When you feel a bout of depression (or anxiety) approaching, you are afraid to be alone because you will be occupied with your thoughts and feelings, so you distract yourself, trying to push away the threat. You watch yourself apprehensively, checking to see if it’s still there. It’s hard to forget something when you’re trying so hard to forget it.
When you do this, you emphasize the threat. The tensions mounts and gradually brings sensitization and the sinking feeling of depression and anxiety. So little to choose between fear and depression, as this fear mounts, she finally convinces herself that depression has arrived, and she feels despair. Despair is the finishing touch. She can feel one touch of despair, that she finally admits she’s struggling.
She may forget her OCD, but when she thinks of it again, the happiness she felt while distracted is lost, and the feeling of depression strikes immediately, even deeper than before. The fight seems hopeless. What is the use of forgetting when remembering is such pain?
She is more depressed and discouraged than when she first felt bad. She might set out feeling good but the sight of returning home reminds her of the depression, and she fears it. There is hope that this episode will pass, but with each episode, there is the fear that this one will stay, and she will never feel better. Depression eventually passes because it is a state of emotional depletion. But emotions always replenish themselves. One morning she will wake to feel a little better and it is a reminder that it will pass.
This is a story of mismanagement. It establishes recurring bouts as a habit, but prolongs recovery. What should a person do, to prevent it from happening, or if already in it, how to get out of it?
Most people must recover. This is a reaction that has been fostered by habit and memory, and has been encouraged by mental and emotional fatigue. Don’t run blindly from the thoughts, don’t drain your emotional reserves further. Work at a steady pace so you can take time to think calmly of yourself. Take time to think calmly about the depression. Don’t sit and wallow in it, recharge your emotional batteries, but do it at a normal pace.
If you forget your OCD for awhile, don’t be discouraged by your remembrance of it. If you accept that and that your emotions will be up one minute and down the next, your acceptance will protect emotions from your own onslaught upon them. Your body will heal depression just as it will heal a broken leg if you give it a chance.
Waking anxious in the morning deserves attention. People get disappointed when they wake to feel the same way, anxious, forboding. To cope with dreading morning anxiety, have a shower, tea, switch on radio. This is not fighting. Rising on waking, quickens metabolic rate and surges anxiety. It takes courage to relax towards OCD. Face, accept and keep working at a normal pace.
Coming through setbacks
All nervously ill must not have setbacks before they can recover. Some can recover on just hearing an explanation of their illness. Others find recovery difficult and long. If in periods of peace they find themselves thinking they have finally found the key, it lurks in the back of their mind “what if it comes back again?” Sensitization, in conjunction with memory, will see to it that it does come back from time to time.
Memory is ready to waylay at every turn at the road. The very sight of a disturbing association spells illness.
Because sensitization brings exaggerated feelings, each frightening experience, sensation that memory recalls may bring such intense suffering the sufferer can be easily duped into thinking memory equals reality and they find themselves back where they worked so hard to recover from. The suffering felt in setback highlights suffering even more and makes it feel more unbearable than ever. This contrast may make the early setback seem so severe that it makes the sufferer think that the struggle to climb out of it is beyond him. It seems as if something is ready to drag him back whenever he tries to go forward. It is hard to understand that it is possible to feel so desperate so suddenly when a few hours earlier he felt well and optimistic. He had thought that as he recovered, setbacks would be less severe and occur less often. But they can just as well seem as worse than ever, and be frustrating.
Yet, however severe a setback may be, it makes no difference to ultimate recovery if it is dealt with in the right way. Memory can play tricks, but if you understand it, you will not be discouraged by it.
There is a difference between memory and reality. When memory slips back, you don’t have to slip back with it. Don’t withdraw with it in fear. They are only memories, only thoughts, and that you need not be bluffed by thoughts, however painful they may seem. As acceptance heals sensitization, you will be finally be able to reason with thoughts and feelings. Each setback gives you another chance to practice acceptance.
Do not count how long you've been in a setback; you are waiting too anxious for it to disappear or impatiently trying to break through it, or have become hopeless about recovering.
Why does one person feel so well one day, and feel so bad the next, as if the good journey had never been made? Because yesterday was so successful, it makes the next day so unbearable. Do not make the mistake of testing yourself because you will always lose! Practice brings no urgent demand, but testing brings the feeling of needing an answer.
