The Breaking of a Cycle
I have avoided writing this blog like the plague. (wait...is that even a relevant statement anymore??...moving on….) I have been avoiding a lot here lately. Don’t get me wrong….my notes are on par, my deadlines are mostly met (besides this blog…) my house is clean, my kids are fed and happy, my husband loves me still, and my garden is huge and luscious. From the outside looking in, I am pretty on top of things. I say all of this because my friend, Stacey, keeps reminding me of how on top of things I am. & she’s correct. & I love her because when I am sad or feeling down on myself, she helps to remind me of the good things, of what I am doing RIGHT. The thing is I am not sad. I mean, I am, but it’s different. I am depressed….or fighting off depression. You see, I was triggered pretty hard a few weeks back. I won’t go into the details of that, but it was a fairly large trigger that has led to panic attacks, heavy bouts of emotional release, and lots of discussions.
All of those things together led to the further revelation of a cycle I have been trying to break for what seems like millennia. At this point in my normal cycle of thought, I start blaming myself, negative self-talk, my self-worth takes a nosedive and I isolate myself from pretty much everyone and everything. I am at a point in my healing where I can observe this part of the cycle without being caught up in the emotions of it. But with depression (and many other mental illnesses) the effects aren’t just emotional. I have these reactions to triggers because of things that I have experienced, but those reactions have, over time, been ingrained into my physiology. My body recognizes the pathways that my brain is trying to take and releases the appropriate chemicals. I have chemicals in my body telling it to be sad, while I am logically looking in saying, “No, we are trying not to do that this time!” (I hope that makes sense. These things are so difficult to explain….) It is a literal internal and exhausting fight. So….I deal by turning my energy into work. This can be a healthy coping skill, it’s productive, but it can also be a way to distract ourselves from dealing with what’s inside.
That being said, I DO have a ton of anger and sadness I have never let out. Writing this blog is one way of releasing them. I avoid writing when I am feeling these heavy emotions because I just don’t want to “mess with feeling them” right now. These are the emotions from my past that I need to stop clinging to like my favorite teddy bear. So much of who I am has been founded on that hurt and pain, while at the same time, I have always kept it close to my heart, not wanting it to seep out for fear of its intensity. Recognizing the difference between my normal depressive cycle and the need for emotional release is a hard one. This pain and anger is a deep, generalized hurt originating from the people who betrayed me most in life. It was those exact people who triggered me so hugely just a few weeks back. So, to say those chemicals kicking in on time is the full blame of this emotional distraction is to disregard the impact those triggers have on my emotions. I know they affect my feelings immensely. Projection is a huge sign that I have been misusing repression as a coping skill. All this anger and sadness I don’t want to seep out, eventually does. And it gets all over the people I care about the most in forms of frustration, emotional outbursts, or me distancing myself from them. I have had that happen more often than I care to admit recently. I am having a hard time separating and processing the amount of emotion that is flooding in. It’s more overwhelming than usual.
Normally, I can work through my cycle fairly easily. I recognize the pattern, attach it to a trigger, recognize the emotion, understand where it comes from, process it several (hundred...ahem) times, and then it’s a “healed” trauma. ( I dislike that word healed...it implies cured….which is not the case, it’s more like a bandaid, but whatevs) This time, I cannot recognize any specific event to tie to the pain and sadness. I don’t know where it is coming from, so I am stuck at this stage in the cycle. Maybe I just need to recognize the prevalence those emotions play in my life and process it. Matt suggested I was having an emotional reaction to a memory I cannot remember. Maybe it is just an overwhelm of all that has happened in my life. A final release, so to say. Maybe those emotions are finally going to all be flooded out, but I expect that will be a whole process, for it to all happen at once, would be overwhelming for sure. I have cried harder, felt more pain and sadness towards those events, those people, towards “little Andrea” than I ever have in my life. I DO know this: I am finally putting myself inside my own story and allowing myself to feel it. Instead of just telling my story, I am hearing it. I am forgiving those who hurt me, but most importantly, I am forgiving myself. You see, each time I tell my story differently, I learn a little more from it, I feel a little more, and I heal in the process. During the healing process, you learn you have to revisit certain beliefs, certain feelings a million times in a million different ways until one day it just clicks. I don’t know how long I will have to live my life fighting the internal emotional battle of allowing those emotions to be released, but I do know that I won’t give up. I never do.
Thank you, Lord, for being the Vine that sustains us. I am so humbly grateful for the blessings in my life. Thank you for leading me to people who love me, show mercy and grace, who lead by example and love me unconditionally. Their love and patience have been nothing short of an outpouring of your love through them. Thank you for using them. Lord, use me, in the same way, to be a light for others in their darkness. Open up the doors for me to share your love and mercy, and guide me through them. Forgive me Lord for failing you every day. I rely so heavily on your unfailing grace. Thank you for never giving up on me. Without you, I am nothing. Amen.
