Emotional Dissipation Leads to Depletion/Depression - Day 78

First of all, I have noticed that I have decidedly been "not depressed" for the last 6 days at least. So this time when I noticed that experience creeping back in, I was on alert as to how and why.

Yesterday near the end of my work day an event occurred to which I reacted with some anxiety and stress, and due to the nature of the event, this anxiety/stress was sort of drawn out easily because I had to wait to find out what was the unknown to which I was reacting with anxiety/stress. And so even though I did try to stop and breathe and realize that I cannot know until the event occurs or unless I ask, nonetheless I allowed myself to also start to feel rushed as well as angry as various tasks seemed to take longer than necessary/I wanted them to take and various items stopped working properly/the way I wanted them to.

I tried to realize my responsibility in each of these instances, where I could have/should have started various processes sooner so that I could allow for the potential that they would take a long time, and like how for example I had used my phone's GPS a lot that day and therefore it made sense that the battery would be dying. But it was very easy and automatic for me to become angry and to blame external sources/influences for all of these compiling "problems." As it turned out, the event that was "making" me anxious/stressed was not really a very big deal -- certainly not anywhere near the kind of scenarios that I played out in my mind leading up to the event. And as it turned out I was not late for anything as I had been worried I would be. And I did not get lost without the use of my GPS. And my iPod-tape deck connector is still working, although even if it is reaching the end of its time, it was cheap, and a replacement is cheap.

So everything was pretty much fine, except that I stressed myself out, made myself anxious, rushed myself, and made myself quite angry. And the momentum of that was hard to slow down so that even after I got home and saw that everything I had been stressed/anxious about was fine, I continued to find little reasons to justify my anger or other reactions in my environment, where I basically had zero patience with anything. And I went into this place where it was like "the whole world is against me!" Which in reflection is so so so silly, and so not true, but that is how it felt, and that is how I have built myself up to feel whenever "things go wrong" / not the way I want them to. And if the whole world is against me, then why not feel powerless, why not feel like a victim, why not give up?

Then I wrote about it. I wrote a whole post about it. And mainly I did not publish it because by the time I was done, I was depleted. And all I wanted to do was sleep. So what good was that post? I interpreted this as if I hadn't gotten to the point. Who knows. I guess when I write a post and make commitments at the end, I'd like to believe I can actually meet those commitments at least over the next few hours before failing. At that point, though, there was already a whole new point to walk through, which was the experience of depression. What I do know is that I recognized how this build up of anger and a sense of "horrible injustice" (haha) in my life led me down the path to depression, to wanting to just sleep. And so I did, for about 13 hours.

What's interesting here too is that even in this experience I was trying to utilize some of the tools I have learned through desteni, mainly my breath and attempting to realize my responsibility for what was happening (although not as much taking responsibility for my reactions, which is key, although this was addressed in the post I wrote without publishing). So this experience actually wasn't as "bad" as some that have occurred in the past, and yet there is much to take away.


So what I notice here is:

