7 Ways I overcame Depression
Anyone who has followed my story knows that I had a severe battle with depression. For many years I held back from speaking my truth and sharing my true feelings. I hid my depression from everyone I knew and loved. If you would have asked any person who knew me during this time, even my family, nobody would have guessed that I was battling crippling depression. I had become a master of disguise. I would put on a big smile, I would laugh, talk about my blessings as an elite athlete, speak out about the importance of chasing down passions, and I even wrote a children’s book about overcoming challenges. I seemed to have it all the majority of people thought this to be true, but my reality was much different. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel like a complete imposter, a phony, even a fraud.
My mind would often race a million miles a minute “What if they knew the real you? You are such a failure? You are such a fake? How could anyone love you? Why can’t you be happy? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
These thoughts never stopped, yet I continued moving forward in life with a smile covering up an immense amount of pain. After years of hiding my depression, going through a failed marriage, jumping from job to job, and feeling lost in life; I finally opened up and shared my reality with the one person I trusted the most. After I shared my truth with her I had this unrealistic expectation that I would just magically heal. I remember thinking “I had finally showed the real me and now this person can save me!” As you can imagine this did not happen, but instead I put years of pain on the lap of one person who was not prepared or trained to help me. She tried and tried, but nothing seemed to work. My pain, depression, and anxiety actually amplified and the pressure on her shoulders continued to bury her, along with me. Finally everything came to a boiling point when I had the trifecta of negative events happen to me all in the matter of a couple short weeks.
- First, my fiance had left me. Her words “I love you more than anything, but I can’t do this anymore. I am so unhappy and I feel like my joy and happiness is being stolen. I don’t know what to do, but i am breaking. You are breaking me.”
First punch in the gut.
- Second, I found out that I had cancer again, the 2nd time, and I underwent surgery and treatment to battle Thyroid Cancer.
Second punch in the gut.
- Lastly, I was let go from my sales job, that I hated, but was my financial stability. After not showing up to work for a few weeks while battling cancer, they decided that I was no longer of value to them.
Knock out punch I finally decided that enough was a enough and that this world would be so much better without me living in it. I spent weeks researching, creating goodbye letters, and creating plans to help others deal with life without me. The day came and I thought I had executed perfectly, but when I woke up I saw the “exit bag” laying next to me and I realized that I was still alive. I thought to myself “You are such a loser, you can’t even kill yourself?” I spent another week or so trying to find the right moment for round 2, but my creative mind went into overdrive and I thought “why don’t I do a bucket list.” In the moment a big part of me wanted to do a bunch of fun and exciting things before I left this world and smaller, but deeper, part of me had this willingness to live and was hoping that this trip would help me find my peace, purpose, and passion again. I left on a journey to travel the United States. For several months I drove from city to city, slept in my car, and experienced life in a way that I never had thought possible. I started blogging, meditating, praying, reading, learning, hiking, meeting new people, trying new things, visiting new places, and living a life full of excitement and raw emotions. The result of my trip was an intense healing process that not only allowed me to find the “real authentic” me, but it helped build an even better version of myself. Not only did I come back healed, but I came back inspired with a new purpose for life. My hope is that you can learn from my journey, my experiences, my failures, and my wins to improve your life, overcome adversity, and even battle depression. So without further ado, here are the 7 things I did on my Pursuit Of Passion Trip to overcome my depression.
I finally listened to my fiance and I got professional help. For so long I had not gotten help because I thought it made me weak, but the reality is that getting help was courageous and the most impactful thing I did to heal.
When I was dealing with my depression and Thyroid cancer I had reached a weight that was 80 pounds heavier than my competitive playing weight. I was not only fat, I was out of shape, and I had zero confidence because of it. On my trip I started working out in every city I visited (I had to, because I used the workout facility to shower and get ready everyday). I worked out, I challenged my self, I lost weight, I gained energy, and I saw my confidence sky rocket.
When I left for my trip I was 99.9 percent atheist. I grew up Christian, but I had lost all of my faith. Along my trip I visited two powerful healers, I started meditating everyday (often in amazingly powerful locations), I started praying and having conversations with God, and I discovered the teachings of Marianne Williamson and ACIM. The result was a new connection with God and a new understanding of who I was and who I was meant to be.
Along my trip I made the decision that I was going to have fun, I was going to challenge myself, I was going to do things that scared me, and I was going to do things that made me feel alive. In a few short months I struck out trying to hit a fastball from an All American softball pitcher, I hiked in the Appalachian Mountains, I surfed in South Carolina, I did a ghost tour in Georgia, I went on midnight walks around New York City, I helped run a wedding in St. Louis, and I went skydiving in Colorado (just to name a few). The joy and energy I gained from doing new and exciting things is almost impossible to explain.
I had started blogging on my trip and in almost every city I visited I found someone to interview or study. Through learning and hearing other people’s stories I was inspired and filled with hope. I realized that everyone has struggles. I realized that everyone has purpose. Most importantly I learned that I too had a purpose and a light to give to the world.
I started my trip off listening to music and somewhere along the journey I thought, “why don’t I started listening to books? I am taking these 5-8 hour drives from state to state and I could probably finish a book whenever I leave one destination and go to the next.” I downloaded Audible and started my journey through personal development. Some of the lessons I learned through these books served greatly in my healing process and it also set me up for success when I returned home.
While reading ACIM, I found two powerful question “How can I see this differently?” and “Can I see peace instead of this?” Through my trip I asked myself these 2 questions multiple times a day, as many as 20x a day. Whenever I started having a fearful thought about the past or the future, I would ask myself the questions and then answer them. The answers almost always sparked new insight and a very different perspective. I now know that thoughts create emotions and emotions create actions so if I can change the way I think, I will change the way I feel, and ultimately I will change my behaviors.
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