Death in Recovery Part 3: Other’s Depression

The Two Selves: My Work

This post is dedicated to helping me work through an understanding I have been studying. I have a long and arduous relationship to other people’s depression and if I don’t go towards it to understand it then there will be no internal resolution. If you know me at all you know I have studied my character defects and my mindful patterns. Let me clarify, when I say “mind” or “mindful” what I mean is, it is the opposite of what love does, it is thinking (mind) vs. feeling (heart), and it is the ego or false self in expression instead of my essence or spirit’s expression. I believe we have two selves: the spirit which is the real self that works in feeling, depth, and love. And we have a second self which we each create when we are very young in order to maneuver and survive our earth adventure. The character defects are strategies to look, act, seem a certain way.

I’ll speak more personally now that I have some of the language down. When I was very young I thought I needed to be something, pretty, popular, a good girl, ect. So I became what I thought I needed to be in order to survive this lifetime. What I became was a victim to people and circumstances around me and I used that victimization to justify my self harm and my self soothing (drug use, eating disorder, smoking, disassociating, distraction through media or love, ect). Im my victimization, I had anger inside that I was being treated the way I was (much of which I was doing to myself), and I had entitlement to help me justify my actions. I felt entitled to self soothing because, after all, I was a victim to myself and others. This trifecta of Anger, Entitlement, and Victim is my core pattern that I came to break apart in this lifetime. I have other patterns my false self uses or defaults to, such as my Child pattern that is my immaturity and inability to be responsible or take care of myself. I have the pattern of Guilt & Shame which paralyzed me for years by being a constant reminder that I was a bad person and needed to suffer (through my own self harm) because of it. I also have a pattern I call my Nowhere Man, and that pattern would show up when things got to be too much and I would just shut down and disassociate. What all these patterns have in common is they were trigger switches to flip and leave myself so I didn’t have to feel feelings, face the truth, and illuminate the reality in my illusions.

I have spent 10 years in recovery and spiritual learning, studying these patterns daily. This work has saved my life by showing my who I really am and giving me a reason not to abandon the real self for the false self. In the last year or so the work shifted away from mere survival to actual prosperity of love and real comfort. I had an experience in a therapy session that helped me understand that I was the one in control of my own life (I know this sounds like a simple concept but there were many things in the way of my understanding this in a deeply, and digressing would make for a very long blog lol). I made a decision to go back to school and I chose something I really wanted to go towards. In the past my previous career choices were all someone else’s suggestions. They were great suggestions but ultimately I would get burnt out doing them and quit because it wasn’t what fueled my passion and so there came a natural ending every time. I needed to take control of my own life but it had to be on my own time, when I was ready. This decision ultimately led me to jump into a long list of experiences that flowed effortlessly somewhere I knew was right and trusted. I gave myself permission of be fully honest about who I am and what I think and feel, and thus this website became a reality. I knew I needed to write my story and I knew it would be a place to honor what I was learning. I knew it would be a launching pad for my business but I needed it to all be collectively united. By doing this I chose to not run away from who I really was. I chose to be fully honest and not hold back. I chose love and to trust myself over fear, immaturity, and numbing.

The Third Death

My grandmother passed in early June of 2019 after a long battle with cancer. She was a fighter and strong willed, it felt like nothing would ever stop her. She created a beautiful home and garden that she was very proud of. She loved becoming a great grandmother to her 3 great grandsons. She had some wonderful qualities about her, but there was also difficult things about her “false self” that made having a relationship with her exasperating at times. I want to make this clear: I loved her and she gave me so much, for that I will be forever grateful for, but she was also a great variable for me when it came to learning how to take care of myself.

I want to tell you about her because her death was not an easy death to be present for and let go of, but it was one of the first times, in my whole life, where I was able to feel all my feelings and stay fully present. In my past I would have experiences of joy, sorrow, embarrassment, disappointment, and so on, but I would stop those feelings dead in their tracks so I didn’t have to feel them. I would feel those feelings start to come in, and I end them by over eating, purging, smoking, going to movies, binge-watching Netflix, distracting myself. I always had a remedy for my feelings. But when my grandmother passed I kept trying to act out in my old patterns and nothing worked. Trust me I tried, but I was left to just feel my feelings, and you know what happened? I survived them. These feelings I thought would obliterate me just sucked for a few weeks and then I used them to keep growing. I finally stopped abandoning myself and I held my own hand through the rough waters to get to the relief of the shore. Upon solid ground, I began to walk again because I was whole. This experience has only multiplied in the last few weeks because I keep having to step up and stand up for myself, and it’s life changing.

Other People’s Depression

My whole life I have surrounded myself with people who are depressed. I know depression well because it is present in many of my most intimate relationships. But I have reached a point in my life and growth that I cannot continue codependent relationships with depressed people. Let me explain this better. One of the ways I deal with other people’s depression is to try to fix it. I do this because my whole life I thought others were depressed because of me. And so to stay in comfort, I would try to fix them so I could feel better. I know that sounds thoughtless, but that pattern of Guilt & Shame kept me persistently believing that their pain was my fault and in order to survive it I would have to fix it. Can you feel how heavy that is? And the depressed people in my life didn’t want to be fixed, so it led to me walking on eggshells trying to avoid their dark feelings because I took it on like water to a sinking ship. I couldn’t fix them and I couldn’t get out of being the target of the feelings, or I was expected to join in it… I. Was. Fucked… Until I understood their depression as having nothing to do with me. If I was not a part of their equation, they would still be depressed and I was only sustaining my victim pattern by staying and making myself be a victim to it!

What I am learning is that I need to put up some walls so I can exist without the constant pressure of that depression. I need to keep seeking out who I am and building a relationship to myself. By going towards these relationships the way they are, I am staying in a codependent and distraction-based partnership that I can’t maintain. If boundaries work then all is well, but to fall back into this routine is like doubling back on progress, and I can no longer do that. I am not ending these relationships, only trying my best to see red flags 🚩, put up boundaries, and leave if I need too. Or in some cases put a literal distance between us until my natural reaction isn’t to throw myself under the bus when things get uncomfortable. It is not my job to fix others. They are allowed to have their process and I have a right to take care of myself if I need to. This is just another notch in my belt to giving myself all I deserve and leaving old patterns behind.

There is a lot more to my story you can find in other earlier blogs. I have decided to do a fourth part to the Death in Recovery series, so stay tuned for that. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 here.

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Thank you for reading. ♥️