Down the Rabbit Hole

I’ve been trying to write for several weeks now. I have numerous good stories I’m keen to finish off but I just can’t get my head organised, it’s easier to start a new blog than finish off an old one. Just seem to be getting stuck with finding the point of it all. Can’t pull it together, all the bits hanging, fraying, disintegrating under my scrutiny. The last few weeks have been a real challenge for me. The guest house is shut for winter so I have no distractions. I have finished my intuitive coaching certification. I have some wonderful coaching clients who make me feel worthy and whole. I’ve had some amazing readings with exotic animals, and the comfort and security of knowing what these animals do for us is heart-warming. I have a couple of fabulous alternative healers I’m swapping sessions with and learning so much whilst receiving and benefitting from their skills. I’ve been on a few healing courses that have galvanised and propelled my healing to another level. On paper I should really be in my element. Coming out. Celebrating. Moving my business forward. Stepping over the ledge.

The only way to write this honestly is to be brutally transparent in a way that will embarrass me, but it has to be done, even if I never publish this. In order to forgive myself I need to acknowledge my deepest emotions and secrets. I’ve been really down. Triggered by a couple of situations that I couldn’t control. People “letting me down”, or that’s how it felt. But the sort of thing that can’t be undone, a bit like learning that someone doesn’t like you. You can agree not to fall out about it, but really, you can’t undo that can you? So in the first case, it was discovering that something I thought I could do, and was excited about, I can’t (as in not “allowed”), and it came as a real shock. I felt let down, mislead, betrayed and whilst technically I can just do it anyway, I felt shoehorned into an uncomfortable position whereby if I did what I wanted to do, I was “doing wrong”. The second was a conflict of interest between two parties close to me. They may agree to play nice but I can’t manage the stress of supervising that (I’m paraphrasing for your understanding, it wasn’t quite like that!). I know it’s not my place to, and I know I can’t, control it but I still haven’t learned how to distance myself, my pain body, my energetic and emotional body, from people who are close to me. The irony is that in both cases whilst I feel in the wrong and responsible, the people whose feelings I’m all worked up about, are fine. They’re over it. It’s all me. Then follows a spiral of self-blame that after all I’ve grown and all I’ve learned, I cannot insulate myself from other peoples emotions. Or even my perception of other people’s emotions. And I feel powerless.

Before I had a mental breakdown I would never have known or acknowledged I had “issues with mental health”. Whilst I’m mostly hugely compassionate person with people individually, face-to-face, my capacity to be empathic with mental health issues was all about whether it was something I could reference. I was empathic towards substance abuse (more so alcohol, less so drugs) because of my own experience. I could understand the hopelessness of being overweight since I struggled there also, but there was also, if I’m brutally honest, a huge amount of judgement in all cases. I’m fat but I’m not that fat, how could you let yourself get that bad – my mother’s words slide out before I’ve even consciously arrived at the discussion. I like a drink but I’ve never been that bad. How could you lose control like that? You’re not even trying to help yourself. No sympathy for anyone with mother issues, I mean, who hasn’t got mother issues, get over it! (Oh the irony). And secretly comparing myself all the time, proud to wear the badge of damage, but only up to some arbitrary point that was acceptable to me, beyond that I would disassociate myself, the unspoken words being that I was not that bad.

Whilst I don’t consider that I live in a cloud of bliss, that’s the goal and I know it’s achievable, I feel that I bob along in mild contentment most of the time now. For many, many years I was barely surviving, and whilst I know there is a better place to be than “OK”, fortunately feeling down is unusual and I feel it very strongly. This is a good sign, it means that I have grown used to a happier state of being so my awareness of being knocked out of it is stronger. However the flip-side is that is can trigger the self-blame of not being happy. How dare I not be happy? In the last few days I’ve been acknowledging things that I haven’t admitted to myself. Ever. Acknowledging that I don’t want to ask my friends for help because secretly I’m afraid it may bore them. I’ve never acknowledged this before. Nobody wants to be around someone who is depressed. I’m embarrassed that I don’t have legitimate reason to be depressed. I know if I told them my fears they would be horrified, as I would be. I know if I told them they would bathe me in love and appreciation. But still I don’t say anything. I’m worried that my spiritual partner and colleague is tiring of my not being positive. That she thinks I’m ignoring her advice. That she is frustrated with my lack of growth and my complaining that she is so much further along than me. I can’t tell her that deep shameful secret that feels ridiculous to put into words, but that’s how I feel. If I did, I know that she would love me and lift me gently out of my misery. But still I say nothing. It’s like watching myself through a fishbowl. Through the fishbowl, a distorted view of what’s actually happening, and a knowing that my perception is distorted, but I’m paralysed, stuck in my suffering. All this behaviour is red flag signs for depression and ailing mental health. I can see them and I ignore them, not because I don’t know they are there and they are real, but because I don’t want to go there. This has opened up a whole new awareness of the value of meeting people where they are. Including myself. I had boxed my breakdown into something that happened, not be be repeated, a reaction to a circumstance. When in fact it was just an extreme indication of the vulnerability that we all have, every day, that can claim us without warning, however “strong” we think we are. None of us are immune to it.

