I learned along the years that depression is thinking about the past, while anxiety is thinking about the future. Living in the present became a luxury that you maintain through a lot of practice.
How I imagine depression is like I am trapped in a very dark and spooky house. I am scared and I stay in one place, blocked by fear to move on and find an exit. I am scared that if I walk in another room I will find things I regret. I actually know the things I regret are living in those rooms, I just don’t want to see them again. I am already living those feelings, I don’t need to open those doors and confront my bad memories. I just stay in the living room, trapped, being scared. Deep down I want to find the way out, but I am too numbed by fear to look for it. I imagine the people I love in the garden trying to get in and save me but they can’t. All the doors and windows are closed. They suffer because they know I am in that house, trapped and suffering.
The ghosts of anxiety operate differently. They enter your body and start to put wood on fire. The fire heats up your thoughts and senses and makes you agitated, blurs your judgement. Every reaction will be influenced by the heat and the smoke. Imagine walking through fire – you don’t take your time and walk normally – you try to go fast and make sure you don’t get too burnt. When anxiety camps within you, you just start spiraling, while trying not to get too burnt. If the flames of anxiety become too big, they will not only burn you up inside; you will start spitting flames outside of yourself also. While it might sound cool to be a dragon, I don’t think it’s the right kind of dragon. It’s a more uncomfortable, fearful, desperate dragon that destroys things that don’t represent a threat.
Living in the present is living without fear. The moment fear is gone the house becomes cozy instead of scary and there is a river going through it, not a fire.
So if we are in a haunted house or we start an uncontrollable fire within us – how can we make it stop? How can we cope with symptoms of depression and/or anxiety?
When I was in that “dark place” the last thing I needed was someone coming to me with advice. The mere act of people trying to help annoyed me. I wanted to get out of there and I didn’t know how but I also didn’t feel like doing something. I felt paralyzed by fear. I wanted to stay in one spot (normally the couch) and spend days binge-watching movies or series. I just sat there, being sad as fuck, stuffing my face with food; I distracted myself from the external world. I had dark thoughts, more amplified, I became more and more scared, more and more numb. Days went by me, people around started to worry and my life was on hold.
I ask again, what can we do to snap out of that rut?
The answer is that we need one moment. For me, it’s eighter a moment where I cry, scream, get touched by someone’s kindness towards me or just start laughing at something funny. There is that one moment of “I had enough”, “screw fear” or “oh, I remember love and kindness – how did I get here”? It’s that aha moment that snaps you out of it, gets you out of the house and puts down the fire.
Don’t get me wrong, you are not healed and it will take some time to heal. But you took the most important step of your life – you allowed that one, aha moment to happen.
This moment may happen right away or after a while, it’s different for everybody.
Self-pampering in any way is a good way to help you cope with all the emotions, until you reach your aha moment and start the healing process.
There is a lot of advice out there about what to do when you are depressed or anxious – I say just hang in there, avoid self-sabotaging and you have the power to snap out of it at one point. Also, don’t be shy to ask for professional help – the house and the fire exist because you have some more work to do with yourself (lessons to learn, patterns to break, things to heal…).
This too shall pass…. just keep going!
