Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Thank you to all who have followed my blog!!!  I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to share my story with you.  

I pray for each of you who read the blog.  I truly do.  I pray what I write will be helpful to you or someone you know!

I want to wish each of you a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!  There are so many clichés especially this time of year, but I do mean it.  I pray each of you would spend at least a few moments to think on what it really means to celebrate Christmas.  

We celebrate the birth of Jesus who would later in His life die on the cross for our sins.  If it weren’t for His birth, where would we all be?  I pray each of you has a relationship with our Heavenly Father.  He loved us enough to send His son to be born of a virgin so that you would not have to live life without him.  

May you all be blessed this season!!!!!

JOURNALING

I love writing; literally physically writing words on paper.  When I was a little girl, I would copy books.  I would use different colored pens.  I would print, write in cursive and try to find new ways to make letters look cool.  To this day, I still love to do it.

When I became an adult, I would write about my day, my dreams, my frustrations, etc.  In the beginning of my diagnosis of depression, my psychiatrist suggested I continue journaling.  She suggested I write down every feeling I had; write like I was talking to a friend; write like I was talking to myself and giving myself advice, and/or write to God.  And that's what I did and have continued to do throughout my life.

What I found very interesting about journaling is this:  While writing my thoughts and feelings, I would spontaneously write something I had not "thought" of.  Have you ever talked with someone and while sharing  you figured out the answer to a problem just by talking out loud?  That's what journaling can do as well.

This process kind of reminds me what our English teachers used to make us do called "free writing".  The teachers would give us a word or subject and we had so many minutes to write anything we thought of during that time.  It did not have to have correct grammar, punctuation, etc.  This process was to help us open up and free our minds.  Well that is actually what journaling has done for me.  There are times I have written out of anger and realized I was actually wrong.  I have come across solutions to problems while writing.  So it has been very beneficial for me.

For me and many others I know, journaling is cathartic.  As I write, I am able to pour out the bottled up emotions on paper.  It is not good to hold things in, and many times we don't have someone we can or want to share those deep dark thoughts with.  Hence, there is journaling.

I encourage you to give it a try.  You don't have to have a "special" journal.  Just get a piece of paper and a writing utensil.  However, you can make it fun.  Go get a journal, a cute or cool looking notebook.  Buy pens or pencils you like.  Decorate your journal.  Do whatever you want.  It's yours.  Make it fun or just use a piece of paper and then burn or shred it if so desired.  Do not make it complicated.  It is not meant to be stressful.  Give it a try.  Comment back to me and let me know your thoughts, if you tried it, and how it went.

5 MINUTES AT A TIME

Time is all about perspective.  There are 1,440 minutes in a day.  Consider these perspectives:

* If you work an 8-hour day and like your job, 480 minutes goes pretty quickly.  However, if you don't like your job, it seems like an eternity.
* If you sit in classroom for an hour and listen to a teacher with a monotone voice, 60 minutes is a long time.  However, if the teacher is funny and interesting, 60 minutes goes fast.
* If you are giving birth without any anesthesia and they tell you just 5 more minutes, those 5 minutes can be torcher, literally.

We hear so often people say 'one day at a time'.  It's not a bad statement.  It's actually very applicable and biblical.  It's means just deal with today.  Although through my experience, a day with depression can be an extremely long day and excruciating day!!!

First of all, many of us with depression do not want to get out of bed.  If you have to work, run errands, take care of the kids, etc., the day seems way longer than 1,440 minutes.  If you are depressed and you don't want others to know, you not only have to push through the day, you have to put a mask on and fake like everything is okay which, I feel, makes time go slower.

The days we can't get out of the house to do errands and/or can't bring ourselves to get out of bed, one hour might as well be 24 hours.  I titled this "5 minutes at a time" for a reason.  In the deeper depression times when it feels like you are walking through quicksand to get through the day, sometimes 5 minutes is all you can focus on.  In those times, changing our perspective from one day to 5 minutes at a time is more helpful.  Heck, set a timer to help you focus on one thing and once it goes off, you can say "I made it".  It may sound so silly, but it is not for those of us who have or are experiencing depression.  We need all the encouragement we can get.  So focus on 5 minutes and then congratulate yourself and use that as encouragement to say "I can do another 5".