Anxiety & depression have taught me these 3 things
I never learned to be disciplined. I never learned to motivate myself. I let life ripple past me and always hoped for a better tomorrow. I always hoped that I wouldn’t have to move out of my comfort zone and that someday someone would just hand me the lottery winnings. Did I play the lottery because of that? Nope. I could say now that I was never taught, but I also know that I was extremely stubborn as a child. I always had to experience and try things out for myself. I couldn’t stand it when an adult wanted to show me something. Must be the genes.
My sister’s son is just like that. “I can!” he then always says with an angry look when you want to show him something. This ambition to experience self-efficacy is then trained out of us over time. The paternal role of the state and the system is deeply anchored in our subconscious and has led us to take freedom and other public goods for granted and to rely on someone else to fix it. Unfortunately, this attitude does not work for our own psyche.
1) Responsibility
Our culture of blaming never leads to positive behavior change, but only encourages a kind of defensive posture that forces one to save face and retaliate by blaming the accuser. As soon as I adopt a defensive posture, I blame someone else, and so the cycle continues on and on. This leads to focusing only on this energy wrangling instead of actually trying to solve the real problem.
But if you start looking for the fault only in yourself, you get out of the blame game and stop pointing fingers at others. It is only natural to quickly switch to the victim role of the “poor me” and beg for pity. For many people, this is the only way to get energy from other people. I am grateful that I am now allowed to teach myself these things. Only this way is sustainable for me and will anchor discipline and self-motivation as a fixed component in my behavior patterns.
2) Resilience
Severe anxiety and depression have not only recalibrated my value system and shown me what is really important in life. They have also shown me that there is only one person who can change my life. Myself. Feeling these feelings is not a sign of weakness. When you learn to go the extra mile with extra heavy baggage, it is a sign that you are already many times stronger than the average person. If you go on and master your life despite the pain, where will this experience take you when you have gone through the dark night of your soul? You are not weak. Going through that pain and not giving up is a sign of incredible strength.
For me, even before the pandemic, it wasn’t easy. The increasingly grotesque conditions in the world have more than tested my resilience once again. Whenever you think that this is it, life comes along and tells you “We’re just getting warmed up”. On the one hand I don’t wish anyone to have to go through the same pain, on the other hand I think it makes some people learn a lot more humility.
Even the most robust character starts to crumble now. Two years of emergency leave no trace on anyone. Long-term consequences of the artificial psychological pressure from politics and the media, have the potential to leave post-traumatic stress in large parts of the population. But no matter how hard it gets for you. Put one foot in front of the other and even if you feel like you’re taking one step forward and ten steps back. You are always making progress, you just don’t see it yourself. As the saying goes “No man steps in the same river twice.”
Every day is a new experience and every day has the potential to be wonderful. Even if yesterday was the opposite. Resilience is not the ability to shield yourself emotionally. Resilience is the ability to pull yourself out of the mud by your own hair and learn something new every time.
3) Courage to change
I only suffer from depression and anxiety when I want to. Pain is inevitable in this life, but suffering is a choice. The human will to survive is stronger than this feeling. Our ancestors went through unimaginable suffering, and not infrequently it was precisely these seemingly unbearable moments that spurred these people to live a life that was off the beaten path of comfortable living. Because the comfortable life is what makes us depressed and anxious. No matter how much we want to believe it is a chemical imbalance in our brain chemistry.
The question is, after all, where does this imbalance come from? Maybe it’s the fact that deep down you know you should have brought change into your life long ago. Maybe it’s the awareness that you will live the rest of your life in this comfortable normality if you don’t start taking responsibility for your happiness. Once you have crossed the imaginary border of what is possible, you will no longer allow yourself to be imprisoned in the cage of normality. The moment you take responsibility for your pain is the moment you make it your fuel for inner growth.
On the path of the warrior
You turn pain into inner strength and growth. Each time you make it back out of that deep black hole is another notch in your bow, and the more you aim and shoot, the more likely you are to hit. The people around you who are living seemingly normal and happy lives don’t get that chance. And even they have to face their fears right now and learn to deal with uncertainty.
You don’t want to live their lives. You just wish for the easy way out. However, be very aware of what you are wishing for. There is no going back to normality, because this normality no longer exists. A new normality is emerging that has the potential to eclipse everything that has existed before. The darkness you have to go through prepares you for more. It shows you who you really are. It shows you that what you previously perceived as your limits are only an illusion.
The alchemist
You are in possession of a rich treasure of experiences stored in your DNA. You may not have conscious access to these experiences, but nature has given them to you nonetheless. The limitations you perceive are only trained ego. Matter is spirit and spirit forms matter and not the other way around. You can tear down these walls and write new experiences into your DNA. You can learn new behavior patterns and charge them electrically with lots of feeling and constructive thought patterns. You can manifest the future in you through this work.
Reprogramming these old belief patterns is the key to a liberated and self-determined life, and depression and anxiety are excellent motivation for you to stay on the ball. Because what would be the alternative? A life of self-pity and pain. It’s your choice.
