As I stated in my last blog post, one of the most difficult things to do is understand your depression. This is because you have to actually sit and try to understand why you’re feeling the way you are. Which means you must be still in a manner of speaking. To sit with your emotions, means you cannot turn on a show, be it TV, Twitch, YouTube, Netflix or whatever else. It means  you cannot just idly scroll through a social media account. This is a double no, because when you look at a site like Facebook or Instagram, you’re likely increasing your feelings of depression even though you’re probably, even if you’re not aware of it, trying to run away from your emotions.

I’d do this by looking, first, at articles on Reddit, then pictures, and then anything else that I could look at to avoid how I was feeling. What I’ve been doing instead is stopping. When I notice that I’m feeling down, I’ll stop. I’ll take a moment to look at how I’m feeling. This isn’t easy. I’ll look at the moments leading up how I’m feeling and try to understand what happened. I acknowledge that I’m feeling however I’m feeling. This means that I try to describe how I’m feeling.

Putting into words some of these sensations isn’t easy at all. One way to help with this is to pull up an emotion sheet like this, below. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s a way to stop and investigate how you’re feeling rather than just trying to move away from your emotions. It’s further complicated by the fact that you’re probably feeling a number of emotions at once. Or in my case, I often felt completely flat, or a feeling of emptiness. For me, this happened a lot. It didn’t matter how good of a day I was having, I’d eventually end up feeling flat or empty as the day wore on. It was crushing over time.

It’s something that’s difficult to explain to a loved one. If you can’t really explain why you feel that way to yourself, what hope do you have to explain it to someone that cares about you? For me, this was made even more difficult since my family didn’t really talk much about feelings, so I had a stunted vocabulary when it came to how I felt, but I could, through reading and other media, articulate how and why I thought other people were feeling. I “simply” had to start using that same sort of analysis to look internally.

As I reflected, I would certainly feel anxious. It was very uncomfortable for me to investigate my emotions. Furthermore, I knew that just being able to explain what was happening to me to myself wasn’t enough. I had to start explaining how the actions of people around me started to impact how I was feeling. This primarily revolved around my relationship with my wife, where I haven’t been able to explain why I react to things the way that I do. I still don’t always understand why I react the way that I do.

If you decide to give this a try, feel free to leave a comment or ask me how I’ve been doing it. I’d love to offer some tips.

Emotion sheet