Awareness helps you take control of your recovery

Have you noticed how sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies. I certainly can!

I’m a huge fan of 80’s music. I was a teenager back then and the intoxicating sights and sounds of the music from that era can transport me back to those exciting and energised times: Wow, I thought I could do and be anything back then. The world seemed to pulsate with magic and possibilities.

However, as much as I love the sounds and memories from those years – the opening bars of songs quickly transport me back to teenage nights out, first holidays abroad, new jobs, fascinating new people – they were once also a huge source of fuel for depression.

Without knowing how to stop it, my mind would compare those days to now; weigh one set of feeling against the other and use those as weapons with which to attack me. You might understand how that works. You might even have a mind that does the same.

Your mind can sometimes use your own memories against you

Back as a teenager, my levels of hope and anticipation were off the scale. These emotions, perhaps more than others, used to power me into each day. I’d be excited by what I might learn, new opportunities I might discover. I has perhaps at my happiest because everything was new; it seemed like it was only a matter of time before I discovered how I would turn my dreams into reality. Being alive felt incredible; as if enthusiasm itself was a drug.

Fast forward fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years and many of the dreams I had back then had failed to materialise. The successes I’d imagined would come so easily and so swiftly, had fallen by the wayside; many ending in setback or even failure. I certainly wasn’t living the life at thirty or forty that the eighteen year-old me hoped and expected.

Of course, there’s nothing unusual about that. Many people have dreams at eighteen that never come to fruition. Mostly because we mature and grow up and realign our out-of-date dreams.

Yet if you find yourself fighting with depression, that’s not always how you see things. Depression simply makes a direct comparison. It measures those earlier dreams against your achievements and loves it when you appear to come up short. This is depression’s fuel of choice.

Black and white thinking helps depression thrive

So with a mind that’s trying it’s best to survive this kind of emotional onslaught, it becomes all too easy to view things in a black and white manner. Success v failure. Happy v sad.

Awareness makes things different. Once you gain the strength and the understanding to step away from your own thinking, you can begin to see these thoughts for what they are – fraudulent.

Life at thirty or forty might not be as we’d imagined at eighteen or twenty. But that doesn’t take into account the lessons we have learned between those periods and the wisdom we’ve gained, or the more rounded person we have become.

Once you accept those things and begin seeing your experiences as your strengths and your successes, you begin to reduce the importance of your adolescent dreams and ambitions. Life changes and we change with it. It’s natural.

So you can hear the bars of a song, the frames of a video, glimpse an old photograph, even encounter a once-familiar smell or flash of memory as little more than an entertaining flashback. Awareness strips those things of their power and lets you enjoy them, not fear them. Awareness gives you control.

Awareness helps you take back control of your recovery

And this awareness does much more than control the memories you access and how you think about them. It also allows you to control other powerful elements too; things that might once have stalled your recovery.

A big thing for me was always other people’s behaviour. Struggling with my own thoughts often left me without the strength to manage my reactions to other people. So if somebody said or did something that I didn’t like, instinct would force me to react. Arguing or inviting conflict, even if it’s internalised, is so draining and I’d find myself exhausted as a result. Depression loves this as it weakens us further, making us even more vulnerable.

Believe it or not, the weather was another major contributor to my mood or state of mind. It still can be, if I let it.

Waking to find a rainy morning could so easily ruin my day. I could fall into a dark mood, reminding myself how much I hate the cold, the wet, the damp. The inconvenience.

Awareness also helps you recognise other triggers

Even cloudy days could quite easily make me angry, irritable and melancholy. Perhaps it’s something to do with high air pressure, but on days that many of us would find quite pleasant, I can feel like I’m being squeezed and restricted and held down.

Coincidentally, today is one of these days. My dogs feel it too – they’re unusually subdued and just want to sleep on the sofa. The sky is a heavy blanket of thick grey cloud. I can feel a tightness behind my eyes and an itch in the back of my mind that I can’t scratch. It I allow myself, I could easily be in a low and aggressive mood.

It’s a very unusual and unpleasant feeling, but I experience it nonetheless. These were the days I would often feel at my lowest and my weakest.

Again, being aware of this means I am in control. I can now recognise how, why and when these events might impact on me emotionally and I can take steps to measure my feelings. If I know I’m going to be easy to irritate or annoy, I can make an effort to avoid situations that might do this. Walking away is a great neutraliser. Or telling people to ignore me and letting them know why can also help; people appreciate honesty.

Become a calm observer, not an instant reactor

Quite simply, being more aware of myself and the things that influence me, has made me a calmer and less reactive person. I can take a breath, observe a situation, and temper my thoughts, feelings and reactions accordingly.

Some days are still better than others – that’s true for everyone – but now, I don’t allow myself to be consumed by little things.

Awareness enables me to control them, not the other way around.

Awareness means my first reaction is not to react.

Awareness gives me the time and space to make a more informed choice about how I want to feel.

Awareness means I win each day.