One of the things I truly know about myself and the way that
my depression has impacted my life is that I find change difficult. I think most human beings do. Taking a new path is frightening. It is also sometimes very necessary. For me, that has recently been the case. I have worked on a business. For many reasons, it has not been a business
that was sustainable for me. I have done
post-mortems on this. I am not sure whether
to blame the economy, my skill as a business woman, or just life/chance in general. But it really doesn’t matter. The result is the important part. And it resulted in serious instability in my
life. This doesn’t help one with
depression.
So, with the encouragement of a daughter that truly loves
me, I have charted a new course. I
recently moved to Nashville. I have
family support here. I have been told
that the job market is more stable in Nashville. And I missed my daughter. Very much.
It is a good decision. But having
acted on it, finally…I am finding myself still needing to rely on faith to move
forward. It is simply not easy to make
changes. And if there is one thing I
know about myself, making changes usually causes me to panic. So, I am committing myself to doing this in a
healthy way. One step at a time.
I am going to nurture Judy.
I am going to reassure her when she panics. I am going to allow her the luxury of making
mistakes without put-downs or self-doubt.
I am going to congratulate Judy for every effort she makes to solve
problems. I am going to encourage her to
work on making changes every day and celebrate every bit of progress that she
makes. In short, I am going to be my own
friend and nurture myself. If I am not
there for myself, how can I expect other people to be there for me?
Can you relate to any of this? I am sure you can. With or without a diagnosis of mental
illness, we all have periods of self-doubt.
And when we fail, we are likely to be our own worst critics. I think this is a human tendency. In me,
it has almost become an art form. Part
of my pattern is the thread of self-criticism that almost results in
self-hatred. I get feedback on it all
the time. A man I truly love (and who
loves me) is mystified by the fact that I am always so negative about
myself. And he gets very annoyed at me
when he hears me doing it. I work on
changing it all the time. Sometimes I am
more successful than at other times. But
it is something that I will probably be working on till the day I die. Work on it I will. Because if I don’t, the depression comes into
my life full force. Learning how to
behave differently in this area is a matter of life or death for me. So, with the help of loved ones…I will
continue to practice new skills.
If this is something you can relate to, I encourage you to
learn new patterns of behavior. If you
don’t learn to be patient with yourself, you will actually harm your own mental
health. None of us is perfect. We are human.
We make mistakes. Sometimes we
actually fail. But if we learn from
mistakes and make efforts to move forward, failure can actually lead to
success. We all know that. But we are so busy judging ourselves and
other human beings that we don’t always internalize or act upon that knowledge.
I encourage you to work on this with
me. And let me know how this shows up in
your life. How do you plan on changing it?
I do care. I benefit from talking
with you. And I believe that you will
benefit from talking with me. Please
feel free to share. I look forward to
hearing from you.
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