Note: this is not advice from a therapist, these are all my own opinions, if it helps I'm going to study psychology next year but before I start the degree, this is what I learned by inferring, life experience, using the internet and a bit from my readings. Please seek professional help if you are feeling depressed, and reach out a helpline (plenty of them available, just search helpline [your country]) if you require immediate help!!
Hi there!! I am writing this blog post as a reference to both others and to myself, because it seems so when the skies turn grey, I am always convinced that the clouds just won't fly away, and that's what it feels like so it's okay. I am fighting with my own thoughts about causing harm, but in the end, even as I'm writing this, it seems like these temporary struggles I'm going through will have lifelong impacts, which is hard to believe but probably isn't true. So I thought writing this post would be both therapeutic and helpful to both my reader and eventually myself again. Before I even start mentioning how I like to cope with these situations myself, I want to say that if you're feeling bad and you're looking for a way to get over the feeling, just completely dismiss it and become happy instead of sad, unfortunately it isn't healthy to do so, you will be only creating a toxic positive environment for yourself, in which you pressure yourself to suddenly become happy. What instead we should focus on is to ride out the feelings, the highs and the lows. Because they are like the wheel of life, what comes down must go up, so like all feelings, your sadness is also temporary, though in large scale it may seem like your most days are bad days, you will eventually enter a period of your life where that turns around. Now I'd like to slowly introduce you to some healthy coping mechanisms I have when I have to deal with feelings of depression. Keep in mind that I am writing this from the perspective of a depressed teenage girl who lives in a house where tension is constantly at high levels, these are what worked for me and whatever will work for you may different, I don't experience life as you are and so do you not experience it as I do, yet I believe you can still try and see what fits, take what helps you from this post. With my disclaimers out of the way, I can begin with my very first step for what is going on;
Identify your feelings
Identifying what you are feeling and what you may be experiencing at first will give you a perspective and possibly line out what needs you have. You may be benefiting from looking at an emotions chart, like the one above, which is from one of my favorite youtubers pixielocks, who brings me great comfort with her kawaii aesthetic videos and I have been watching her since I was 13 :) I went a bit off topic but, this is a great way to understand that what you're going through is an emotion, and emotions have properties, like going away or shifting or making you do things you normally wouldn't if you are under the influence of. Understanding that makes me feel more human, I'm a person who has emotions and go through them and that is nothing new, like many many many people have also felt these similar emotions and they have also felt better or worse but it changed and I think mine will also go away with time. So identifying what you are experiencing is very important. Maybe you just need to sleep a little, give yourself a break. Maybe you realize that you have been having a strange relationship with food or you are experiencing a bad self image day. This is crucial information and a great underwhelming first step to begin healing and soothing yourself. There's also the downside to this activity, you may feel confused about how you feel, heck how did even humans decide that a particular emotion is definitely sadness if everyone experiences things differently? Well, even if you feel that way, it's alright, if you feel completely numb and emotionless, that's also okay. That is also a human emotion, in fact numbness and emotionless is often times a coping mechanism our bodies use when we don't know how to react, it's just our attempt at our brain to make sense of the world and protect ourselves, even if it ends up seemly interrupting our day to day lives. Just knowing that you are experiencing an emotion can still help, even without trying to interfering. Our next step after identifying the emotion will be;
Understand what you are experiencing are the effects of what you are feeling
Our perception is effected greatly by our emotions. Here's a little information I can tell you, if you are having a criticizing voice in your head, it's most likely a culmination of all the painful things you've heard from others and experiences that made you feel embarrassed, guilty or small and now it's simply a small (but very annoying) voice in your head that repeats it because you are believing what others have told you to be true. I used to deal with this voice in my head for years going on and on forever 24/7, what I did to combat it was to simply change the information I was feeding my brain from negative things I heard from others to affirmations I would say to myself. When you are feeling depressed, you will most likely not believe the nice compliments people give you, or whenever someone tells you "it's going to be okay!" you might just roll eyes and feel like no one understands you, ironically that is also a universal human experience. This is mostly a symptom of the painful emotions you are feeling, in a strange way I yet don't understand your brain is still wired to help you out and make you survive in the world, one of such tactics is to imitate and follow orders, so if you live in a negative environment, you will feel negative and hear negative things which makes you think of yourself lowly. I understand that you may not be in such position to change your environment but your mental space can always be exposed to nice things thanks to the internet.
