The Fight Back

The loneliest road to walk is the road that leads to a place of isolation and an acute loneliness, brought on through the parasite force known as depression. You’re stuck inside a shell that has cracked and is seeping the most destructive emotions, tearing at your body and mind, and no matter how hard you try you just cannot shake it loose.

Those around you pretend to understand at first, but eventually their compassion and empathy wanes to frustration, and then the distancing sets in.

Inside, you send out a silent scream that can only be felt when one looks into your soul. The agony and fear is etched into the glassiness of your eyes and as they say, the eyes are the windows to the soul.

Your friends become awkward around you; after all, you’re no longer the fun loving person you once were, and no one wants to hang around a killjoy. Eventually, your friends disappear and family drift back to doing what makes them feel comfortable. The longer it goes on the fewer words of comfort you hear. Eventually you’re on your own and every day becomes a battle to just breath easy.

You may experience tightness through out the body and aches and pains in the muscles, coupled with acute fatigue, nightmares, constant negative mind chatter, and awful feelings that haunt you day and night.

So to those of you who identify with this description, I’ll lay out a few coping strategies that got me through the toughest of times, with many moments in which I could break surface and breath easy for while.

1. First I would advise looking into the emotional freedom technique, often referred to as simply E.F.T. This technique employs tapping specific areas of your body whilst repeating positive affirmations, which over rides the negative thought rut you’re stuck in, and resets the mind. Once you reset the mind to think positively, the emotions follow in kind.

2. Words are powerful and will effect your moods. Have you ever noticed how, when you’re in the company of someone who feeds off negativity like they’re at a gourmet meal, gossiping and constantly pulling people apart, it makes you feel, especially if you are very sensitive to energies? Lousy, right? You eventually walk away and let out a huge sigh of relief. You feel you have been emotionally drained; your energies are depleted, and there is a heaviness in your head.

So first and foremost, avoid being around energy drainers, especially ones who feel they are experts on your depression and they know what’s best for you. The only person who knows what’s truly best for you, is you. Even doctors will tell you this. No one can know your experience—it’s yours, not theirs. It’s you who is walking a lonely and often terrifying path. Even my advise here should only be continued if you get almost instant results. That’s what my experience was, but your experiences may be different, and your coping strategies that work for you might be something else. There is no real benefit from using someone else’s coping strategy if straight away, you don’t feel some improvement. Believe me, I’ve stuck with some things so long, because a column I read or a book I bought said it works, and I was always hitting that brick wall. We are all different and don’t function the same. Our traumas are different and our experiences unique, so don’t hang on in quiet desperation to something that doesn’t work.

3. Be mindful of your thought streams, and also be aware of how you’re feeling inside. When you consciously observe what’s going on inside of you, the mind quietens, the negative feelings diminish and the tension eases up. We are so drawn into the drama of our everyday lives, we forget to check ourselves, to observe what is happening within. Observing the chaos can change the intensity of the negative flux and bring relief. Have you ever looked at the back of someone’s head, then suddenly they turn around and look straight at you? They sensed you observing them and intuitively turned to look in the direction of where they felt watched. Observation is a very powerful tool and as they say, ‘energy flows where attention goes.'

4. Again, words are very powerful and do effect us on an emotional level, filtering into physical. Now this might sound a little odd, but it worked for me. Have you ever spoken to your body? Huh huh oh yeh, sounds crazy right? But it works. Find a quiet space and say words to this effect, “Body relax... body float... body, you’re as light as a feather, floating on a breeze,” and even imagine yourself floating on a cloud. You will feel how powerful words really are, when you experience the reaction to these simple, but effective, words. Doing this exercise will also make you conscious of how the mind chatter quiets, as the body relaxes. The stress in your body and the negative mind chatter are symbiotic and feed off each other. Interrupt that relationship with relaxation and focused intent, then things change. Changing your perceptions will change the way you are feeling.

5. Here’s a very simple but very effective way to give your body/mind instant relief from the chaos that ensues within. Lay on your back, then place your thumb in your navel (belly button). Press your thumb down, into your navel, firmly, but not too firm -as to make you feel uncomfortable. Hold for a count of 60 seconds, then release. You should feel a pulse of energy spread through out your body, relaxing you deeply and giving you respite from the tightness and stress your body endures.

6. Everyone we meet is, to some extent, carrying around their trauma. As children, we are like sponges, absorbing each experience and the energy that was the fuel, behind those experiences. Whether the experience was good or bad, children absorb it all. Those children that carry that deep trauma into their adult lives are constantly seeking validation, feeling deep down they are unworthy in some way and struggle to fit in, to find happiness.

The key I feel to break this cyclic, generational relay, is to understand what’s really happening. An abuser, more often than not, is also the abused. They have experienced their own trauma in their own childhood and it filters down into their children’s lives. Whether it’s an inability to give love, to bond or communicate with their children, or something more severe, it’s roots lay in their past and the experiences they endured. Most people who have had disturbing childhoods, unconsciously filter than perceived except-able behaviour down into their own children lives, because it’s what they experienced as being normal.

The mind is very much like a software program, programmed through experiences. Once you realise what’s happening, that your parents for example carried their own trauma that impacted upon you, (and were unable to consciously see the mistakes they were making), then you start to understand you were never to blame and are worthy of love, understanding, and compassion. That seeking validation throughout your life was a result of having parents who were carrying around trauma from their own flawed childhood experiences.

Once you understand this you start to heal the past, and in doing so, you start to care and love you, and no longer need to look outside of yourself, for validation. It’s our experiences from cradle to grave that shape our perceptions of the world, and it’s our childhood experiences that most acutely impact our adult lives.

The body/mind is very much like a computer. That’s right, the body is a highly advanced biological computer and the mind is the software program. When a computer overloads with too much information, it freezes, or breaks down, just like the body/mind. We need to understand what we really are. I like to think, at our core we are souls, and that the body/mind is vehicle our souls use to experience this reality. Sometimes i call my soul forward to help me heal. Maybe the soul was always meant to be in the drivers seat of this experience, but somewhere along way we forgot who we truly are. Talk to your soul and just maybe, this will help too.

Written by—Stephen Doheny