Hello guys and welcome back. Today I would like to share observation with you. As you know I started this blog when I was suffering from anxiety and depression. As I successfully beat it doesn't mean that everything is back to normal. Process beating up this terrible illness is actually learning curve. Let me explain.. You can not treat Anxiety and Depression same way as Cold and Flu. There is no pill that cure this mental illness, there is no surgical procedure help you out. You have to do it on your own. You learnt to recognised triggers for your Anxiety and feelings that are connected to Depression. Then when you learnt recognised this feelings you learnt how to handle them. This process could be a long term learning depend how Mindful you are. Mindfulness is definitely a tool I would recommend at this stage just because I am living example that works.
Then when you learnt how to recognised, how to deal with emotions there is final stage I call it how to prevent situations, feelings or emotions that doesn't make us feel good. What I learnt on my journey was that the best way that works for me is expose myself to situations that made me Anxious and recognised feeling that there is nothing I have to be worried about. How ever this is the way that works for me. Once you thru this process your mood changes and you start enjoying life again. But there is BUT.
As you know or may not know Anxiety and Depression creating wishes circle. This is emotional circle containing happy feelings and dark feelings and they are working in pattern - happy - moody- dark-depressed-sad-fight-happy-moody-dark-depressed-sad-fight. During your learning process you should be able to break this pattern and focus more on positive then negative emotions. It is not easy. But if you manage break this circle you will feel relieve, happy, exiting and content. But again this is not the end. Every so often Re-lapse occur. This is usually when we feel tired, worn out, stressed or emotional situation occurs.
Passed two weeks I been rather busy at work and working 10 hours shifts 6 days a week and that was the trigger for mine re-lapse. I became tired because my sleep pattern was disturb, working stress that everyone goes thru been rather overwhelming. I became agitated, tired and start slipping from my path. I tried to do mindfulness meditation but my brain was working on 150% and I wasn't able to relax and meditate properly. I would say that is fine how ever you need to be determined. I decided to have a quiet weekend with my husband. I planned to get up early on Saturday morning to correcting my sleeping pattern and enjoy my craft work - making bath bombs. I manage to calm down and relax. Now my mood improving and have to say that this was my disturbing experience with re-laps. Most of the times I can nip this feelings in the bud before they grow but this time I missed that point.
I would like to encourage to keep fighting if re-lapse approaching. Reason why is that you all ready passed most difficult part like observing, recognising and handling your emotions that cost you loads of energy and determination. Controlling re-lapse is only tiny bit that shouldn't throw you off the truck. In my case I think that big contributor was stress, lack of sleep and then unable to channel my brain to meditate. Working stress is normal. While we working our levels of Cortisol are higher and therefore we are more vulnerable for re-lapse to occur. If you feel overwhelmed just stop, breath and try to calm down. Have a relaxing bath, read book or enjoy hobby that make you happy and content.
I hope that this blog will help you manage you Re-lapses. We only live once and in my life is no place for dark thoughts.
Thank you reading guys and thank you for support and hello to new subscribers .
Jerry