Hi BrightEyes-1234
My heart goes out to you so much as you face a time of so many mixed emotions, including despair, exhaustion, desperation and more.
From my own experience in life, I find I can be occasionally flying high, in a state of joy, happiness, bliss, high energy etc. I can also experience being grounded, in a state of contentment or peace, with a sense of ease and so on. I should add that boredom, dissatisfaction and a lack of highs or happiness can also be found while being on this level all the time. I can also experience being below grounded or below ground, in a depression or a deep well of sorts. The question can be 'What influences all three natural states?'.
Focusing on the well or the depression, I've discovered (through personal experience and research) there are hundreds of different influences. There can be mental factors involved, such as depressing belief systems and perspectives, inner dialogue and more. There can be physical influences, such as not having enough of the right kind of physical or chemical energy in play to give us a sense of being grounded or high. There can also be what feels like soulful or soul destroying influences. Then there's the combo of all three. With the well, there is the brink (which we can be teetering on), the tipping point (a trigger or set of triggers) and the decent into the depression. From a little way in and all the way down to rock bottom, there can be many levels to a depression.
While in my younger years, there were times where I was told 'You have depression'. When facing such times these days, I much prefer to consider 'I am in a depression'. I don't have it, I'm in it. My standard questions then become
- What's led me in there and what was the tipping point?
- Is it mentally based, physically based, soulfully based?
- Do I need to employ a detective of sorts or a guide to help me find clues as to what it's about (whether that detective who wonders with me is of a psychological nature, a GP, a friend or family member, someone on the forums here or someone else)?
- What revelations, actions, strategies, treatments or practices etc are going to energise and raise me up through the many levels of the depression (depending on where I'm at in there)?
and the list goes on in regard to all the things worth wondering about. It definitely pays to wonder, not simply accept 'I'm someone who's destined to suffer in a depression for the rest of my life'. I'm familiar with that belief being depressing in itself.
I'll leave you with a couple of examples of how incredibly different the causes can be. While experiencing an incredibly depressing level of B12 deficiency some years ago (a psychical/chemical depression), the GP was the detective and the blood tests offered the most obvious clue after months of suffering. The B12 shots catapulted me straight up and out of that chemical depression. In more recent times, my mum passed away. She was one of my closest friends. While I've felt myself on the brink many times since then, I'm wondering about and working through a lot of stuff that would lead me to experience a tipping point into a depression. The brink is an incredibly challenging place to be, that's for sure.
I suppose the ultimate question, after all that, is 'Are you feeling yourself as being too grounded much of the time, without any highs to feel, or are you feeling yourself on the brink of a depression (that well) or can you feel yourself having gone in?'.
