I apologize for taking a few days off from the blog without an explanation why. Things have been interesting, discouraging, and thought provoking over the last few days.
My original purpose for starting this blog was to give me an outlet for my emotions, mostly so I would not express them inappropriately. That purpose sort of evolved more into using the blog as an outlet for me and putting myself out there for other people to see and know that they are not alone in their depression.
The blog has been helping me. I like being able to have a place to put my thoughts and feelings. I have enjoyed the feedback I have been getting from people in my email. Working on this blog has become a very enjoyable thing for me to do everyday.
However, recently I was told that by blogging about myself it showed how selfish and self-absorbed I am and that putting myself out there with my thoughts, feelings and struggles I am really just whining about things. This really made me feel quite bad.
I needed to take a few days and reassess my motives and ambitions with regards to the blog. What I have decided is that if something made me feel good, and gave me more self-confidence and was a positive outlet for me then it is something that I should continue to do.
In fact, even though my husband does not write in my blog, he likes to see what I have written and offer suggestions. There is also what my daughter gets out of her picture of the day section. She and my husband are both now on constant look out for the perfect picture of the day. In a way, my blog has become a family affair.
Maybe the person who gave me the negative feedback was having a bad day and that is what they felt after they read my blog, or it could be their honest every day feeling about these types of blogs. The positive thing that came out of their negative comments is that it forced me to re-evaluate my motives for the blog. There is nothing wrong with taking a good look at yourself to keep yourself on track.
Communication
I am learning that just like in any part of life, when a person is in the process of recovering from depression, communication is so very important.
My natural instinct is to keep my honest and real feelings to myself and put on a “mask” of fake feelings and not properly communicate my wants or needs. Most of the time, if I feel like I have to express something personal, I will only hit the surface, just enough to satisfy another person.
On the flip-side, I expect people to communicate fully with me, even when I do not do it in return. That is not very nice of me to do.
A few days ago, my husband and I got irritated with each other over a lack of communication. I thought he was not communicating properly with me and he thought I was not communicating properly with him. The thing we were NOT communicating about was a stupid grocery list. I wanted more input from him, and he wanted more input from me, so that both of what we wanted would be represented on the grocery list. Like most small things people argue about, it turned into a bigger thing than it should have.
The reason it spiraled down into an argument is that both of us were too busy worrying about what the other wanted to properly communicate our own wants. For some reason, both of us perceived that in that situation if we had communicated what we wanted, it would have been selfish. The reality of what happened is that he got irritated and I got irritated and the list never got done.
Later on that evening, he and I talked. I expressed to him that it felt like he wanted me to read his mind and figure out what he wanted and he expressed feeling something similar. We both felt frustrated. We both realized that if we had spoken up and communicated our wants then the whole mess would have been avoided. Not to mention, we both connected a few dots and realized that there have been other occasions where frustrations and irritations could have been avoided if we had spoken up.
On a more personal level, I see that by putting a “mask”on and hiding what I truly want, need or feel, I am setting up a situation that is bound for failure. People cannot read my mind to know how I am doing on any given day. That leads them to worry about what my emotional mind set is for the day. If I communicated my feelings more, good or bad, then it would cause them less worry because they would not be trying to guess about what is going on in my head. If things were bad, then they could share the burden or help with solutions, if they were going good then we could feel good together. Also, the reality of wearing a “mask” to hide my feelings is very tiring work.
I also realized that many of my own personal stress, and aggravation comes from not communicating with other people. I end up doing something I really do not want to do (but never communicated that fact), then stressing because I feel like I am stuck doing something I never wanted to do in the first place. Worrying because of feeling like I am not doing an adequate job, since I do not want to be doing it in the first place. Which often leads to me feeling so anxious that I cannot leave the house, which leads to more guilt, worry and stress, and then more anxiousness.
To take care of myself, to “be all I can be”, I need to expend some serious mental effort and communicate properly. Keeping things inside is no longer acceptable. Keeping things inside will eventually lead to me ending up in the hospital again.
