Over the past weeks, I have been listening to an audiobook called “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” by a psychologist Lori Gottlieb. It is an autobiography about her own journey through psychological issues as well as some of her clients. It is very emotional and dramatic as well as informative of different facets of psychotherapy, counseling, and mental issues. Overall, I have enjoyed the book as a light listening through my traveling. It was up until the very last few chapters that really triggered me to once again pick up my laptop to write this Depression Diary, as a reflection of myself and my journey to healing.
“Pain can be a psychological shell to protect yourself,” said Lori, and she continues in the later part of the book “It is sometimes easier to let pain takes over than to face it.”
I was struck by these simple sentences that I kept seeing in different shapes of deliveries when it comes to dealing with depression. It is also quite a common fact for well-informed depressed people that the depression itself can be a symptom of deeper and much more complex and intricate problems or traumas. Also, depression can appear in a form of emotional pain, lethargy, fear, and many things.
The reason I was especially struck by these two sentences was that I somehow feel that I am slowly falling into the trap of this well-masked evil as well. As mentioned in my recent journal, I was lately faced with lethargies to exercise, and I have grown to become more and more shameful of myself for not taking good care of my physical self. Additionally, as my prolonged MBA program has come to a finale, I have also become very uneased with the change and shift in my life phase. The parting from my friends here is also nerve-wracking. I have become somewhat more reliant on Xanax during the day when I started to feel anxiety hitting. Going out to exercise and making efforts to practice yoga has become harder each day even though I have more time than ever these days – though some of the days that I managed to exercise, I felt very accomplished.
The constant mental fight and the sense of accomplishment to force my inertia to do something really emphasize the fact that, even though I actually felt much better than those dark days in July, the depression is still there, creeping up in a different shape, and I really need to start facing it head-on.
I guess what I have to say to myself – and, of course, my dear diary – is that I will now face my inertia and really try to move more.
