break

If I didn't self-censor myself so strictly, I could write a couple of books every year. 

It's a characteristic of rumination and depression. I'll have an idea for something to write about, but then, on further thought, there are always reasons why I shouldn't write about it or don't want to write about it. 

Hours can pass like that. 

One of the positive changes that I've made happen this year is that I push myself to make art every day and to write every day or almost every day. I'm not as prolific with writing as I am with art, but I'm getting there. 

There's something about making a conscious decision to create like that that gives you the energy and motivation you need to do it. 

I wasn't able to do that in the past. I was still too captivated by rumination. For example, after falling out of the habit of creating art last year, I wanted to get back into it, so I made an effort to at least create something, but what I made was lame and I knew that it was lame. It only had part of my attention. 

What's happened this year is that I've broken my rumination. Because of the challenges I've been through and I'm still going through, I had to treat my daily goals as a matter of life and death. I read self help books and watch positive videos. I write and read affirmations every day, more on the hard days. In about 8 months I've written more than 400 pages of affirmations. 

I exercise every day. I started with walking, but recently I started running and now I run every day. I have a proper quiet time - reading the Bible, writing my insights and praying - every day, which is something else I had let slip in recent years. I'm eating more and healthier....and I do a lot of other things. 

liminal space

The space between being asleep and being awake is a different reality and it doesn't work the way our waking experience works. 

Sometimes I find that it's a restful space. If I can just stay there a bit longer I can get some more sleep. Sometimes that's possible but other times my fully conscious mind steps in with worry and rumination and it's like I'm under attack. I always hope that doesn't happen too early. It's a bummer when it happens at 3 am, because then it becomes a vicious cycle of tiredness and anxiety feeding each other. 

Sometimes it's the opposite. In my semi-awake state, I'm already experiencing stress and fear. What I've learnt though, interestingly, is that getting up and fully waking up actually helps in this case. I feel calm and able to be productive once I get up and get going. 

The mistake that I've often made in the past is to react to that initial turmoil, thinking something like, oh no, here we go, this is never-ending. It starts as soon as I wake and lasts the whole day, and I'm so tired, I just wish I could sleep. That kind of reactive thinking perpetuates the stress because I'm feeding it with fear. 

How I've learnt to react is to welcome it - to understand that every single unpleasant symptom or state of mind is my physiology's way of healing itself. That fraught state of mind that continues into my waking consciousness is my mind doing something. It's processing, and it's healing itself. 

renovation

My fears are saying to me, what if I have to face this or that situation? How will I cope? And how am I going to handle the situations I know I'm going to have to face? 

But then there is hope. Sometimes in the past it was as if my mind was unable to hold anything good - anything comforting or hopeful. That's one of the problems that depression, rumination and anxiety bring. One's mind is so amenable to fear and sadness. We've made a nice cozy home for those things. But hope, fulfilment, joy....there's nowhere for them to even stay. We can't hold such things. Hopelessness and despair own the place. 

Just like illness feels bad but it's actually your body's way of healing, when God is renovating your mind so that it can hold hope and joy and love and peace, it doesn't feel good. But hope tells you something good is happening. 

book recommendations

The three books that I usually list as my favorite books are all books that I discovered early in my English and History degree: Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein and Middlemarch. So that view is colored by the enthusiasm I felt about learning and discovering literature. Those favorites are special not just because I really appreciate them but because of the context in which I found them. 

A list of the books that I rate highly is going to have a lot more books on it. There are books that I think are probably as good as those three but they just don't bask in the glow of my discovery of the field of English literature and literary criticism. 

So, in no particular order, here are some of the books I would recommend (besides my three favorites already mentioned):

1. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

2. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

3. A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul

4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontё

5. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

6. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 

8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

9. The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner

10. Such is Life by Joseph Furphy 

tension

My art is a series of intentional accidents. I'm never fully in control. I get a sense of what happens when I do certain things, so when I'm creating an artwork, I try the things I know and maybe try something different. Over time my repertoire of things to try grows. 

