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Help For Your Depression - Help For Your Depression

Bipolar Depression Chronic Depression - Help For Your Depression

Keepin it real

August 3rd 2009 04:51

Fake it til you make it is a term that is used frequently. Some folks use it when they are struggling with a belief in a higher power. It is more like a blind faith that they place their belief in. I could never get the hang of faking it. It was either there or it wasn’t so I guess I can not relate to those that fake it. I didn’t need to fake it because every time I came to the turning point, I was brought to my knees, this time I was flat on my back. Everyone has their own turning point but the result is always a belief in a power greater than us.
It is a paradox. Going through some extreme pain to come to the realization that we can not do it alone. We give into the higher power that has been carrying us all along. It comes as a great relief that we do not have to face our lives all alone. After the realization, we get a sense of hope and faith that we are safe. A sense that everything is going to be alright. Looking back we can see that we were always o.k. We just never gave it a chance. Free will is a hard thing to control. Free will can make us arrogant and it can give us a feeling that we are in control when in fact we have very little control over things and even if we did have control, we would probably louse everything up. I am not very good at just letting things be. I am too impatient in just letting them unfold. I can look back at many instances in my life where I jumped the gun. Hind sight is 20/20.

For me, it is not just developing a belief and a faith that everything is going to turn out the way that I want it to, it is a feeling that no matter what happens, I will be o.k. That is my faith. When I am able to get into this mindset, I can see how things just fall into place without me getting in the way. I couldn’t plan it any better. Fear does get in the way of everything. But the only thing that can cast out fear is love. Love has the power to get rid of fear because love is unconditional. Love is an acceptance of the way things are. Love is allowing a person to be who they are and what they are. Love has no boundaries. If anybody has told you that they love you, you can tell if they really mean it by seeing how they are when you are at your worst. Are they still right there beside you, or do they run for the hills? Many people use the term loosely, or they have developed their own definition of love based upon their own values and morals. That type of love is cheap and superficial and it doesn’t do anyone any good. It just causes more pain.

So if you are struggling with the concept of a power greater than yourself and are getting tired of faking it, just get honest with yourself and ask what it really means to you.

Keep the faith
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Battle For Peace

July 31st 2009 04:35
Lord don't let there be
A battle for peace
Inside of me
There's always a war.
Unless I can change
There's nothing to see.
Inside of me

This past year has been one of being stuck in a pattern that is difficult to get out of. It’s funny; a feeling of needing to move on yet the energy to do so isn’t there. Seems as if that energy is nonexistent. Staying stagnant, living off of days long ago but not moving forward. Another opportunity to move forward presents itself. I’ve got to take this chance and run with it to see where it leads. I have never been down this path before. Is it new light to show me the way? Fear.

The dreams are so vivid, yet obscure enough to have only hazy memories. Are they speaking to me to get my attention? Now that I have given all my attention, where do I go from here? What I think it is might really not be. A self inflicted illusion. Carry on. When ever the thoughts drift off carry on and don’t look back.
When I was a boy everything seemed so wrong. Nothing lined up, nothing made sense. Bad timing. Fast forward to the present day where the same things are happening. The suns shadows look the same, the sound of a distant lawnmower brings up feelings that I never thought I would feel ever again. But they always come back. Thoughts constantly moving. Never know who is going to show up on certain days. The thought process is where the problem lies. Sat on the beach. Felt the heat, smelled the salt air and the definite smell of marijuana. There is no getting away from it. The smell of beer and pot brings up even more feelings on top of the others. Layer upon layer. Like an onion.
Sitting all alone with my head pounding. I wish the waves were bigger so they could drown out the pounding in my head. Feels as though I am invisible. I go through my daily routine and feel invisible. Pride.
Picking up on meetings. That’s all I know how to do when it gets like this. Keeps me afloat. Keeps me out of danger. Keeps me out of the hospital. Impatient? After 4 f---ing years away from a drink and a drug? Impatient? I will face this alone. I have to. Nobody else can go through it. Nobody can really even help because it is what I need to go through. I like being alone. I got real good at it in the lost years. I grew back then. Even though it may not seem so, what I went through was what I needed to go through to get to where I am today. Kinda like getting kicked up the stairs. Ouch.
I say a prayer for the still suffering. I am grateful for the gift of sobriety. Things could be worse. Things have been worse. That is my perspective.
Thank you for letting me share. Keep the faith.
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Letting go

July 26th 2009 00:51

How are you supposed to let go? After all this time and effort there comes a time when you must let go. Maybe it is just a process of going through everything to get to a certain place where you can no longer afford to hang on, to let go and let the current take you where it needs to. That’s where we are supposed to be. Right here, right now is where we are supposed to be. The resistance is what causes all the pain.

