Exhausted

[timingiseverything]

After a lengthy hospital stay and 8 ECT’s, I’ve gone full circle and started to think about it again.

I can’t find a decent Psychologist and my family is nervous which I can totally understand, as next time failure is not an option. Does anyone else love their family so so much but still not want to be here??

[therising]

Hi timingiseverything

While I feel so incredibly deeply for you, given how intensely you're struggling at this time, I'm also glad you're able to give yourself the freedom to ask such an honest and valid question. It's a question where if you asked most people they'd simply shut it down with 'You can't say that/ask that!' but when you ask it of people who can relate to it, you can get a very different response.

While I think of depression as this long deep well-like thing, there are many different levels, from the brink of going in all the way down to rock bottom. I'd have to say (from my own experience) there is nothing on earth that compares to rock bottom in depression, a kind of hell on earth. It can feel impossible to live with, so for some it becomes a matter of no longer having to. While I went down that path of desperate escape once in my 20s, life for me is different now based on my 2 kids (18yo son and 21yo daughter) being my 'anchor people', anchoring me to this world. No matter how bad things get, I would and could never leave them because it would lead them to reach rock bottom in depression. Becoming a mum was actually what led me to also realise that's where my choice, if I'd been successful in my 20s, would have led my mum. I think while we can imagine the people in our lives being able to find ways of coping without us, what we imagine can fall short of the suffering they'd actually experience.

Sounds a little strange perhaps but I've found at times my aim to be 'If I can find a way to raise myself just above rock bottom then I can cope with that'. Of course, completely out of that well or depression is ideal but sometimes being able to feel the slightest difference can be enough to cope with. Another way I look at it is...with that light at the end of the tunnel people speak about, when you tip the tunnel sideways, it becomes the light at the top of the tunnel (that well). The more you're able to raise yourself, the more expansive the light becomes and as it comes to expand, perception begins to change in some ways. As perception changes, ways of thinking change along with physical chemistry changing. As everything begins to change while you're gradually rising, you can start to feel life or alive again and that becomes more of a soulful kind of experience (coming back to life). Yes, all far more easier said than done or achieved. Far easier.

The question remains 'How do I move up or raise myself up off rock bottom?'. I've always found I can never do it alone. The only people who can raise me out of such depths are the ones who can actually see what my struggle is truly about. These are the kind of people who can see 1)what may have led me down there in the first place, 2)what's keeping me there and 3)they can see exactly what I need to do in order for me to raise myself. I've found the people who love me yet simply wait in hope for me to get better are the ones who don't make a huge difference. Should add I know they love me and I appreciate that but sometimes what we need are people who love us intensely enough to the point where they'd consider just about anything that'd make a positive difference. In the hundreds of ways they can think of and offer, logic says at least one of those ways has got to work. A dozen different ways simply isn't enough sometimes. Sometimes what we need most exists outside the square so even an outside the square thinker in our life can be the best person for the job, when it comes to raising us.