How I Began to Create My Destiny: A Story in Ignoring the “Can’t”

I have always been rather over-sensitive. Even when I was young, I was prone to boredom, bordering on depression. Inquisitive, but unsatisfied. Somehow I made it through the rigors of high-school and its social life. Once I got into a good college, I proceeded to get more and more lax--after all of my hard efforts, I reckoned I deserved a break. Plus, I was tired of my good girl image and wanted to be reckless.

This mentality continued to dis-serve me throughout college. The harder I worked, the harder I played. During my sophomore year’s specialized program geared towards over-achievers, I had a huge amount of reading and paper writing every week. Rather than miss out on the Thursday fun of welcoming the weekend early, I would force myself to finish so I could join the revelers.

I suppose I needed that release too, since I put so much pressure on myself when sitting down to write. I fought tooth and nail for my very soul, the voice telling me “I can’t” bouncing around my head like a ping-pong ball. It was my first taste of panic, though I couldn’t name it at the time.

I continued to prove that voice wrong, every week. And it still haunts me from time to time. I found myself wondering where it comes from, and why it had so much power over me.

Like any grateful child, I prodded my parents for answers. More bluntly, I blamed them. I ran away from family obligations like my life depended on it. It might have, in fact. But in the course of the rupture, I became more and more broken. Even as I traveled the world and the distance between us increased, I couldn't face myself and my own tendencies, hereditary, cultural or otherwise.

Anger, resentment, desolation—they followed me like stowaways, surfacing during my darkest moments. My health suffered as a result, and I knew that unless I tried something drastic, I'd never recover. So I quit my job and began searching for solutions to my self-inflicted problems. I turned to creative writing in the hopes that one day I could share my story. I never imagined I'd actually have an inspiring story to share.

Now that I've unloaded all this garbage out there, I'll take a pause in the story. We have come to the juncture between the “before” and “after” of the makeover. For me, the turnaround point came through a program aptly named “Inner Engineering.” It was challenging, but fun. It enabled me to look at life anew, with a clarity I'd never known before. By the end, I was bursting with so much energy that I couldn't recognize myself. It was so powerful, so positive, that I needed to explore further; it couldn't be ignored.

After several subsequent programs and long stays at the Isha Yoga Center, I became enraptured by the new yoga and meditation practices I'd welcomed into my life. My health quickly improved, as did my relationships. I noticed my reactions to situations subtly changing; things that once bothered me didn't have the same effect. There was a distance between me and the emotions that used to over-power me.

In this space, I began to shift from unconscious reactions to conscious ones. In this space, I began to create my destiny. In this space, new possibilities emerged like phoenixes.

The old patterns of thoughts and emotions are still there to some extent, they just don't rule me anymore like in my life's previous chapters. I've discovered a bliss so pure that it keeps me wanting more, and knowing that I'm bound to get it once I stop paying attention to the nonsense. I've discovered a world far beyond my wildest imagination: one where I'm happy. And life's volume is just so loud, I simply can't hear the “can't” anymore.

************************************************************************************************

Interested in discovering more? You can get a discount on Inner Engineering Online, 7 online classes for self-empowerment, and learn a free meditation. Becky blogs about personal and professional explorations at Becky Blab.

Nothing Good On The Menu

Or: How to Manage A Loved One With Major Depression

Depression is ferociously difficult for everyone involved, in that ordinary measures don't even bear consideration. A sensible person sleeps when they are tired, eats when hungry and drinks when thirsty; when sad, might weep or pause for melancholy reflection; might laugh when amused, retort when offended, change the channel when bored, etc. The mildly depressed will dutifully follow their doctor's orders and consume their medicine on schedule and perhaps even receive a modicum of surcease, blessedly returning to such prosaic matters.

The profoundly depressed view such normative responses to stimuli with deep suspicion; their own emotional perceptions having brutally waylaid them their entire lives, people around them quick with platitudes, condescension, disbelief or resentment, they are not conditioned to be 'solutions-oriented'. The deeply depressed withdraw into ever-increasing alienation because with one's back to the wall that's at least one direction that the lacerating winds of psychic agony won't come from. In extending a hand of solace, offering a bridge to fellowship, the healthy person's most sincere gestures appear to the seriously depressed person as threats.

Guilt is a potent self-fulfilling entrenchment for the person with major depression. It's bad enough feeling overwhelming guilt just for breathing and taking up space; the unavoidable inconvenience that one's illness causes others is like salt in the wound. We really don't want to be any trouble, thanks we'll stand, I'll give you $100 if  you let me sleep in your garage - just for one night. And no amount of backpedaling, shit-eating or genuflecting will sooth the sting - there we are, still breathing, much too loud.  And make no mistake, it's an incredible pain in the ass dealing with us, overtime with no pay. Nothing is ever simple, no interaction or transaction free of the most byzantine and unnecessary complications. It's even worse if our illness is constellated with others - borderline PD, schizo-affective, adult ADD, and so on.  We forget the appointment or date or birthday or anniversary, miss the bus, take the wrong bus, lose our bus pass, etc.; then we descend into a slough of despond over it, become almost violently defensive, attempt suicide or cut ourselves with razor blades, overdose, set fire to the garage, etc.

Sure we take the pills. Most of them. Most of the time. But pills just take the edge off - make the madness slightly more manageable - they don't get your shit together for you. If the pills are working, eventually we'll have to get out of bed; if they are not working, we have to actually pick up the phone, call the doctor and tell her they're not working. Either way, we have to actually take them, as prescribed, to find out.  We have to actually take a shower, get dressed, and go to work in order to find out whether or not we can.  And that takes more courage than is quantifiable.