I have let go of the fact, on a daily basis, that I can no longer use alcohol and drugs safely. I know that there was a great deal of resistance going on over the years pertaining to stopping, and there also was a great deal of pain but I had to go through that to get to where I am now. It is very similar with all of life as well. Same process. Truth has a way of just nailing you to the wall.

It is a different season in life, a new season where everything changes just like winter, spring, summer and fall. A new start. Life has different seasons too.
Whenever I think of the pain of the change, I am learning how to turn the thoughts over. Not like turning over pancakes, but turning over the thoughts so they just break apart. After turning it over, I become conscious of what is to come next. It is kind of a meditation of the direction I am to take. Just do the next right thing. Do what is in front of you. There is no need to know what is coming, just try and relax and let it happen. How many bad decisions have been made jumping into something, without thinking about where your feet are?

Letting go is a spiritual awakening. It is a realization that what lies ahead really isn’t all that important, right now is what is important. It is a feeling that all is going to be o.k., it is the grace of God, or the grace of something, that has come about to give a daily reprieve from all the pain and suffering that has really been self inflicted. It is time to move in the right direction toward what is intended for us, to become who and what we were meant to be, that we otherwise would never have come to see if we stayed where we were.
Pain is a great motivator, yet it is also a sign that something is wrong. Letting go of something that causes you great pain will give you freedom. And that is all we really need is freedom to feel peace. Keep the faith.
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You Are Not Alone

July 14th 2009 21:47


So, how does it feel to know that there are millions of other people that are probably feeling the same way you are right now? Somewhere along God’s green earth there is another human being, animal, or let me just say sentient being that is feeling sadness, and depression. It might comfort you to think that perhaps not too far away there is another person feeling anger and rage, jealousy and bone chilling fear, or perhaps the overwhelming feeling of grief you are feeling at this very moment is being felt all over the world by people that are grieving over the loss of a pet or a loved one. Whatever the pain you experience, do you look to connect to all that may be suffering as a way of coming to terms with your own pain?
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the recovery path

February 28th 2009 06:58
There are times when depression has a way of seeping into every area of life. First it just affects us personally, causing a change in moods and then a change in outlook on life. It can start to cripple by depleting any energy to do the things that need we need to do in order to get through every day. It continues to get bigger as the depression escalates into anger and our actions begin to tear down the lives we had worked so hard to build. Not getting to work on time can cause trouble at work and we may get verbal warnings. This does not help self esteem and we begin to sink further by calling out of work, to eventually losing the job by walking out or being fired. Our relationships with others start to get strained and nobody seems to be on our side. We begin to feel there is nowhere to turn so the only thing left to do is to turn to the old friends booze and drugs.
After a few bad episodes of drinking, one might find themselves in the emergency room after a rough night of heavy drinking, locked in the drunk tank for hours and sometimes days on end waiting to see a psychiatrist or someone that resembles a psychiatrist. Social workers are the ones that sometimes step in and get us into a rehab if we have insurance.
We go through a detox and decide to go to AA meetings again, even though we have not been able stay sober for any period of time.
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Obsession

July 29th 2008 17:15
obsession

Obsession can rule your life. It is probably among the top five behaviors, along with resentment, anger, fear, and pride that can be devastating. These emotions can be the primary cause of obsessive thoughts. Trying to chase a thought out that keeps playing over in your mind can be exhaustive. There are many ways to deal with obsession, but the only way these work is by constant vigilance.
There are those that claim that keeping busy, even with the most mundane tasks can help get your mind off the obsession. My experience has been both negative and positive with keeping busy. Work is a four letter word for me. I truly wish I was obsessed with some sort of “career”. I can’t relate to those that are workaholics. They are fortunate that they have found something to be passionate about, but it can also be a way of not dealing with painful feelings. The obsessions that I get are always very unhealthy and dangerous to my recovery. I was doing landscaping during a difficult time in my life, and one day my job was to weed a huge garden. Not only was it extremely hot that day, but it was the kind of mindless work that is great for letting those thoughts get way out of control. I felt as though I was in a prison of my own deep dark thoughts with no way out. I even experienced a few mild panic attacks and the only way I could deal with it was to take a break and go get a drink of water. I thought that taking a break would help clear my thoughts, but I realized that those thoughts followed me wherever I went. It’s the old saying that “No matter where you go, there you are“. There is no escape and everything you try seems to fail. Alcohol, cocaine, and weed were once old friends that I could count on to pull me through, but there came a point where even they let me down, in fact they made it worse by magnifying the thoughts 10 fold.
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Emotional Rescue

July 29th 2008 02:37
Emotions


During the course of a minute, my brain is processing so much information at lightening speed. It actually makes my head spin. It’s like four seasons in one day, especially if there is a lot going on in my life. Back in the 90’s, I was hospitalized four times in a three month period, all in the same facility. It was my home away from home. The staff used to have this group every afternoon that was designed to help patients cope with their illness by attempting to educate them. There we were, listening to a woman wearing cheap costume jewelry talk about how stress can cause depression. So, if stress causes depression, one would think that you need to cut out as much stress in your life. That isn’t always possible for some people. The key is realizing when the emotions are rising, and be aware that you are heading for a storm. Although back in 1996, that storm lasted for almost ten years and tore apart a perfectly good marriage. The main problem may be fighting these natural emotions. If you let those feelings and thoughts get the best of you, it can lead to a fall into a deep whole that you may never get out of. This is the point where the pain is so bad, that some actually take their lives. I have tried to take my life several times, none of which were successful: At least as far as I know.

