Staying in control

I think the fundamental thing about dealing with depression or any sort of mental health problem is the inability to remain in control of your life. 

Lack of control is what makes it so difficult to bring yourself out. For instance, if I were to put off my own wants and needs for the benefit of others, I would be handing my control over to them, to some extent. Every now and then, this is perfectly fine, but there has to be a balance. 

When you are doing this to the point that you are not making any decisions towards your own path, you have ultimately lost all control of your life. And the more you lose control, the harder it is to get yourself back on the right path, YOUR path. You can't light yourself on fire just to keep everyone else warm. You absolutely have to save at least a little of yourself, for yourself.  

I, like many people, find it impossible to say no. If this is you, you're always putting other people in front of your own needs. And I'm not criticising you! I think it makes you a beautiful, caring person to be able to do that. But at the same time it makes you completely vulnerable and a target. It's just one of the messed up ways of the world. The nicer you are, the more shit you get. Awesome, isn't it? No wonder so many people choose to be assholes. 

Although it wasn't exactly my choice to take a step back, during my last major depressive episode I essentially cut everything and everyone out of my life. At the time my reasons were purely because I was pretty much in a catatonic state and needed to in order to begin to see clearly again. I wasn't thinking straight and just wanted everything to go away because my head was overflowing. As much as this time was terrible for me, I am almost grateful for it happening. This is because it helped me to essentially strip my life back to the basics and re-build my foundations. Have a read of my story, one of my other blog posts, if you're interested in reading more about this.

I am still pretty much in this process now, and am proud of how far I've come. But one of the main things I have learnt is that you don't have to please and be friends with everybody all of the time. Easier said than done, because when you're caught up in it, it's almost impossible to see what's doing you good and what's having the opposite effect. I am grateful for having this time to really think about what was bringing joy to my life and what wasn't.  

At the moment, I am only spending time on things that make me even that tiniest bit happier. Because I don't have time for things that don't. Obviously I'm not including the usual boring crap everyone has to deal with like bills and work (unless you love what you do) and yada yada. I'm talking everything outside of those responsibilities. I'm talking about relationships mainly. Because relationships are what you deal with every single day. People, conversations, interactions, friendships, colleagues. The main thing is to not let any of those take the wheel on your life.  

 You should be the most important person in your life. If you lose sight of that, that's when you get problems. It's ok to be selfish sometimes. You NEED to be and you totally deserve to be. So go on, treat yourself. Life's too short.

I've written a more detailed post on making the most of today if you're interested to read more and I'd love to hear your stories about trying to regain control of your lives as I know it's a steep uphill climb and you're not alone!
 

Feel free to drop me a message or a comment :) 

Peace x