I never like using simple, straight-forward colors - like plain blue, red, green, etc. I like using the in-between colors on the color wheel. But I experiment. There are colors that I think are pretty boring, to look at them on the color wheel, but then, when you apply them, they look completely different because of the other colors around them, or under them or mixed with them. 

I absolutely love art that is obviously art - like you can see the media - but it also represents something real. Like the art of Izumi Kogahara, for example, or the impressionists, like Monet and Pissaro. 

There's a tension between roughness and precision, and tension produces beauty. 

recovery

Recovery has a double-edged quality to it. As you get stronger, the thing you're fighting against also gets weaker. You keep pushing and pushing, on and on, and as you do, you become aware that you're also being pulled through to the other side. 

momentous

I remember in year 7 religious education class, we had a textbook and I only remember one thing about that book. It was a picture of Abraham that looked like it had been drawn using colored pencils and it had a subtitle or a brief description that said that God told Abraham to leave his people and go to the land that he would show him. 

I think the statement in large letters was even briefer than that. It said something like, 'God told Abraham to go'. I don't know exactly why but this really caught my imagination, which is why I still remember it. 

In his essay, 'Spiritual Laws', Emerson wrote:

A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature.

It's like each of us has our own language and life is always saying something to us that only we can understand. There are moments that I will never forget that I'm sure the other people involved have forgotten, and there are probably moments I've forgotten...it was just another moment...that other people will never forget. Sometimes I think it's a shared thing though. I don't really know for sure but some of these moments that involved another person, I think maybe it was a special moment for them too.

The interesting thing is that these moments are not big things. They can be. They can be related to a big change in our life, but a lot of them are of such little significance in the bigger scheme of things. But, as Emerson writes, they have huge significance to us. 

I think it's very fitting that the best moments are unassuming like that. When do you have your most meaningful conversations with a good friend? It's late at night when you're doing the dishes. 

step by step

I'm starting to feel more of a sense of security than I did. Partly because, so many times, the fears about how things are going to go that my rumination brings up just don't eventuate. 

Earlier this year, I looked ahead to the future and it was overwhelming. I didn't know how I could do what I needed to do. But now there's a sense that I can pretty much handle what I need to. Yes, it's challenging at the moment, but I can do this. 

That makes a huge difference. As I said, it's partly because my fears don't get realized, but it's also because things work out well. So many things have worked out better than I expected. 

All along it's been the same struggle, but my vision of that struggle has become clearer. At one level the struggle is about tapering off Valium, but what it's really about is rumination vs action. It's about me overcoming rumination, anxiety and depression. Defeating fear. 

I have to be grateful for the challenges I've been through and I'm still going through because it's only because of them that I have this new life. 

I was thinking about this yesterday. Yesterday was one of the harder days. I'm still so bound to rumination. All the fear and anxiety and depression is real and it's hard. At the same time, I have my daily goals and I know that's the way forward. But it seems like the rumination is winning. Sometimes I'm so far from even being able to do a few of my goals and the ones I do, I don't do well. It's like a token effort. 

But every day I try. It's true that sometimes I get worn down. Day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month of this struggle and at times it feels like it's never-ending or even getting worse, sometimes reduces me to a state where I think and feel that I can't go on. 

But giving up is not something you can proactively do. It's like rumination. There's no substance to it. I'm like, OK, let it be known that I'm giving up. So, I'm in that state of giving up, which does bring a kind of temporary relief - a kind of resolution. You've responded to the situation. But now what?

So, very soon after, I find myself working on my daily goals again. 

Getting back to my point...yesterday the rumination was winning and it seemed virtually impossible to do my daily goals, but even in the midst of that dynamic I had the thought that, this must be where I need to be right now. Wherever the 'front' is in the battle between rumination and my goals - however that struggle manifests - that's where I will be. 

