both” where we see “one or the other.” We tend to be more similar to those with whom we disagree than we want to admit, especially in times of conflict.
People are inclined to inflate a point in order to make it. It’s too bad humans haven’t instead worked to develop a keener sense of detecting a point so there would be no need for the inflation.
Spend a little more time around horses and you can witness the art of keen perception. You can also come to discover the incredible power and reach of a heart-field.
Our horses help me to send love everyday. They are tapped in. We put the soccer ball out for them yesterday because the weather was nice and they were showing signs of being in a playful mood. Legacy spent the most time testing out the odd obstacle while the mares focused on their grazing, well placed in comfortable proximity to him.
Hunter expectantly waited for a turn.
They eventually moved over the hill and left the ball alone for a while. When we came back after lunch, the ball was all the way down the slope up against the fence, so someone had been playing with it again.
I’m following their example and letting my perceived obstacle be ignored for a while. When I reclaim my heart center and bolster my love beams, I can approach the situation again to see what happens when I show up.
I am not any less of a person as a result of what happens around me, unless I choose to react poorly.
After some faltering, I’m choosing love.
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Today I’m
Today I’m not preparing to evacuate a hurricane zone. In the middle of the country, the biggest threat from hurricanes on the east coast is that they might temporarily stall the usual flow of high or low pressure weather systems that move across our region.
Today I’m purposefully ignoring anything that democrats or republicans want to tell me about how awful and scary the “other” party candidates are. Just not gonna allow them to sully an otherwise promising possibility for goodness and prosperity to spring forth from even horrifically dire situations.
Today I’m remembering how it felt to be chronically depressed and appreciating the grace that allowed me to discover I had power over my thoughts and my body chemistry to navigate my way to better health. Eat well, exercise often, focus thoughts and actions in the direction of optimal health. Repeat.
Today I’m revisiting my realization that I am the only one who sees things exactly the way I do while standing in my shoes, and the view from every other vantage point is not necessarily wrong. Many could even be the exact opposite. Whether you need to turn left or right to pull into our driveway depends completely on whether you are approaching from the north or the south.
Today I’m going to laugh at something, because the universe is filled with comical possibilities. Even our horses have demonstrated the art of prankish shenanigans. It’s all in the timing, and they obviously have a sense of it.
Today I’m publishing this post, because you might stop by to read it and I want there to be something for you that wasn’t here yesterday at this time. A morsel of *this* John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences that I captured in the moment. A glimpse of the ongoing drama from my world that I hope dances around being relative to something for you every now and again.
Today I’m sending you peace and love from beautiful Wintervale Ranch in Beldenville, WI, USA.
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Reasons
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little known
indistinguishable
reasons for feeling—
…subtle
like hammers
only soft ones
wield incidental influence
thorny
noticeable
lovely
annoying
vastly underrated
interminably hyperbolic
and endlessly hard
to ignore
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Alarming Rise
In one of the many ways I feel lucky, it is my great pleasure to be able to awaken easily when it is time for my alarm to go off. For that matter, I also enjoy the good fortune of falling asleep relatively quickly, without any trouble at all. It was not always so.
During my years of greatest depression symptoms, sleep was problematic for me. Having that for comparison makes my current pattern of blessed slumber that much sweeter.
The radio alarm clock that I have at my bedside has been my companion for decades. It doesn’t get very much interaction from me, so it has grown a little persnickety about responding to button pushes. I fear that the years of dust it has endured have led to some hesitation of electronic connections.
Recently, I have experienced a recurring pattern of waking just before the time that would trigger the radio alarm to come on. One day last week, in exception to that rule, I snoozed a full 6-minutes past the alarm and decided the volume should probably come up a little bit to better get my attention.
I never tested that because the next two days I was up well before the alarm time. Since I am able to leave it off over the weekend, Sunday night I needed to reset everything. It balked over multiple attempts, but eventually I thought I had it.
Whatever song that was on when I tested it in the evening did not prove to be a good reference for the song that was on Monday morning at the appointed hour. Like usual, I had woken up before the alarm, but it being a Monday, I decided I should linger in comfort for the remaining time before the alarm.
It didn’t take me long to fall back asleep, and it didn’t take a second for me to startle awake to the volume of music that came on the short time later.
Oops.
Maybe it’s time to download a fancy newfangled app for my phone to gently increase an alarm until I wake up. I usually am charging the phone at my bedside every night anyway.
I don’t know if I could do that to the old Sony Dream Machine. It’s like family after all these years.
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General Goodness
It’s been a quiet day in Lake Wo-Wintervale-begon. The weather was mild all weekend, the trail cam continues to capture rabbits and squirrels, and progress on my wood sculpting art project has advanced, but not enough to stand out in pictures. Trust me. I considered showing them here today, but the results were too emphatically underwhelming.
The horses have been emanating incredibly peaceful vibes, Delilah is mostly behaving, and Pequenita endlessly seeks hands-on attention from me. Cyndie has been extraordinarily productive with creative abundance from her kitchen. I stand around wondering how to at least be ‘above average,’ never sure how to achieve the ‘good looking’ descriptor that Mr. Keillor tosses around.
We’re at one of those points where, in my past life, I would respond with a multitude of reasons for a gloomy outlook. It is a precious thing to have forged a path above and beyond that inclination, and to be able to relax and absorb the absence of dilemma today; to actually feel joyous, in fact.
Sure, the Check Engine Light still comes on in my car after every time the shop resets it, but I’m not stressin’ that. It is what it is. Things are mighty fine in general, and being able to appreciate that goodness, without struggling so to do, is icing on a cake that I get to have, and eat, too!
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Greatest Discovery
As I was driving home from work yesterday, I became aware of an absence of a gloomy pall which had been working its way over me for a couple of days prior. Even though few circumstances actually improved, my mental state had.
That is a testament to the greatest discovery I ever made. Many years ago, I identified my depression. Becoming aware of my depression allowed me to take action toward treating it. Treating my depression has led to every improvement in health I have achieved since.
Through daily adherence to my personal “program” of thoughts and actions that specifically counteract my depressive tendencies, I now manage my mental health without prescription medication or professional psychological support. I originally used both to find my way out of the darkness.
I still find myself surprised when the things I’ve learned to do, like catching my negative self-talk and ending it, or cultivating love for others and projecting it, produce such tangible results.
It is well-known, and usually rather obvious, that people’s energies are contagious. Individuals have widely varying levels of tendencies to be an influencer or the influenced.
If you haven’t seen the viral video by Shea Glover, People react to being called beautiful, check it out to see how quickly, and mostly involuntarily, people react to a positive verbal message. Imagine if we sent that same message to everyone, nonverbally from our hearts.
Be the influencer. Send love.
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Relative Something 