There aren't really any hard-and-fast rules for handling life with a person managing major depression or major depression plus whatever.  Either they were up front with you from the get go - "Before we go any further, I think you should know something about me..." - or they lied about it, or they were lying to themselves about it, or they didn't know, i.e. hadn't yet been diagnosed.  We can go for years thinking it's not us, it's just that life and the universe generally suck so bad it's pretty much unbearable, and we will tend to surround ourselves with people who share this viewpoint.  Being told that we are actually sick and the world is basically neutral is such an intense revelation, it might actually make us sicker (and our behavior more problematic) for a while.  None of the old coping mechanisms for maintaining a good front are effective any more.  It seems to take forever to adjust to all these strange new chemicals fucking up our brains in ways that even the doctors don't understand completely.  We go back and forth between paranoia and trust on every issue, major and minor; we blame everyone else for everything, then blame ourselves for everything, and eventually after a big swim find a middle ground to stand on.

Understand that the person in your life going through this doesn't want your pity, your coddling, your caretaking/codependent behavior, to be rescued, or to not be held to any of the normal standards of relationship one may reasonably expect from anyone without an illness.  What we do want is for you to remember that we're sick.  It's useful information.  That way when we actually accomplish things, you can think to yourself, "Wow, he actually did that."  Not that we want you to hold us to a lower standard than others, as explained above.  When we fail, understand that we don't need to be cut slack any more than anybody else - "What did I expect, after all he IS crazy..." - just remember that, ha ha, yeah, we probably already know we failed and don't need to be reminded.  What we DO need to be reminded is to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back in the ring.  Don't give us some treacly rah-rah routine - this isn't the Jerry Lewis Telethon - we're not a starving child you're supposed to be horrified for on those TV commercials trying to capitalize on your guilt.  We're just people with a particular set of challenges, JUST LIKE YOU.  So don't take care of us, just remember what we're going through, and maybe that knowledge will help you to be prepared for hard-to-manage behaviors, like spending our last dollar on cupcakes for the kid when we should have saved it for the bus.

Love Thy Self

“If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.”

Barbara De Angelis

I have loved someone very close and dear to me for near on half my life. This person is an incredibly intelligent person who also has a pure heart and is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever know. This dear friend is also an incredible musician with natural God given talent and has a photographic memory that can recall details 15 years old as if they happened yesterday. They have completed a Bachelor of Business externally while working 60 plus hours a week and helping to run the family house and raise their child and in her spare time she both trained in Martial Arts and instructed.

Sounds like an incredible person ? I certainly feel and think so !

Not that what I think matters because having said all of that, my friend hates herself ! Why, no one really knows. Yes she had a terrible childhood but her level of self loathing is incredibly profound.

Her despair and self loathing combined with her non existent self value has driven her to self harm over the last 3 years and attempt suicide twice in the last 12 months.

We all love her, we all want to help her and share this beautiful world with her but she is so convinced that she is worthless and irrelevant that any attempts to help her or share love with her is simply rebuffed and stone walled.

How do you convince someone that they are beautiful and a treasure to the world when every cell in their body screams at them otherwise and tells them that the world lies and that they are a bad person and that they don’t deserve to be happy or healthy.

When someone believes with their very existence a belief, even if it is totally baseless and unsupported by facts .. It is true to them !

Night may as well be Day and Black be White.

I am only 42 years old and to date I have personally known 4 people who have committed suicide. All four differed in many ways, age 19 – 50, Social Status ( Only child to comfortable family – Hard working grandfather ), Religion ( Atheist – Devout Christian ), Education ( Uni – Left at 16 ), Nationality ( Dutch, Australian, Scottish ) the only thing to date that any of them have in common is that they were all males. Depression and Mental health Issues know no boundaries.

Mental health issues are incredibly devastating conditions to deal with as it is not only debilitating to the sufferer but also places incredible pressure on the loved ones and carers of the sufferer.

Because of the profound beliefs that the sufferer holds as truths, there is no rationalising discussions with the sufferer for treatment plans or goals because the person doesn’t want the help due to their belief that they are not worthy of the effort or that they deserve to feel better.

The health care system even with its major advances in both medication and psychiatric practices, still offer very little relief from mental health conditions and due to the fact that each and every patient is different the process of trial and error in the treatment can mean years of hit and miss before limited if any relief can be found for the sufferer.

Mean while the sufferers loved ones and primary care providers are left powerless to protect their loved one and in most cases can do nothing but watch ( with guilt of inadequacy ) the sufferer self harm and hope that they will always be near enough to get help when required.

Mental Health issues reach every corner of society, it is non-prejudicial and non-discrimatory. It destroys both the sufferer and those who care and are associated with the sufferer, it destroys both male and female, young and old, rich and poor, black or white.

For the carer there is a profound sense of isolation and hopelessness. I believe on most occasions primary carers do not speak out about what they are enduring. This I believe is for two reason, the first being that they do not want the person they care for to be judged in any way by others who do not and can not understand the full picture and also because on most occasions if a carer does talk to someone they normally get the response of “ I don’t understand why they do it ” on more then one occasion I have pointed out to people that even the sufferer doesn’t understand and but for the grace of God I hope you never understand because to do so would put you in the same place as the sufferer, and that is something I would not wish on my worst enemy.

So if you know a sufferer or a carer, don’t run away ( it’s not contagious ) talk to them, support them but most of all Don’t Judge Them.

~~~~~~~~~~~

You may as well try to hold back the king tide or to shift the seasons as easily try to love someone who hates themselves.

Andrew Swansson

~~~~~~~~~~~

Article also posted on my Blog " The Soap Box Truth "

Thank You for sharing your time with me and reading my post.