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magazine. It may have been a Photoshopped illusion, but whatever, she was alive and seemingly happy, and a member of the same species as me.
Depression says ‘Look at you, with your nice life, with your nice boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/ wife/kids/dog/sofa/Twitter followers, with your good job, with your lack of physical health problems, with your holiday in Rome to look forward to, with your mortgage nearly paid off, with your non-divorced parents, with your whatever,’ on and on and on. Actually, depression can be exacerbated
Depression is also . . . Smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky.
‘And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on’ —Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more?
To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.
and advertising is not really life. Life is the other stuff. Life is what is left when you take all that crap away, or at least ignore it for a while.
Life is the people who love you. No one will ever choose to stay alive for an iPhone. It’s the people we reach via the iPhone that matter.
trouble with warning signs, though, is that we only have the past to go on, not the future, and if something hasn’t actually happened it is hard to know that it will.
ANXIETY IS THE partner of depression. It accompanies half the cases of depression. Sometimes it triggers depression. Sometimes depression triggers anxiety. Sometimes they simply co-exist, like a nightmare marriage.
Anxiety, even more than depression, can be exacerbated by the way we live in the twenty-first century. By the things that surround us. Smartphones. Advertising (I think of a great David Foster Wallace line – ‘It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.’) Twitter followers. Facebook likes. Instagram. Information overload. Unanswered emails. Dating apps. War. The rapid evolution of technology. Urban planning. The changing climate. Overcrowded public transport. Articles on the ‘post-anti-biotic age’. Photoshopped cover models. Google-induced hypochondria.
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Love. Anaïs Nin called anxiety ‘love’s greatest killer’. But fortunately, the reverse is also true. Love is anxiety’s greatest killer. Love is an outward force.
course, it is never easy walking into a room full of people. There is that awkward moment of hovering around, like a serious lonely molecule, while everyone else is in their tight little circles, all laughter and conversation.
@mannyliz Very simply my children. They didn’t ask to be born to a mum who at times struggles to keep it together.
The days start lengthening after December 21. Something to cling to in the dark times.
because even though I’m in constant pain, I have the most supportive people around me, and the best books to read. #reasonstostayalive
#reasonstostayalive I still haven’t seen Iceland where my ashes will be scattered.
#reasonstostayalive Since the other option isn’t flexible.
Not everyone thinks you’re as much of a waste of space as you do when in the depths of depression. Trust others. #reasonstostayalive
Because inside there is a golden you who loves you and wants you to win and prevail and be happy. #reasonstostayalive
Sunsets. And that particularly unspecific musical genre with access to your spine. #reasonstostayalive
Suicide may lead to my friends and family becoming depressed, I would never wish depression on anyone. #reasonstostayalive
My last depression was a severe post-natal. It was an awful time. My #reasonstostayalive were my family and knowing it would pass.
#reasonstostayalive Because 7 x 10^49 atoms won’t arrange themselves this way ever again. It’s a one-off privilege.
#reasonstostayalive Love is the best reason to stay alive. Self-love, love for other people, love of life and noticing the good. #reasonstostayalive
#reasonstostayalive I had to feed my baby. I had crippling anxiety & post-natal depression, only here because of having to nurse him.
I hate depression. I am scared of it. Terrified, in fact. But at the same time, it has made me who I am. And if – for me – it is the price of feeling life, it’s a price always worth paying.
‘We blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.’
In this view, happiness is impossible, because of all these goals. Goals are the source of misery. An unattained goal causes pain, but actually achieving it brings only a brief satisfaction.
key Buddhist symbol is that of the lotus flower. The lotus flower grows in mud at the bottom of a pool, but rises above the murky water and blooms in the clear air, pure and beautiful, before eventually dying.
‘No one saves us but ourselves, no one can and no one may.’
Self-help How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music. How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.
No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts.
The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don’t become them.
When I sink deep, now, and I still do from time to time, I try and understand that there is another, bigger and stronger part of me that is not sinking.
Nothing makes you feel smaller, more trivial, than such a vast transformation inside your own mind while the world carries on, oblivious.
There is absolutely nothing in the past that you can change. That’s basic physics.
Be aware that you are breathing.
Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.
Look at trees. Be near trees. Plant trees. (Trees are great.)
Alcohol maths. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it’s hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication.
Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don’t wish for it to end, or for it to never end.
If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no point.
Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.
Remember that the key thing about life on earth is change. Cars rust. Paper yellows. Technology dates. Caterpillars become butterflies. Nights morph into days. Depression lifts.
