I haven't written in my little corner of the internet where I pretend I'm a writer or where I enjoy trying to make sense of the things that I go through for quite some time now. And I have to say, that tittle that made me chuckle as I was writing it and then decided to add the . . . and the question mark has a lot to do with that.
For some time, in this little corner of mine (Welcome, by the way. It's my corner but I make it public, so thank you for coming over) I had been writing about my battle with depression and PTSD after I profusely wrote about my cancer journey. It fills my heart with joy when many of you flood my posts on cancer-recovery with likes and comments. But my depression posts don't get much traction. I thought it had to do with the fact that they were never a "recovery" post like my cancer post were. I was getting a little tired of hearing myself talk about my battle with depression and anxiety, and I gathered that you too were tired of the same old same old. So, I said to myself I would come back to my corner when I had finally figured it out, and I could share with you all of the steps I took to recover and tell you how I was now thriving. (I chuckled again... mainly cringing remembering having heard that word uttered in the first minute of the new Persuasion movie.)
So, I'm sad to inform you I have no such posts in my near future. Sometimes I even wonder if I'll have to deal with depression and anxiety for the rest of my life. And then it hit me that millions of people around the world are and will walk that road I'm in too. Isn't that our first comforting thought? "Someone else is also going through this." Is it comforting though? I never venture to be an expert on anything, but I would answer "yes." And one of the reasons it's comforting is because a logical conclusion we hope is: "Someone figured it out. Someone got better. Someone has valid, useful advice." And even if all that fails, we can at least conclude "Someone understands." And that last one is really comforting. Sometimes I think suffering anxiety and depression would be better defined as being neurodivergent, and my neurotypical husband can simply not understand what goes inside my atypical brain.
Most sufferers of depression and anxiety would agree that our view of reality is very askew; and in my case, my most awry perception is myself. I was talking with my mentor Diane last week and she said these words to me: "So you hear people around you say good things about you and about what you are doing and who you are, but you choose to believe the complete opposite? You can hear God say that you are loved, important, cared for, and you deliberately CHOOSE to believe it's a lie? And if anyone comes and tells you you are worthless and trash THAT you would believe is true?" And without one hesitation I said: "Yes! I believe I'm worthless."
It pains me to write this and tell you this. Most of the people who ever stumble on my little corner are people who were there for me during my cancer journey. People that prayed and donated and made fund raisers and made home and hospital visits. You did so much to save my life even with your messages and your comments and your encouragement and support. And here I am telling you that since that battle began my little brain has been telling me over and over: "The world would be better off if you had died" and that sometimes I have chosen to believe that is true.
Just this Sunday the youth pastor came over and said to me "You are doing a great job with the girls." "Which girls?" I asked. "The girls in the youth band. I can see the difference in them. They are more confident. They are experimenting more. Even the way they stand in the stage. Thank you." I had been giving harmony lessons to the youth band singers all year every Saturday morning. He didn't know that I was feeling bad because last Saturday the sound guy had gotten mad at me for using the church's piano without informing him, and another friend told me I might have gotten the band leader in trouble because I had not informed the sound guy. It made me feel so terribly bad that I was thinking of telling the band leader I was no longer going to do the singing lessons. "You see?" said my brain. "You tried to help, but you only got someone else in trouble for meddling in what no one ask you to meddle in. And those girls probably don't even want to attend your lessons and are not learning anything useful." I have to make a pause here because I just wrote "my brain said" and the Spirit just made me realize I should have written " and the Devil told you." I don't think the youth leader knows how much his words resonated in my mind to debunk the lie I was believing. Again, choosing to believe only what's worst, only what's bad, even after some parents had already come to tell me how happy they were seeing their daughters improve and how happy their kids said they were in their singing lessons.
In my pursuit of finding comfort in knowing other people feels this way, I read a few articles when I googled "How to stop feeling bad about yourself." They're quite some good articles in the web on that. Here is the main gist of those articles:
Why they happen:
1. Those feelings stemmed from "not feeling good as a child" and from "believing you must be perfect."
2. Those feelings surface when you compare yourself to others.
What you can do:
1. Appreciate what you have. In other words, practice gratitude. Those who've been here from the very beginning know how employing this one plentifully saved my life during my Tigo days.
