Dear Joe:

The problem may be this: we are used to tasks being done from point A to point Z in a day, let’s say, done and completed. The task of getting emotionally healthy is not that kind of task. It takes so much time, so much work and all through, you still feel anxious and depressed. So when you do, you say to yourself: it is not working! I failed the task, task aborted, unsuccessful! So we give up. It is as if we expect, once we do feel better, to always feel better from now on, task completed and done.

So we feel better, then we feel badly again- and this is where a lot of people give up, not understanding the nature of this particular task: emotional healing.

It is when you feel awkward, and in your head, and worrying about your nose again or about what people are thinking about you, or if they forgot you are even there and so on and on… at those moments, focus on healing. These moments are not regression, they are progress if you attend to those moments when they happen and continue the healing during those moments.

anita

Hi Joe,

Congratulations for putting in great effort to improve yourself, understand you are disappointed in the results you see, disappointed that you still feel weird.  The thing is, like Anita says, good physical & emotional health and healthy self-esteem don’t eliminate feeling weird or depressed – these feelings still happen same way good and bad things will happen through life. But they do give you strength/resilience in dealing with them and improve your ability to recognise and process thoughts differently, being able to see them as a temporary feeling, a temporary thought – not an absolute truth about us as a person, something to be considered and acted upon only if needed.

Trying to ignore thoughts and feelings only empowers them more – it’s like telling someone not to think about elephants and ofcourse the first thing in that person’s mind is an all-singing, all-dancing elephant! What thoughts are you trying to ignore when you calm your mind through the TV/computer? Do you think they are true? For example, it is different to say I am currently feeling depressed to saying I am depressed. The first recognises it as the truth, a temporary state of feeling which will pass with time. And as you practice reviewing your thoughts and feelings in such a way, not ignoring them but not blindly accepting them, it gets easier and quicker to work out the underlying driver of them. Often it is old-standing insecurities or fears that once identified, can be worked through.

Hope helps.