Thought for the week.

Sometimes, it's amazing how quickly the answer will come to you, if you just ask why?

This morning I logged onto my facebook account and saw my friend saying about taking counseling and how it's good in the session but after she goes back to feeling crappy and depressed. My immediate missing-puncutation-response was:

well thats not the objective really is it...
your supposed to use the way you talk about things in counselling when you feel like crap so you can figure out why you feel like that and you learn to make small objectives that you can achieve as part of a bigger plan to sort your life out.

I started thinking about how we used to see what was upsetting me and think about why It was upsetting me and sometimes to get there, you have to think about times you've previously felt like it.

Now, one problem I have is that my lovely boyfriend is so bloody successful in life. He always seems to get everything, particularly in terms of work. He's always getting money in. Naturally, I can't help but feel a bit jealous. Thing is though, sometimes it really does upset me. I'll be all teary and start going down the crapper that is depression. It loops in my head that I'm not needed in the world, that I'm not good enough- I'm incapable of doing these jobs. Honestly, I know this isn't the case and it's just my stupid depression. But after a recent episode of crying (and I still feel a bit teary!) I thought about when I have I felt like this before. 

The answer came in an instant..

It sounds obscure and unrelated, but what a lot of people don't realise is that the past does have a big affect on how we think and feel in the present and our reaction to current events and predicaments. For me, the event when I first remember this feeling was when my Dad broke down into tears the saturday after my mum left. The younger ones were in bed at the time and he just started crying. There was nothing I could do. I was seeing the strongest person in my life crumble and I was too weak, too young, too stupid to make any difference to the pain he was feeling. Obviously it's not like that- I was 8 years old, there was nothing I could do then and if I was 80 there still wouldn't have been a lot. Yet for some reason when Nicks succesful and I'm sat around by myself I go back to that feeling. The feeling that there is nothing I can do in the world and I'm not good enough. 

Knowing this is why I react in that way makes me feel better. I always feel so bad because I know that he doesn't want to do anything to hurt me and it makes him feel awful, but now when he returns we can talk about it and he'll know it's not his fault. I'll also know why I feel like this and whilst it's unbelievably painful to be reminded of such a hard memory, it makes the current situation easier. There was nothing I could do then, it wasn't my fault. It's not my fault now either, half the work he does is technical and it's not my fault there isn't jobs going in my area of expertise. 

I'm sure I'll still feel jealous, that's natural. But now I've gained the first step to controlling this depressive episode if it attacks again, and that is an unbelievably important step.