If, at that point where I am at, it seems like rumination is winning, that's still where I'm going to be. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I realized that it's not such a bad thing that I'm still learning. This new life is new and strange to me, but it's the real me. 

The old me is not the real me, even though it's still such a part of me. It's still calling the shots in a lot of ways. But I'm learning, and the new me is permanent. 

windows and waves

I've never experienced such a roller coaster as I have this year. One of the lessons I'm learning is that I am not defined by the ups or the downs. 

Sometimes, in the midst of the waves, I think I'm broken or I'm getting close to breaking - actually, I am breaking - but what's really happening at those times is I am growing. And then after that - often very soon after that - things get a lot better. The harder the wave the more potent the window. 

The ups and the downs both seem permanent. When you're hardly coping, you can't imagine being whole and strong and confident ever again. The opposite is true to some extent. When I'm up, no other state really makes sense. I can't understand the pain and distress I was in. But I know from experience that I'll be back there again. 

Recently I was surprised when a wave that I thought would go on for hours just eased and I felt better and started doing things. It's usually not that easy. I have to keep pushing and keep pushing, often to no avail. It's getting easier to actually open a window though. Writing affirmations, pushing myself to do whatever the next goal is on my list....sometimes just enduring through the wave, and it eases. 

It starts off with just a flicker...a slight change, an easing of the pain, and then I push through to the window. It's kind of like catching a wave actually. 

centered

The apostle Paul wrote that 'when I am weak, then I am strong.' (2 Corinthians 12:10) He understood that trusting in our own strength and intelligence makes us spiritually weak and stupid. 

Weakness leads us to be dependent on God, if we choose to be, and there is no greater strength than the strength that comes from God. 

It's easy to talk about that in theory, but when you're actually beset by weakness, that's a different matter. It's hard to believe that God is with you. 

Weakness has changed my whole outlook. I have to stop thinking about all the situations I'm not actually in, and stop dwelling on the reality that I can't handle simple everyday things. It forced me to slow down. It forced me to look at what's actually happening instead of listening to the stories in my head. 

It's leading me to really dig deep in my relationship with God. I want to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, as it says in Romans 12:2. When I read the Bible and write my insights and pray, I want to really spend time with God. I want that, and not rumination, to be at the center of my life. 

a new light

I learnt something important about my rumination today. 

What I noticed earlier today is something that I've experienced many times. When I give my attention to something and try to engage, I feel uncomfortable. I feel like something is wrong. What I realized when I thought about it later is that that feeling is my rumination tugging on me. As I try to give my full attention to a task, my rumination tells me something is wrong - that I need to continually monitor it rather than giving my attention to other things. 

My attention is always on this unsolvable problem that isn't even clearly defined. I don't even know what the problem is, just that my mind is so occupied with it. 

Usually when I have that feeling of wanting to give my attention to a task and feeling unable to because my mind is so engrossed in rumination, I react by being critical of myself and feeling defeated. I think, I can't even do this task. I can't do anything. I'm stuck with this problem. I feel trapped and hopeless. 

But when I thought about it today, I saw it in a different, positive light. It's not an indicator of being stuck in an endless loop of suffering. It's an indicator of a struggle that I am making progress with - the process of breaking down my rumination and building my new life. As I keep pushing myself to do my daily goals and pushing against the rumination, I am making progress. 

I often feel lately like there is no path forward. There is no relief in sight. But then I realize that my daily goals are the path forward. 

Just seeing the struggle for what it is is something new for me. In the past, I wouldn't be aware of it as a struggle. The fact that I'm aware of when I'm ruminating and I have a sense of an alternative to that, shows I've made progress. 

Eventually my daily goals will be my life. For now, I still keep wanting to go back to rumination, and falling back into it. 

the process

Romans 5:3 - 4 talks about how we rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope. 

