As the beginning of the year brings with it great reflection, I was thinking back (and reminded by my old journals) about how 2023 started for me. It was not good, friends. I wasn't public about it at the time, but I fell into a pretty bad depression at the end of 2022, and that's how my 2023 started off. As I look back, there was one specific day, realization, and resulting action that I took, that helped me start to grind those gears in a new direction. Whether you're feeling depressed, or frustrated, or some other repeating mental pattern that's not serving you anymore - I hope this helps....

A quick disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and fully acknowledge that the strategies mentioned in this post may be far from sufficient in relieving depression or any other mental illnesses or challenges. Please seek professional help if this is something you’re struggling with. This is based solely on my own personal experience.

I’m often reminded of the Elizabeth Gilbert quote, “I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting sick of their own bullshit.” Now, I would never call depression “bullshit,” and what I was feeling this time last year felt a lot more serious, and a lot more out of my own control, than that. However, I was quite sick of myself. I felt incredibly stuck, needy, and I’d even say a bit pathetic. Furthermore, I was starting to kinda freak myself out. My therapist asked me to keep a log of my moods throughout the day, and the activities I was doing, people I was with, etc. This was the first thing that helped call attention to things that felt missing in my life, and things that were making me feel worse.

I noticed that instagram (shocker) was instantly worsening my mood, even though I was following a bunch of accounts that were meant to be “positive” and “helpful.” Accounts sharing relationship advice, mostly, were causing me to ruminate on the breakup that had started it all, all the things I did “wrong,” all the ways I had abandoned myself. I would say that is decidedly not helpful. Other accounts that made me envious or triggered comparisonitis were just not something I needed to look at at that time. So I did a big sweep of unfollowing and muting accounts (such a nice trick: muting people in case it feels a bit “political” to unfollow them, but you don’t want to see their posts for a while). That was step one.

But then I noticed something else… As soon as a thought floated in reminding me of the things I was sad about, I would latch on and dig my heels into it. In this journey down the familiar rabbit hole, I could get myself so worked up, sad, angry, just sitting alone in my bed. There was something satisfying, dare I say, masturbatory, about going over and over the facts, the course of events, the ways in which I was a victim in it all. I would call friends (god bless my friends) and run through the story and the takeaways for the 100th time. I would look forward to my therapy calls and hope that maybe this week my therapist, or a friend, would have something new to say. A fix. A remedy. I was leaving it all in someone else’s hands, shoving it all onto someone else’s plate, just waiting for the answer, until I realized: it was up to me. 

Nobody else could fix this for me. I had to do the work of digging myself out of this hole, if I wanted to be out of it. Again, it felt completely out of my control - my mind just went this way on it’s own, it seemed. But as I was able to sit back and watch, I noticed I had a choice: to think new things.

When we talk about neuroscience, or habit change for that matter, I often use the metaphor of a river. A river is formed by a flow of water that has carved it’s way through rock. It starts as a trickle, and over time it carves deeper and deeper until the water moves faster and ignores any other possible route it could go. The river has become the path of least resistance; the seemingly only way the water could flow. But imagine you came along with a shovel, and started digging a new route. The water would trickle in, but it would still prefer to go the way it’s always gone. You’d have to really effort to dig this new trench, and to redirect the water. Over and over again, and facing constant defeat, you’d have to keep pushing it that way. Until, one day, the water flows naturally into the new route. So effortlessly, in fact, that the old route dries up, grows over, and becomes the less desired path. It’s still there, but now that’s the one that takes effort to get the water to go down. 

This is how our brains work. We have a series of pathways, most of them very well-carved, and it’s easy for our thoughts to flow down them in the same way they always have. They even pick up speed and strength the longer they’re with us, turning thoughts and beliefs into cold hard facts when they’re not. It takes real effort to change our thoughts; over and over again, catching the thought process as it starts, and choosing something different. And this is what I did, even though it felt good to ruminate, to get mad, to cry out to friends. 

I noticed, also, that I was getting something we all want by being stuck like this: attention. Embarrassing to admit, but I liked the attention I was getting by being in this low place. My friends and family are busy, and while they’re very “there” for me in the general sense, for this period of time they would really drop everything to talk to me if I needed to. Which, honestly, was very often. I think part of me was afraid to let that go, and to go back to being responsible for moving my life forward. It felt a little easier to, for a while, just be stuck. 

But I was sick of my own shit. The depression had become bigger than the guy and the breakup; I no longer liked the person I was because of how stuck I was, because of how needy I was. It became a snake eating it’s tail. So I caught the thoughts, and I chose something different. And it was hard, like rerouting a big old river. The water would try to flow it’s old way, and I’d have to catch it, each and every time. I’d have to find something happy, hopeful, exciting to think about instead. I had to create those things for myself sometimes. 

Like most things, the process seems slow and arduous and at times it feels like nothing is ever gonna change. And then one day, you realize, as if all of a sudden, you feel better. The small - itty bitty - steps you took have added up and you’ve somehow navigated to a completely different place. If you’re in the dark right now, let me remind you: there is light at the end of this tunnel.

This post is not, by any means, meant to blame you or make you responsible for the way you’re feeling. Seek the help you need, find support, take the meds! But in those moments when you realize you have a choice, when you can possibly strong arm yourself into thinking a new thought, or getting up to do the smallest of tasks for yourself - choose to change the pattern, as if clearing one more pebble out of the new path and letting a little more water flow through.

Sending much love all around and a happy new year to everyone. xo

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