BLAAAAAAHHHHHHH

[cookiemom6067]

I have been so "not me" for a little more than a week. I'm slipping back into being depressed and it's a REAL up-hill battle to make myself do much of anything. Even reading fanfic online, something I really LIKE doing, is not that fun. I did get out of bed today. I did take a shower. I did make something for dinner for the family. Go me. woo hoo. I know that I need to move my playing piece off "start," so to speak. I feel like I have just a TON of "have to's" and "ought to's" and "should's" weighing me down, even though some of them are thing that I ACTUALLY WANT TO DO, just the fact that there's a "should" attached has me reacting with much less than sparkly enthusiasm. How have you overcome this yourself, if you're the sort of person that "shoulds all over (your)self?" I'm also feeling down because of how I look. I really have quite a lot of weight to lose. I feel lousy and I look worse. My son is getting married in May and I would really like to "lighten my load" before then. I have been on a lot of diet and exercise programs in my life, only to gain back (and more). I have had, up until a couple of years ago, a fairly stable (if still obese) weight. I know what I need to do (and HOW do I know!!!!), I just have no enthusiasm to do it! ARGH. My son and his fiancee are talking about moving out of state ultimately, and I don't begrudge these two liberal activist types from moving out of our decidedly ruby-red state (seriously, NO ONE bothers to campaign here), I hate the thought of not having them close. ("But, Sweetheart!!! If you're going to fight injustice, you have to be where the injustice is happening!!") Little birdies gotta fly, I know. Wow - this is pretty much "word salad" - sorry about that. LAME.

Comments

[darkemeralds]

I know it doesn't make much difference when you're in that state of mind, but I just want to tell you that I sympathize because I've been pretty much where you are for much of my adult life. That horrible, stagnant feeling of "have to but can't" and "should but don't wanna." It's like swimming through a vat of Jello. I know it well, and I'm so sorry you're in it.

For what it's worth, dietary changes made the biggest difference for me. Any kind of change in that area was so bound up with my need to lose weight--so bound up in my fundamental self-hatred--that it was almost impossible to approach. But I really did believe in nutritional healing, and I really didn't want to be on SSRI drugs (though I used them for one 18-month period in my late 30s), and so somehow I managed to eliminate the Big Four non-foods: artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, and MSG.

I still struggle with sugar, but the Big Four took all kinds of crap out with them, and a lot of my mood disorder began to abate as my diet improved, even though I lost no weight (in fact, I gained weight).

The other side of the picture has been hormones. I'm beginning to think hormone imbalance was at the heart of my entire problem all along. I'm glad I made the dietary changes for my general health, but I wonder if age and hormonal decline wasn't the main agent in my release from depression. I wonder whether I might have suffered less if the type of hormone treatment I'm on now had been available when I was 35 or 40.

Anyway, I've got the best of several worlds now: my efforts to clean up my diet have slowly resulted in generally better mental and physical health, and I was finally able to lose some weight, AND now I do have a bio-identical hormone replacement regimen that's solving a bunch of the discomforts and inconveniences of post-menopause.

I've mentioned EFT Tapping a few times in my own journal and I think you and I might have exchanged a couple of comments on the subject. It's simple and useful for mood management (and all kinds of emotional and physical states), and anyone can learn it for free. I can dig up some links if you're interested.

[cookiemom6067]

I was hoping you'd comment - I debated about whether to just whine to you or whine to my f-list, and decided to give you a break!

Yes, I would love some links - we have exchanged some comments about EFT, and my skepticism (of course, when you're in a negative state of mind, you're sure everything is stupid). I'm at the "try anything" point.

I got off my SSRI last Summer, which helped me a lot, paradoxically - I had no idea how numbed out I had gotten. I got off with the idea of using Ilardi's "Therapeutic Lifestyle change" method - which I have pursued with my usual lackadaisical style. To quote AA, "It works when I work it."

My biggest food challenge is sugar, particularly candy, although I have really backslid into drinking pop occasionally, and eating junk food like chips and such. I also don't eat near enough vegetables and fruit. Artificial sweetners aren't an issue, because I've always just eaten sugar! But, I've had more than one person recommend dropping hfcs, and I'm well aware of the issues with transfats.

I also am VERY sedentary.

I am at the intellectual point of saying, "yes, this is an issue, chickie." but not to the point of putting my inner 2-year-old in time out. Working on setting those boundaries.

[darkemeralds]

I consider you a friend, and our association one of support and kindness, so I hope you'll feel free to "whine" to me directly if you ever feel like it!

Here is a link to a really good introductory talk, about 38 minutes long, where one of the masters of EFT tapping reviews theories about why and how tapping works, and walks through a basic session. I've got a couple dozen talks from the same summit, from all kinds of practitioners on a range of subjects (including weight loss, of course), and I'm happy to share. It's a quick matter to upload them.

The short tapping round, which is what's discussed in the audio interview above, is demonstrated here by Rod Sherwin. Nice guy--I follow him on Google+. He taps the points in a slightly different order from what's on the audio, but believe me, the sequence is unimportant, and different practitioners use different versions with excellent results.

And I just discovered this guy, who is excellent. He looks like he's about 15, but he explains and demonstrates the full, classic method with perfect clarity. That's the long round, and can be valuable for deep, intractable issues. I use it occasionally, but I use the brief method most of the time.

(Also, you'll note, you get a pan-Anglophone taste of international EFT--American, Australian and British in these samples).

I hope you'll find a private moment and give it a little try. Because the method was given away to the world by the developer (Gary Craig), you can find tons and tons of free material online. It's like the Linux of self-help. You get way more than what you pay for because it's open source!

Good luck!