It's easy to wish this process was done and I was healed and recovered, but I don't know what that looks like. I've always struggled with anxiety, depression and rumination. My whole life I've battled them, and now I'm in the process of overcoming them. So, I'm going somewhere I've never been. I'm not going back to the way I was. That's exactly what I'm not doing. 

So, I have a different view about the end of this process. I'm not hanging on, waiting for it to end. I've stopped hoping for that. I've become resigned to life being challenging for the foreseeable future. As time goes by, it gets harder but it gets better too.  

I'm learning to fight and to live in that state of struggle, and that's why I don't really think as much about the end. The end seems a long way off. I'm looking forward to it, but the way I'm going to get there is by working through this process, which takes time. 

Every day I keep working on putting down and letting go of the rumination and picking up my daily goals. 

reporting back

It's interesting to me how the approach I'm taking to recovery and growth was informed by a few key conversations I had with a range of different people. Probably those people didn't realize the huge impact they were having on my life. Actually, neither did I, but it was like each of them gave me another piece to fit into the puzzle. There's a definite methodology to my approach and the basic principles came from three key conversations I had. 

These are the truths I drew from the three conversations:

First conversation:

I nurture and protect my anxiety and depression and rumination. I cultivate them. I withdraw. I need to get out and be active, do stuff, occupy myself. I need to cultivate my life. 

Second conversation: 

Intense depression and anxiety are a normal and natural result when you've been abusing alcohol and you stop and when you've come to rely on benzos and you start tapering. It's the real you actually feeling things. Through drinking, you've not only negated your anti-depressant medication, you've driven yourself deep into depression, as well as dehydration and malnourishment affecting your physical health. 

So, all the fear and anxiety and depression - the absolute mental turmoil - is actually a positive thing. It's a brand new me emerging as I go from being dependent on alcohol to not drinking at all and being dependent on Valium to tapering and eventually stopping that as well. 

Third conversation:

This conversation linked the first two and made me realize that I had to change. I had to push and do my daily goals. That was how I would make the change from rumination and withdrawal to engagement and occupation. And this change is not just desirable, it's a matter of survival. 

I've also taken a lot of really good ideas from a couple of YouTube channels - Powers Benzo Coaching and The Lovely Grind. I can't recommend David Powers's and Michael Priebe's YouTube channels highly enough. They're both absolutely brilliant and doing crucial work. I've watched a lot of their videos over and over and over, trying to get their practical message of hope to penetrate my troubled mind, much in the same way that reading and writing affirmations does, by reminding me of the truth. 

As I work my way through this process, I'm starting to feel like I have something to say. I want to have those conversations with people and share those messages like the ones that helped me so much. 

fighting for life

When you go through challenging times, it's easy to think your life is on hold. Once you get through this then you will resume life. 

That's how I usually think about crises I go through, but the current challenges I'm going through are making me think differently, because they're not in any hurry to leave me. 

I'm seeing positive changes but, at the same time, the challenges are still hard. But then when I think about it, it's the challenges that are driving me to make the positive changes. 

I get up in the morning and I'm like, do I still have to fight? Does it still have to be this difficult?

But the really great thing is that it really isn't as difficult as it was. My new life is really taking shape. But I know how important it is that I don't get to relax - I don't get to go, phew, I'm glad that's over, because that's my old self talking. 

I'm learning that my new life is not going to just occur magically. It's mine and it's growing but that growth involves fighting. 

It makes me think of that scene in the movie Braveheart. One of his companions says something to William Wallace like, maybe one day, after all this fighting, we'll get to live out our dreams. And Wallace replies, isn't that what we've been doing? 

investment

I'm so obsessed by situations I'm not in and situations I'm not in yet but might be. I'm learning to reframe those things though. Instead of thinking, what if I had to do this? How would I cope?, I'm looking forward to being able to do these things that seem challenging to me at the moment. 

