One More Step
Sep. 21st, 2011 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
For those who have suffered, tolerance is not a political position of even a principle. For those of us who have suffered, who have hauled ourselves into the sun, anything exhausted beside us is family.
I struggle with depression... and I'd like to remind people at this point in the 'proceedings' that depression is an illness, it's not just about 'feeling blue' or 'being down.' It is an illness, a complicated illness born of many things and experiences.
Mine first began during my struggle with infertility... I know that now, I didn't at the time. It was exacerbated by the stresses and pressures of everyday life, but that was at the root of it. The question of 'what kind of woman am I if I can't even do the most fundamentally female thing and bear young?
So I sank into depression, was really quite ill... took anti-depressants for a time, but stopped because I didn't like the out of control way they made me feel, and I was out of work with it for a long time. I mention this because one of my greatest 'destressing' pastimes, one of the things I enjoy that has become a passion for me, came out of that time –by a rather roundabout route which I will discuss some other time than here.
After that first, most serious bout of depression I have suffered a couple of 'relapses' and still struggle off and on with it. I know the warning signs, and know some methods for getting through the rough patches, thanks to the doctor I saw the most recent time I buckled under it all... who suggested CBT as a means to help.
I'm not cured, nope... but I'm a survivor. I survive through being positive, and sometimes that's hard when people around me aren't always, but I stick to it as much as I can... and my 'family' is many and varied... those who lie exhausted beside me. One more step... we'll get there.
Maybe that's why I want to touch people
so often-it's only another way of talking.
--Georgia O'Keeffe
For those who have suffered, tolerance is not a political position of even a principle. For those of us who have suffered, who have hauled ourselves into the sun, anything exhausted beside us is family.
I struggle with depression... and I'd like to remind people at this point in the 'proceedings' that depression is an illness, it's not just about 'feeling blue' or 'being down.' It is an illness, a complicated illness born of many things and experiences.
Mine first began during my struggle with infertility... I know that now, I didn't at the time. It was exacerbated by the stresses and pressures of everyday life, but that was at the root of it. The question of 'what kind of woman am I if I can't even do the most fundamentally female thing and bear young?
So I sank into depression, was really quite ill... took anti-depressants for a time, but stopped because I didn't like the out of control way they made me feel, and I was out of work with it for a long time. I mention this because one of my greatest 'destressing' pastimes, one of the things I enjoy that has become a passion for me, came out of that time –by a rather roundabout route which I will discuss some other time than here.
After that first, most serious bout of depression I have suffered a couple of 'relapses' and still struggle off and on with it. I know the warning signs, and know some methods for getting through the rough patches, thanks to the doctor I saw the most recent time I buckled under it all... who suggested CBT as a means to help.
I'm not cured, nope... but I'm a survivor. I survive through being positive, and sometimes that's hard when people around me aren't always, but I stick to it as much as I can... and my 'family' is many and varied... those who lie exhausted beside me. One more step... we'll get there.
