Relapse

[JonW]

"Oh I really needed this, I didn't realise how much this discussion would help but I do feel as though it's opened my mind up again. Thank you all, I shan't keep it all to myself next time."

It's our pleasure. You're welcome here any time, Kathleen. We'll always do our best to help whenever we're able.
Happyogababe is right to single out the phrase "chink of light". When the going gets tough, it sometimes feel as though we're going to be stuck in that rut for some time to come. Often, all we need is that chink of light for life to turn in a different direction.
There's never a bad time to quote Thoreau's Walden: "A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring."
All best,
Jon

[Peter]

That's truly a beautiful quote, Jon!
Groetjes
Peter

[Happyogababe]

I absolutely agree with Peter, you've enriched my day with that quote, Jon, it's beautiful.

[Gareth]

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” ~ J.K. Rowling

I think that these "setbacks" are essential to building a solid practice, and over time, giving us the perspective we need.

Here's a topic I wrote a long time ago, during such a setback.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3717&hilit=new+job

Looking back now, I don't recognise the man that wrote that topic.

[KathleenH]

That is a lovely quote, thank you Jon.

I do count my blessings that even when I'm really down I am able to look at the rain as a positive and see the beauty in every day things, I just get a very narrow, trapped feeling.

I have just done my morning meditation and it's getting more settled, onwards and upwards

[JonW]

The Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis has a lot of wise things to say about depression and low moods in general. Here's one I jotted down four years ago when things were fairly dark for me:
"The opposite of depression isn't feeling happy but being fully alive, however painful.”
In my experience, life becomes so much more manageable when we stop thinking in terms of glass-half-full and glass-half-empty, when we start to accept the glass just as it is - clean, dirty, cracked...I used to spend so much time and energy in trying to think myself out of depression, trying to wish it away, doing anything to distract myself from it - rather than just see it as internal weather which, like everything else in life, will pass in its own good time.
I realise now that all that thinking about my depression simply served to feed the depression.
Since I took up mindfulness, I haven't experienced a single moment of depression and very little anxiety. Occasionally the thought pops into my head, "Why didn't I discover this at 20?" Then I remind myself that thinking that way is the opposite of being mindful.
Cheers,
Jon