Instead of dreading them, I'm framing them as my goals, and thinking how good it will be when I can do them because that's how it should be. That's how I want it to be, and that's how it can be. Recovery takes time but it also happens surprisingly quickly, and I know from experience that it doesn't take long for me to be able to do things that were previously unimaginable, or things that didn't seem possible when things were challenging. 

There's also a strange reality that I've been experiencing more and more lately whereby the new me is a different person from the old me. Change is not linear, it's dialectical. It's driven by the tension between two opposing states or influences. Thesis + antithesis = synthesis. In the playing out of the struggle, at any particular time, either side will be dominant. 

Sometimes I'm still the old me, but increasingly I'm the new me. And when I'm the old me, I worry about how I'm going to handle different things, but then, when I think about it I realize that I don't need to worry because the old me is not going to have to handle things, the new me is. I'm making it sound easy but it's not. The old me is still me and it's being put under intense pressure. This process often involves the old me turning up to do what only the new me can do. I still have to face my fears.

But the new me is growing. Every day I become more invested in my daily goals - they're becoming fuller and they are filling my life and negating the rumination. For example - my quiet times - my times with God, reading the Bible, writing my insights and praying. I'm doing those things more fully each day. I'm writing more. I'm creating more art. I'm exercising more. I'm eating better. I'm doing more of my goals. I still don't get all of my daily goals done but I'm doing more of them and doing them more fully. 

I'm inspired thinking about all of the things I want to do. 

I think each of my daily goals is powerful, and I have longer term goals as well, but my daily goals have a special power. They are my new life. 

Just thinking about one in particular - my quiet times....that is so powerful. To be able to spend time with God each day. What can compare with that? It's better than any counselling or any resource you can draw on or any experience you can have or any other relationship. But it hasn't been powerful in my life because I neglected my quiet times. I haven't invested in them. I fell out of the habit of spending quality time with God as a priority every day. And also, rumination squeezed it out of my life like it squeezed everything else of value. It got to the point where rumination made it so that I couldn't even have good quiet times if I wanted to. I had no sense of what that meant any more. 

That's how I have changed. You can take this to the bank. Every day I achieve my daily goals. And I feel something building. It's been so, so, so hard. It's been ridiculously hard. How is it so hard to just read the Bible, write my thoughts, and pray? How is it so hard to make art? How is it so hard to write a blog post or write a post on Medium? How is it so hard to go to the shops? How is it so hard to do anything except be in a kind of vegetative state? 

It's stopped being as hard now, and I notice that every day, I'm more invested in all my goals. With my quiet times it's been hard to even think and write anything when I read the Bible. I can barely manage to squeeze out a sentence. Some days not even that. But it's getting better. I'm able to focus more on what I'm reading and write more about it, and I want to keep growing in that way - really seeking God and spending quality time with him. And my other goals as well - I find myself getting carried away, transported, away from the rumination and other problems. 

art and writing

I've been watching a few videos lately about abstract art and what it is - what makes a good piece of abstract art. It's really fascinating because I can relate what's being said to my own art. I pretty much always do abstract art these days. 

The thing is....that idea people have about contemporary art and abstract art - that it's just weird and not very good...I can relate to that. I've been to some modern art exhibitions and, just like with absurdist drama, I feel a sense of despair, because I feel like nothing is being offered to me. I literally don't get it. I don't know what I'm looking at. Which is fair enough. I'm not a great appreciator of art, at least of viewing art in exhibitions. I don't feel strongly about it. I don't get that excited feeling you get when you're going to a concert.

There is some art that I really like though. My favorite kind of art is impressionism. I love the tension between the work as a painting - how you can see the brush strokes and it's very obviously a painting - and what the work is representing - how you can see the most intricate details even within the roughness of the paint - and I love the idea that that is somehow a more faithful representation of the scene than a highly realistic painting or a photograph would be. 

