Many people from all walks of life suffer unnecessarily and could seek relief from similar issues. Buried under layers of regret, anger and misunderstandings, they never resurface. Clues elude them and their situation remains entrenched. They expect more hell, not improvement. They don’t believe they have the power to change because the cycle of depression can be so utterly crushing. In many cases, they have lost hope for so long they can not recall a time when they ever experienced joy or hope to begin with. If there’s one thing I aim to convey in my book it is the idea of hope. Hope exists, but you have to shave away some layers to feel it. Hope comes with relief. Relief floods you when you see hints that you are not powerless. When you embrace the fact that you do have power to change, that’s the tipping point! Once you get a taste of hope, it becomes clearer how very doable it is to create an excellent life.
So how did I get relief? It sounds so simplistic; I got it from writing and talking with a therapist, and coming to understand that the past is valid but that it does not have to continue to be the same way forever. There is hope for change. Slowly, I came to respect myself for the work I was investing in myself in order to improve my own well-being. With that came a flickering of self-love and an awareness of an energy greater than myself. What’s this? Life? Plain old life happening all around me! I started to feel the force of life again as I had when I was a small child. Some people call it awareness of God’s love; some call it the universal life force or force of nature. Call it what you wish. It’s there. And it’s always present. I had to open myself to it. I set in motion the ability to open myself to it when I asked for help from a professional.
Statistics on suicide and depression, self-abuse, domestic abuse, substance abuse and addiction, hand-to-mouth disorders, and dysfunctions of many kinds can be lowered when one asks for help. The opportunities are there for each of us to become whoever we want to be, and not remain buried in isolation, feeling like hell. In realizing I was not suffering alone, and that my energy, my life force, is an extension of a much greater universal life force to which every one of us is connected, that was a relief. It is the individual who chooses what to do with his or her own slice of life. My choices, each and every one of them, were pivotal to my next step and the next and next. With each choice, at each split in the road, my confidence grew, and I found new ways to make the best of a situation. There was a learning curve, of course, so not each and every single choice resulted in fanfare, but increasingly my habit developed to pay attention to present choices in order to plot my course for the future.
It was an eye-opener to me to discover that each choice lead me to many other choices that opened up as I went along. Ultimately, after plenty of mishaps, I accepted that I am accountable for my choices, each and every one of them. And I am responsible for outcomes within my sphere of influence. Up until the healing process began, I did not like the man I had become. To become whoever I wanted to become seemed so remote. If I disliked who I was, then who could I become that I would like? What attributes must I acquire in order to like myself? Who did I want to be? I had to start writing down a description of who that man would be, and what aspects of my character I did not like that I wanted to discard. Initially, I had to be brutally honest with myself and listing what I disliked about myself was painful, as it seemed to include just about my entire life up until that point. So, I had to ask myself what attributes would this new me have. At first it was general stuff: health, thoughtful toward my wife, feed my brain, things like that. In time, my description of ideal-me became much more specific: Workout with weights to build core strength and run one mile every other day, eat more vegetables daily, ask my wife how her day was and listen daily, buy her flowers weekly, make time to read to my child, study more for my master’s degree daily.
I had to live with myself, whether I was wrongly accused as a child or I blamed others for my misery, whatever happened, the buck stopped here, with me. If you ever had a chronic physical pain, you know it can wear you down. You feel tired and cranky. But eventually, you feel relief when it heals and you forget about it. When you have an emotional pain, it seems never to heal, and your energy is siphoned off as your mind tries and tries to make sense out of it, returning again and again to one thought, like a rat in a Habitrail that’s too small for it. In my experience with writing and discussing my concerns with a therapist, all that energy that had been wasted on emotional pain-management was now rerouted back into me. Suddenly, I had the energy to explore new ways to live.
Therapy triggers all kinds of emotions on the spectrum of misery to bliss. No one has to become an emotional wreck and lose everything as I did just to ask for help. You do not have to wait to hit bottom to take a gulp of air. The sooner you can face the demons of the past head on, the sooner you are headed to recovery and a life of fairly consistent joy. I am not saying drunken euphoria; I am saying fairly consistent joy. I like to compare the process to a head cold that gets worse before it gets better. When a fever gets so hot that it burns the sickness in order to kill it off, it puts a strain on you, and you feel achy and tired. Similarly, when therapy digs so deep into a hurtful past, all manner of friction is released. You feel drained for awhile as your mind processes the hot thoughts. But then, you feel measurably better.
The longer you carry around burdens of the past, the harder it becomes to hide the fact of depression. I, like many people, had developed habits to mask my condition from others. Compensating for my mood swings, I avoided people, and sought emotional safety in reclusive behavior. Many mood disorders, such as bi-polarity, are compounded by other conditions such as ADD/ADHD or PTSD. To compensate for the sudden swings, often an individual is propelled to self-medicate in order to feel better. This may come in the form of a simple hand-to-mouth chocolate addiction or the more damaging consumption of excess alcohol and controlled substances. This compensatory masking behavior is often followed by guilt and continuation of the cycle with no exit strategy. Consequences harsher than plumpness from ice cream overdose can include penury from gambling, violence to self and others, increased depression from alcohol and substance abuse, suicide, or merely slower recovery time.
