Ride It Out

For many of us, when we finally decide to get help for a our depression one of the main questions we receive is: How have you been coping? From what I know this questions usually elicits a response along these lines “I usually push through.” What does that even mean? Push through? How? What does “the push through” look like?

Ride it out a.k.a wait it out a.k.a let time pass a.k.a push through a.k.a sweat it out a.k.a just get through it are age old “coping mechanisms” that have passed through generations. If you listen to the stories of those speaking about their diagnosis you will usually hear similar phrases. I don’t know the originator of this specific technique, if it was patented they’d be rich. But I imagine this came about from the stigma that was associated with mood disorders. It used to be depression was characterized as “crazy.” Out of fear of being labeled as crazy I imagine I’d be “waiting it out” too.

While I wasn’t consumed with others perceiving me as weak, I was concerned with how I viewed me. Even more importantly I struggled to love & respect myself with my diagnosis. While I never thought I was crazy I did think I was weak. The thought of others, “people”, believing I was a winkling, had me “riding it out” alone with the weight of my depressive thoughts weighing me down. I felt like my mind was failing me but from my perspective my mind was my greatest asset. It had gotten me far, I finished high school, I graduated college with a B.S., and I even got my master’s degree a few years later. This brain had done well by me. I kept thinking “I’m smart but not that strong, my mind is weak & so is my faith. “What good is it to be smart if you don’t have the strength to get through when it’s hard?” Pride would not let me talk. It just wouldn’t. So I rode, pushed, waited, & sweated myself right in to a diagnosis of major depression. Some good that technique was. I was in worse shape than I thought, and now I was going to have to tell strangers details of my “weakness.”

That was my experience with the “ride it out” coping mechanism. From my vantage point to ride it out is to allow depression to beat you up until it “just stops.” I’m not sure it does just stop, I believe circumstances just “seem” a little better. But continuing only means that each time the ride is going to take longer & longer and the circumstance for change will need to be bigger & bigger to get you off the ride and “feel” better.

Choosing to cope this way is like, choosing to ride on a never ending roller coaster that gives you motion sickness. It’s self-torture.

If you want to get off the ride, stop pushing, & wipe off your sweat, check out the Resources page for some options. Choose to get off the ride…I did!

#thoughtlifeco