Let Go

My stepmother attends Al-Anon meetings because of the troubles she's had as a result of my step-brother's behavior and life choices. She used to blame herself, and right after she started attending, little signs appeared all her and my dad's house. They said a wide range of affirmations, but the one that always stood out to me is "let go and let god." Now, the message doesn't work for me at all - I'm not religious in the least, and in fact I'm an atheist, so I don't really think that god is going to be doing much of anything for me. On the contrary, I feel that things happen if I make them happen; good things take place if I work hard for them.

My road trip afforded me a lot of time to think. Before setting off on it, I wasn't sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. As it turned out...it was both. There were definitely times alone in the car when thinking was the worst thing that could be going on - that I just went round and round, and got more and more sad. But the last few days of the road trip - early last week - I started to make a break through, and I was surprised to find that the biggest breakthrough I made was the addition of a single phrase: "let go."

When I'm really depressed, and I start to cycle through Bad Things I Probably Shouldn't Be Thinking About, there is very little that I can do to help. However, when I'm feeling neutral or okay or good and I start to go down directions of thought that upset me, I've now got a set of things that I can do that seem to help - most of the time. :)

1. Self-Acceptance. "It's okay that I feel sad/hurt/down/angry/annoyed/frustrated/guilty/etc." I've been amazed by how often I've found myself feeling worse and worse and I've just cut it off cold by reminding myself that it's okay that I feel however I feel, and that there is nothing wrong with me just because I'm still sad or still depressed. I've turned entire days around this way.

2. Distraction (and more self-acceptance!). "What do I want to do?" And then I do it. I've given up on asking myself "what do I want?" as a general statement, because in the past four months I've only had one, unachievable answer to that one. If the answer is that I really don't want to do anything, I don't do anything. I put aside all of the "shoulds" - I should be crafting for Nerd Wars! I should be working for my day job! I should be reading! - and focus on it being okay. Last night, all I really wanted to do was watch my baseball game...so that's all I did. It's taken four months, but the side effect of persistently focusing on only doing what I want to do and not doing what I don't want to do...is that I finally want to do things again! I've finally picked my crochet hook back up. I'm reading more. I'm getting more done. But it has to be constantly reinforced - I have to honor my own desires.

3. Ask why. It's very easy to get into a cycle of bad, thinking about all the things that I'm still hurting about, wishing. Instead, now, I try to think, "why do I feel this way right now?" This weekend, it was because I realized that it would have been the six month anniversary of my relationship, had it worked out. Realizing this didn't really help me feel better, in fact I think it made me feel worse, but I still felt that it was better that I knew than that I didn't know.

4. Naming it. When I've got enough spunk, when I notice things taking a turn, I just call it up short: "Shut up, Cushan!" (recall: I nicknamed my inner demon Chushanrishathiam...) It doesn't work every time, but if I'm generally having a day where I feel okay, this can really work to stop the whole thing from derailing.

5. Self-encouragement. Simple reinforcement stuff. "I look nice today," or "I did well yesterday," or, "I've been getting a lot done!" It's easy to look at things that "don't matter" but that you did and took a long time, and then say, "damn it I wasted all this time!" Wrong attitude. When that starts to happen - and when it does it'll always drag me down other bad directions - I just remind myself, "no, it's okay. I've done well. I made the choice to do this thing. I'm on top of what I need to do." Even if I do fall behind, I try to keep the inner message positive.

6. Let go. This is my most recent addition, my epiphany last weekend that has helped me a lot in getting through this most recent week, and it's clearly derived from my step-mother's Al-Anon signs. When I really start to cycle, I say to myself, "let it go. I know that it hurts, I know that I'm sad/angry/guilty/frustrated/what-not, but there's nothing I can do about it. So let it go." I've noticed that increasingly, this is accompanied by a visual: my fist in a death grip around...nothing, scraps of paper, air, feelings, I don't know, and I just visualize pulling my fingers away, one by one, and...whatever it is...blows away in the wind. There's nothing there, really, yet I can kinda...see it...dissipate.

Do these things work every time? No. Last night, for example, they didn't work at all - but I know for sure that hormones were involved. When I start really low, none of this makes much impact at all. I have to have enough spirit to fight back before I can really tell Cushan to shove off. But I've found that all of these strategies have really helped me on the days where I'm mostly doing okay but I start to go down lines of thought that upset me. I'm sure I'll keep coming up with more, sure that I'll keep experimenting and discarding. What kinds of things do you all do?