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Looking for Zen? Just ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’

1

As the year comes to an end and I think about 2016 I realise that I have come a long way, it was this time last year that unbeknown to me I was sinking into a deep and lasting depression. It’s ever so insidious, you think you’re coping, you battle through the days and then suddenly it hits you- the chemical imbalance, the muted muffled sounds that surround you, the loss of focus highlighted when I took an eye test because I literally couldn’t see- 20:20 turns out there was nothing wrong with my eyes just my soul. And then you sink and once you

SelfishMother.com
2
sink you literally have no idea where or who you are, my life was completely taken over by this demon.

But this time the difference was I knew it. The first time I sunk into Post Natal Depression I had no idea, I thought I was legitimately part of the rational world with strongly held views and even stronger emotions, anxieties and obsessions. I was tearing through my life like a pensioner who thinks they can still drive- completely unaware. That was dangerous and damaging and I still don’t have a full grasp on the consequences of that.

However

SelfishMother.com
3
this time I knew it, I understood what that under water feeling was, where my inability to make a decision came from, where my obsessing over the smallest detail on the smallest thing came from, why I was able to be completely detached from my children, husband, friends, family, the cashier in Tesco.. Anyone.

I wanted to beat it. I literally wanted to kill the fucker.

I attempted this in a number of ways, the first was complete and utter indulgence of short term fixes; wine mmm wine. Wine has a wonderful way of numbing the pain in the most

SelfishMother.com
4
delicious warming and relaxing way. Wine was like a cuddle at the end of an emotionally wearing day, she eased my tension, she relaxed my thoughts, she warmed my heart.

The only problem with wine was that the next day she was aloof, cold, dehydrated, achy, dry mouth, dry skin, dry love. The only way to get back into her good side was to drink her again and again. Wine also had the unfortunate ability to take away the warmth and subtle glows and replace them with panic, anger and anxiety- the truth was I never quite knew which way things where going to

SelfishMother.com
5
go with her- the only thing that was guaranteed was the hangover in the morning and two kids under 4 to deal with.

Alongside my ever dependent relationship with the ol vino, I threw myself head first into a crash course of sugar and caffeine addiction. Any time I felt worn out, any time I was confronted by a stressful encounter, anytime I completely lost my marbles and yelled at the kids so loudly i Iost my bearings, I’d reach for the kettle switch a coffee a tea with a biscuit or 10, a cupcake, a donut, an entire packet of Iaribos or the not as

SelfishMother.com
6
amazing Rowntree Randoms. Kit Kats, twixs, bounty bars (the healthier option) and when the new bakery on the high street opened I rekindled my childhood love affair with Belgian Buns or the ultimate Cinnamon Swirl.  The sheer ecstasy my body and taste buds would go through as I indulged in each one of these delights several times a day is impossible to describe. I’d feel awake, energised happy, the hit was intense and delicious and entirely lovable, until the Crash, the slump, the headache the strange rage that I didn’t even noticed had nestled inside
SelfishMother.com
7
of me until I lost control in my emotions.

And of course the weight gain, the inevitable weight gain. The puffy face, the bad skin, the yellowing eyes… In many ways it was a form of self harm, physically change how you look, hurt your body and loose yourself further and further inside a body that already feels alien to you.

So with this as my backdrop, I continued with my life looking for answers to my depression but never really changing my lifestyle. I knew that I had to find zen somehow, a way to escape the pain and downright foggy nature of

SelfishMother.com
8
depression- I just wanted to see clearly Goddammit!!

I started online counseling, I had a lovely therapist called Sam, I felt she really cared for me and was on my side, she showed me that scrutinising every single negative action in my day was taking me in one direction only.. Downwards. She helped me to see that motherhood is a constant cycle of up and downs and that ultimately our children love us through it all. It became clear to me that all this time I thought it was us parents that exemplified unconditional love to our children, I realised the

SelfishMother.com
9
truth is, it’s them to us. Their innocent, untainted, truly beautiful love for us is the true meaning of unconditional. I’m grateful for those sessions but after a while they became unsatisfactory, maybe it the endless typing and waiting for a response, or simply the formula of therapy itself became cyclical and I wanted to break free.

Next I turned to Mindfulness. I was coming out of the doctors surgery and literally saw a sign ’Find Happiness the Mindful Way’. Ooo I thought surely that is way to zen? It seemed to tap into everything I wanted to

SelfishMother.com
10
be, I want to be mindful, present, aware. Mostly I wanted that endless narrative of negative emotion running through my head to stop. I wanted a break an actual break from myself.

