First steps

[Shosh]

I am nearing retirement and have in the past few months found myself at the beginning of yet another cycle of depression/anxiety. Harder to deal with this time because it doesn't only involve the initial trigger but also a couple of extra curve balls to do with relationships and self-perception. I am trying this as a bit of a last-ditch effort -- I feel exhausted all the time -- years (50 actually) of acting have caught up with me and I am feeling like there is not really much point in even trying. It is soul-destroying after spending quite a few years of intense counselling and thinking that I had made great strides in progress/received many tools to help me to deal with things as they crop up to find myself back in the cycle and with less strength to deal with it. 

I am looking for genuine support and encouragement and think that I may also be of some help to others also. Thanks.

[therising]

Hi Shosh

The warmest of welcomes to you as you face such an incredibly challenging time in your life. While I wish there was something I could say that could offer the kind of revelations that would instantly change everything for the better, I've found that it can be the nature of depressing and/or anxiety inducing challenges to take some time to work out.

As a 54yo gal, it's taken me decades to finally work out that I don't cycle 'round and 'round in and out of depression, I cycle up through depressing or potentially depressing challenges. I've found this to be a far more encouraging way of looking at things, compared to what I was originally led to believe in my earlier years, 'You're likely to be someone who will always suffer from depression'. Not a terribly uplifting prognosis, that's for sure. With every new challenge and up cycle

• We may be forced to gather new tools, skills and abilities
• We may led to gain a greater sense of self understanding or self awareness, coming closer to knowing who we naturally are
• We may become far more conscious than before the cycle began
• We may become slightly better at feeling or sensing

and the list goes on when it comes to such a challenging form of graduation.

With that last one on the list, I've found it to be a bit of a double edged sword. If we're meeting the challenge of becoming more in touch with our feelings or what we sense in life, it makes sense that we're going to feel/sense more. The more you come to your senses (being able to sense who or what's depressing or who or what's anxiety inducing), the more tuned in you become. Just as important, to create some sense of balance, involves tuning out or mastering the art of emotional detachment. Such an art can come in many different forms. To be feeling or sensing all the time means there's no time to connect with what can be felt as 'peace'.

While graduating can be seriously exhausting at times, I think it also pays to wonder about our chemistry and what it's doing. Too much ongoing high levels of cortisol, generated through stress, can become exhausting. A significant lack of certain chemistry that helps generate energy and energetic processes (B12, iron etc) can leave us feeling like a seriously depressed flat battery. Not being energised through exciting visions of the way forward can also play a part in some cases. Can't be energised through what we can't see. A lack of positive vision also doesn't feed our dopamine receptors. I've found it pays to find a seer, someone who can see for me.

So many different factors behind why we can be struggling at times. To say graduating can be a challenge can be the understatement of the century.

[Shosh]

Hi therising

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. I found your reply interesting but to be quite honest, I am not really able to relate to it - for me the cycle is definitely downward this time. The thoughts go round and round but the whole thing is a different colour this time. Previously I have had the same sphere of depression but have had both my faith and family around - without them knowing an inkling of where I am at. This time, after posing a question to my GP I have decided that God might know what I am and have gone through but it has definitely never been his to experience. So that wipes out the faith.

My family - parents/siblings - are (and were) dysfunctional and my husband was my stabiliser - again with no idea of who I am and what I am going through. But that too has swung off in a different direction - leaving me totally blindsided but feeling totally deserving of all the down stuff that happens/happened. 

So for me I can only call it a downward cycle. 

Flat grey and spiralling is not a good place to be but that's where I am. Sorry.