How to walk yourself out of a despair spiral.

Given all that’s happening in the world lately, there’s plenty of be upset about.

If you’re like me, you may find yourself descending into a despair spiral. It makes good sense that it would happen. And here’s how to walk yourself out when that happens.

The world is waking up and when awareness dispels delusion, it usually isn’t a pretty process.

In addition to the everyday things happening in our lives, which are always there and happening, we have things like virus pandemics and partisan politics and institutional racism. I confess I got pretty caught up in that tidal wave of social/cultural consciousness on social media and drifted pretty far out to sea. It wasn’t wrong but it was unsustainable and I have spent the past month paddling back to the shore for some respite. I knew I couldn’t keep trying to shoulder all that weight. Something had to give.

Just opening Facebook for a minute makes me feel nauseous. The chronic complaints and angry rants seem to be growing worse, but I have to be honest and say it’s probably always been this bad. All that’s changed is my participation in it. So I limit my exposure which lessens my despair.

But my work puts me into peoples’ lives and my empathy for all people makes me very sensitive to more than just my own experience.

My client lost her son several weeks ago in a car accident. Her two other children survived. I admit that I cannot imagine her grief and how it feels to be her, right now.

My friend has spent this past year grieving his father passing away unexpectedly last summer. It’s coming up on one year for him.

My friend just lost her brother.

My friend barely kept her business alive these past few months.

Everyday life keeps happening and it is traumatic and tough to manage our own and bear witness for others.

I do have moments where I wish I could feel less. Do you? But what kind of life would that be?!

I remember when I had a breakthrough about depression. And how it was just another word for despair.

I remember thinking that it wasn’t something that I had to battle anymore. That it wasn’t something I was afflicted with. It wasn’t something I would be saddled with for the rest of my life.

It was a decision. A choice.

My depression was despair born of discouragement and experiencing it was a decision. One of many I can make every moment of every day. Choosing to embrace my despair is an act of self-care.

And I remember thinking that and then being told by a “friend” at the time, when I confessed it to her, that I would be crazy to put a thought like that into the blogosphere or interwebs or whatever we’re calling it now.

“I worry,” she said. “I’m scared for you.”

“For me to be honest?”

“I mean, people don’t want to hear that. So I’m worried for you.”

This person battles herself to live from integrity and authenticity. Her fear probably came from that place.

I get it. I struggle, too. But I persevere to be as real as I can. I know every person who meets me perceives my efforts differently. Many days, that very awareness can be a real trigger for a despair spiral. One of my core wounds is feeling unheard which feels like I’m misunderstood or misrepresented.

And since social media is just a mind-fuck of warped social and cultural projection, it’s a real act of courageous mindfulness to navigate it all. Are we at the point of collectively understanding and accepting that social media is how we’re capturing and witnessing the expansion of social consciousness? Maybe? Are we getting close at least?

I’ve had to work hard, very very hard, to discern what authentic means as it’s currently socially defined compared to how I experience and express it.

I’ve had to learn the difference between being “honest versus transparent” per the good advice of my therapist years ago. He also helped me see how much of my mental health was a series of choices I made.

But I know that’s not a popular thing to say. He and I spoke often about how differently I see things. And how hard it can be to even feel like sharing my thoughts. After he died suddenly in 2017, things worse when I felt so silenced.

And that’s why this is the first thing I’ve written in many months, after two decades of writing and publishing on my website or medium and other public places. My private journals are full, however. So the writing never really stopped.

Because sometimes writing helps me walk myself out of a despair spiral.

Sometimes talking to myself helps.

Sometimes eating something healthy works.

Sometimes eating sugar does, but it usually does NOT.

Sometimes posting on social media makes a difference. USUALLY IT DOES NOT.

Sometimes walking in nature works wonders.

Sometimes talking to my dead therapist grounds me. More than I can even believe, most days.

Sometimes I sit on my couch and talk to my dead friends. Like my friend Sara who died before we had more time together and my friend Fay who died but profoundly changed my life before she did and my friend Jenn who died of cystic fibrosis when we were 16.

But sometimes thinking about people who loved me who have died can lead me into a despair spiral. I feel profound sadness when I feel lonely, and I think how much more loved I might feel if those people were still alive.

And then when I feel that sadness, I can begin to feel buried by it. Like I feel buried by the brutal killing of people in my country and the blatant ignorance that fuels selfish greed. I feel buried when I believe that my presence barely makes a difference to all that evil.

So I walk myself out of that despair spiral by choosing the opposite feelings.

I choose to intentionally feel gratitude that I even had friends like those people at all. I appreciate having the chance to have loved them. The gratitude grows bigger than the loss. I tell them, wherever they are, that I need their support, however they can send it.

And I feel them. Amidst my grief their hugs from the spiritual beyond find me. And I sit up and wipe my face and find something healthy to eat and the day improves.

Sometimes, that’s how I walk myself out of a despair spiral.

But sometimes, like last Monday, the depression is there waiting at the end of my bed when I open my eyes. Like a thundercloud hovering over me and as the day begins, it begins to creep through and cover my mind.

It doesn’t feel like a choice when that happens. It feels more like being possessed by something.

The more I resist it, the more it clings. It grows fast and fiercely.

And then it’s been hours and I’m wandering around the house, scouring through cupboards for food to feed it or books to distract me or exercise to temper it…but nothing works.

That’s when I hit my rock bottom. When I’ve tried everything and nothing has helped it.

The bottom, I’ve found, is where the best breakthroughs happen.

Because that’s where I stop trying. And embrace the beautiful messiness of my brain trying to process so much pain and trauma. When I stop battling and just breathe.

I don’t know why it still takes me as long as it does to remember this, since I’ve done it so many times over the past several decades. The brain is a precarious, imperfect instrument.

So I stop expecting the despair spiral to be pretty. I release the need for my process toward more balance and better mental health to be straight and narrow.

This is the cure that keeps working.

And now I have a new one. Because I’m doing a better job of asking for help and choosing better listeners in my life.

Being heard is the best medicine for me. Because being ignored and neglected is one of my biggest wounds.

One of my biggest worries is whether talking about what’s tough makes it worse or better. What I’ve found is it’s a balance between the two. What I say and how long I let myself talk makes all the difference in how I’m feeling about whatever bothers me. I can talk myself deeper into discouragement and a despair spiral when my disempowerment is in the driver’s seat. I can walk myself out when I don’t believe it to be real and tell myself that.

We walk ourselves out of a despair spiral when we want our resilience as our reality.