So I signed up for 12 classes and I loved them, they were everything I knew I wanted to be, calming, meditative, zenful. If I can do this everyday I thought to myself surely I will discover that allusive inner peace… Happiness was only a meditation away! Only I could never find the time to fit that meditation in!!! 2 young children, a house to keep, groceries to be bought,

SelfishMother.com
11
dishwashers to load I just couldn’t get the damn time to tap into that meditative state. The truth was I was just so darn tired all of the time, sheer energy sapping fatigue, I could have slept for a 100 years if anyone would just let me. It was hard to have the answer to my happiness in my hands but the lack of motivation to complete it. The lethargy I suppose was another side effect of my fiend the depression.

There were two things that I did take from those mindfulness courses though: the breath, it’s always on you and just a few deep oxygenated,

SelfishMother.com
12
inhalated breathes can change how you feel in an instant. I realised at that  up until that point id been navigating my way through life by literally holding my breath as I fought through any tense moment.

The other thing I took was that prophetic phrase that all users of the London Underground are familiar with ’mind the gap’. If you take notice of your breathing you’ll notice that there is the most subtle of gaps between the point that you’ve inhaled and about to exhale. It’s in that Gap that we truly are. That pause applied to your life

SelfishMother.com
13
before you yell at the kids, or say a sarcy comment to the husband, or just generally start the internal stream of negative consciousness, that pause allows you and your soul time, time to not do any of it. Time to make a different choice and have a different outcome. It’s in that pause that empowerment comes.

Next I went to see my priest. I told him I was struggling to see up from down, I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. I told him I felt so utterly alone and even though I knew that God hadn’t abandoned me, I felt he had set me a task I

SelfishMother.com
14
could never achieve which was almost worse. He performed a healing ritual on me. Identified in his eyes that I was clearly suffering from depression and that the spirit of rejection had nestled himself within me. I had to close my eyes and pray together that I would be rid of this demon. This was tricky to do as my 6 month old son at the time bashed his way around the room almost falling off the sofa as we reached the height of the prayer. I felt hopeful that I would be healed but sadly the depression reigned on.

I bought a yoga DVD, nameste my

SelfishMother.com
15
friends! This was good too when I mustered the energy to do it, but it felt indulgent doing the DVD when I could have been cooking dinner.

I suppose the most interesting of things I did in attempting to rid my depression burden was reach out to inspirational people. Friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years, one in particular a childhood friend on Facebook, I would always read through her statuses with envy she was all about love and living in the moment, empowerment as a women, two children and seemingly taking it all in her peaceful stride, and it

SelfishMother.com
16
was authentic too, she had made choices about the way she lived her life for herself and her children. She had something I lacked Confidence. I nervously messaged her afraid my vulnerability would be rejected but she came back straight away, I had some of the most revealing, inspirational, guided talks with a person half way across the world. It was cathartic and I was grateful for Skype and the technology that enabled us to do this. She introduced me to yoga nidra, powerful meditation, affirmations, the 7 chakras, ways to retrain my brain away from
SelfishMother.com
17
negative limiting thoughts. She was so generous with her spirit and time. It was around this time I genuinely started to gain a sense of heightened spirituality, I was having very vivid dreams: a white baby owl, a rainbow, a butterfly, a fish all symbolic totem meanings. I do believe at a subconscious level something was shifting.

But I still couldn’t escape the daily spaced out feeling, I couldn’t shake my lethargy, I still feared 5 o’clock the time in the day where I felt so out of it I could cry and often reached for a gin to get through it.

SelfishMother.com
18
I hit a new low at this point, I was tired, so bloody tired I had tried everything, when was my life going to turn around? When would my vitality be restored? When would I be happy? Where the hell was zen?!

I was literally the only one approaching the school gate each day feeling that I could just curl over and die.

And then I got honest with myself, I knew the way I was eating and drinking was not serving me in any way, how could I have emotional stability when my sugar levels where peaking and troughing so rapidly throughout the days? I knew also

SelfishMother.com
19
had to take out the coil that had so enhanced my sexual pleasure but gave me no real sense of how I was actually feeling at anyone time. My hormones were all over the place, I needed to know that if I woke up and wanted to cry every morning, that it was my own body making me feel like that not a foreign object in my womb.
So the coil came out and I booked in to see a nutritionist who introduced me to the Paelo  way of life. I got a food education and realised that I really didn’t stand a chance of improving my well being before with the way I was
SelfishMother.com
20
eating. After a few weeks my energy improved and I lost a stone, a wonderful way to improve self esteem.