Now, I would like to give you the news that.. drumroll please... if somebody tells you something nice you don't have to believe in it to have it effect you in a positive way!!! you really don't have to believe in the affirmations you are listening to/telling yourself/ heard from others, if you're just beginning to hear these, not yet. Just acknowledge that, as you hear negative things in your life, you will also hear the positive. I believe in you and I love you and you deserve to exist, everyone does and no matter who you are, nothing takes your right to exist in this world just like anyone else. It doesn't matter if you're reading this not even knowing who I am, just know that people out there strangers or not, will be there to support you and let my message to you be one step towards getting to believe in the nice things you are hearing. Putting around posters with positive text on them and just looking at them, listening to affirmations as you feel asleep/just wake up and generally surrounding yourself with positive energy is one step closer to actually believing in that. For me, this process took about a year, but I was as far down as to think that "I am the lowest human being to exist"(and genuinely believe it from my heart) to "I deserve to exist and I deserve to take space" which was a huge shift in my perspective, from self hate to self love, there is a long road and it is one of the things that you can take at your pace. Understanding that you are experiencing your perception affected by your emotions can broaden your horizons and help you understand yourself better. Put yourself in others shoes, perhaps think of a friend, she is feeling down and being pesimistic because of it, not believing in herself. Wouldn't you get her to feel better first and ask her about her ideas again? So why don't you do the same thing to yourself? You're also equally as human.
Take one step at a time (and adjust how small the step is to your needs!)
My favorite thing in life is that, you can take it in baby steps. Really. You can just open your window one day and that will make you feel better and then the next day you also decide to get out of bed an hour early. Taking small steps and the ability to decide how small of a step that is gives me comfort and a sense of power. If you are feeling that you are at the rock bottom, also know that anything you do for yourself is a net positive and every single goddamn time, it will be. You cook for yourself? Amazing. You washed your face? Excellent. Read 3 pages of a book? I'm so proud of you!!! I love that so so much. I cannot emphasize the importance of taking baby steps in what you do can do for you if you're feeling depressed. I recommend looking on pinterest for some self-care activities and picking one or two of them as a challenge. You may feel that doing anything at this point in your life feels useless and it won't matter but you should also know that whenever you do the smallest things for yourself and find the enjoyment of that, you will eventually get your brain to take more pleasure in daily activities, rather than only that slightly numbing - but even more wounding - feeling of filling your brain with stimulus by doomscrolling.
I have the feeling that this is that part of the text that should be the main point I'm trying to make. Again I cannot emphasize how taking baby steps, teeny tiny steps if you will, is crucial to mental health! like please don't feel pressured to take on the world and have a "glow up in a week". I hate how the internet sort of pushes this idea of getting your life sorted out in a miniscule amount of time by purchasing items that are most likely out of your budget and do not in anyway help you to "get your life together" like girl, how is an expensive bottle of shampoo supposed to help you get over all the painful things you've heard in your life lmao? I say that but I must also mention that buying things that help you do self-care can have a positive impact on your mental health. If buying an expensive bottle of shampoo helps you feel better then off you go girl! but please do not set it up as a standard of what can be a healing experience? Anyhow, this is very off topic so to connect the dots. Taking care of yourself can be an antidote of depression, which is a thing that makes you feel very unmotived and causes you to not take care of yourself and it is kind of ironic that those cancel each other out. So to get out of this feeling, you may find it easier to break down your tasks, make them small little baby steps and then execute your plan to achieve small goals. That can also be done through small challenges you set for yourself - but be careful that these do not end up as expectations that overwhelm you - and it can be done through some tiny things you do to spoil yourself. The internet and the world is obsessed with the idea of getting everything together in a short amount of time, which in most of the time not even a possible or great idea to force upon yourself if you are not the in the condition to take on such challenges.
