How I Gave Myself Depression - three habits that hurt

 

In this post I am being brutally honest about my mental health, so this I your warning to cut and run - though if that's your first reaction maybe you should stay and read! I'll start with a confession thus; sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. In 2014 I went through a rather prolonged period of anxiety and depression. This wasn't the kind of depression where my Gentleman Caller found me foetal on the bedroom floor sobbbing uncontrollably, it was a sneakier kind, a kind that nobody but me could see. I developed some awful habits that made my worse.

The three worst things I did for my mental health in 2014.

1. I never spent any time alone. When I wasn't on WhatsApp, Facebook, iMessages or Skype. I was reading news websites or listening to podcasts - I quite literally never had a silent moment to myself. Yet at the same time I rarely spent spent any physical time with people that I loved and who loved me. If you've spent more than 15 seconds consuming any kind of media in the last ten years you'll know its mostly a fairly depressing place! With a constant soundscape of inane negative prattle in my head it became extremely hard to hear myself think.

2. I went with it. On bad days I relaxed into feeling low because it felt easier than making any sort of effort against it. My mindset was something like "I'm feeling pretty shit today, so I'll treat myself to this." Or "I just can't be bothered with the gym because I feel sad." I exploited the advice 'give yourself a break' to breaking point. This was the most damaging thing I did! It was also the hardest to thing to admit I'd done because it meant admitting that I trained my own brain to accept and subject to feelings of anxiety and inadequacy when really what I should have done was listen to Dylan Thomas when he said...

3. I was a mean girl. A 26 year old mean girl; I focused on my failures however minute, I replayed moments of conflict, I dwelt on periods of pain, I mocked my efforts, undermined my attempts and kindled the flame of insecurity. And I did all this while earnestly cheering on my friends in their successes. I would never have tolerated anyone speaking to them the way I spoke to myself.

Of course there were outside contributing factors, predominantely my chronic unemployment which at times felt terminal, but the personal habits that I adopted during this period went a long way toward making a bad patch a bad field! Streched that metaphore?! Don't care!

This post has been really hard to write, because despite our increasing awareness and understandingly our mental health, it still makes for awkward 'touchy-feely' conversation! I look forward to the day when mental health is treated like bodily health. The good news is that seeing as I took myself there, I could take myself away; and one day, I resolved to do just that! Tomorrow I'll be talking about how!

 

Posted with Blogsy