You Cannot Suppress your Thoughts.

Then why do we keep trying to struggle with them?

This realisation was the big turning point for me in recovering from depression.

If you are going through depression, I'm sure you've experienced first-hand how thoughts and feelings can be so deeply painful.

It's common for people to say that our thoughts and emotions can't actually hurt us - but I don't think they've experienced what it's like to feel your head is being torn apart.

I'm sure it's the same for you, and I'm sure you've been trying your best to try and get rid of all these negative thoughts and feelings.

You can't control your thoughts and feelings.

Trust me, I've tried. I'm sure you've tried too.

I'm willing to bet that no matter what you did - whatever relaxation technique you've learnt or engaging in some form of distraction - those thoughts and feelings always pop up again.

And then it's back to square one - an ongoing cycle of trying to suppress and repress, only for it to appear again.

In that way, this is actually what we are doing with most of time - struggling.

And boy was I spending MOST OF MY DAY struggling to get rid of my depressive thoughts and feelings.

I was living under the false assumption that I couldn't live life the way I wanted to UNTIL I finally got them all under control.

Yet negative thoughts and feelings are automatic.

They cannot be suppressed for long.

It was the realisation that it wasn't so much the thoughts and feelings that were the problem, but it was my attempts to control them that became my main problem each day.

Because we can try and distract and fight and blame and run away all we want all day, but they will always pop up at the slightest trigger.

So what if we learned to break the ongoing cycle of struggle with them and simply allowed them to be?

As much as we don't like them being our heads, but to get along with them and be okay with them.

Much like learning to be okay with "not being okay".

Wouldn't that free up our head space to focus on other things that really matter?

With kindness,

Hernping