Recap: I started getting depressed somewhere between 2006-2008 and hit rock bottom around 2010, with huge amounts of help I managed to claw my way back to semi normalcy and have been climbing and falling in and out of depression (mostly in) ever since.
Anyway, throughout all this I have spent huge amounts of time and effort developing tools to objectively gauge my current mental state, regulate my thoughts to keep myself from heading down a bad path, try to climb out of depression again when I fail and ultimately try to root out the underlying cause for my depression, and the very greatest of these tools have always been the very things I have had to battle in the first place. Every neurotic thought pattern, every unbreakable intrusive thought or damaging mental process has the potential to be your greatest strength. If you are entirely unable to break this negative thought pattern it means it is robust and powerful, and if you can turn it into something you can use, it will be an indomitable tool beyond anything you can make on your own.
A few examples:
1) My sister has chronic self doubt, she never believes she is good enough or will succeed, and she has turned this into a driving force to always try harder, always prepare more to the point where she flattens every challenge in her way, she is easily the best at her job, she far surpassed her classmates at university and even some of her lecturers, and though I am objectively a little smarter than her, my fucking goodness I simply cannot keep up with her drive and determination, fuelled by what originally was a disabling and destructive belief in her own inferiority. It still causes problems for her sometimes, her self doubt is an issue, but she has achieved so much because of it that even she has trouble sometimes dismissing what she can do.
2) I kept finding that whenever I was actually happy for a change I would suddenly become aware of this happiness and in an instant my mind would say "stop pretending" and it was like I has stepped out of the feeling and all the happiness was gone immediately to be replaced by the misery of its loss. I found the root cause of this and now not only have I stopped it happening, I found I can use it to "step out" of sad feelings instead. Its a little hit and miss and takes a moment, but it is just unreal when it happens, a feeling of weight and aching in my chest and I stop and picture it, call it out as fake and just step out of it and the weight and aching fades in seconds. It was doing this again today that prompted me to post this. I was feeling anxious and like I had lost the progress I made this last month and I stopped, and stepped out of it and am now literally laughing, I feel great
The above are some extreme examples, so lets start with an easy one: Procrastination.
If you cant bring yourself to do a task for whatever reason, you know you have to do it, and you know it wont take long, but for some reason you just cant make yourself do it, then do something else instead, procrastinate. For example, you don't want to do the washing up, fine, clean the kitchen instead, by focusing on the task of washing up, cleaning the kitchen feels like avoiding a task rather than doing anything, then you can slowly steer it towards the original task, throw away rubbish> hoover the floor> clean the counters> move the clutter and cutlery over to the sink> clean out the sink... and before you know it, you're doing the washing in a clean kitchen. As long as you feel like you're avoiding the task you can slowly sidle up to it until the next natural progression of what you are ALREADY DOING is the task you were avoiding and you seamlessly continue to do it.
I'm not saying its easy, but if you simply cant break a bad habit or a painful intrusive thought, then just maybe you can turn it to your advantage, because it is so effective when you can.
Anyway, throughout all this I have spent huge amounts of time and effort developing tools to objectively gauge my current mental state, regulate my thoughts to keep myself from heading down a bad path, try to climb out of depression again when I fail and ultimately try to root out the underlying cause for my depression, and the very greatest of these tools have always been the very things I have had to battle in the first place. Every neurotic thought pattern, every unbreakable intrusive thought or damaging mental process has the potential to be your greatest strength. If you are entirely unable to break this negative thought pattern it means it is robust and powerful, and if you can turn it into something you can use, it will be an indomitable tool beyond anything you can make on your own.
A few examples:
1) My sister has chronic self doubt, she never believes she is good enough or will succeed, and she has turned this into a driving force to always try harder, always prepare more to the point where she flattens every challenge in her way, she is easily the best at her job, she far surpassed her classmates at university and even some of her lecturers, and though I am objectively a little smarter than her, my fucking goodness I simply cannot keep up with her drive and determination, fuelled by what originally was a disabling and destructive belief in her own inferiority. It still causes problems for her sometimes, her self doubt is an issue, but she has achieved so much because of it that even she has trouble sometimes dismissing what she can do.
2) I kept finding that whenever I was actually happy for a change I would suddenly become aware of this happiness and in an instant my mind would say "stop pretending" and it was like I has stepped out of the feeling and all the happiness was gone immediately to be replaced by the misery of its loss. I found the root cause of this and now not only have I stopped it happening, I found I can use it to "step out" of sad feelings instead. Its a little hit and miss and takes a moment, but it is just unreal when it happens, a feeling of weight and aching in my chest and I stop and picture it, call it out as fake and just step out of it and the weight and aching fades in seconds. It was doing this again today that prompted me to post this. I was feeling anxious and like I had lost the progress I made this last month and I stopped, and stepped out of it and am now literally laughing, I feel great
The above are some extreme examples, so lets start with an easy one: Procrastination.
If you cant bring yourself to do a task for whatever reason, you know you have to do it, and you know it wont take long, but for some reason you just cant make yourself do it, then do something else instead, procrastinate. For example, you don't want to do the washing up, fine, clean the kitchen instead, by focusing on the task of washing up, cleaning the kitchen feels like avoiding a task rather than doing anything, then you can slowly steer it towards the original task, throw away rubbish> hoover the floor> clean the counters> move the clutter and cutlery over to the sink> clean out the sink... and before you know it, you're doing the washing in a clean kitchen. As long as you feel like you're avoiding the task you can slowly sidle up to it until the next natural progression of what you are ALREADY DOING is the task you were avoiding and you seamlessly continue to do it.
I'm not saying its easy, but if you simply cant break a bad habit or a painful intrusive thought, then just maybe you can turn it to your advantage, because it is so effective when you can.
