How to Course Correct Setbacks on Your Healing Journey
DO NOT BEAT YOURSELVES UP. Then gently pick up ONE simple good habit.
You have been feeling stressed. You can barely think straight when it comes to personal matters for about two weeks now. Therapy sessions become more like band-aids on your leaking sanity than actually making any progress on healing. You don’t even know what to answer when asked by your most patient friend “what caused you to feel depressed?” So many things are chipping your sanity away that you can’t even pinpoint which ones are the most aggressive offenders.
Finally, on a Friday night, you wrap up work on time and decide to give yourself a treat — the beginning of a slip. It’s all very justified: “I have been doing as best as I can to hold myself together. I deserve a break.” Then you go on to indulge JUST THAT LITTLE MORE in things you know that are not good for you. One bad decision after another, you end up where I was last night — It was 4 in the morning and I was still scrolling through my iPad because I didn’t want to face the reality.
Eventually, we pass out of exhaustion, like we always do, and then wake up in a deep sense of doom and self-loathing.
This moment is where we need to catch ourselves.
In the past, the temptation to dwell in the comfort zone of self-loathing is so strong, that we would just go either extreme — completely give up and relapse back to our old self-destructive habits and double down on the bad decisions OR try to overcorrect our behaviors and go overboard with the good habits and end up going back to the vicious cycle of “I have worked so hard. I deserve a break.”
To stop this broken record of nightmares, or at least reduce its intensity by a little every time we can’t help but have a slip, here is what we can do:
First, we need to STOP BEATING OURSELVES UP. That would only make the downward slope that much more tempting and crawling back up that much harder.
Second, we resume one good habit that we usually do if we didn’t slip. Just one to get us moving instead of sitting in the puddle of self-criticism — and we all know how HARSH we can be to ourselves if we let that criticism unattended.
For me, the minute I caught the voices saying terrible things in my head again, I tuned into the channels on Youtube regarding addiction and maintaining a high vibration. Immediately they helped pull my head out of my ass. Then one good decision after another, I thought to myself “I will do one simple 10-minute meditation. I remember how great I felt the last several times I did it, so I want to make an effort to feel that peace and ease again.” Soon enough, after the meditation, the strong self-loathing voice became a mere whisper that I could quickly brush off by resuming another good habit — jogging. You’re reading these words after I came back from jogging and clearing my mind.
Lastly — Do Not Quit.
Do not quit pulling ourselves up, encouraging ourselves, forgiving ourselves, being patient with ourselves, making good decisions as best we can, and maintaining a system of safety net — good habits, affirmations, positive influences — so we can pull ourselves back up an inch faster and an inch more the next time.
I had been comparing living with Depression with Sisyphus pushing the boulder. That image in my head had been so strong that I felt hopeless. The suggestion from my therapist about breaking the boulder down didn’t make sense to me because my perception of Depression was just a huge dark jumbo of negativity. If I could break it down, there wouldn’t have been Depression in the first place.
By crafting this new strategy of recovering from a setback, I realize there is another perspective of seeing this seemingly doomed picture. If I can fall back down just an inch less every time the boulder gets pushed down again — if I can spend 10 minutes less before I can pull myself up again every time I experience a setback — then over time, it’s guaranteed that I will get closer and closer to the top of the slope even if I slip.
Will there be one day when we will be able to live peacefully at the top of the slope regardless of the boulder? That question only becomes meaningful when we put in the effort to try our best to reach there. Let us strive together.