But my afternoon slump reigned on, out of body, disconnected, empty as though deep deep deep underwater where there is no connection to reality at all. Zen had eluded me.

Then one day I was talking to a mum friend, it was the usual chitter chatter but I could feel myself sinking into that space cadet state and I said out loud, ’do you ever feel as though you can’t see? Like you’re sinking into a strange mental  chemical imbalance?’  I was

SelfishMother.com
21
almost embarrassed that I said it out loud but her answer surprised me ’yes all the time’ she said. I couldn’t believe it, she was absolutely one of the most happiest, bubbliest and mischievous people I’ve met, I couldn’t see how this could be her reality too. She went on ’it’s horrible like a headache at the back of your eyes a compete retreat from the world, I always find everything muffled when I feel like it.’ Her description mirrored everything I’d been feeling for months… Even years ’well what do you do about it?’ I asked, she replied
SelfishMother.com
22
’I try not to take it out on the boys, I do things I like to do during the day, I try to fit in at least one thing each day that interests me and not just do things for the kids or only the things that I have to do. I play netball, walk to the school pick ups and drop offs, I find getting my blood pumping always helps. But mostly I try to take my power back, I force myself through those moments at the end of the day it’s me isn’t it? I’ve got to make my day work for me.’

I was gobsmacked, it made such sense, all this time I’d been seeking

SelfishMother.com
23
answers outside of myself, when the reality was plain and simple, I can control how I think and feel and what I do. The power is in me. It was a revelation, it made sense.

And so the next day, I didn’t approach the school pick up with usual trepidation and dread, I embraced it with positive thoughts, empowering thoughts that this was my choice I’m in control and you know what? That afternoon wasn’t so bad, nor the next or the one after that. And when my 15 month napped I didn’t rush around the house trying to tidy up the way I’d always done, I

SelfishMother.com
24
sat down, had some lunch (Paelo of course) watched a bit of TV the shows that I like to watch and it felt nice, really nice and I even managed to fit in an evening meditation session after the kids went down and before the hubby came home.

I guess that’s where I am right now, taking it a day at a time, empowering myself to take charge of my own feelings, feeling happier than I’ve done for a long time. Is this zen? I’m not entirely sure but I’m reminded of that wonderful ending in the Wizard of Oz when the good witch explains to Dorothy that the

SelfishMother.com
25
power was really inside of her all along. I guess I just had to find it.

 

SelfishMother.com

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- 28 Dec 15

As the year comes to an end and I think about 2016 I realise that I have come a long way, it was this time last year that unbeknown to me I was sinking into a deep and lasting depression. It’s ever so insidious, you think you’re coping, you battle through the days and then suddenly it hits you- the chemical imbalance, the muted muffled sounds that surround you, the loss of focus highlighted when I took an eye test because I literally couldn’t see- 20:20 turns out there was nothing wrong with my eyes just my soul. And then you sink and once you sink you literally have no idea where or who you are, my life was completely taken over by this demon.

