Learning Limits

Learning to cope with depression is really all about learning to set healthy limits and actually keep to them...SO much easier said than done.

My entire life I have been taught the following idea that was so eloquently put into words by Ghandi, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."I would find myself so drawn to those that needed help and in many ways that is how I defined myself. But then I was consumed with the plague of depression and the lens in which I viewed my life had to change.

How could it be wrong to want to focus on others?

Isn't that what I had been taught since I was a young child...both religiously speaking, and just as a general good way of living?

Then why was it how a harmful and wrong thing to do?

I suppose that using the word "Wrong" is maybe a little inaccurate, but it definitely wasn't "Right" for me to act the way I had before. I found myself so torn my this. I didn't understand how it could be right for me to have to shift to a more "Selfish" vs. "Selfless" way of being?

Sleep became increasingly more and more important. My OBGYN instructed me to get 8-9 hours of sleep a night (and mind you this is while I had a nursing 3 month old...YAY, RIGHT!). At first I just did my best, but over time I definitely started to notice that there was a DRASTIC difference when I would get more than 8 hours of sleep vs. just 8 hours. I'm not just talking I was less tired (that is of course the obvious result), but I was actually nearly unable to function with 8 hours of sleep. Even to this day I have to be a sleep NAZI! If I don't get enough (8+ hours) sleep I can usually count on the next 2 days being shot. Many others might not notice what I'm going through, but the internal struggle I go through to even function on days like that is SO tremendous that I often feel like I might have after pulling a week of all-nighters.

Exercise, reading my scriptures, saying my prayers, keeping the house relatively organized, getting enough down time (i.e. 2-4 hours per day), etc. Again, these things seems normal and most of us are happier when we get these things done, but again the priority level of these things sky rocketed. Accomplishing these tasks literally takes me all the energy I have, but when I don't do them there is a direct correlation with how I feel...again, on a much more dramatic scale than for someone without depression.

As I'm reading through this I just feel my vocabulary is lacking me. How can I truly express the depth at which these things affect me? I try to think of other comparisons that someone else might understand, but they often fall short. One that I do like and I think might kind of come close is the following:

We all need to work on balancing our lives in order to keep healthy and happy. For the average person that is like riding a bike...maybe even a bike with training wheels that are in their highest position. Yes, you can stumble and fall if you don't work to keep the balance, but usually you can catch yourself before you completely fall. Someone with a major mental illness is riding a unicycle instead...without the benefit of any training wheels. The balance required is so immensely challenging that more often than I not I feel like I am crashed on the ground instead of actually riding anywhere.

I know my posts are especially dark and hard to read, but this has been my reality for much of the past 2 years. I have definitely had better times and worse times, but I would say the general direction I've been going is up. And if I want to continue to have it proceed in that direction, I must set and keep healthy limits.