A Different Kind of Blue
Off and on for most of my life I have suffered from depression.
It has shown up in a myriad of ways from melancholy and to lethargy.
Luckily, I've been blessed with a lot of good therapy, various 12-step programs and spiritual explorations not to mention medicines and foods to help me along the way.
I've learned to recognize when I am beginning to create a rut for myself and how to shift my perspective out of it.
One of the most helpful suggestions I have received is to focus on what I feel grateful about.
For a person battling depression, feeling nothing but dark can be difficult, but with all the help that I've described above and my creative mind, I have come up with one idea that has helped me and that I hope may be helpful for you when you want to "feel" grateful.
In Austin we have a park that winds its way around a river in the center of town.
I have lived in this city for 26 years and have driven down one of the roads that cuts right through the park many times but on this particular day I was feeling especially peaceful.
I was able to appreciate the glinting sun on the tall Pecan Trees that line the road and that the air was light and comfortable.
In that moment I began to pretend that I was having a conversation with an angel.
I wanted to understand the angel's perspective on this day.
From my perspective I believed that the angel had extraordinary powers and came from a time and/or place graced with beauty that we can't comprehend.
Even with all this however, the angel was not able to see, feel, taste or hear things on our plane like we can.
I pretended that this angel was telling me how lucky I was to be a human so that I could see just how the sun glinted off the leaves so that the whole tree shimmered in the breeze.
I saw how lucky I was to be able to feel the breezes as they blew through the hair on my skin.
I became grateful that I could smell the new grass bursting forth from the ground.
I've taken this insight with me and used it when I am feeling especially pitiful to help me get to a place where I can be grateful.
For me and my sometimes dark brain, it is a much healthier idea to focus on all that I have and all that I can enjoy than to go down the path of what I don't.
All of this isn't to say that it is not okay for us to have feelings of being down and blue--I believe these are necessary for us to feel the textures of life--but after you've talked with someone about your feelings or written them down or meditated on them, than look around you and try seeing your world from a different perspective.
It has shown up in a myriad of ways from melancholy and to lethargy.
Luckily, I've been blessed with a lot of good therapy, various 12-step programs and spiritual explorations not to mention medicines and foods to help me along the way.
I've learned to recognize when I am beginning to create a rut for myself and how to shift my perspective out of it.
One of the most helpful suggestions I have received is to focus on what I feel grateful about.
For a person battling depression, feeling nothing but dark can be difficult, but with all the help that I've described above and my creative mind, I have come up with one idea that has helped me and that I hope may be helpful for you when you want to "feel" grateful.
In Austin we have a park that winds its way around a river in the center of town.
I have lived in this city for 26 years and have driven down one of the roads that cuts right through the park many times but on this particular day I was feeling especially peaceful.
I was able to appreciate the glinting sun on the tall Pecan Trees that line the road and that the air was light and comfortable.
In that moment I began to pretend that I was having a conversation with an angel.
I wanted to understand the angel's perspective on this day.
From my perspective I believed that the angel had extraordinary powers and came from a time and/or place graced with beauty that we can't comprehend.
Even with all this however, the angel was not able to see, feel, taste or hear things on our plane like we can.
I pretended that this angel was telling me how lucky I was to be a human so that I could see just how the sun glinted off the leaves so that the whole tree shimmered in the breeze.
I saw how lucky I was to be able to feel the breezes as they blew through the hair on my skin.
I became grateful that I could smell the new grass bursting forth from the ground.
I've taken this insight with me and used it when I am feeling especially pitiful to help me get to a place where I can be grateful.
For me and my sometimes dark brain, it is a much healthier idea to focus on all that I have and all that I can enjoy than to go down the path of what I don't.
All of this isn't to say that it is not okay for us to have feelings of being down and blue--I believe these are necessary for us to feel the textures of life--but after you've talked with someone about your feelings or written them down or meditated on them, than look around you and try seeing your world from a different perspective.