• Allowing myself to become "stressed" and "anxious" over an unknown event, especially one which seems like I might be "in trouble" (it was a meeting with my supervisor)
• Allowing myself to imagine scenarios / conversations which were basically power struggles between myself and my imaginary supervisor, where here I was searching for what leverage I have to "win" the argument.
• Ready for an argument -- already defensive without even knowing the context of the meeting.
• Already defensive, thus defensive within and as myself, thus defensive even in the moments leading up to the meeting, thus setting me up for the rest of what happened as my reactions: 
• Rushing myself through processes in reaction to the stress/anxiety as well as a belief that I will be late for the meeting and that I will be late for an appointment I had after work. 
• Rushing = NOT PRESENT, most obviously, along with the rest of these points. By being "in a rush" I have only one thing in mind: going fast. So obviously anything that gets in the way of that goal is going to be seen as a "problem," and obviously I am not able within "rushing" to slow down and address what is in front of me in any given moment (so that I, my goals, my self interest, are all more important than whatever is here in physical reality in each moment), or even to simply appreciate/enjoy what is in the present moment, which means it's one more aspect of this whole dynamic that led to a very negative emotional experience. 
• Allowing myself to become quite angry at small things that do not work exactly the way I want them to / expect them to, as well as angry within the backchat/imaginations I have about the event and about my supervisor. 
• Rather than seeing/experiencing, stopping, and breathing, I allowed myself to see/experience and REACT immediately with anger within thoughts about how nothing is going "right" and "I don't have time for this" and other things that positioned me as more important and better than and yet also as a victim of all of these things "going wrong." 
• Where here half of what was "going wrong" was only going wrong within my imagination of the potential reasons for this meeting. 
• Wanting things to go a certain way 
• Established a set "way" that I wanted things to go, which obviously is never going to be satisfied, because I don't get to control what happens in my environment to such a specific degree. 
• So it seems that in response to the stress/anxiety, I set forth a kind of "plan" to appease and calm myself. "Okay, self. I will go through the period of time leading up to this meeting like this, and then things will go like that, and then I will still make it to my appointment on time, and then everything will be okay." 
• So this was how I "dealt" with the stress/anxiety, which I didn't even really realize in the moment, and which explains why it lingered and why this whole experience unraveled.
• So when reality did not match up with my "plan," I became more stressed, felt victimized, felt like everything was working against me, and I felt like the whole plan was falling apart if only one component wasn't in place, which obviously, within the context of this plan and my belief in it, meant that the whole "everything will be okay" part was not gonna happen. 
• Inflexibility in needing things to go exactly according to "plan." 
• "The whole world is against me!"
• I didn't really flat out think this, but this was sort of the charge behind it all. A sense of powerlessness, of victimization, of "trying so hard" and yet all of these things going "wrong." (It is something I have flat out thought in past events-reactions, though)
• So a clear abdication of responsibility, self deceit in terms of what it means to "try hard," and resigning myself to this whole chain of reactions within myself being somehow out of my control, when above I can see quite clearly how I created it all. 
• Dissipation of emotions leads to a depressed state
• As the emotions subside and dissipate I am left feeling "depleted" as I have in fact just put much time, effort, and energy into creating this emotional state and creating all this outrage and becoming angry and stressed and anxious and rushed. 
• So I feel like I have "used up" and "exhausted" all of my resources -- I feel "exhausted," tired, not just physically but really moreso mentally, so I just want to sleep, shut off, shut out, hide away. 
• I realize I am in fact somewhat mad at myself for the way that I created and allowed all of these reactions, and for the way that I rushed myself through everything (feeling rushed is clearly something I don't do well, haha), when actually I ended up being on time and/or early to the time-dependent events. 
• This self anger quickly becomes unproductive and turns into self blame, self hate, a sense that I can't do anything right.
• So "everything is going wrong" turns into "I can't do anything right." 
• Neither is a practical or realistic assessment. 
• Thus begins experience of depression: Belief that storm within me is out of my control, fighting it as if it is outside myself, and then giving up and giving in, allowing it to consume me. 
• All of what is described above is "mind energy" which is what I had already finally identified as being the content of depression, where without the negative thoughts/beliefs, there can be no depression. 
• First step here is to see myself as the storm and take responsibility for it, as the creator of the storm, the "I" of the storm. 
• No matter what is happening outside me, no matter even if the whole world really is out to get me, I get to decide and direct myself as to how I will respond and what my internal experience will be. 

And even as I went to bed at an early hour I knew that I wasn't necessarily making the most self supportive choice, but I did at least consider how I would proceed upon waking, how I could regain stability within myself, how I could practically not allow this to slip into a full on "depressed state" where I would spend the entirety of my day off in bed feeling sorry for myself and ignoring responsibilities, or ignoring my ability to respond, which is simply that I am perfectly capable of meeting the obligations of a day, even if those obligations only consist of staying awake and doing anything even remotely productive (although I do have more slated for my day than that). 

So moving forward I realize that the experience of yesterday does not have to determine who I am today, that I direct myself in each moment, and that I have here directed myself to reflect on yesterday, and even yesterday I directed myself within those moments the best I could within my present understanding and level of aptitude in putting these tools to the test, and now I will direct myself to accomplish tasks which I have set for my day and to move within and through each moment as if it is all there is. That's really all there is to it. If this is all there is, then why would I do anything other than face it, address it, even enjoy it? So perhaps later I will report back on how productive today really is.