Depression And The Attitude Of Gratitude!

I’ve been thinking about depression over the last several days.   Not because I’m depressed but because it’s come up in conversation lately and a couple of friends have expressed the fact that they were going through bouts of it themselves.

I’ve been depressed before and I have been thinking about what is going on in my life right now and the fact that I haven’t gotten depressed more than a couple of minutes. I had to ask myself why?

It’s weird, because I sure have been going through a lot!  Last August I had a massive stroke which left my left side paralyzed.   I now can walk with the help of a cane. And because I’m left handed I write on the computer with the help of a program called Dragon.  It’s hard for me to read and have a hard time spelling even simple words.  I  couldn’t have done that even a few months ago, but I’m making forward progress.   I keep hearing that it’s not a race but a marathon. I didn’t know how long a marathon is.

I can’t play the piano or my guitar.  I can’t use my wood working tools or do most of the things that I use to do. And yet few signs of depression.  When I realized this I said, well I guess this is the time to get back to writing! Which I hadn’t found any time for in quite some time.

There are lots of opinions about depression.  I even had one of my friends say it’s a bunch of bunk. Just pick yourself up dust yourself off and get back to work. I guess there are those people that can do that – I’m not one of them.

I like the explanation another friend suggested better.  He suggests that depression, anxiety and panic attacks are not a sign of weakness they are are signs of having tried to remain strong for too long.

Statistics show that one in three of us goes through this at some point in our lives! He said that it is mental health awareness week, I didn’t know there was such a thing. I think it should be every week!

There were so many bad things that happened world wide during my early recovery.  Two earthquakes In Mexico, several severe hurricanes in the south and Florida, and  devastating fires in California followed by killer mudslides.  I knew that people were recovering from strokes in addition to having to deal with earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, mudslides, and  floods.  I had a comfortable safe room, as a matter of fact people were being evacuated to my hospital during the California fires.  I didn’t have it as bad as they had it!  So what did I have to complain about – nothing!  Sure I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t use most of my body but I had a good roof over my head, fantastic nurses that were taking care of me, a loving wife and a family that truly cared about me! For some reason I kept going back to these people that had it worse than me.

There was a time in my life when I was a cup half empty of a guy.  Gradually with some hard work I became a guy with a cup half full. One of the mantras that I used during that period of time was “let go, let God…let go, let God…let go, God dammit, let go”!

The other concept that worked was keeping a ”Gratitude List” that I added to every day.  I found these two tools benefited me the most during this period of time.

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