Finding peace.

"I'm always sad."
"Are there certain thoughts associated with the sadness?"
"No, the sadness is under the thoughts. It's like when you're on a camping trip, and it's really cold, and you put on extra socks, and an extra sweater, but you still can't get warm, because the coldness is in your bones."
"Do you hope to get away from it?"
"Not anymore. I just hope to come to peace with it."

(source, Humans of New York)


Many times when I am working with clients, they tell me that they want their depression to go away. "I should be over this"... "I don't understand why I still feel this way"... "Tell me what I need to do to get rid of this". As much as I want to offer a wave of my magic wand and have their depression disappear, I think that we sometimes have unrealistic expectations of feelings. As if they can really go away and not come back.

In many ways, I think the reality is that we need to come to a point of acceptance before anything really has the possibility of changing for us. We need to accept our depression/anxiety/heartache/etc as it is before it can be reduced. Not that it wouldn't be great for these feelings and thoughts to go away, but quite often they don't vanish from our lives forever. What happens is that we find peace in our reality, and learn a different way of thinking. 

A few months ago, I was going through something really challenging. I didn't want to accept that my life was in a tailspin, so I ignored it and complained about it... and it didn't go away. It was like that "white elephant in the room". But then, after a really honest conversation with someone close to me, I realized that I had to accept that my life wasn't the way I wanted it to be, but that the only way I could make it different was to start where I was. Not go back. Not look forward. But to start right there. That's coming to peace... and ultimately, that was when change occurred for me. I can look back and without a doubt, it was when I said it out loud to someone else (when I admitted struggle) and had an opportunity to reflect that the picture became clear and not fuzzy anymore. Since that moment, I have clarity and have worked diligently on being different.

Finding peace about our current situation doesn't mean that we don't want things to be different... finding peace means that we don't hate ourselves for where we are right now. When we already hurting, isn't it important to accept ourselves, instead of beating ourselves up?