DEPRESSION - AND OLD HABITS

I am quite depressed this evening and the biggest surprise is that the day did not start with such an air of melancholy.

My therapy session (after a two week absence) unleashed a great deal of anger that I was holding in but quite clearly was aware of during the absence. I feel out of sync, uncooperative with nature, and totally frustrated with my chosen lot. I am questioning my professional life, my interests, passions, and I am sorely remembering all the depressions and self-defeating monologues of the past (and sometimes present). I didn’t feel at all like eating dinner this evening. I wanted so badly to skip it and stay without putting any food in my stomach. I had to fight very hard to eat something (nutritious) knowing full well that I needed to put in some food so that I may better combat my depressed mood. Experience has taught me that depression takes a stronger grip when a stomach is empty and a constitution is weak. I don’t want to go there again, but it is so difficult to abandon the “friendly” habits of the past. I ended up eating a mixed vegetable salad with tuna fish but it left me yearning for something more. I ate some of my favorite yogurt hoping it would put things right, but that too did not hit the spot. The empty feeling continues to pervade my entire being. It feels as if it’s seeped through my pours and permeated my apartment. Although a feeling, the “emptiness” manifests as if whole and personified. I feel its presence in each room I move through, and it accompanies me through each activity I foolishly try to engage in. I am frightened that this dark feeling will bring me even lower into the abyss that I have known so well in the past. I am desperately trying to remain in control and not have it drag me down further. This too becomes a battle of wills between an “old habit” and a thought process that is more hopeful and functional. I pray the latter wins. My therapist has reminded me that I have gone through this before and I have recently been quite formidable in remaining even spirited even in difficult moments.

Amidst all of this I am thinking of my exercise session tomorrow. I need to be vigilant in not over doing it on the cardio machines. It is so easy to lose myself in the consistency of the machine’s pulse. Each stair climbed or mile completed feels as if I am unburdening the heaviness inside my chest. It livens the deadening that the emptiness envelopes around me and I am able to acknowledge the fast beating of my heart as a sign that I am still present and working instead of just habitually reacting. However, I am also quite painfully aware that the exercise too is a habitual reaction to the depressed feelings. That is why I must be cautious in not behaving as I normally do. I don’t want to over tax my body to the point of exhaustion. There have been times in the past when I ran so much that I could not run again the next day; leaving me crippled physically and emotionally.


Stay well,

MBI