when it gets really bad and I feel as if I am about to actually lose my mind and hanging on by a mere thread...I have to just stop and honestly ask myself...OK. Time out. What feelings/events etc am I avoiding and trying to push aside and not deal with? I find that if I ask myself this in an open and uncensored enough manner and allow for a pause...the answers typically surface on their own.
To just honestly ask myself.. what's really going on here that is making me so miserable that I have yet to acknowledge? (A morbid curiosity, if you will ~)
For me, I think the greatest obstacle(s) most times are those things (feelings) which I suppress...only, you don't really know that you are suppressing it in the first place until you feel really cornered, trapped and utterly hopeless - enough to finally ask (and answer) your own self just what the heck is going on here????
9 times out of 10 (for me) it has to do with profound, unprocessed disappointment about a particular situation/person from my past. About not processing a particular loss in my life. Not easy nor pretty to actually...go there. But I have found (overall) that it is almost always worth the effort and I come out of it knowing a little more about myself, and the depression just naturally kinds of shifts/lessens as a by-product result.
Kind of, sort of like removing a long buried thorn from my soul...and somewhat ironically I find (in retrospect) that I was making a big deal out of nothing (surface stuff)...when (in essence) there was a much bigger deal in which I was doing nothing about...(by not acknowledging or 'going there'.)
For me, my biggest hang-up is not so much about depression per se - but on the incredible confusion, mostly...which feeds into the depression...if that makes sense? And the main thing that comes with that is a level of personal embarrassment to myself - about myself that (evidently) I didn't/don't know enough about how the whole world really "works" because my emotional growth was stunted ('deer-in-headlights' kind of existence) at such a young age and I have to all of a sudden attempt to make up for all of this lost time...is probably my biggest obstacle to try and tackle...Oy - at my age already!
Aside from that, music (and dancing) really helps me to instantly change my mood and allows a well-needed outlet.
Also, it really helps to have a few supportive non-judgmental friends in my corner who are not put off my sporadic neurotic ways!
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