Looking after yourself like you would a kid
This is all about finding out what is the most comfortable way to get something done in order to have it completed, like guiding yourself as if you were guiding a child. When brushing your hair, brushing it like you are brushing the hair of a child and be gentle. The idea here is that you would need to find ways to treat yourself in a good manner, as opposed to how you would beat yourself up when you're depressed. I'm not trying to say that you should only treat yourself like you would a child, not take yourself seriously or not allow yourself the freedoms you have as an adult, but rather to shift your perspective from treating yourself as someone who deserves whatever you have heard in the past to someone who maybe deserves the basic unrequited love and care a child does. This can also mean that you can maybe try some meditations where you treat your inner child, but I will not be getting specific to any trauma, just the ugly things depression directly causes. Trying to find the comfort in life is really important, this teaches us self-compassion, you will realize that with time when you thought "oh I really hate myself" you will be becoming more soft and less harsh to yourself and turn your head around to think "I actually am just a person lol", while I do not guarantee that you will not be using the exact words but I guarantee 100% that life is going to get easier and you will find yourself thinking and observing life from a different perspective than the one that you would find yourself feeling trapped in. Treating yourself with compassion can be categorized as doing self care but I believe it extends beyond the activities we consider as self care. I consider it to be something that you implement to your life slowly, even if you feel like you hate yourself, it doesn't hurt you to not hurt yourself. Even if you are drowning in guilt. Take a moment, breathe in. Brush your 5 day old hair tangle with patience and care you would have looking upon a small child. You are worth it. You deserve to live in decent comfort and have a life just like anyone else. Do everything slowly, compassionately and mindfully. Not only will this make you feel physically better, it will also slowly make you understand that taking a moment to adjust to yourself is the gateway to living your life as your first priority. You may not be able to say no to extra work a person puts on you but you are able to always lower the volume of the song you really love but actually find it bothersome to always keep the volume up high. Even if you do not agree with the idea that you deserve decent things, just act like so. I promise you will eventually find that hope and love in you bloom like a flower.
This too shall pass
I want to slowly wrap this up by creating this one paragraph where I will attempt to explain several things under the idea of the changing emotions. Like I mentioned earlier, mindfulness is a powerful tool that can help you slow down a moment and adjust anything to your needs at the moment. So, as your feelings are changing in a constant state it's important to know that when you are even at your lowest, you can always return to a mindspace you have for yourself as you meditate or breathe deeply in a calm fashion. I want to state that in this case, meditation, especially the guided ones that encourage self compassion are very non overwhelming pieces of media you can use to feel better about yourself. It's free and it requires nothing except a quiet space (or a pair of headphones of course). Another thing I can recommend is spirituality. This doesn't have to be religious but it also absolutely can be. Praying can help alleviate anxiety and give you a sense of meaning and guidance in life which is always a plus. To those who don't believe in a religion, there is still the option to be spiritual, maybe you can be interested in rituals of neo-paganists, also known as wiccans. These spiritual activities are also great ways to connect with mother nature and feel connected to the universe. I personally like to also use the introspective aspect of tarot cards to take lessons and understand situations I'm going through (rather than simply as a tool of seeing the future). One of the lessons of the card wheel of fortune is that whatever comes up must come down. Know that this too shall pass.
Once you feel better, for your long term mental health
I recommend reading books and listening to music! Yes, those very basic things are actually a great source of cultivating empathy and you get to learn a lot more by reading/listening to music. Reading books actually get your empathise with the characters which is always a plus, this can both manifest as an empathy towards understanding others emotions as well as your own emotions, which is a key to self-love! Same goes for music, I recommend especially jazz it's a very creative and free medium of art and it's unexpected which always keeps you guessing and it's still very danceable! (For a great chunk of it at least).
anyhow, I've been writing this blog post for the past 3 hours or so and it's literally 2 am and it's best if I get some sleep, I really hope you enjoyed this 3 thousand word insanity of a post. Take care and I love you :0
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