On depression and anxiety
Depression and Anxiety were a familiar “friend” for a very long time. We are talking since the age of seven. But the point of this post is not to share my entire story of the struggles with anxiety and depression (more to come on this) but more so to just share with you small pieces of my story. One thing about anxiety is depression is the way that it can make you feel so isolated from the world around you. My anxiety would tell me lies like “they don’t even like you” or my depression would say something like “we are better off alone” WHAT BS. But at the time my mind really believed that those words were true. It has taken me years to get to a point where I could actually identify a voice that wasn’t my soul speaking but rather an overworked stressed out brain. Ah yes. The brain we love you so much, but DAMN DOG why you gotta be so protective. This is another thing I learned that helped me feel slightly not as crazy. My brain was trying to protect me from feeling any “negative” emotions.
For a long time I fed into this notion that anxiety depression were wrong and I was a bad person for feeling so bad… blah blah blah. It was utter nonsense- what was actually going on was that I was SO disconnected, disoriented, from suppressing SO many emotions over SO many years, that my brain and body stored so much of my feelings that it was like I was just walking around with the weight from all past experiences. I wasnt a bad person for feeling- I wasnt bad at all. The truth was I wasnt giving myself permission to just feel the shit. All of it, because when we feel our shit we can actually shift.
There is a saying that depression is anger turned inwards (true for me at least) and I feel like anxiety is really just another piece of the depression loop. When we are depressed if we don’t have enough energy to feel our emotions than all that is left over is the energy in motion, and this can kick up anxious feelings, and then overthinking, and the loop continues. This was true for me.
I kid you not when I finally began to let myself feel- like REALLY feel, there was a lot of anger that came through. I had never been an angry person, well because I kept everything inside and let me tell you, it was FUN. You’re probably wondering why I say fun… well for a woman who didn’t fully feel or express her emotions for like almost 20 years… feeling without an underlying tone of depression felt SO freeing! Don’t worry I didn’t do anything out of anger to anyone, BUT I did scream into pillows, or jump up and down, dance my butt off, swear and scream at the sky.
The ability to just express, to let my emotions run out of me through my energy was cathartic every single time. Still to this day I love to healthily express my sacred rage.
Have you ever seen that scale that ranges from low vibe to high vibe emotions? I want you to burn it down. Say it with me, EVERY EMOTION IS IMPORTANT. WHY? Because our emotions are a marker, a signal from our body that something is going right or not. Our emotions are our intuition speaking to us. If our emotions are connected to our intuition- then they are one of the keys to developing more trust with ourselves. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? NOT ME.
Being able to feel is a gift, and each and every emotion that we feel is a connection back home to ourself, helping us to ride the waves of life, connect to our intution, show up with more empathy for ourselves and others, and make room and guide us back into our JOY.
