When I was unemployed, I didn’t sit around doing nothing; I had my music, lots of meetings and service work, pool, friends, etc. Since going back to work, it’s been a little bit of a question as to how to keep all of that going and work full-time, too. The simple answer is that I haven’t. But, in general, I’ve been pretty successful at adjusting. I’m still doing everything--mostly--just doing less of each. Instead of going to three or four meetings a week, I do one or two. Instead of blogging every day or two, I write every three or four days. And I’m glad to say I only missed one day of exercise--that was really important to me to keep up. I haven’t gotten out to shoot pool yet, and I did have a stack of Netflix movies that sat unwatched for several weeks. But I just watched a couple of them over the weekend, and I will get back out to shoot soon enough.
Learning how to keep my life going, being back at work after not working for a year, is a process. And there have been some bumps along the way. After a really rough couple of days on the job, I had some serious doubts. So I reached out for conscious contact and received wisdom--it’s just a job; go to work, get paid, that’s what it’s for. Since that moment, stress has been much lower and I’ve felt a lot better. It’s a far cry from the days of agonizing in misery about having to work at all, and feeling depressed about not being recognized for the skilled employee I am.
Speaking of depression, though, I want to pivot a bit here. I’ve had my struggles with it, but have been fortunate enough that my issues in that area have pretty much vanished, thanks to my working the program. Not everyone is so lucky. I know so many people who just struggle, and struggle, and struggle. Finding the right meds is a challenge. Remembering to take them every day is even more of a challenge. Getting out of bed when they’re not working, or it’s just a straight-up bad day? Next to impossible.
I have one good friend in the program who, if he’s off his meds for even a couple days, the change is visible. His apathy-level skyrockets. His tendency to isolate increases dramatically. He fidgets constantly, as though trying to escape somehow from his own skin. It’s hard to watch, hard to see him suffering, and sometimes it’s even hard to remember to have compassion for him. It might seem like such a simple thing--just take the medication--but something so easily said is not so easily done. Kind of like, “if you have a problem, why don’t you just quit?”
Another real difficulty for those who suffer from Depression is that this particular evil really does not like it when you feel good. A lot of us who struggle with just plain addiction are aware of how hard it is to be okay with feeling okay. Especially at first, we aren’t used to feeling good. We’re so used to feeling bad that we find ways to sabotage ourselves, drag our lives back down. Learning to accept the times we feel good is a process of Recovery, too.
For those dealing with Depression in addition to addiction, the challenge becomes at least ten times as difficult. It’s a mental illness that will do everything it can to keep someone from feeling good about themselves, and the harder you push, the harder it pushes back. It’s like one step forward, five steps back. Constantly.
My heart goes out to all those who have this added challenge, and the only advice I can think to give is to remember what it says in ‘how it works’--“There are those too who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”
There is hope, my friends.
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