Enough Is Enough...

It's easy to feel like you aren't enough when you're living with a chaotic mind in a chaotic life.  When you have demands coming at you from every direction and you don't know which one to answer first, it's easy to just listen to the voice that shouts the loudest.  When that voice is your own, shouting that you aren't good enough, it's very difficult to ignore.

As humans it seems to be our nature to undervalue our own efforts and gloss over any success.  When you have anxiety and depression it's more profound than that. You loathe yourself, you feel like a failure all the time, you want to do well but no matter how well you do it isn't enough...you're never enough.

Although I can't speak for others I want to say that when it comes to recovery and the ongoing journey I take with anxiety this is especially true. I'm often guilty of judging myself too harshly in regards to how well I'm doing and it's only when I turn a corner and start to feel better I can accept my so called shortcomings.  This is where I am at the moment and this is why I wanted to write this now, so I can read it later when I need to give myself some advice.

This is it...

YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH.

I'm human, I'm weak and I'm fallible and that's okay.  If we just give ourselves permission to be less than perfect we can start to accept ourselves and love our flaws. We can find a way to live with ourselves in a way that works.

While we need to accept ourselves, we should never stop trying to grow and develop, we just need to be a lot kinder in the way we go about it. We just need to find ways to do things so we can participate in the world without it feeling like a chore or a punishment.

Take me as an example.  I don't like unfamiliar surroundings and I hate having things sprung on me. I need time to plan, to feel a bit in control or else my panic.  It doesn't make me a bad person and it doesn't make me boring.  It's just the way I am. Having a spontaneous husband doesn't make this easy but he is good for me.  He understands when I turn down the sudden suggestion of a night out but equally I am challenged to step out of my comfort zone from time to time.  So now, rather than always saying no, I try to deal with things by putting plans in place to give me back some of the control.  I plan how we're getting there, how we're getting home, how long we're likely to be out and often that's enough for me to go out and have a good time.  But sometimes it's all too much and I have to say no, I can't go out tonight, I'm freaking out...and that's okay.

It doesn't matter how many tries it takes, only that we don't give up.  Life is basically an extended period of trying. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we learn something and need to try again, sometimes we realise we're going in completely the wrong direction and need to change course and it's all okay.

I think the point I'm trying to make is, if we do what we can do, that's enough. Don't berate yourself, don't judge yourself harshly, don't be your own worst critic.

You did good...
 
   You did what you could...
    
      You did enough...

         You ARE enough.

Introspective

Nobody consciously chooses depression. Nobody wakes up and thinks, "I know what might be fun... feeling afraid to go out". Nobody wants to be the one amongst their friends with a long list of reasons as to why they can't do something, the one that is always cancelling at the last minute and the one that feels sick every time the phone rings because they haven't had time to think of a decent excuse yet. Nobody wants to live in the constant fear of the uncertainty the future holds. Nobody wants to feel so painfully lonely, but at the same time dread company because you've forgotten how to function with others but that was what my depression felt like.

I was consumed with worrying thoughts that people didn't like me. In reality the problem I had was that I didn't like me. Every negative thought was a step away from who I was. I had turned against myself and slowly spiralled downwards until I was in a hole that seemed too deep to climb out of. Of course I didn't tell anyone how I was feeling. I wore my smile as often as I could, but the mask slipped more and more and flashes of anger and sadness came through.

I didn't want to feel that way, but equally I didn't know how not to. Those feelings had become normal and it was just part of who I was. I wasn't confident, I was over-emotional, I was volatile, but that was me and I just needed to live with it and try to soldier on. I decided I just needed to try harder to control these emotions, to get on with it and get out there into the world, to function when I couldn't think of anything more impossible.

But as time would reveal, when anxiety and depression take hold of you it's not as simple as just deciding you're not going to be feeling that way anymore and flicking a switch. For me, it took medication.

My symptoms included hot flashes of panic, a feeling like the walls were closing in, intense feelings of nausea and convincing myself I had untold numbers of medical conditions. I couldn't think straight and the problem had become very real indeed. My mind was scrambled and no amount of positive thinking was going to change that.

The first step, the hardest step, was recognising the fact that I was ill. It felt like a failure, like admitting defeat and realising I couldn't cope with life and it was horrible - but that was the illness speaking.

I struggled with the idea of taking the tablets, feeling somehow as if I'd failed, but I also knew that I couldn't carry on in my current state and so I took the tablets and it was the hardest thing I've ever done and the best decision I've ever made - but that's a story for another day.

Silencing The Critic Within

If there's one thing life has taught me. It's that we are our own worst critic. Other people's false opinions of us in our formative years help us form the opinions we hold of ourselves in the years to follow. It's not particularly helpful. She's shy, she's not very confident, she's a bit scatty. He's not very clever, he's socially awkward, his boisterous.

The thing is, we are not these things...we are whoever or whatever we want to be. We are pure potential and if only the voice that shouted the loudest when we were working out what we were to become was the voice that screamed "YOU CAN DO IT" we would be looking at a very different us right now.

But that is not to say that this you can't emerge. We are always growing, always changing and there is no limit to what we can do with the right mindset. What if we went back and turned every "You can't" into an "I can", every cruel word into a kind one? Or observe these cruelties as a third party and intervene on our own behalf?

If we could love ourselves with the compassion of a parent, or a friend and encourage ourselves to progress with a supportive smile and the belief that we can achieve anything we set our mind and heart , there would be no boundaries to what we could become.

So the next time somebody says something unkind, something unsupportive or derogatory, please, don't believe them. Instead, be your own cheerleader and remind yourself that actually, you are quite brilliant and capable of great things.

Stop With The Shouty Rage

Why is the world so angry? Imagine if we could all just let go of that anger and focus on how we could make the world a happier, kinder place. How much nicer would the world be for all of us if we could just stop being expressions of our own rage?

Maybe all it takes is the decision to change our thinking and the patience to make it a habit. I have spent a large portion of my life as an unwitting hostage to my own way of thinking. I saw the negatives in each situation, worried about things that could go wrong, felt resentful when things didn't go well and chose to believe I had no choice but to accept these feelings and suffer them. I was wrong.

What if I told you, being offended was a choice? Or being upset, or angry or hurt? Admittedly, it's a choice that we are often unconscious of but once we get our head around that fact, it becomes a lot easier to take yourself out of other peoples business and just get on with being happy. Not being offended, or upset, angry or hurt is also a choice. It's not as easy as the first option but it is far more beneficial.

If someone is rude to you and says something hurtful or does something that is a horrible reflection on them. If you choose to believe them or be offended by what they say and do, then who suffers? Only you. Better to let them live their life in a way they see fit and focus on living your own.

It takes a lot of work, but it can be done. The trick I've found is to notice your thoughts and when a negative one creeps in, acknowledge it and then replace it with something more beneficial. Little by little you might notice a shift in how you're thinking and feeling because your thoughts affect your feelings. If you can choose how you react to those thoughts the possibilities for happiness are endless and if we're all feeling happier and being nicer, imagine what the world could become.