Is my fear that I don’t want people to think I am that person? Looking back over my judgements in the past, there is a theme of abhorring weakness. My true self, faced with a person who is suffering, doesn’t judge. But when it’s second- or third-hand, stories told by others, my judge is pompous and righteous about how weak these people are. And by implication, how strong I am then, especially since I have danced around the edges and not fallen in.

All the teachings tell me I need to acknowledge how I feel and then turn my attention towards happier things, but when you’re in the midst of depression, it’s hard. It’s infuriating to know that you “just” need to find happy things to think about, when you’re wallowing around in a pit of sorrow and self-abuse, because they don’t come readily. I know why that is, and I know how to get out of it, but knowing how to do something and being able to do it are not the same thing. You literally have to “snap out of it” said with love, in a Cher voice, but not in the condescending voice of a well-meaning friend or spouse who thinks you need to “pull yourself together”.  And turn away. Turn towards anything that lifts your spirits. I was speaking to a client in deep grief yesterday and I was getting the same messages from her guides. You have to turn away from the darkness, and gather some momentum in the other direction. There is a habit of suffering that some of us are comfortable with and whilst I have overcome it to a large degree, the patterns are still there, a well worn path. Paths I didn’t know existed, but paths that can be triggered when I least expect it. And paths that pull in only one direction. My new awareness of this has helped enormously, once I’ve got over the shame. Hence the acknowledgment that poor mental health can happen to each and every one of us, whether we know it or not. And in that I have found relief.

This episode has taught me that one of my fears is to be seen as weak. Because if I’m weak I can’t be of use to anyone. And if I’m of no use, then I’m unloveable. It’s all nonsense, it’s all variations of a theme, but this is a new one and chasing it down has brought some further relief. The behaviour I’m exhibiting is hiding, and it’s very common, but it’s not something I ever saw in myself.

So back to the turning away. Exactly how do we do that? You can’t turn from sorrow to joy on a ha’penny, but you can climb higher than powerlessness. Even anger is preferable. For me, if I allow myself, I can watch my chickens long enough for the love to sneak in, I can’t watch them for any length of time without a slight warming in the heart. The trouble is when you feel shit, it’s hard to give yourself the time to unwind the sorrow long enough to feel the tickle of something else. You really do have to work at it, to persevere long enough. Abraham Hicks says it takes 17 seconds to start building momentum – of course it depends how far you sunk the other way, but you can start changing your momentum in as little as 17 seconds, so stick with it! Whatever brings you joy, laughter, happiness or even peace, neutrality. There is a lot to be said for kitten and cat videos if that’s your thing. Part of the problem is that we have grandiose ideas about therapy about what is good and nourishing for us. Joining a class or starting a new hobby would be admirable, but it’s likely be out of reach if you’re in a ditch. For me, TV. I’ve been battling this “worthiness” around TV but I’m finally ready to let that go. Watching “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “the Great Pottery Throwdown” is feel-good TV for me. It’s full of love and affection. Even “Dating No Filter” feels like I have a bunch of friends around, friends I don’t have explain myself to, don’t need to mix drinks for, but I benefit from their company. My favourite feel-good tip is slow dancing with the cat. I hold Sally the cat in my arms and sing George Michael’s Freedom into her head. Or Rufus Wainwright’s Dinner at Eight. She makes pudding on my shoulder and purrs like a fridge as she loves the vibration of my singing. I challenge anyone who loves cats not to feel better after that.

So if you’re in a dark place, focus on the small things that feel better, and just try to hold that for long enough to build momentum. It’s very hard to stop thinking about something – the only way you can do it is by thinking of something else, so line up a few neutral or positive scenarios to think about. Day dream. If you can’t muster up the enthusiasm, then shamelessly scour TV or the Internet for anything that will make you smile, but seriously avoid anything negative. You don’t need to know what’s going on the world right now, and you don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. Most importantly never let anyone tell you how to feel or what to do unless it feels right to you (including me!). And on behalf of all the people in the world who just don’t get it, including the old me, I apologise for our lack of understanding. As Neale Donald Walsh says, ‘don’t say “there but for the grace of God go I”, but rather, “there I go”’.