Hi Ashley
It may sound silly, but I'm trying to remember how I hauled myself out of the worst before. There was no eureka moment or magic bullet, of that I'm sure. I think it was more a gradual coping - I haven't been totally free at all, it's as if those depressive pathways and ways of thinking will always be there, but I managed to keep them under control, filed away.
But now, due I think to feeling stressed at work and tired all the time, I'm kind of vulnerable again. Slipping back into depressed behaviour is in a strange way comforting and familiar. Does that make sense? It's tempting just to give in to it and wallow. That's what I have to battle against, but when I'm tired, stressed, and my self-esteem is taking a battering, it's difficult.
How am I today? Not too bad today, but yesterday I just surrendered to it. Lay around the house doing nothing and despising myself for it. Three times summoned the motivation to leave the house and go out, three times didn't get far and turned around. Slept through much of the daylight in fits and starts.
In boomerang mode right now. Every trivial, everyday setback (such as we all face) causes a feeling of panic in the pit of my stomach and an urge to escape everything, and despair that there's nowhere to escape to. Then something goes right and it lifts and for a while I feel light-headed and can laugh at my troubles. Up and down, up and down ....