But this time the difference was I knew it. The first time I sunk into Post Natal Depression I had no idea, I thought I was legitimately part of the rational world with strongly held views and even stronger emotions, anxieties and obsessions. I was tearing through my life like a pensioner who thinks they can still drive- completely unaware. That was dangerous and damaging and I still don’t have a full grasp on the consequences of that.
However this time I knew it, I understood what that under water feeling was, where my inability to make a decision came from, where my obsessing over the smallest detail on the smallest thing came from, why I was able to be completely detached from my children, husband, friends, family, the cashier in Tesco.. Anyone.
I wanted to beat it. I literally wanted to kill the fucker.
I attempted this in a number of ways, the first was complete and utter indulgence of short term fixes; wine mmm wine. Wine has a wonderful way of numbing the pain in the most delicious warming and relaxing way. Wine was like a cuddle at the end of an emotionally wearing day, she eased my tension, she relaxed my thoughts, she warmed my heart.
The only problem with wine was that the next day she was aloof, cold, dehydrated, achy, dry mouth, dry skin, dry love. The only way to get back into her good side was to drink her again and again. Wine also had the unfortunate ability to take away the warmth and subtle glows and replace them with panic, anger and anxiety- the truth was I never quite knew which way things where going to go with her- the only thing that was guaranteed was the hangover in the morning and two kids under 4 to deal with.
Alongside my ever dependent relationship with the ol vino, I threw myself head first into a crash course of sugar and caffeine addiction. Any time I felt worn out, any time I was confronted by a stressful encounter, anytime I completely lost my marbles and yelled at the kids so loudly i Iost my bearings, I’d reach for the kettle switch a coffee a tea with a biscuit or 10, a cupcake, a donut, an entire packet of Iaribos or the not as amazing Rowntree Randoms. Kit Kats, twixs, bounty bars (the healthier option) and when the new bakery on the high street opened I rekindled my childhood love affair with Belgian Buns or the ultimate Cinnamon Swirl.  The sheer ecstasy my body and taste buds would go through as I indulged in each one of these delights several times a day is impossible to describe. I’d feel awake, energised happy, the hit was intense and delicious and entirely lovable, until the Crash, the slump, the headache the strange rage that I didn’t even noticed had nestled inside of me until I lost control in my emotions.
And of course the weight gain, the inevitable weight gain. The puffy face, the bad skin, the yellowing eyes… In many ways it was a form of self harm, physically change how you look, hurt your body and loose yourself further and further inside a body that already feels alien to you.
So with this as my backdrop, I continued with my life looking for answers to my depression but never really changing my lifestyle. I knew that I had to find zen somehow, a way to escape the pain and downright foggy nature of depression- I just wanted to see clearly Goddammit!!
I started online counseling, I had a lovely therapist called Sam, I felt she really cared for me and was on my side, she showed me that scrutinising every single negative action in my day was taking me in one direction only.. Downwards. She helped me to see that motherhood is a constant cycle of up and downs and that ultimately our children love us through it all. It became clear to me that all this time I thought it was us parents that exemplified unconditional love to our children, I realised the truth is, it’s them to us. Their innocent, untainted, truly beautiful love for us is the true meaning of unconditional. I’m grateful for those sessions but after a while they became unsatisfactory, maybe it the endless typing and waiting for a response, or simply the formula of therapy itself became cyclical and I wanted to break free.
Next I turned to Mindfulness. I was coming out of the doctors surgery and literally saw a sign ‘Find Happiness the Mindful Way’. Ooo I thought surely that is way to zen? It seemed to tap into everything I wanted to be, I want to be mindful, present, aware. Mostly I wanted that endless narrative of negative emotion running through my head to stop. I wanted a break an actual break from myself.
So I signed up for 12 classes and I loved them, they were everything I knew I wanted to be, calming, meditative, zenful. If I can do this everyday I thought to myself surely I will discover that allusive inner peace… Happiness was only a meditation away! Only I could never find the time to fit that meditation in!!! 2 young children, a house to keep, groceries to be bought, dishwashers to load I just couldn’t get the damn time to tap into that meditative state. The truth was I was just so darn tired all of the time, sheer energy sapping fatigue, I could have slept for a 100 years if anyone would just let me. It was hard to have the answer to my happiness in my hands but the lack of motivation to complete it. The lethargy I suppose was another side effect of my fiend the depression.
There were two things that I did take from those mindfulness courses though: the breath, it’s always on you and just a few deep oxygenated, inhalated breathes can change how you feel in an instant. I realised at that  up until that point id been navigating my way through life by literally holding my breath as I fought through any tense moment.
The other thing I took was that prophetic phrase that all users of the London Underground are familiar with ‘mind the gap’. If you take notice of your breathing you’ll notice that there is the most subtle of gaps between the point that you’ve inhaled and about to exhale. It’s in that Gap that we truly are. That pause applied to your life before you yell at the kids, or say a sarcy comment to the husband, or just generally start the internal stream of negative consciousness, that pause allows you and your soul time, time to not do any of it. Time to make a different choice and have a different outcome. It’s in that pause that empowerment comes.
