Is This Normal?

Is it normal to wake up in the morning and wish you could just stay in bed? Is it normal to wake up feeling miserable that you have woken up and are still breathing? Is wanting to lock yourself away from the world, not answer your phone or even ring work to say you are sick even close to normal?

This is depression, and many of us have suffered or are suffering from this unbearable emotional state that can paralyse you to the point of not even wanting to shower, eat and prepare yourself for the most basic of chores.

As many as 2 out of 100 young children and 8 out of 100 teens may have serious depression.

Globally, an estimated 300 million people of all ages suffer from depression.*

Self Compassion

Try not to be too hard on yourself, according to Dr Google, this horrible infliction is one of the fastest-growing mental health problems alongside narcissism.

You need to give yourself a serious dose of self-compassion, and for this to be effective we need to understand that it is to make ourselves feel better when we are feeling so bad. We need to accept the reality that we are feeling pain and discomfort at that given time. Denying the emotion will only draw out the underlying concerns and at best keep it temporarily locked away, suppressed deep within your psyche. It is often at this juncture that we reach for the bottle, drugs, prescription or other, or some other form of crutch that is most probably detrimental to our recovery and health in general.

Self-compassion does not mean we are sugar coating our negative emotions, feelings, state of mind or bad intentions. Feeling like you want to leave the family because you can no longer cope with the three screaming kids and a husband that hates his job, is not a punishable offence by hanging. Wishing you were dog-free, so you did not have to walk it, or better still younger, single, husband, mortgage-free for a month does not mean you should beat yourself up. Giving yourself a hard time making your headspace feel even worse for having these sparse moments of wishful thinking, followed by guilt, will not help the situation one iota.

Your brain might be telling you that you are awful, horrible, dreadful or worse. It may well convince you that life is not going to get better. Just because you are having these toxic thoughts does not make it true. Thoughts can be inaccurate, negative, they can catastrophize and be wrong, leaving you feeling hopeless. Before you realize what is happening, these dysfunctional and often debilitating moments of monkey mind madness are suggesting there is no point in going on, you are going round in circles. Stop the world, I want to get off!

So when we need self-compassion, give yourself just that. Be kind to yourself, whilst remembering you are human, and as a human you make mistakes, you have shitty feelings, with shitty thoughts, which can go on for shitty months. You are not infallible, your family think you are, but you know you are not. You are entitled to these moments of madness, and you are entitled to have them without feeling that overwhelming rush of a negative and quite frankly unnecessary bout of regret, guilt an even worse sense of failure. Trying to deny these moments of madness, as regretful as they can be, only leads you to the stage of the manipulative strategy. Where you tell yourself off, brush yourself down, have a swig of wine or your preferred tipel, and soldier on denying yourself any of the above until the next time. Remember the brain can be sadistic, unkind, selfish engraving all kinds of false egos, selves and more on you.

My suggestion is that you feel the emotions, own those shitty thoughts and wishes, have a cry, be kind to yourself and tell yourself it is alright to feel like this, that you deserve this moment, day or week of madness. Safely and legally do say, act, and think however you need to for you to be able to get through the blackness. That way you hopefully avoid the faze of heavy drinking, manic depression, GP appointments, therapy, insomnia and worse. Just let it flow, my friends, feel the fear and do it anyway.

Practice self-compassion — Good luck! and thanks for reading my page www.sybellaloram.com