Key In The Lock

In my last entry I mentioned about opening up the door to my emotions. To the way I am feeling and getting the feelings out in the open. I talked about not trusting people about how I am really feeling. NOW, is the time to start with opening the door a little wider. I am still unsure of where to start so I am going to start with the present.

Finding things to cope with depression and anxiety is difficult but not impossible. The reason I am still alive is because of things I have discovered to help me cope. In order to do those things, you need motivation. Lately, I haven’t had motivation to do anything but sleep. There are times where I am so low that I want it all to stop and to stop fast. I have held a bottle of pills in my hand ready to swallow all at once several times in the past year or so. I haven’t had motivation to paint, write, sing, or “people”. Such as hanging out with my friends. All I want is to be alone. It’s hard enough being in my own head but when I have to be with people and try to listen to what they say and hold back my emotions is like a zebra hanging out with a lion.

What do I mean? Well let’s say in a zoo the zebra and lion are in two different enclosures. Well, let’s say they don’t have any other “friends” with them in their area. So, the zookeeper decides to put the zebra and the lion together because they felt sorry for them and just wanted them to be friends. Well, in the natural order of nature the lions EAT zebras. When I go out with people, I see myself as the zebra and people as the lion. I would be eaten alive if I went out in public. By this I mean judged, criticized, ridiculed, made fun of, and so on. I would fall into a deeper whole of emotion cause by the anxiety that I get when I go out. So, I spend a lot of time alone, with my cat, because she loves me for me. She shows me love and acceptance.

I have a real hard time with that, acceptance. There will be times where you are not accepted. It’s all how you deal with it that will make you or break you.

Because of my issues always wanted to be accepted I have grown up to be a people pleaser. Which is dangerous because people are not always good hearted. Their intentions may not be pure. I learned that the hard way. As a people pleaser you focus more on the other person and their feelings than you do their own. You feel uncomfortable? No problem at least the other person is comfortable and is happy. You have a pile of work to do but your boss adds more work for you to do to help them out. No problem you want to make them proud. This isn’t healthy. You are ignoring your own feelings and pushing them down to deal with them when you break. And when you deal with them your mind is not being rational and causes you to do drastic, maybe even permanent, solutions.

A lot of times people with depression and anxiety fight their battles alone. For the same reason I do. Because they don’t trust people to open up. They don’t want to burden others with their issues. They think they are strong enough to fight on their own. We need people who we can trust enough to open up and to LET them help us fight our battles. There will also be times where you are so stuck your ways and stuck in your mind that if you do decide to trust someone with your troubles that you will be closed mind and not listen to what they have to say. In order for you to help yourself and others to help you, you need to have an open mind. Truly listen to what they have to say. Think through your options. Think of the future and what will be best for you in the long run. If you can’t take care of yourself. How can you take care of someone else with their problems?

I like helping people. I also know that I need to take care of me. That is what I am doing but with my trust issues with people and opening up to them is very hard but not impossible. I figured I could start out buy opening up in writing. Get things off my chest in writing first. After all I am better at writing than I am at speaking.

My mind goes all over the place. I would talk about one thing then switch topics and go off on another tangent about something else from then what I intentionally wanted to talk about. So, when I talk, I don’t get what is on my chest out. I avoid the real issue. That is something I need to work on. As I see it, me changing the subject is a way of avoiding the real talk and the real issues at hand.

When it comes to real talk about MY issues it’s an uncomfortable zone for me but when it comes to real talk about other’s issues. I’ll listen and talk it out with people until I’m blue in the face. Why do I do this? Because it takes the focus off of me. I’ve been through a lot in my life that I am able to say the right things to help people think through their issues. That is what I am going to work on. Opening that door. I opened a little bit with this post about my depression and how low I have been. But it’s not everything.

Stay tuned as I open the door a little more.