In my own art, for a long time I was trying to achieve something like that, but I've moved more towards dropping any attempt to convey anything real. There is an element of realism because I like to incorporate lines that are inspired by letters or are actual words and writing. I've always been fascinated by the idea of somehow combining language and visual art. One of the reasons for that is that, when I learnt about creative writing and how to do creative writing, I was struck by the similarity of what we were taught about writing to what I experienced in making art. 

It was refreshing. I'd always felt like I couldn't do creative writing but here was a teacher who was also a writer, telling us how to write and it was just like the way that I do art, which is that I don't start off with a good idea. I just play around and experiment and see what develops. She said you can do that with writing, which is something I had never heard before. She taught us some games you can play with words where something creative and interesting just emerges. Then, when you see something interesting, you can do more with it. 

I did find that, while writing in that way does lead to something worthwhile, for me it didn't lead to a novel or short story or some kind of 'proper' literature. It was something more experimental - like the modernist literature of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. 

There's still the idea among some people who appreciate abstract art and make videos about what makes good abstract art, that the artist needs to be trying to convey a very definite point. I think in a way that's true but in a way it's not. Again, it's like literature. The creator is setting up a forum within which the responder can construct their own meaning. That's why good literature speaks to us so personally - because we as the reader have constructed the meaning in our own way. Likewise with art. I don't know what point I'm trying to make in my art...I'm just trying to create certain effects and make something engaging, but I don't have an exact idea about what I'm trying to convey, although, as the work takes shape I get a better idea of what I'm trying to achieve and the impressions I want to convey. 

When I first started wanting to really improve my art, I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I aspired to make art like I saw in those videos. Of course, my art is nothing like the art I was seeing, never has been, but I thought I could develop and become a 'better' artist. 

Then I wanted to get into digital art, so I bought an art tablet and got some software. The problem is, I still wasn't very 'good' at art, even with traditional art supplies, and using an art tablet and doing digital art is harder. I was trying to do art like all the YouTube tutorials say it should be done and I couldn't do it. I just gave up and put away my art tablet. 

But then one day I thought, I want to do art. I want to use my tablet. I want to use the software. I want to draw and paint with traditional art supplies. I just started doing it because I wanted to do it. I just forgot about the tutorials and the preconceived ideas about how to do art well and how to develop as an artist. I just created and had fun. And interestingly, as I did my own thing in that way and worked on achieving different effects, my technical skills developed. I actually went back to some of the tutorials to see how to do certain things that I wanted to do. But mostly it was just from doing it that my skills developed. 

I can't do art like anyone else, but I don't want to anyway. Same with writing. I can't do what anyone else does, but I can do what I do. 

Odyssey

This has been a huge year for me. I stopped drinking and I will never drink again. And I'm tapering off valium. Coming off valium is definitely one of the most grueling and hard things I've ever done. 

I've learnt a lot about the power of personal change and also the ability we have to influence our own minds in ways that are just as powerful as any medication. And it's better than medication, especially benzodiazepines/ anti-anxiety medications (like valium, Xanax, Lorazepam, etc) because medication is a quick fix...it chemically removes the problem, so it weakens your ability to deal with the problem. When you have to fight every day and be committed to doing what is going to help you even though you don't feel like it and you don't feel any positive difference, and you have to work on your own thinking and you have to keep facing your anxiety and depression and there's no escape, you begin to grow. 

For me, as I've written about a lot lately, the struggle is between my old self, characterized by rumination and withdrawal from life, and my new self, characterized by action and engagement with life. I began a new life when I stopped drinking. Rather than rely on alcohol and Valium to deal with life and retreat from life and have a life of not really doing that much, I started a new life. And through conversations I had and thinking about my life, the nature of the struggle became clear - that it was between rumination and action. 

My vision of this has only become clearer as the struggle has continued, and the struggle has intensified. It didn't get easier. It seems to get harder the further I go. But I know that's the nature of this struggle. It has to be painful. 

It became clear that my new life is defined by my list of daily goals. I've had the practice of having a list of daily goals for years, but in recent months, for the first time, I do my daily goals as if my life depends on it. 

