I spent many years as a child and as a young adult, in and out of the depths of depression.
The things that put me in to depression were the emotional, psychological abuse and emotional abandonment as a child from my parents, the restrictive religion I grew up in, being an out coast in that religion and at school because I stood out, being kept down in grade one and being bullied for half of my life because the other children judged me thought I was dumb and below them in intelligence, having people I thought were my closest friends at school lie to me, back stab me and blab all my secrets all over the school as they didn’t have exciting lives of their own to talk to others about. Being bullied as a child by my older sister, I remember in particular the way she used to hold knives to my throat while doing the dishes and being bullied by other children. Having extended family tell me my parents never wanted me and that I was a mistake. My father when I was moving my stuff out of the family home letting me almost fall down the stairs while carrying a large box of my belongings I heard him yelling at me as I proceeded to take the box down the stairs that I had a heart of stone that no one can or will ever love me and that I would never amount too much, the men I got involved with as a young adult who could not understand that if you are with someone in a serious relationship that you don’t stray in to the arms of their best friends even when things get tough, the rape and abduction I had happen to me as a young adult and the bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace I experienced want the best either.
All these things led me down the rabbit whole of low self-worth, low self-esteem, and no self-respect and at one point believing all the bad things that people told me I was and that I had wrong with me. It led me to being a people pleaser who was easily manipulated by others in her life, so that she could feel some form of belonging, love and as though she was enough.
For years I would get myself out of depression only to have another thing happen that would drag me back in to depression but way deeper in the depression than I was before. It was a slippery winding , slide or should I say avalanche of negative emotions I felt every day and I didn’t know how to snap myself out of it so I experimented with the things one by one that people used to tell me would get me out of depression and keep me out of depression, only to find that some of them didn’t work on me at all and that others worked but they were only short-term fixes and after a while they would wear off.
I remember when I had had enough of not feeling anything due to being on antidepressants as people made me believe that they were the best thing for me being burnt out and having a nervous breakdown where I sat on the floor of my apartment in a corner just simply staring in to space aimlessly for hours sometimes days. One time I hit rock bottom and at that point I realised that there was nowhere for me to go but up again and the only way for me to go up was for me to pick myself up and to completely change who I was and my entire lifestyle. My life as I knew it was broken and could no longer be glued together as I was shattered like tiny shards or fragments of glass all over the ground and I had no one.
It was then and there I started my journey it to putting together my holistic support system that supports and serves me today in helping me bounce back from the low parts in my life. The system was a mixture of things, not one thing but many things in my lifestyle that would pick me up and support me and help me to become resilient in the face of trauma trials and tribulations. It helps me change my perspective on life, myself and the way I dealt with my fear, feelings and limiting beliefs and help me to heal, become strong and gain a sense of who I was, what I wanted out of life and where I was heading. My system made me stronger, gave me self-love, self-respect, boundaries, and things I could cling on to so that I would never have to go back in to the depths of depression and despair ever again. My system took me 12 years to perfect and is not for the weak minded or weak at heart as you really do need to be dedicated and devoted to the lifestyle that you get from having the system. You really must want and need to help yourself and do it for yourself to be able to transform. I took myself cold turkey off antidepressants that made me feel nothing, which made all those suppressed emotions I had before the medication come flooding back to me almost tenfold. I wanted to feel the joy of life that others felt every day as I felt nothing on medication and I knew that if I were to take myself off the medication that it would really hurt and it would suck and that I needed to replace the medication with something anything to support me. So, I did my research and combined everything it tired throughout the years before I was put on the medication into the one lifestyle support system. I knew that once I was off the medication, there was no turning back.
My holistic lifestyle support system helped me deal with the emotions from the darkest parts of my life, heal and become strong and self-sufficient. I have supported myself for many years with this holistic support system and I know it works, but if you are not strong, then you will find it to be a lot of hard work, time and effort to implement in your life. It is well worth it though. To this very day, I am still experimenting with things to see if they can improve the effects of my holistic support system, as some things in the system are short term and may wear off in time. With this system, I know that my life is my life and that I can get through just about anything that happens in my life without going back into depression. With this system, I have the power to control my thoughts’ actions and to face my fears and still know that I will be fine at the end of the day. Today and every day after today, I win in life because I know I’ve got this!
I must stress to you, however, that going cold turkey off the medication is not recommended or advised and that one must seek the advice of a physician if they want to come off anti-depressants first before doing so. ©
Copyright © 2022 Lynette Diehm.
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