Mantra during Depression: This is Enough
Today it’s a struggle to stay vertical. To keep my eyes open. I’m gonna hit the showers here in a few minutes and I know it is going to feel good, but until about 10 minutes ago, I didn’t know if that shower was going to happen today.
Too much work to do all that standing and washing at the same time. Especially the hair-washing part, because my arms feel like they’re made of cast iron.
This is the kind of depression that I don’t sink to all that often, thankfully. The kind where talking is way too much work. Chewing is too taxing, and I even get dehydrated because lifting a glass and drinking is difficult. I’ve never really related to the eating binges or lack of appetite associated with depression. My appetite usually remains the same. However, hunger often can’t overcome the leaden quality of my limbs to get food to my mouth.
I voted this morning by mail, and typed and emailed a letter, so that’s pretty baller if you ask me. But I was back in bed two and a half hours after escaping it, simply because it was the only option. Sometimes I don’t make it this long, and sometimes I haven’t “accomplished” this much before I succumb to the intense forces of gravity.
It’s hard to stop the voices that say I’m a loser when I have days — or heaven forbid, weeks — like this. Decades of getting to know depression, though, along with lots of study of spiritual traditions and self-helpery, find some answers far easier to access than they used to be:
This is enough.
Accept reality: it is happening, so to deny that it’s happening is utter insanity.
Embrace the emotions as a friend, even if they are “negative.”
Allow thoughts to come and go, without getting attached.
So I do what I can, and I say This is Enough. I vote. Then rest. Then type. Then rest.
I see the thought “you are a loser” come, and I let it go pretty quickly, rather than nurturing it and adding supporting evidence as I used to. The idea “nothing you do matters and you’ll never get anywhere” creeps in, lurking, trying to hang out in the corners of my mind. I find it and hold its hand and walk it to the door.
I lay down. I rest. I get up. I shower. I rest. This is enough.
This is the mind I was given. When you have a mind like this, sometimes you nudge it to find the edges of your sanity reserves that day and whether you can squeeze more life out of it. And some days you know nudging might ruin you. And you rest.
And it is enough. It has to be. It’s all there is.
Some resources that I’ve used through the years to keep me engaged in my relationship with depression (in a good way!):
Paperblanks Journals for wrangling out those mangy thoughts and seeing them for all their deluded glory.
There is Nothing Wrong with You by Cheri Huber
The Depression Book by Cheri Huber
The Chemistry of Joy Workbook: Overcoming Depression Using the Best of Brain Science, Nutrition, and the Psychology of Mindfulness by Henry Emmons, MD