The depression and anxiety I have experienced this year have been as bad as I have ever experienced, in some ways worse. And I get to a point where I am defeated, and I feel broken beyond repair. But then, at that point, sometimes something good comes in. Some thought comes to my mind, like an angel, and somehow....it really feels like some positive chemicals - healthy neurotransmitters - begin to flow in my mind. It starts off as just a slight relief in the pain and then leads very quickly to a window. People coming off benzos talk about windows and waves. 

For a lot of people, waves go on for months and years. That's the nature of withdrawal from benzos. It's acute suffering. But, in time, you do heal. You have windows. One of the really challenging things is that, you have a window, and it's amazing how good it is. You actually feel normal. It's amazing. You can do stuff. You can function. You can have conversations and enjoy things. You think you're recovering - almost recovered - but this thing is so up and down. Windows will be followed by waves. Of course, there are exceptions even to that but I'm just talking about my own experience. Actually, there are exceptions to all of this. It's different for everyone. 

More and more I seem to go through rapid fluctuations, which they tell me is a good sign. I have multiple windows and multiple waves some days, and I have some kind of window most days. The windows are still the exception. In many ways I've been going through one long wave since detox, when I stopped drinking. 

The other day, a thought that really lifted me up and breathed some life back into me was the idea that my new life is growing all the time. Every day, regardless of how I feel and how I struggle, it is growing. It really is like a living thing. It's a new life. And it's powerful. That's what is so deeply encouraging. I have a life. That's really something. Every step I take as I do my goals is permanent progress. It's only going to grow. 

Withdrawal has dredged up all my worry and rumination and fear and anxiety and depression, and it's really bad. Early on, the issues I experienced were directly related to withdrawal. So it was mainly anxiety. But then that lead in to the next phase, which was a deeper struggle with my lifelong problems with anxiety and depression. So, I'm now facing these things that are decades old and I've never really been able to defeat them. 

But there is hope. My new life is real. It is absolutely real. And my rumination....is it real? Not really. It's just like an error message that my operating system keeps throwing up, and because I've kept responding to it, it's achieved a kind of gravity. It seems very imposing, and it does have the capacity to hurt me. It's the main cause of my mental pain, actually. 

But a process has started. Every single day I practice my goals - I live my new life. That is my reality. My steps are faltering and tentative. This new life is strange and not what I'm used to. I'm out of my comfort zone. But I'm free! I've come out of the house of fear and pain that was the life's work of my old life. I still return to it, but then, as I push to do my daily goals, I step out again into my new life, and I build a new, better dwelling. 

the other side

It took me longer to learn to play guitar than it did the other kids. I just couldn't master changing chords without stopping. I would have to stop briefly, reposition my fingers, and then start playing again. Everyone else seemed to have mastered the way you have to change chords while you're strumming and plucking. 

Everyone assured me that I would eventually get it if I kept practicing. I wasn't making any progress though. However much I practiced I wasn't getting any closer to being able to change chords instantaneously. I wondered if I would ever get it. Then one day I had a breakthrough. I realized that what I need to do is move my fingers before the moment when the new chord starts. Once I realized that I was doing it.  

I think personal change is a bit like that. You have to keep doing things before you feel ready. The struggle seems like it will never end and you feel like you'll never change, never make progress. You get pushed beyond what you think you can handle, and then....this is where I'm learning a different and better way. 

After enduring what seems impossible and unbearable, and then experiencing some relief - a window after the wave - I've learnt not to ease up. I was pushed beyond what I thought was possible so, now that things are a bit easier, I'm going to push myself beyond what I think I can bear. 

I need to do that. Because the change I want to bring about is huge. The me that achieves my daily goals does not exist and is beyond my comprehension. 