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You are what you is

July 7th 2008 16:45


It always baffled me how some people can go through the everyday mundane BS and get a sense of satisfaction from it. They are able to get up in the morning and do what they have to do. It is almost as though it drives them, the same thing over and over. It drives me too. It drives me F - - - - ing crazy. It wears me down. I know a guy that is retired and is all freaked out because he doesn't know what to do with himself during the day. He was in a line of work he really enjoyed and now he is lost. I offered to show him how to retire and do nothing (For a one time fee of course with monthly installments)

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Anger turned inside out

July 4th 2008 13:15
anger resentment rage


Anger can be a devastating emotion, especially to those that are in recovery from alcohol and or drugs. The fuel feeds the fire that can lead to actions that we may later regret. When it comes on, we feel the need to act out to relieve the conflict inside us. Most of the time we just lash out expecting to feel better, almost like a knee-jerk reaction to things that twist us up. The most dangerous part of anger is resentment. Resentments are like anger over and over again, reliving the anger, playing it over in our heads like a broken record, nothing seems to make it stop. That is where the anger can turn to rage. Talk about devastation. Some of us can actually go into blackouts from the rage. It seems to come out of nowhere because the next thing we know, we are acting out on those deep dark thoughts that roll around in our head. I am sure we have all heard that depression is anger turned inward, that may or may not be true. Most of the time, anger is brought on by fear. A fear of facing something that we don’t want to face, or a fear of not knowing where we are going in our lives, economic insecurity, growing up, they are all driven by fear. Not being in control and not knowing what is going to happen next can terrorize us. It is very easy to say to someone that is going through a great deal of anger, “let it go, why are you holding on to this? Don’t let it get the best of you”. And then something happens to us and we realize that we should follow our own advice. Whenever I hear somebody talking about their anger, I listen very close to what they are saying and I always find that I can relate to them in so many ways. You‘re experiences are your own. I never tell someone to get over his or her resentments for numerous reasons. First, it does not really help anyone, I know it never helped me, and second, I do not want to get my teeth knocked out!
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Be conscious of the subconscious

July 1st 2008 03:01

Feelings come and they go. So do thoughts and emotions. This is something that we all fight with, those days when our thoughts are moving a mile a minute. There isn’t a remedy to stop these thoughts. They are constantly moving and flowing like water. The problem lies in trying to stop the thought process. Our minds are always moving, even when we sleep. There have been all kinds of research on what the brain is processing when we are sleeping. One conclusion that some psychologists have come to is the brain can’t understand what is going on when we are sleeping, so it just processes abstract information. That explains why our dreams are sometimes like a Stephen King movie.
The subconscious is a funny thing. It can only remember events as they first happened. In other words, when we think of something that occurred 20 years ago, it can still be as painful as if it just happened. The subconscious has no past, present, or future. Giving into all the events going on in our subconscious mind can easily feed the fire of anger, resentment, and fear that always leads into a depression. It is very easy to fall into that trap. We sometimes hear the phrase “Getting some closure” on something that was traumatic in our lives. That phrase can be misinterpreted. It can give the delusion that we will someday wake up and rise from our bed and never, ever be weighed down by those horrible memories again. What really happens over the course of time ( in my own personal experience) is an acceptance of what happened by coming to realize that the thoughts are always going to be there, but they don’t stay as long and they don’t have the weight they once had. There are things that pop up in my mind during the course of a day that I thought I had already dealt with, and it can make me laugh to think how I can still be steaming mad about something somebody said to me 25 years ago. That is the subconscious mind. It still thinks it is 25 years ago.
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Bipolar Affective Disorder

June 14th 2008 01:28


Manic depression captures my soul.
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The Medication Maze

June 3rd 2008 05:53
Medications can be a touchy subject.There is always the risk of side effects that seem to make you wonder if you really feel bad enough to go through the painful period of starting a new med,getting used to it,then realizing it isn't right for you,so you have to come off of it.Then you are prescribed another medication and you have to go through all that again.That's at least 8 weeks of pure volcanic hell.After a while you get to feel as though you got hit upside the head with a sledge hammer.I like to use the anology of a boxer getting knocked to his knees,then as he gains his balance and attempts to fight again,he is hit again.It is just like being on a therapeutic dose and having another attack of the depression so what happens? The medication level gets raised and you get knocked to your knees again.


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