If it feels like I haven’t been around much lately, it’s because I haven’t. After spilling my guts on FB live about having situational depression and all of my big plans to solve it, I spent the last week sitting on my couch under the full weight of the many symptoms of that depression. BUT! I’m here now. And I have some learnings I’d like to share with you, my happy tribe.
- Depression can’t be solved all at once. The healing starts by tackling one small goal every day. Small as in taking your dog for a walk or running that errand. That’s where I got tripped up, because I wanted to implement ALL of my self-care solutions ALL at once. Small steps lead to big steps. It’s like strength training at the gym. You’re rebuilding a muscle.
- As soon as I started treating my depression like a sickness, I completely altered my perception of it. And by altering my perception, I’ve been able to come at it from a whole new angle. When I get the flu, I take a sick day. I lay on the couch in my sweat pants eating whatever I can keep down whenever I have an appetite. I watch TV and let my body rest until it heals itself. Once I put that mentality toward healing my depression, it removed a lot of the guilt I was feeling for not being more active about my recovery. I needed to let myself rest so I could muster up the strength to take action.
- The best, most potent medicine I’ve found so far for feeling better is socializing. And trust me, its the last thing you want to do. But the more I push myself to make plans with my friends and hang out and talk and be social, the happier I begin to feel. The nature of situational depression is that your situation needs to resolve. If you take the steps to change your situation or your environment, you can start feeling better faster. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Dates with friends, RSVPing to holiday parties, working from coffee shops instead of alone at home. Putting myself out there.
Every day, I feel more in front of this damn thing. Its definitely still there, but I’m confident that as long as I remain patient about my recovery that I will be able to resolve these symptoms and start feeling more like myself again. Even better than that! I’ll be keeping you all updated as I learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Some things I’ll be looking into and possibly trying are transcendental meditation, staying off social media, building an exercise routine and detoxing my diet. So stay tuned for that!