I can't do it just like I couldn't change chords. I keep practicing. I'm doing my daily goals, and the struggle is getting harder and I'm not progressing. And the answer is to keep practicing. It's both impossibly hard and incredibly easy at the same time. 

anxiety, control, and acceptance

Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation with prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4:6 - 7

I've been thinking about this verse a lot and listening to a Guided Meditation and Prayer about it. 

I like this part: 'when we petition and ask, we release control to God and we are free to embrace an acceptance to things as they are. As we present our requests to God, a peace beyond all understanding begins to soothe our anxious wounds. We begin to feel a little more human and a little closer to God.'

Something I've been learning is that you can't make having peace contingent on getting relief. When we're struggling with mental suffering from anxiety, depression, rumination, we want relief. We read the above verse as a promise of relief. So, we present our requests to God, that he would help us with this burden of anxiety, etc, and then we expect relief, and then, when we don't get it, we get frantic again, and think nothing helps...even praying doesn't help.

But notice the quote above: "we release control to God and we are free to embrace an acceptance to things as they are". Often that is what's needed - acceptance. And, even as a practical matter of fact, that really is a solution to anxiety. The more we resist anxiety, the worse it is.

Earlier in the video, the speaker talks about how the normal way of the world is to respond to anxiety by trying to exercise control. Control and anxiety are 2 sides of the same coin and neither of them can bring us the security and full life we desire. The verse encourages us, rather than trying to exercise control, "to offer our experience to God. As we do that, even if our circumstances don't change, we are offered the gift of peace that transcends all understanding." 

So that's how it works. The peace comes from us petitioning God and presenting our situation to him, and importantly, as the speaker in the video points out, that process is the opposite of exercising control. If we're still trying to 'get relief' we are trying to exercise control. 

It's challenging because we really want relief. We want to be able to do something that brings relief. I've spent a fair share of my time getting worked up about my mental health issues and desperately seeking relief. But I've been learning lately that that attitude of desperation is a big part of the problem. 

Of course, I believe God is loving and full of grace as well. He does want us to have relief. The verse is not some kind of sleight of hand that God uses to trick us so we can go through more pain because, in our ignorance, we keep trying to get relief. It's just that God knows better than us what really does bring relief. 

Sometimes it's better and it's God's will for our suffering to continue. When that's the case, even though it doesn't feel like it, it's a gift from God. And, in the midst of that suffering, we can make our requests to God and 'the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard [y]our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' 

the battle

Sometimes I feel hopeless and I feel abandoned. I feel broken. I feel like all the stress has finally cracked me and I can't function any more. 

But I'm learning that, as much as I don't think so, I choose desperation and helplessness. I don't have to. I don't have to be victimized. 

I was watching a video today by Michael Priebe: Withdrawal & Healing: New Beginnings. He talks about a time when he was really feeling the pressure from coming off Paxil (an SSRI anti-depressant) and tapering off Xanax (a benzodiazepine/anti-anxiety medication). Coming off benzos is a grueling process to say the least. Anyway, in the video, he talks about how, one day when he was just really feeling hard-pressed and his wife was also going through some health issues, he said, lets just go for a walk in the park, to get out and do something. So that's what they did, and it became a kind of turning point in his life. Just a simple thing. It wasn't a run or a work out, but as Michael says, he had the suspicion that if he could take a few steps, then bigger steps would be possible later. 

I can relate to that with what I'm going through at the moment. There's a lot of fear and pressure and I feel broken sometimes. I get to the point where I feel desperate and my fear and rumination just spiral upward in a kind of panic attack. 

I've also experienced that sense in which taking a few steps can be a turning point. 

Sometimes it's fairly immediate. I'll be doing one of my daily goals and I'll just suddenly be freed from the cloud of rumination, and I'll really feel it. Other times it's more of a battle, where I'm struggling to do my daily goals while I'm stuck in rumination. That's when I can get to a point where I feel defeated. 

But, in any case, I keep fighting. I keep working on my daily goals and moving away from rumination. That is the way forward.