I had started slowly coming out of the holiday depression, when a friend made a remark that knocked me back into it, actually into a worse place than I started from.\u00a0 She asked something like \u201cAre you holding on to your misery?\u201d\u00a0 I got angry, said NO.\u00a0 Said \u201cI\u2019ve worked very hard for a long time to get better.\u201d\u00a0 As I was leaving I asked her \u201cDo you really believe I\u2019m holding on to my misery?\u201d\u00a0 She said \u201cNo,\u201d but alas, my psyche responded as if she had said yes, and I dropped down into the worst place, where it\u2019s just too hard to go on with the daily struggle.
\nI told Lynelle about what she said and Lynelle got angry at Sally.\u00a0 She said \u201cThat\u2019s what controlling people do when they are up against a situation they can\u2019t fix.\u201d\u00a0 That helped a lot,\u00a0 but the day was wrecked on a hard rock.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t do my stretches.\u00a0 Looking back I can feel an angry energy.\u00a0 \u201cYou think I\u2019m holding on to my misery?\u00a0 then why should I bother keeping up with my daily disciplines?\u201d\u00a0 The daily disciplines: stretches, walking, medication, therapy, writing in my journal, are not things that help me feel better right away.\u00a0 So there\u2019s no immediate benefit, which makes them harder to do when I\u2019m feeling tired and discouraged.\u00a0 Why bother?\u00a0 So here I am perversely refusing to do things that don\u2019t make me better except that they support my life in the long run.\u00a0 Is that holding on to my misery?
\nFortunately, my cleaning lady was here and she brought in extra firewood.\u00a0 And my friend Randi came for lunch.\u00a0 I had warned her that I was depressed, so she brought lunch, bless her heart.\u00a0 Without that I might not have eaten.
\nWhat people don\u2019t understand about depression is that it can\u2019t be banished by willpower.\u00a0 Sometimes it responds to surrender as in step one: Discovered I was powerless over depression.\u00a0 Sometimes it responds to a softening of compassion that I extend to my depressed self. Sometimes it responds to a recognition that I am angry at myself for being depressed and softening with the idiocy of it.\u00a0 But none of these works every time.\u00a0 Medication makes a big difference, but there\u2019s a limit to how much I can take.\u00a0 Medication, as I\u2019ve discovered after struggling over many years, creates a kind of stable platform that keeps me from going dangerously down, and allows me to make good use of therapy.\u00a0 Therapy works, but again, not every session.\u00a0 It\u2019s something I just keep doing to survive.\u00a0 Anything that implies that I\u2019m somehow choosing to be in this pain, or that I\u2019m not doing something easy that would lift me out of it, is totally toxic, about the cruelest and most devastating thing any one could say to someone who\u2019s depressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had started slowly coming out of the holiday depression, when a friend made a remark that knocked me back into it, actually into a worse place than I started from.\u00a0 She asked something like \u201cAre you holding on to … Continue reading