Depression sucks.
I’m having a rough go of it. It seems to have started just after I hit a year of sobriety. I think that was more of a coincidence than anything else but I’ve been stuck in a slight depression for the better part of a month. My toolbox hasn’t been working like it has in the past and I’m struggling to have positive conversations with myself.
I’m doing everything right. I’m keeping my side of the street clean, working hard, watching my mouth, exercising, eating right, and generally being as best a person as I can. Yet, I have this internal dialogue telling me I suck and I’m starting to grow resentments. Resentments that the world isn’t being fair. Resentments towards my job, my girlfriend, my family, and even friends. I spent the last two Sunday’s napping simply to escape from the spiraling thoughts in my head. Thoughts of being owed something and just a general victim mentality.
I’ve been trying to grapple with why out of the blue I’m thinking this way. I’ve practiced acceptance over the last year and many of these past resentments I thought I had dealt with but then out of nowhere they’re showing back up again.
I realized today there’s two primary reasons why this is happening:
- I’m taking a larger step outside of my comfort zone and at the same time;
- I’ve relaxed on my self-work. Gone into a maintenance mode of sorts or a routine.
The combination brings up all kinds of unhealed insecurities around self-worth. I have always had a lower than average sense of self-worth regardless of the external inputs that tell me otherwise. Inside I still feel like the guy that just doesn’t reach his full potential. The guy that half asses the back nine. The one that self-sabotages because achieving would prove something different to myself.
Now that I’ve identified it…
For me, identifying it becomes a huge part of healing it. Simply coming to honest terms with what the issue is becomes essential to putting any real effort behind fixing it. Brutal honesty with myself has retreated a bit since being brought to my knees by alcohol. I’ve started to tell myself little white lies which if unchecked start to incrementally creep back in many times without me noticing. I feel like my ego is slowly trying to coax me back to what it’s known for 40 years. Back to its comfort zone no matter how destructive that actually is. That comfort zone is that the world owes me, I’ve done everything right, and yet, I still suck. How that is a comfort zone, I’ll never know, but the increasing regularity and strength of those thoughts means I’m taking some unhealthy comfort in them. In some way, it is serving me.
It means that now I need to get back to work again. Dive into some daily step work and nip some of these in the bud before they fester inside my head. I need to do things against what my ego wants me and that simple step will start to help. I, at least, have some lessons learned over the last year to lean on. Fighting against an old behavior and succeeding at withholding action on it, is in itself, powerful. It demonstrates restraint at that part of me requiring change. It’s intentional and painful but from that moment forward it starts to get easier. I know this. I’ve done this. I’m just not perfect just after a year.
The Process of Progression:
I’m stretching myself. Stretching yourself is going beyond what you’re comfortable with into the unknown. We stretch ourselves so that even when we fail we’ve succeeded in moving beyond that line of comfort we’ve been holding steadfast at. It hurts and all I want to do is retreat back to what comes easiest. A month or so ago I was beating the drum of self improvement and had all of the positivity in the world. Today, not so much. I know the direction is correct but my mind is telling me it’s too much, you suck, stay where you are and you won’t get hurt.
A part of my ego (and I would bet this is the case for most) is to protect myself against failure. It’s always been that way. Do you know how many girls I DIDN’T talk to because of fear of rejection? How many jobs I’ve had that didn’t really get my juices flowing but offered the comfort of a pay check and in turn stability?
My fear is not of failure but of what I will translate failure into being. I will make it about my entire existence and that’s what really scares me.
A Thought Experiment From My Coach:
For the last year and a half I’ve been working with a business coach that in reality has morphed into a blend of life and business coaching. The majority of our work together has been focused on looking inward opposed to excelling in my career. The irony here is that as I understand who I am better, job, money, relationships have all started falling into place.
He has been one of the most influential people in my life and yet has not, to this day, instructed me to do anything. He creates a space for us to have open and honest conversation and that’s something I believe we all could benefit from. I focused the last two sessions talking through this with him and there’s a couple of suggestions he gave me that are really powerful.
He said four words to me that immediately put things into perspective for me:
Under stress, we regress.
After vomiting out all of my symptoms and all the reasons I had thought was the cause he paused, looked at me, and said, “What you are describing as a failure I see as incredible progress”. He wanted me to honor the fact that I had improved enough to; 1. not drink over it, 2. Not act out because of it (physically or verbally), and 3. I’m consciously aware that I’m going through it.
I took solace that while I’ve chosen a new path I can’t just escape my old patterns. An hearing that old patterns emerge under stress made all the sense in the world.
I’ve had one year of flexing these new muscles (consciously changing thought patterns) paired against 40 years of existing patterns, models, and pathways carved deep by life experiences. The awareness of it is a massive indication for the capability of that new muscle growth.
He broke it down like this…
The last couple weeks I’ve been telling myself a story that was in alignment with the narrative I have history with rather than the new narrative I’m evolving into. We all have narratives and what he was trying to emphasize to me is that these narratives are cultivated over a long period of time and are actually created to serve us in some way. The new narrative I’ve been crafting in sobriety is still an infant and will lose in times of heightened stress against a 40 year old story that, up until now, I thought was just who I was.
He’s gently bringing me back to the observer role. I am not my thoughts and when I can observe them I can recognize that while they’re there, they aren’t who I really am. He urged me to give this part of me a name. I went with The Gremlin and went on to state that I hate that part of me. He paused, looked me in the eyes, and remarked that instead of hating, repressing, or pushing away this part of me, I need to honor it. The Gremlin has served me historically and he’s still there because he protected me from something or someone. He feels needed and won’t just simply go away without firm acknowledgement that he’s here and he’s helped but I’ve got it from here. He actually used the analogy of a family driving in the car. Each family member representing different parts of me. He encouraged me to look at The Gremlin like a five year old son complaining they’re hungry in the backseat. Acknowledging their feelings and asking to allow the Dad to get us safely to the restaurant and he can eat.
The goal, he went on, is to give The Gremlin space to talk, be heard, and as long as he knows he’s heard then he can start to take a back seat. Denying and repressing only allows the Gremlin to build in strength and eventually force himself onto the main stage as it did these past few weeks. Listen, acknowledge, honor him and then ask him to take a back seat because, I got this.
Put simply, we have parts of our ego we all hate and they show up from time to time and without conscious awareness of these parts, we just react and live with them. I hear people say all the time, “It’s just the way I am and there’s nothing I can do to change that”. It’s either an easy way to explain away actions, accept these darker parts of us as unchangeable, or to shut up someone who is challenging our actions. I’m learning none of that is true. We can change, we can progress, but not without some pain. It takes a lot of failures, recognition of the actions, conscious awareness that we are not our thoughts, and a long ass time. This twist of perspective has really helped pull me out of the mire I was wallowing in and a new tool I look forward to putting into practice.
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