Dealing with depression is one of the hardest things you’ll do in life. However, there is hope! The best way to overcome depression is to first understand how depression creeps into your life. I call this “being aware of your slide pattern.” In my case depression starts slowly and progresses slowly until I reach the level of feeling about 50% normal. At that point I drop precipitously in my mood to 0%. In the 0% stage, I am sooooo depressed that I don’t even know the telephone exists to be able to get help. This state is equivalent to being wrapped tightly in black cellophane. You can’t see anything that surrounds you. You can only see inward pain. This is a dangerous state to be in.
So how do you prevent yourself from getting to zero which is full deep depression? First understand your slide pattern. Mine looks like the picture below.
Once you know your slide pattern you have to catch yourself before you fall to zero. Once you get to say the 25-50% mood state, call a friend and say you need help. Friends want to give you this gift of help. It makes them feel good and it makes you feel good too. Other tricks are to do things that make you feel good, things you like to do … eat out, go hiking, go swimming ….. but the essential prescription in all of this is just three steps:
1) Know your slide pattern
2) Tell yourself it’s OK to reach out to others for help and reach out when you reach the 25-50% mood level.
3) And by all means tell someone how you’re feeling over and over again if you have to.
Author: Patti Tillotson, Survivor of her daughter’s suicide.
Help me raise money: StepsForSteph.com
Get Help: Suicide.org
Survivors of suicide are the strongest people I know because they have experienced the worst kind of tragedy possible. We are strong yet fragile. We plow through pain every minute of every day like demolition teams. It takes a lot (if not all) of our energy to maintain a positive outlook on life and to maintain the support and caring relationships of friends and family.
We never stop asking a million questions. Why me? Why my loved one? What could I have done? What did I miss? Why didn’t he/she ask me for help? All of these questions are a never ending carousel of motion in our minds. Sure, the questions come and go with intermittency intervals that are sometimes long and sometimes short. But the carousel is always there.
Survivors of suicide are compassionate and loving people. We have forged the worst life has to offer and have a great desire to prevent others from experiencing this devastation and shattering of hearts. We listen carefully to people and their problems. We are accepting of people as they are whether they are blue, brown, beautiful, talkative, shy, smart, simple, short or tall. We love them all!
We experience life in more fullness and clarity than others. We live in the present moment more often, see more intense red on roses or fractional shades of blue in the sky. Life is precious to us. I saw a bumblebee taking an afternoon nap once and thought this was the most precious gift God could have given me that day. We pay attention to a single leaf floating to the ground from above. We see the glimmer of light poka dotting a sandy beach. We live each day to its fullest.
We are handicapped but not crippled. We love, we laugh, we hope, we cry, we cry and then we cry some more ……. but life is still good.
Author: Patti Tillotson, Survivor of her daughter’s suicide.
Help me raise money: StepsForSteph.com
Get Help: Suicide.org