@stayingsane
Hello Stayingsane
Yep, know this dynamic well. Isn't life a peach, that you know is tasty, is good for you, it fits nicely in your hand but sometimes you are just too full to take a bite?
That's kinda what anxiety and depression does. It makes us full. Too full of "what might happen" to be open and see what will happen. So where are left starving with a piece of fruit in our hand.
This may well be the way things are, but does it need to remain this way?
I've come to the conclusion that if I don't move, the world will spin on and I won't know where I am. Why me? I used to think, sometimes still do, but it's a question which has no real meaning.
I remember many years ago, I asked Why Me? And I felt this voice say to me, Why not you? What I got fromthat was a rationale.
Ok, I'm in pain, I;m depressed and suicidal, I scared and anxious, I'm angry, I feel like these emotions are scooping an enormous channel through the middle of me. and it really hurts.
Then I look around me, I see folk who though they aren't mental, they are feeling hurt, fear, sadness and are scared to live life to any kind of fullness.
Hmmmm. A paler version of what I'm living with. Yes, they periods in their life where they are happy and content and all that good stuff but when they have these challenging feelings they appear so very lost.
I hit upon it.
They felt what I'm feeling but at a minus of 300%. Still they were kind of lost in it, not knowing what to do, and here i am with this channel you could float a luxury liner through and dang! I realised I could provide them with a measure of comfort because I knew their discomfort but at a factor of ten. I could help.
This was a big realisation for me, I could indetntify using the damage of my mind and my "self" to ease the burden of my fellow humans. For me, this was the WHY!
Did this conclusion heal me, make the bad stuff go away? Was I mentally healthy, did become symptom free?
No. None of that. But suddenly I had purpose. Suddenly I had out sight. Insight was old hat, I could see myself better than a narccissist in a mirror shop. But now I could turn that sharp insight outwards and suddenly I understand that people everywhere have pain and are alone in it, and I could actually help them not be alone.
Fear became a signpost. it indicated that change was coming. Every time I felt fear I was fearful of change. Therefore fear itself was no more than a tool to recognise the coming change.
Fear is the sign post to change. Do I want to change my life? Oh yeah. Is a better life a change? Oh yeah.
This simple observation transformed my whole life. I still felt frightened and often it was almost overwhelming, but I kept seeing the notes I'd written to myself and blutacked to the walls in my house.
"FEAR IS THE SIGNPOST TO CHANGE" "CHANGE HAS GOTTA BE BETTER THAN THIS CRAP"
And that for me was the secret. It has flowed over most parts of my daily life. I am always frightened but I view it now not as an animal trying to get me, but as a tool that God uses to get my attention, to ready me for something different.
I am still mentally ill. I am still neurologically unsound. I am often powerless in the hate I feel for myself.
But that deep channel has allowed me to empathise with almost any type of person, even the feckwits, and I know that by feeling that fear I am prepared to run toward change. Blindly and sometimes stupidly, but something new can't be as bad as that old stuff. That bad stuff was the worst.
So I guess what I'm saying is it's ok, natural even to be fearful, but it could be a tool to new and better things.
Hope I think is what led me to this conclusion , and as I might have said once or twice before
Hope endures
Prayers for you,
Rick
