Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Hello darkness, my old friend;
I’ve come to talk with you again.

Depression comes in many shapes, forms, and sizes.  Sometimes it can be alleviated with an anti-depressant, but sometimes it is purely situational, and the only thing that will resolve it is changing the situation.  And the only person who can change the situation is you.  But who has the resolve or the energy to change their situation when they are in the midst of depression?

The Serenity Prayer can do a lot for anxiety.  Sorting things into two categories, things I can do something about and things beyond my control, can help prevent us from tilting at windmills, wasting energy fighting against something (or preparing against something) that we cannot control.

With COVID I have done all the things I can do to prepare to fight.  I have protected myself and my family.  And once I’ve done all the things that I can control I am left in the grips of the things that I cannot control, and they grow in their power.  I can do nothing about them.  Once the fear is released, I relax into knowing I can do nothing about it.  But this isn’t the sense of freedom it should be.  It is a sense of entrapment.  I am stuck, and I can do nothing about it.  That sense of futility brings along the overwhelming sense of sadness, wave after wave of racking sobs.  The tightness in my chest is replaced by a loss.  A sadness so intense it feels I will never recover.  I will never be whole again.  Yet I know, on some level, that I will.

Maybe the reality is that there is no such thing as something that we cannot change.  Even if we cannot change the thing itself, we can change our perception of it.  We can change how we react to it.  We can change how we engage (or if we engage) with it.

Accepting that we cannot change something isn’t the end of the story.  We then need to DO SOMETHING about the fact that we cannot change it.  We cannot just sit and let the depression roll in.

Sometimes the depression needs acknowledgement.  There is no shame in seeing it, feeling it, and hugging yourself through it.  But then you must consider carefully what you can do about it.  If drugs won’t work, then action is all you have left.

What actions can you take?

Reach out to a friend.  Any friend.  Perhaps someone can cheer you up, but also perhaps someone needs cheering up even more than you do.  The simple act of connection is DOING something about the situation and can help to snap you out of the grip of the void.