Next I went to see my priest. I told him I was struggling to see up from down, I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. I told him I felt so utterly alone and even though I knew that God hadn’t abandoned me, I felt he had set me a task I could never achieve which was almost worse. He performed a healing ritual on me. Identified in his eyes that I was clearly suffering from depression and that the spirit of rejection had nestled himself within me. I had to close my eyes and pray together that I would be rid of this demon. This was tricky to do as my 6 month old son at the time bashed his way around the room almost falling off the sofa as we reached the height of the prayer. I felt hopeful that I would be healed but sadly the depression reigned on.
I bought a yoga DVD, nameste my friends! This was good too when I mustered the energy to do it, but it felt indulgent doing the DVD when I could have been cooking dinner.
I suppose the most interesting of things I did in attempting to rid my depression burden was reach out to inspirational people. Friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years, one in particular a childhood friend on Facebook, I would always read through her statuses with envy she was all about love and living in the moment, empowerment as a women, two children and seemingly taking it all in her peaceful stride, and it was authentic too, she had made choices about the way she lived her life for herself and her children. She had something I lacked Confidence. I nervously messaged her afraid my vulnerability would be rejected but she came back straight away, I had some of the most revealing, inspirational, guided talks with a person half way across the world. It was cathartic and I was grateful for Skype and the technology that enabled us to do this. She introduced me to yoga nidra, powerful meditation, affirmations, the 7 chakras, ways to retrain my brain away from negative limiting thoughts. She was so generous with her spirit and time. It was around this time I genuinely started to gain a sense of heightened spirituality, I was having very vivid dreams: a white baby owl, a rainbow, a butterfly, a fish all symbolic totem meanings. I do believe at a subconscious level something was shifting.
But I still couldn’t escape the daily spaced out feeling, I couldn’t shake my lethargy, I still feared 5 o’clock the time in the day where I felt so out of it I could cry and often reached for a gin to get through it. I hit a new low at this point, I was tired, so bloody tired I had tried everything, when was my life going to turn around? When would my vitality be restored? When would I be happy? Where the hell was zen?!
I was literally the only one approaching the school gate each day feeling that I could just curl over and die.
And then I got honest with myself, I knew the way I was eating and drinking was not serving me in any way, how could I have emotional stability when my sugar levels where peaking and troughing so rapidly throughout the days? I knew also had to take out the coil that had so enhanced my sexual pleasure but gave me no real sense of how I was actually feeling at anyone time. My hormones were all over the place, I needed to know that if I woke up and wanted to cry every morning, that it was my own body making me feel like that not a foreign object in my womb.
So the coil came out and I booked in to see a nutritionist who introduced me to the Paelo  way of life. I got a food education and realised that I really didn’t stand a chance of improving my well being before with the way I was eating. After a few weeks my energy improved and I lost a stone, a wonderful way to improve self esteem.
But my afternoon slump reigned on, out of body, disconnected, empty as though deep deep deep underwater where there is no connection to reality at all. Zen had eluded me.
Then one day I was talking to a mum friend, it was the usual chitter chatter but I could feel myself sinking into that space cadet state and I said out loud, ‘do you ever feel as though you can’t see? Like you’re sinking into a strange mental  chemical imbalance?’  I was almost embarrassed that I said it out loud but her answer surprised me ‘yes all the time’ she said. I couldn’t believe it, she was absolutely one of the most happiest, bubbliest and mischievous people I’ve met, I couldn’t see how this could be her reality too. She went on ‘it’s horrible like a headache at the back of your eyes a compete retreat from the world, I always find everything muffled when I feel like it.’ Her description mirrored everything I’d been feeling for months… Even years ‘well what do you do about it?’ I asked, she replied ‘I try not to take it out on the boys, I do things I like to do during the day, I try to fit in at least one thing each day that interests me and not just do things for the kids or only the things that I have to do. I play netball, walk to the school pick ups and drop offs, I find getting my blood pumping always helps. But mostly I try to take my power back, I force myself through those moments at the end of the day it’s me isn’t it? I’ve got to make my day work for me.’
I was gobsmacked, it made such sense, all this time I’d been seeking answers outside of myself, when the reality was plain and simple, I can control how I think and feel and what I do. The power is in me. It was a revelation, it made sense.
And so the next day, I didn’t approach the school pick up with usual trepidation and dread, I embraced it with positive thoughts, empowering thoughts that this was my choice I’m in control and you know what? That afternoon wasn’t so bad, nor the next or the one after that. And when my 15 month napped I didn’t rush around the house trying to tidy up the way I’d always done, I sat down, had some lunch (Paelo of course) watched a bit of TV the shows that I like to watch and it felt nice, really nice and I even managed to fit in an evening meditation session after the kids went down and before the hubby came home.
I guess that’s where I am right now, taking it a day at a time, empowering myself to take charge of my own feelings, feeling happier than I’ve done for a long time. Is this zen? I’m not entirely sure but I’m reminded of that wonderful ending in the Wizard of Oz when the good witch explains to Dorothy that the power was really inside of her all along. I guess I just had to find it.
 Dorothy

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