How I Fight with Depression, Day After day
Maybe this can help you too
A Long-time Anxiety
When I was very young, I was very friendly, smiling all the time, cheerful, and talking to everyone, even strangers. At least, this is what my parents told me many times. I can’t remember those times, I only have a vague memory of myself at the front door of a neighbour, telling him all in detail about this new toy I just got. But that’s pretty much it. For the rest, for all I can remember, I’ve always been excessively shy, so talking to strangers or in front of an audience was a personal nightmare. I had a group of friends but could only talk when only one was there. If I was with more than one person, I switched to listening, not wanting to interrupt, and not knowing how anyway. There have been times when people used to talk for me and answer in my place because I didn’t know how to do it myself. Conflicts were impossible, I had them all in my head but if it had to happen for real, I would just shut down for days.
I went to high school, then university then found a job and moved to London. In the meantime, I learnt a bit and became more able to talk, but not so much.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
During the pandemic, I returned to France, and like many people, I suffered a lot of solitude. After a year and a half, I flew back to London strongly wanting to change things. And I did. I fought, day after, trying to be more open, work better, and know more about the people I live with. It wasn’t easy but I pushed through.
About a year ago, a rather bad series of events started to occur, one after the other. I always had a tendency to have very unlucky moments, probably because I used to see only the negative in life, but that last year, from April 2022 up until now, March 2023, has been incredibly challenging. It started with the loss of a job. Then my laptop took water. The person I not so secretly loved told me no. A flatmate moved out, leaving a lot of tension. A new one came in and turned out to be aggressive and transformed our life into a nightmare. Then with my flatmates, we almost lost the flat and had to fight with all we had to keep it. In the process, I had to cut ties with two very close friends. I didn’t have any holiday that year, and arrived at Christmas I didn’t know what January would be made of, where I’d live, with whom, nothing. Rather depressing. And after fighting, we managed to keep the flat but had to fight again to find a new flatmate. We did. And now we’re in March, almost one year after it started and guess what?
I just lost my job again, I spilled water on my laptop two days ago, and the woman I love replied to my love letter with a “Wow that’s brave, thank you”.
Any idea why I feel depressed and have a hard time getting up in the morning?
Yet, I’ve never given up, not once, and I won’t. I have found a way to fight, keep standing tall, and do what needs to be done. And in a strange way, I now feel freeer than I ever felt, and have found a lot of strength and confidence. Some of this comes directly from living through those events mentioned before, I had to stand up for myself in many ways. But the rest comes from a constant fight and a system I’ve managed to put together.
The Never-ending Learning
I was deep down, at some point, and when you’re deep down, you can either dig deeper yourself, by self-pity, taking you down, wallowing in despair, or make the conscious choice of rising up.
I chose the latter.
But I didn’t know how. I had to look for ways. I had to learn. And I looked everywhere I could, books, articles, videos, nothing was left unchecked. That’s actually how I found my way to reading articles on Medium pretty much every day. And I wish at that time I had the idea of keeping track of those who helped me, so I could actually quote them here.
But I spent hours and hours, scrolling, watching, and reading. And at first, that was all I did. Aimlessly looking at content telling me how to feel better, but not taking action. Until one day I started taking notes. From each article, video, and book. If something felt it could be of use, something that I could do, I wrote it down. And then I’d put every note together, see what was similar, and create a plan from them. Each day I’ll try something new. If it felt useless, I’d ditch it, if it felt good, I’d keep it. If it didn’t feel anything, I’d keep with it for a week and see in the long run. While still learning new things every day.
Soon, I tried so many things: waking up early, changing alimentation, forcing myself to smile, walking in nature, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, talking to myself, cold showers, Coué’s method, words of empowerment written on the mirror, sports, and so on.
What worked
To be fair, a lot of these things worked. After doing them, I was feeling better. Or sometimes, it was when I gave up on them, thinking they were useless, that I noticed feeling a lot worse. They were actually helping without me noticing.
But in the end, when I tied it all together, I understood something.
It’s not about one magical thing that works like a miracle. All of those actions had one thing in common though: they made me focus on myself. Not in a selfish way but in a healing way. In an empowering manner even.
And what worked too, was the fact of trying, of constantly trying.
It wasn’t a problem if I failed, if I had a day where I didn’t do anything, or if something I just tried didn’t work. Because I knew soon enough I’d do something else, try something else. Because at least I tried something. And I know now it’s not good for me.
And this is it.
- Focus on yourself. On what makes you feel good.
- Try new things, keep the ones you like, ditch the others
- Repeat
One. Step. At. A. Time.
A constant fight, with constant result
I won’t say this is easy. I won’t say I’m winning every day. The depression is still around, I still cry for no apparent reason from time to time. But I feel like I’m progressing like crazy. I’m so much stronger and more confident than I used to be. And what’s awesome is that now I feel like I’m learning. I can look back and see the improvements.
Today, I started the day with a run, and then a small workout while still in the stadium. I know being outside is very important to me. If I don’t go out for at least an hour a day everything feels so much worse. Then I came home, took a shower, and took care of my physical appearance. Not something I used to do at all, but I realised it brings me confidence as well. Then I decided that for once, I’ll do my job hunting outside, in a coffee shop, instead of staying at home. So I went. Yippee, they were a lot of available seats. Bummer, they didn’t have any power plug and since taking water my laptop has no battery — yes, in the end, I have been lucky, the water spill from 2 days ago only did that.
So I couldn’t work in the end. What did I do? Took a piece of paper and wrote this article. We are a few hours later and now I’m putting it on medium. And this act of writing itself is something that procures me a lot of joy. As for the job hunting, it’s a problem for this afternoon.
Not even a month ago, in the same situation, I would have just gone back home and sadly worked from home. 3 months ago, I probably would have cursed the whole world for being so mad at me. A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have even been able to set a single foot in that coffee shop, and I’m not even sure I would have got the idea of doing it. But no, today I stayed, treated myself to a pie and a coffee, and wrote like a madman for hours. I caught myself being very excited about it, sometimes smiling, and even looking at other clients and smiling at them.
All of this, I call progress. I’m proud to see that. And I reward myself for it. And the more I notice things like that, the more confident I get, and the more I want to try new things. I’m starting to love this process, to love to learn. And my self-confidence is getting a boost all the time.
And I know, if you also take the time to try and act, you can find this too. I hope this experience can help you a bit and wish you all the best.
Remember:
- Focus on yourself. On what makes you feel good.
- Try new things all the time, keep the ones you like, ditch the others
- Repeat
