Comments on Adventures in wanting: Light bulb moment #2: Feelings as information

Well..everyone has already said what I was thinkin...

2010-01-12T09:37:27.949-08:00

Well..everyone has already said what I was thinking when I read your blog entry!

All I have to add is that BBQ pizza sounds like a yummy idea :-)

Hopefully I can reintroduce myself to pizza this year...

Sarah x

I love the blue! Blue's my favourite colour :) I ...

2010-01-12T03:31:37.865-08:00

I love the blue! Blue's my favourite colour :)

I have had to deal with both problems that you're talking about in this post - judging your feelings and fearing them. When I was younger I was ALWAYS telling myself that I had no right to feel sad/anxious/angry/whatever, because other people had it far worse and there was nothing that bad going on in my life. Of course, all this did was make me feel worse. Eventually I realised that my depression and anxiety were partly genetic, which stopped me being so judgemental towards myself, but instead I got scared. If it wasn't my fault, how could I stop it from overwhelming me? I think this is why people like to blame themselves so much, it gives them the illusion of control over the situation. Being angry with yourself is so much less terrifying than feeling out of control. I've had...six episodes of major depression in my life I think, each lasting between six and 18 months. With the last one, I did everything I could to try and make myself feel better, and nothing seemed to work. After ending up in hospital, becoming physically sick, losing weight again and rediscovering how being underweight seems to do something chemical to my brain to make the depression easier to cope with, I became terrified of getting back to a healthy weight because I thought the depression would come back and overwhelm me again. It hasn't yet, but it's only in the last month or two that I've finally calmed down about bad days. If I wake up feeling crappy I can sit with it now and tell myself that it will pass. It always has so far! But even if it persisted, it's just like physical pain. Physical pain increases if you are anxious and tense. Psychological pain, which is essentially also physiological, increases if you are scared of it and trying to push it away. Remembering that helps me a lot.

This is an essay, not a comment :P oh dear. I just wanted to say I relate and I think it's possible to learn to deal with this. See, that only took one sentence!

I like the blue a lot. Your thoughts are wonderfu...

2010-01-11T19:55:40.135-08:00

I like the blue a lot.
Your thoughts are wonderful. They always speak to me so deeply. Its amazing.
We often for example say "i should do this."...well, why not just exist in the moment and try to exist without that thought....like i always say "i feel so crappy and lazy " ...why not say instead " i can walk for 30 minutes today"...i plan to do a post on this soon...about instead of saying that former (negative feeling)...say the FACT...then it is what it is...and nothing more...words are words..thoughts mean ...nothing...we need to stop the attachments.
BBQ pizza ..yes.
Blue...yes.

The blue looks great. Thanks for all of your words...

2010-01-11T19:01:33.252-08:00

The blue looks great. Thanks for all of your words of encouragement during a very sad week in my life.

I do exactly the same thing--become angry and crit...

2010-01-11T18:10:50.545-08:00

I do exactly the same thing--become angry and critical of myself when I'm feeling bad because logically I have no reason to feel this way. But I've learned too that this only makes the situation worse and that I've got to accept the way I'm feeling for what it is. And I've also come to recognize the fact that when I'm feeling bad it will pass. It always does.