Depression and ECT 43: The fragile progress

I've suffered from depression since I was a pre-teen. In 2012 I got very sick, becoming suicidal. In 2013 I decided to try ElectroConvulsive Therapy. The "Depression" series of blog posts chronicles that process.

I went to therapy for the first time in weeks yesterday. Illness has meant I wasn't able to see my therapist, and it was really starting to get to me. I found myself telling inappropriately personal stories to my colleagues because I wasn't able to talk them through and get closure with her. I was using people at work as quasi therapists which, of course, they aren't, and so I found myself telling the same story again and again to different people. Thank God I was able to have a session yesterday.

I think the primary realization I came to during the hour discussion is that things are better, but I am too scared to believe they are.

I am doing yoga five times a week, I am meditating every morning and I am coming off one of my drugs, but it's all such early days that it can't be called a routine yet. The fact that I feel slightly better and that my depression symptoms, although there, have less intensity, is true, but it hasn't been long enough for me to believe that this is the new normal.

I think that is also why I reacted so badly to the bully who yelled at me in yoga class. The nurturing I get from yoga is such a novelty, my belief in it so fragile, that she shattered a precious thing that I thought I had found, my refuge.

So this morning I took some time to meditate on the chant "I am open to the possibility that my life can be better."

And I suppose I am.

Sort of.