damage

Depression is not like, here's that pain again - the same pain that I've experienced many times before. It seems fresh every time, as is the case with any kind of pain, but also, you think about all the years that this has been going on, and about the future and how it's going to be part of your life all the time, every minute of every day, for the foreseeable future, and you think that it's really breaking you down. 

One helpful thing I've learnt though is that that sense I have that I'm breaking down and sustaining damage from all these years of mental pain, is not true. It's a story. An illusion. How do I know? Because my brain was made to do what it does. If we think of depression, anxiety, fear, worry, and the like, as involving different liquids flowing through pipes, and your fear and sadness and hurt are liquids that are unpleasant, painful and unwanted....the thing is: that's all they really are. That's all that can possibly be in your brain - stuff that belongs there. And the good news is that that cannot do permanent damage.

I guess different drugs and chemicals can do damage, or some external stimulus, like a head injury, or when your brain is deprived of oxygen, but your thoughts and the stories you tell yourself, can't hurt you, even though it feels like they can.