Depression – a personal journey

I am no psychologist, so take what I say with a pinch of salt….

If you have ever suffered from depression, you will know the feeling of hopelessness, rejection, isolation, and self dislike. The constant sense of doom without hope and an ache deep within, which doesn’t seem to go away.
Like a headache, we want an instant cure for it. A pill to cure it perhaps, or to indulge in activities that drown out the pain!

For me, I tried to keep busy, but when the waves of depression hit, I would allow them to take me down to the depths of despair. Here, dark memories would consume me, haunting me constantly…the things I could have done but did not…what would have happened had I done things differently.
The deeper my memories took me, the greater the intensity of pain……
I would eventually surface exhausted, only to wait for another wave to sink me. During these times, faith and music were my best friends. They would comfort me and allow me time to heal, which thankfully I did.

Pain is a process we go through to necessitate change; in ourselves or in the surrounding.
Without pain, we would stay where we are and not move forwards. Evolution? The natural order of things? I don’t know, but I do know we all experience some sort of depression in our lives.
The key thing is coping mechanisms, which will be different for each one of us. Trying to drown out pain isn’t the answer, as it will come back. Rather, let time takes its course, whilst we find ways of coping with it.