Dealing with Depression through Self Awareness

Depression is a funny thing. I never used to say that I got depressed. Sure I had mood swings, felt good one day and bad the next; it just never occurred to me that I suffered from depression. At first there were obvious reasons for how I felt. A wrong relationship, a bad career choice a broken down car. All of this made sense. I felt bad because of the circumstances in which I found myself. If X happened I would feel Y. Then one day all of this changed.

I can not remember the exact circumstances however I do recall a sense of self awareness that made me stop and, for a moment, place me outside of my self almost as if I was an observer of my own reactive self. I was feeling low, really low, and started to examine the causes of my thoughts and feelings. I couldn't find anything!It was a sudden awareness that I felt depressed simply because I was used to feeling depressed. I then started to backtrack within my own mind to find root causes of my anxiety. This is why I referred to my reactive self. All of my anxiety came from a reaction. Not from the situation itself. The situation was, in a way, irrelevant. My reaction was the driving force behind my feelings; good or bad. In that one instance of recognition I was free. I was no longer a victim of circumstance. I had taken back my own power and placed myself in the driving seat of my own response. Obviously a sudden reaction to the car not starting in the morning is not a problem. The continuing reaction is what seems to bind you.

Now when I feel depressed it moves on very rapidly. I no longer suffer from days, and I do mean days, of anxiety. I allow myself to feel whatever I feel for no reason at all. This then does not anchor it to a particular event and it passes very quickly. The same is true for feelings of elation. Again, by not attaching a specific to the emotion then I can be happy for no reason. This works opposite to depression. When I allow myself to feel good for no reason at all then my feelings of joy actually last longer. They are not bound by time and space and thus become free to expand and explore and I feel happy simply because at that moment happiness is what I am.

Even when I allow depression to become the entirety of my being then at that moment depression is all there is; it is what I am. In that discovery there is a singularity of being that envelops me. The conflict is gone. If depression is what I am at that moment then where could the conflict come from? I am singular and if that is so then there is no "opposite" or "yin" to my "yang". at that moment I am whole within myself. This realisation then instantly converts to feelings of joy simply because when you experience your own singularity you are experiencing your true self. Your true self is what joy and happiness are.

Now I am not promoting that blissful unawareness of what goes on around you. That ends up being escapism. I am in fact owning my own feelings, allowing myself to totally dive into the emotion I am experiencing and becoming whole with it. It is profound, it is powerful and it is at times nerve racking! Yet how else could you live?

I have experienced an intensity of depression in my life that a fortune teller once told me that I had shaken hands with the devil himself. In many ways that is very true. Yet he taught me some extraordinary things about myself that I would not have discovered otherwise. I have been a self harmer as well;which I will leave for another article.

When you go to hell and back you can do three things. You can forget it ever happened and carry on with your life (good luck!). You can keep looking back at it with anger, resentment and bitterness (not recommended!) or you can use what you have learned to inspire yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbourhood and the entire world itself.

I choose the latter; and that is what keeps me motivated.