8 Years of Depression
The First 3 Things That Shifted Me
After a very long, energy-consuming depression, with so many ups and downs that even I thought it was a miracle that I could get out of it, it turned out that I had still survived along the way. I never imagined I would be where I am today, where almost all my passion for life has returned. And I never imagined that I could wake up from all those years of depression, in fact, I was more certain that I wouldn’t survive. And it was in that state of survival, the healing process took place, although it was very slow, gradually, and took a long time.
I had trouble falling asleep and waking up. Even though I was tired at night, I couldn’t fall asleep until early morning. At night if I close my eyes, I could suddenly cry. At night if I fall asleep early, for example at eight in the evening, at ten to eleven at night I wake up with a beating heart. Or in the early hours of the morning, I can be awake, but with sudden palpitations. Not only at night but even during the day, I can suddenly feel my heart rate speeding up. And I become anxious because of that uncomfortable body sensation. I felt and believed that crying suddenly at night for no reason was my subconscious mechanism for releasing, unraveling, or holding or treating a (mental) wound. Which one was the wound, I wasn’t certain.
I wish I could wake up early, I told my friend. Because I always wake up at two or three in the afternoon, and it’s as if time has disappeared for me. During the day it’s too hot, and everything is too much to do, and I don’t even know what to do at that time. I didn’t know what to live for. My friend said I was disorientated because I had no foundation or milestones in life. I was not able to be grounded. Then he said, I have to create those milestones. And that’s where the importance of the rhythm of life is to make us embody, to ground ourselves back to the earth, to life, to the present time.
My friend first told me to recreate the rhythm of life by deciding on one thing that becomes a pillar in life. “Decide on one activity that you can do at the same time every day,” he said.
Bathing, reading, cooking, eating, meditation, walking, or whatever, but in principle, it should be done at the same time every day.
For that reason, I chose the first thing I would do every day at the same time, which was to water the plants at three o’clock in the afternoon. I didn’t choose the morning, because I knew I couldn’t get up early. At that time, I couldn’t even understand what it meant that I had to have the milestones. But when I started doing it, all the rhythms of normal human life gradually came back.
From watering the plants at 3 pm, other activities follow. There are a series of other activities after watering the plants that automatically happen, one of which is walking in the late afternoon. After walking in the evening, there is another thing that seems to happen automatically, which is bathing. Taking a bath in the evening after watering the plants and physically moving around on a walk feels different than just taking a bath after a long day of sleep. After the shower, there are other things that seem to automatically follow, such as making afternoon tea, reading, or watching television, browsing, or writing a journal.
Once that was in place, I then added one more activity, which was meditation. I tried to learn meditation on my own, starting with five minutes of feeling the breath. This meditation is following my friend’s instructions, which is just breathing, feeling the in and out of breath in the nostrils, then if thoughts come, just let them go, then move on back to focusing on the breath again. Starting from five minutes, then I can hold it ten minutes. I tried this meditation at 3 pm, then afterward I would water the plants.
So, broadly speaking, the first three things I did to survive the most difficult times were:
Watering plants — gardening.
This activity of watering the plants is very helpful when our minds are over. Since the plants, and since I started planting, I started to special attention for the growth of the plants, so when my mind starts to go over, I take myself out to the garden and look at the plants again, because when I look at them, there must be something that needs to be done, for example, moving them, sowing them again, harvesting them, and so on. Doing a lot of work in the garden and interacting with plants and soil makes us more grounded. I feel focused and relaxed. Gardening, touching the soil, sowing, watering, and so on, is really effective in making us embodied, and present in the moment.
Walking.
“Walking for at least thirty minutes a day will help you sleep,” said a friend who accompanied me through my crisis. Walking really does help to ground the mind. While the mind is often not on the body in motion when walking, the body in motion always automatically invites the mind to experience the journey. That is, in fact, the reason why I feel addicted to travel.
Meditation.
The meditation I did at three in the afternoon was always in a laying position. As an amateur, I didn’t want to be tied down by the rules of sitting upright, sitting cross-legged, and so on, because I knew I would feel overwhelmed before I did it. I just wanted to learn to breathe, to feel the breath, whatever the position. Therefore, I positioned myself lying down, because that was the most comfortable at that time for me. And it turns out, by lying down and feeling burdenless, I could do meditation consistently. In effect, every time excessive anxiety arises, or negative thoughts arise, I could automatically start to be able to distance myself, and take a pause on the emotions that arise. It helps me process my emotions, but it didn’t always work, because I still got carried away and did things that I would later regret. Even so, doing it continuously makes me more sensitive and sharp to all kinds of thoughts and emotions that arise. Not only meditation in a lying position but at that time I also tried meditation in a walking position. Because I like to walk, walking meditation was more suitable for me at that time.
In later years, some of the main things that also helped me survive and eventually get through that hard time were solo travelling, morning journaling, yoga and my dog. Dog keeps me in rhythm. I have a morning routine. Dog was one of the most important reasons for me to stay alive. Yoga, like walking, keeps me embodied and grounded.
Thanks for reading.
Please feel free to share if you have similar experiences.
Jan Stanlav.
