Welcome Lovelies!

I've faced many adversities in my life, and through it all I've been blessed with the strength and grace to endure.
I have been diagnosed with depression and also have lived my life with COD (Compulsive Overeating Disorder).
My faith in God coupled with supportive and loving family and friends have impacted my life greatly.
I seek to help others who may be struggling as well by sharing my story and my everyday life.


Sunday, October 2, 2011

Why being able to compartmentalize can become dangerous and destructive

I'm damn good at compartmentalizing things. I think it's how I cope with being able to do so many things at once. If something pops up and I'm in the middle of something else, I can 'file it away' in a mental filing cabinet to deal with later. This is a very useful tactic for remaining focused on the task at hand.

The pitfall of this is that sometimes I forget there are things I've filed away and need to process and deal with. These are things that are generally more emotional in nature. And then the drawer just bursts open at some random time and everything else in my world just stops as I try to clean up the mess.

I didn't realize I'd been holding back some pretty deep and strong emotional things lately. I know I had made a conscious decision at some point to file this away to deal with when the time was right, but I didn't realize that my brain went on autopilot after that and kept adding to that file. It's like a virus, it lays in wait, quietly attacking and causing damage and is only discovered when it messes stuff up. And the only thing you can do is let it run it's course. I went for a run in the conservancy yesterday. It's the first time in a long time I'd gone for a run there. About 3/4 of the way through my run, all this pent up emotion hit me like a ton of bricks. And I just lost it right there. And I'm still reeling from it.

Looking back at the past few months, I can see some of the signs were there, only I wasn't really paying attention. My eating choices have become more on the poor side lately and my will to workout has fallen to the sidelines. These are usually warning signs for me. I only started recognizing them late this past week. And since running is my time to clear my mind, I think my brain finally put things together for me. I've been binging and reverting to old, comforting habits because I am emotionally stressed. And it all just came up like emotional vomit.

I'm scared. It was at this time last year that these behaviors started to become prevalent and it finally led to me breaking down in my therapists office and being diagnosed with depression. For some reason, even though its my favorite season of the year, Fall and Winter trigger these emotions and behaviors. The medication helped, but because of the therapeutic lag in efficacy, I ended up not feeling better until February. Last Fall and Winter were very very hard on me. It still hurts to even think of how I felt. And I so desperately do not want to experience that again. But I'm very scared that is the path I'm headed down. I'm finding myself stuck in that same mindset: No one cares, everyone has their own burdens and worries and don't want to hear about yours, I don't want to be around people, and yet feel so lonely, what's the point of doing anything productive, or being social, it all just leads to disappointment anyhow.

I'm sure this revelation will come as a surprise to so many people I interact with regularly. I saw an interesting comment today: People think Depression looks like this:
When the truth is, the public face of depression looks like this:


Put on a smile and get by so no one realizes how much you are hurting inside.

It's hard to not put the smile on and get by when you feel no one can understand. 

I'm so scared and worried and stressed right now. I don't want to do this again. I don't want to feel this way again.

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