2. Understand that life is not a fair game. This one is particularly insightful. And it also connects to the comparing yourself to others. "I should be married by now.""I should have a house of my own by now." "I should have a good job by now.""I should have kids by now.""I should have matured and gotten over my depression by now." Why? Because others have! But were you in the same circumstance, with the same opportunities, the same upbringing, the same resources, the same connections????
3. Things aren't always what they seem. This one connects to what my Pastor Steve shared this Sunday in church. I confessed to him that I was struggling a little this Sunday, and I chose not to listen to the message even though I was serving in the worship team. I went home and I felt the Spirit whispering in my ear that I needed to hear the message. I finally caved in the afternoon and listened to the message through our YouTube channel Crossroads Bible Church Panama. The message was titled "When God rains on your parade." Talk about serendipity! It was the reason I didn't want to listen to the message in the first place. I felt God was raining on my parade. Basically, God knows why He closes doors and makes us wait. I recommend reading God in the MEANtime by my very own Diane Batchelor on Amazon for more on that subject. You'll love it!
4. If you must compare, compare to yourself. Acknowledge your own progress and how far you've come. Careful with this one. If you don't practice self-compassion, it will be easy to even beat yourself more if you compare yourself to yourself. You are still alive and that counts if you need a starting point. That is truly a feat with us depression sufferers, so take it as a victory that you are still here and you are still trying and haven't given up on life.
5. Accept what you can change and what you can´t. This one has been the hardest one after cancer, when I thought I would one day go back to normal. I guess this is what veterans feel. They thought they'd go back from the war to their homes to their normal. Normal never comes back. Normal body, normal sleeping, normal thinking, normal relaxing, normal relating... it's never again what it use to, and we spend years searching that "normal" before accepting that change is the new normal, even if we wouldn't choose it.
So, if there are articles out there about the same subject, why write this post?
Well, because my main audience is myself. I write to make sense. I write to understand. I write to remember. I'm pretty sure I've said something of a similar sentiment here in my blog, but I learned a new step that I will write before this final most important one that you can probably guess but need to hear it anyway.
6. You don't get to keep what you've learned in the past without actively practicing it today. Learned how to cartwheel when a teenager? Haven't done it in years? Try it to and see how well your body responds to you attempting to cartwheel in your adulthood. Hopefully you did not hurt yourself. This is the same with our emotional and spiritual gains. Learned how to trust God in the unknown? Great. Think you'll do it again in the next storm? Not necessarily unless you had actively trusted God with the little things or with everyday communion with Him building that trust. Learned how to be kinder to yourself? Won't keep doing it unless you practice that inner kindness when you mess up, when you fail, when you didn't do what was expected of you, when you didn't perform like you thought you would. Messed up lunch? Did you practice giving yourself props for attempting to make lunch? Depressed and feeling like staying in bed? Did you practice saying "good job" for getting up to take a shower? Did you tell yourself today that you are valued, loved, and important? Can't believe that or say that? Next step will help.
7. Tell yourself what God says about you.
Do you know what He says about you? Do you know He says your life is worth the life and blood of His one and only Son? Do you know He says that if you got lost He would leave the 99 sheeps just to go find you? That if you have been far and away from Him, when He sees you in the path walking back to Him He runs to throw a party and is waiting to greet you at the door with a kiss and a hug? Do you know that there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more because His love for you right now is so infinite there is no definition for more?
My sweet Diane has had me repeating this children's song when I start believing lies that contradict what God says about me:
"I am covered over with the robe of righteousness that Jesus gives to me, He gives to me.
I am covered over with the precios blood of Jesus, and He live in me, He lives in me.
What a joy it is to know my Heavenly Father loves me so He gives to me my Jesus
When He looks at me He sees not what I used to be but He sees Jesus! "
Anyways, This post was a complete rambling disorder. I'm sorry if it makes no sense. I'm trying to understand my brain. Why does it behave like that? Depression is a fog. Anxiety is a wild ride. And your brain short circuits. We have to find steps to take to cope. Steps to take in the hard times. Coping mechanisms when our brain is hurting or making no sense. Or maybe have the right words when the Devil is spewing lies, and he knows we are in a vulnerable spot. We can call out His truth like Jesus did in the desert.
