Working with my emotions: Depression

Just doing the next right thing

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together again and they fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” - Pema Chodron

---

I'm experiencing a depressive episode.

I haven't been depressed for a few years. Prior to that, pretty much every year of my life that I remember, I had multiple, severe, sustained episodes that qualified for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

I usually don't write from the midst of my pain - at least not publicly. I wait until I can get it all tidied up and metabolized, so I can offer hope and inspiration when I tell the story of how I dealt with it.

Because I don't want to give solidity to this state, I'm trying some things I didn't do in the past. One is to talk about what's going on openly, while it's happening.

Another is to make a list of the things that I know help me come back into balance. Something that's changed since therapy is understanding that it often only takes simple adjustments to create the environment for a shift in my feelings, when I respond early on to their presence.

It’s really hard to adjust to drastic shifts in your abilities when you know what you’re capable of and when you live in a world that demands so much of you to keep your head above water. But right now, I just have to do the next right thing. The rest will take care of itself. - Olivia Pennelle

Reading Olivia Pennelle’s article this morning, I was reminded of Pema's quote above and inspired by Olivia's list of her own next right things. So I decided to make my own. My next right things are:

• 8 hours sleep a night

• 3 meals daily

• 6 cups of water daily

• Listen to Pema Chodron daily

• Shower every day

• Sunshine 10 minutes every other day

• Art 3x per week

• Video chat with my wife 2x per week

• Therapy weekly

• Limit screentime to 2 hours on weekdays / 4 hours on weekend days

That last one is going to be the hard one. But I did go and shut off all the news notifications on my phone, and I'm going to have to mute the many screaming headlines that come to my email daily. The world feels like a lot right now, and it's not helping anyone for me to be taking that in right now.

---

So I've listened to Pema this morning, and I wanted to share a few notes that I took from her audiobook, When Pain Is The Doorway:

We have a propensity to suffer.
When outer circumstances come together in just the right way, it triggers the propensity.
When you strengthen the propensity, it takes less and less in the outer circumstances to trigger it.
You can practice weakening it:
1. Acknowledge that you are triggered
2. Remember that the propensity has no solidity, it is dynamic, in flux - all is changing continuously
3. Give the felt sense of the experience of the propensity your full attention 
4. Stay with the rawness of the experience until you drop beneath the story line - there may be other feelings beneath that to attend to in the same way
It's not about aggression toward the propensities. The idea is not to reject them or try to get rid of them. It's about knowing them fully, so you see that they break up and are not so solid after all.

---

Here's a drawing in pen and marker I made last night while sitting on my porch. Drawing lines and coloring helps, when I am blocked from writing or painting.

Thank you for reading. I hope you are feeling well and taking good care of yourself. ❤️