In the last post about my story, I mentioned the low place I was in, that giving up place that I was enticed into by complacency and laziness. There’s no need to go over the details of what it was like, the important story is how I got out! Which I’ll tell you about right now.
Fortunately, unlike other times of depression, this time I had a lot of positive momentum on my back. Even though I was not currently practicing the positive actions and thought patterns I had been learning for years, they were still there and rock bottom has a beautiful way of bringing awareness to the next right step.
So I was walking in the woods, my favorite place, and I was praying pretty hard! I was just asking for any help, any help at all!
I remember I was asking for strength because I felt so weak and I hated being there in that helpless state. That’s when the “hindsight” I mentioned in the last post actually happened. I “heard” the words “You gave up, stop being a quitter!” I was then guided by The Spirit to remember the many truths I grew up being taught, about casting all my cares upon God and the Proverbs 31 Woman who I had studied so many times, how she “dressed herself with strength and made her arms strong for the task!”
“She Dresses Herself with Strength” Painting by Matilda Wentzel
I had always pictured this strength as coming from outside myself. That’s an ok starting point, it was enough to get me pointed in the right direction. I now know, whether I realized it then or not, that I am filled with strength from the inside out and “gathering up” strength to go on and not give up began with me. I needed to take the first action!
After this divinely inspired encounter, I went back inside my apartment and immediately started painting the “She Dresses Herself with Strength” & while painting it I was contemplating a lot of things which you can read about here.
That’s where things started to turn around for me!
Unfortunately, you don’t know what you don’t know. And while I had a lot of tools and was doing the work and trying to walk the walk I still had the belief mentioned in the last post, the belief that a life without anxiety wasn’t available to me, that it didn’t exist!
I hope no one reading has had that belief, but seriously if you do, this is for you! Because I’ve been there & it’s hard to muster up motivation to keep going if you don’t even believe in the destination!
I was surprised when I asked a friend who also dealt with depression if she believed it was a possibility to not have anxiety, and she responded “If that’s not the goal, why are we doing all this work?” And that caught me off guard, I thought she would confirm, “No, that’s impossible!” But she didn’t.
And believe it or not, before I could even ask this question of her, the possibility was presented to me by someone else, someone named Herietta. This person had planted the seed of possibility in my mind. Before having a conversation with her, I was completely unaware of the disbelief I held towards total wholeness. In fact, here’s Herietta’s tagline: “Joy is your birthright!”
Isn’t that beautiful?! And do you believe it?
I met Herietta on a therapy consult call after reaching out to many therapists in the RTT industry (Rapid Transformational Therapy by Marisa Peer) And I’d heard of Marisa Peer’s work via YouTube (what a great age we live in!). This therapist is unlike any other, and much of what I’ll be presenting on this blog in the coming months was presented to me by her!
My first call with her, she changed 2 of my limiting beliefs (therefore literally changing my life forever!) In this blog post you can get a glimpse into one of them. I was under the assumption that my sadness, depression, chronic crying, chronic worrying, and panic attacks were part of my personality and something that I needed to accept. (I will write soon about the “empowering-way” of self-acceptance and the kind that just keeps you stuck, but for now) I’m just mentioning these belief changes because they are at the core of everything we think and the actions we take and we must begin with them in order to find lasting change! Follow this link for more practical advice on this subject.
In the end we all have very unique stories and it doesn’t matter exactly what it is that gives you the permission to turn around and start a new life. For me, it required countless knock-downs cascading me to rock bottom again and again, till eventually I decided I either needed meds or needed to try a deeper form of therapy. I felt powerless within myself to do it on my own. Though not ideal, that’s an ok place to be if it’s where you find yourself. Thinking I could get on medication or invest in some expensive therapy, gave me one last ounce of hope, because I felt like I’d tried everything else and yet there were still some options.
The therapy I was doing at the time wasn’t giving me what I was looking for, it certainly helped and was an important stepping stone, but the “problem” was so deep in my subconscious that it was not being addressed at all. In fact, the reason why everything I was doing wasn’t helping was because I simply did not believe that it would, all my tools were just cover ups, a coping mechanism that wasn’t addressing the real issue. And what were the biggest issues for me?
Giving up too quickly…because I didn’t believe it was worth it…because I didn’t believe it was possible (to live a peaceful life without anxiety.)
Believing anxiety and chronic crying were part of my personality, but of course they weren't.
Canceling out all the empowering work I was doing with the negative & self-degrading thinking (that I wasn’t getting rid of at the same time.)
I’m gonna write about all of these things and more! Now that I've brought you into the story of where I was at, here’s where I’m gonna start writing about the things I learned in more detail.
This post is just to encourage you to believe in the possibility of wholeness for your life or at least double check to make sure that’s not a disbelief that’s holding you back. And one last encouragement would be to seek out help, knowing you do not have to figure everything out on your own! It took months for me to find the right therapist, best to start seeking out help sooner than later. Make sure you get a therapist who is aligned with your personality, that really gives you an outside eye into your life, in a way that moves you forwards into the highest expression of yourself.
