Dealing with those Depressed Days

As I looked through the pages of an old journal from 2008, I was astounded as to how many red flags there were. Green flags for good days. Red flags for bad days. Some days are so bad there is nothing written in those pages. Like I’d vanished from my life. Other red flag days I was overwhelmed, swept up in busyness, agitation, complaint, and the need to escape. Other red flag days there were external issues I couldn’t handle, perhaps the struggles my children have had — aged 16, 13, 10 at the time. Still other days I was just unsettled in my spirit and confused beyond belief, full of a mental fog that would not lift for hours. Of course, some days were full of fear-and-frustration-intuiting conflict. And some days I was just so sick of myself for one or a couple of many reasons. There were so many red flag days in that year, but there are possibly many red flag days in every year (and still we get through), just as there are very many green flag days, but we hardly fear those. We are more likely to take those for granted. Or, be thankful for the sweet breeze of reprieve.

In a monthly pattern of life, these days, there are at least two single days where I feel flat. Where there is no hope nor life nor reason, and all vision of positivity simply vanishes. I put these experiences down to a mix of spiritual warfare, an unbalanced focus on my desires, and perhaps the return of past hurts and disappointments, as they fleetingly dare to dash punitively across my psyche from my memory.

Some of these days it’s just a few hours. Rarely are these days consecutive. And still I hate smiling and lying about how I feel. It makes me more depressed, and yet if I know the person well enough who is before me, I aim to trust them in being honest about how I feel. I cannot add to their burden, of course, but I do recognise that many people are encouraged to know, that as a helping person, I too have my own fragilities. Most if not all of us do.

No matter what you do,
and no matter how you feel,
what you do and what you feel,
are okay any way.

Let nobody take this away from you.

But try not to attack people because you, yourself, are low. Have the courage to be honest. Be vulnerable. We never know when our vulnerability will be an encouragement to someone. It’s always a good surprise to discover that. When we’re honest, we’re more likely to experience the empathy of friends and strangers alike. If you share with someone and they do not get you, try not to allow that to be license to spiral further downward. Adjust your expectations. In rejecting your invitation to know you more, which is a holy trust, they are the ones with the problem, not you.

If we have issues with our mental health, we have more community around us than we know, for we are all ‘normal’ until you get to know us. Think of the pedestal we put people on before we get to know them. Know them and we relax, and so do they. We don’t know who is struggling in our midst. And even those we look up to do not have the dream life that we often think they have.

Embrace the fact that life is an up-and-down exercise of endurance. It is easy for no one. Everyone finds life tough occasionally. And there is much more anxiety in the normal run of life than we ever realise.

So the wind of change occasions the opportunity — be much of peace even if depressed.  Things won’t be down forever.

Image: of journal pages tabbed green and red.