Cutting Away

We all heard and/or read about the employee who took a “Mental Health” leave and the epic response the CEO gave. It was a breath of fresh air knowing that your boss understands and supports you. The CEO knows that a person who is not in his/her 100% is a liability to the organization. An employee’s well being is important in doing tasks assigned.

What might have been missed is that the employee in the “viral news” knows how to take care of herself. Self-care is important. My girlfriend, friends and those who are helping/have helped me recover say so. I can only agree.

Having my first Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) session has given me tools to look inward. It has given me time to reflect and to realize what I lack or what I have been doing wrong. In short, I was not asking for help when I need help. Maybe I was, but the message didn’t get through. Maybe I was sending mixed signals. Finally, maybe I was too proud to ask. That has been the case since I could remember. Certainly, it has been like that since I have lost my family members one by one. 

We have seen the quotes in various pictures and languages and tones about cutting out the stressors in our life. We, as adults though, all agree that work can be stressful and there are good and bad stressors. For me, the stressors come in different forms and from different persons and situations. In NLP, I was taught to cut the stress that makes me anxious. Cut from the people and situations or avoid if possible. A cutting hand gesture suggests that we should cut it and that the mind should follow. I still need practice to make this happen as I need to identify the triggers of my anxiety attacks.

After the anxiety attack comes the depression mode. It spirals down and it feels physically heavy. With all the thoughts that race through my mind, it is difficult to focus on one task without thinking about the other tasks I need to finish. Maybe this is the downside of multi-tasking.

It is difficult to explain anxiety and depression to people who don’t have any idea what it is. It may be because the word depressed is overused and misused. People that don’t understand or have not experienced this, link depression to sadness, loneliness or  melancholy. It is and it is not. It feels sad and lonely but it is not your typical sadness or loneliness let’s say when you just broke up or a loved one died. It feels empty at times. It gives no warning and defies logical explanation.

All my life I have been curious and have believed that there is a logical explanation to everything. Recovering (or trying to) from depression and anxiety, I think not everything can be explained – at least logically. Like feelings. Feelings cannot be explained. It is felt and no matter how much I try to explain why I feel a certain way to a certain incident or situation, it does not capture what I am going through or the feeling/s I have inside. It doesn’t also help that my personality feels and cares too much and I have that difficulty to detach from something or someone whom I have invested time and passion for.

There are no right or wrong feelings. One cannot say that I am wrong in feeling a certain way because my feelings are mine. It cannot be taken away from me. I can only un-feel them or change the way I feel.

Sadly, when things get too much for me I want to disappear. Literally just vanish in thin air. In my “calm” moments, I have suicidal thoughts. All of them nasty. All of them unacceptable to my conscious mind. I fight these thoughts. Of all the thoughts that race through my mind, suicidal thoughts are the worse. Thoughts of making it appear like an accident and that sort of stuff. It makes me cringe that I have those. I stop myself from thinking about it. In fighting those, I still have that hope of not giving up on myself. I guess I still have in me the strength to not give up.

I will not be the same person I was. This is what I have realized. I will not be the same. I may recover and be a better person but not the same person that denied that I have depression and anxiety. That I do have a mental health problem. That I do need help.

This is still an uphill battle. I am just grateful that people help and support me. That people still encourage me to hang on and make it through all these. Of all the people that do, I am most grateful for the unconditional, unselfish and committed love from my girlfriend. It is tough to be a partner to someone with depression. It is not easy continuing a relationship. We get by. We talk things through. She may not be the only source of light in this dark stage of my life but she shines the brightest specially when the going gets tough.