Some of the best advice that was given to me during the two and a half years I suffered from clinical depression as a teenager I received from my therapist at the time, he told me about" The Five" which I have renamed "The Five Finger Death Punch for depression and to live a happier life", for dramatic effect. They are for the most part so simple and so common sense that of course human beings often struggle to do at least one or all five of them.
For anyone who has lived in depression, it is the equivalent of living in a dark tunnel with no sign of the light at the end and the walls are so cramped and the ceiling so low its suffocating. You exist each day in these blinders of sadness, and reality really does not connect into your brain where you are trapped. Everything bad that happens seems to be life personally putting its boot on your chest and pushing only you deeper in. You take the world so personally, when it is the exact opposite of personal. Sleep seems to be the only respite from this, but may people suffering from depression also suffer from anxiety and insomnia as I also did, so getting to that place of rest is an even harder. Also you lack energy, or enthusiasm for anything, the simplest things seem to take everything from you.
Within the first session my therapist told me was this:
1. Clean Your Room:
Most people in the depth of sadness have a living space that represents that inner sadness, there room is a mess. So start there, clean your room, nothing is more important. Turn off your phone, turn your computer off, lock the door and clean your room/slash space. If the whole house has gotten run down along with you just start with your room, the place you sleep. Clean the hell out of it, change your sheets, do your laundry and make it a sanctuary, a holy place where you can rest at night. Actually if you are not depressed do this also, even if the rest of the house is a destruction zone make this place your base, the place you return. When it is clean, then you can start to venture out into the jungles of the rest of your living space, the destruction zone of the living room, to the sink hole of the kitchen and finally the pits of hell that is the bathroom. When this space is clean then, you give yourself a base to start from, a sacred spot. Even if you live in the most inhospitable basement nook, which I have lived in, treat that place as sacred, as holy, as the Sistine Chapel of your life.
The next three are part of that life thing that we all work with our wholes lives and I struggle with regularly.
2. Eat Well
3. Sleep Well
4. Exercise
I know, I know, these are talked about by every single doctor, health practitioner, yoga instructor, hair stylist, postal man and your mother till your sick to death of hearing it, but man are they important, and its all about making small gains in them. Life is a zoo, its a zoo of work, relationships, family, children, bills, blah, blah, blah. Most people barely have the time to cram caffeine in there face and not go to work naked let alone do these things, but start to do them. Put more veggies in your diet and less sugar, watch one less episode of TrueLouieKimmyGameofCardsville on netflix and get a half an hour more sleep. MOVE! Shake your body like its no body's business, its the most incredible tool we have in our entire lives so move it about, go for hikes, dance in your living room, stretch. Don't work to look like some younger, thinner version of yourself just work to feel good in this fleshy thing you are trapped in during your human existence. You may not have time to join your local gym but move the damn thing if you want it to survive into your elderly years, it was not meant to be sedentary it was meant to do all sorts of stuff. So whatever that means make time to make that happen, and get all those difficult things I listed above involved. If you need to take your board meeting on a fricekn jog, make your children do yoga with you or take your bills hiking, just make it happen.
5. Do things that make you happy
This is a giant vague statement, but if you know the person you are then you should know the things that make you happy. If you don't, go find out. You owe it to yourself and everybody in your life. If its art, music, theater, sports, carpentry, reading, running, biking, crossword puzzles, swimming, dancing, yoga, beer making, cooking, baking, astrology, astronomy, archeology, paleontology, or making Christmas tree ornament of cows out of tinsel , just do it. Some people are lucky enough to do the things they love for their work but most are not. If you can work towards doing work you love for your work, make it happen over time. Life is not that easy and quick that you can make it happen immediately, but damn you owe it to yourself to try. If work is work and it allows you to live then fine, but hack out that time in your life to do this stuff, why else are you living?? What is the point of your existence if you are no doing things you love?? If your family and friends love you they want you to do them too, if you have kids get them involved in the things you love as well, share it. The masochist western society we live in want us to drown ourselves with over work and boob tube, but instead go exercising your brain working on teaching yourself wilderness survival skills, or learning to knit scarfs for cats. Study a style of African drum making, or look up that recipe for those vegan turnip beatloff cookies you have been dying to make. I joke but just find those weird hobbies you love that tickle your heart and just do it man.
Bam that's it! Those are the five, but you may say "Dory, your dumb, there is so much more that goes into this" yes that's true, but if you do these things as your base, you will feel so much better about your life. True is if your seriously depressed these simple things become monsters to deal with, but if you want to live you have to do them. Only you will decide if you want to live, I came desperately close to the darkest cliff of my life in depression that almost killed me thirteen years ago, but I decided I wanted to live, I decided I wanted to fight, and these five became my weaponry with which to do it.
If you need even more help, go to therapy (which I highly recommend for everyone at some point if you need a non biased second opinion on things), meditation (which truly saved my life, and I will write more about down the line), medication (if you have an actual medical chemical deficiency and need the help) are there as well as so many other therapy's, light therapy, yoga, Tai Chi, nature therapy, art therapy and so on and so forth.
But these are the five that should help death punch that depression into last year, I wouldn't be the silly happy person I am today without them.
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