While writing Shadowed Soul my discoveries of hope and fun and love were very freeing to me, and delivered answers to many important questions, such as, why me, why must I struggle? Of course, struggle is relative to each individual, and we all struggle in some way from the moment we are born. We learn to control our bodily functions, walk, talk and read. Some more complex difficulties plague others, and if anyone has a completely carefree life, I’ll show you an individual who is bored and unchallenged, or lying. Some pretend it is easy, yet they struggle miserably. The grace is in how you manage your struggle and keep it in perspective, how you validate yourself. There is always someone with a worse scenario than yours. So, I have to say, the magic is in how you choose to deal. In knowing what you do want, then those choices become clear. Keep asking and specifying what you do want, then it becomes clearer how to manage struggles better as you proceed. For me, learning about myself provided the greatest number of answers to why struggle?
When I escaped my depression long enough I noticed others suffering and asked myself, where are we headed? If so many people are suffering, why? Should we all be in therapy and take prescriptions to balance our chemistry? Men express less than women for different reasons, and often undisclosed problems can not resolve if the problem is not identified and treated. A downward spiral habit can result from environmental influencers; any number of factors can trigger a bi-polar high or low, whether incited by abusive people or rainy days, DNA and chemical predisposition, or what you choose to put in your mouth or up your nose. Rx can balance imbalances in one’s chemistry temporarily, and help get past the trap of indecision. Sometimes making any decision gives relief, even if it proves to be not the best decision.
As I pondered the mire of indecision, I could not help asking, what’s the point? Given my own chronic isolation and self-neglect, I won
dered if, to find meaning in my life, I must climb Mount Everest or make a pilgrimage to Tibet to ask a monk what the point is? In contrast to therapy, that seemed like a lot of work to me. Everything felt so pointless and all the solutions seemed too extreme. If so many people are suffering, where is all this meaningless suffering leading us as a society? Through therapy and regulated wellness, I came to the conclusion that I am here to make a difference, to share, to create, to help people if they will accept what I have to offer, and to enjoy the joy in every-day challenges. I feel fulfilled and accomplished because I recognize that I have something to contribute to others. Each person has a story that is relevant. Each person deserves to be heard. Everyone deserves a support system and sense of community, a sense of place and acceptance, to feel relevant to others and to one’s self. Miniscule and cliché as terms may sound such as community and acceptance, being heard and sharing, each of these old–standbys individually and together create a feeling of hope and joy.
So then, I had to wonder, how can I get more happiness? How can I extract more joy and fun from life? The process of writing my own story gave me relief and then joy and even fun in the process. Understanding myself brought me increased relief and an appreciation for the complexity of my emotions. Publicly, I became more effective at expressing my emotions, rather than suppressing them in a pressure-cooker or remaining emotionally constipated, as it were. By allowing myself to be more expressive, I felt more clear-minded and more open. My sense of humor improved, and I was able to have a greater appreciation for the silliness and irony in life. This brought a feeling of delight.
In seeking out ways to increase these moments of delight, without relying on alcohol or ice cream, I wondered about balance. My therapist had mentioned the art of balance. How to get relief and consistency, balance and fun? I asked myself, what actually felt fun to me besides escaping from my emotional pain? My first list included: Build Lego’s with my son, enjoy date night with my wife, go out to eat with my wife, listen to music in car, be excellent at my job, gardening. Soon that list became more private between my wife and me, and more specific with my work and hobbies. For example, I loved to hybridize plants. Cross-fertilizing flowers such as African violets or daylilies fascinated me. In the process, I even learned to grow from seed the largest flower in the world (amorphophallus, in case you’re curious), and I wrote my first book on how to grow amaryllis.
Along the path to recovery I encountered many stepping stones and hurdles, but I felt that however often I encountered hellish phases I was on a distinct trajectory toward creating a successful life. Plugging away, yet patiently giving myself time to explore emotions, I learned to not hyper-focus and not over-think everything. Milestones occur frequently, but it is not overnight success. It is a process over months, incremental, gradual, so you often do not notice anything is happening. Then for no apparent reason, you go, wow it’s so much better.
In keeping a journal, writing goals, what you feel at any moment, asking yourself why you feel that way, for some reason the process of writing makes it more likely for an issue to resolve itself. Perhaps it is that it lets you think more clearly. It takes time, but I see it as an investment in myself. You can always shred it if you do not want others to read it, but write it down and get it out of your system. Caveat: Do not mail it to anyone but yourself! Indulge yourself; focus on yourself for a time. In giving yourself time, you have a more whole self to give to others.
If you are stuck in one phase for a while, writing helps you process it faster, depending on what you are depressed about. It may take longer, depending on how fixated you are on a particular emotion, how habitual a given pattern is. It just takes time to release yourself from the pattern. As you process, allow yourself to consider different choices. Allow yourself time to look at it in a different way. That light hearted approach oils the gears of the process toward joy and enlightenment, feeling lighter, more joyful. So the answers to questions like why am I depressed? and why do I feel like hell? may never secure closure but instead a kind of resolution. Not closure whereby you cauterize it, nor ignore it, but, instead, you grasp it, look at it, understand it, and in time adapt and adjust to a new paradigm.
When I acknowledged depression as a legitimate feeling, then I gave myself the freedom to move on. If ignored it, maybe it would eventually have gone away. For brief times, it may have. But until I addressed, it, the Shadowed Soul kept returning to me, rearing its ugly head. After looking at issues straight on, much of it did go away. Now the things I choose to ignore and the things I choose to focus on are very different. I wake up feeling better as I can express myself better. I am in charge of creating each new day for myself and my family.
I hope you’ll connect and share your reaction to Shadowed Soul through any of the available links. Your comments and insights are important for me and others to hear and discuss.
Thank you for your time,
John M. Spagnoli
theshadowedsoul.com
facebook.com/theshadowedsoul
facebook.com/john.spagnoli.54
[email protected]
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