Today While the Blossom Still Clings to the Vine

The Triplets One Year Ago At Our Home

         Way back when I was a 19 year old serving a mission for the LDS Church, I really struggled with beating myself up.  Part of my problem was worrying about and being anxious about the future.  I would worry about what I wasn’t and how I couldn’t possibly be effective going forward.  It would affect my mood and it would affect my body. 

In fact, I don’t think that I was diagnosed on my  mission as having ulcers in my stomach from my anxiety, but I do know that I would experience terrible abdominal pains during my mission that would put me in bed for long periods of time.  My mom had ulcers because of her anxiety and I just thought in my young mind that I had inherited her malady.  I have come to understand that my family of origin, and my mother in particular, had a significant role in how I did or didn’t handle my anxiety in those early years.

Something happened towards the end of my mission that changed me.  In an interview with my Mission President, he challenged me to “stop worrying about myself and just do the work.”  As I thought about it after, and in the days that followed, I knew that he was right, and I began to remember a line that a girl friend had mentioned to me before my mission as she observed me being anxious.  She would cleverly say, “don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.”

Since those early years, I have attempted to not “trouble trouble.”  I believe that for the most part, I have been successful at doing that.  I will occasionally feel anxiety about something unpleasant that needs to be done, but I have learned not to worry about issues or events over which I have no control.

However, as I have raised four children, been married for quite awhile, and have had to make decisions along the way in employment and living quarters, I have had occasion to reflect on what I did well and what I didn’t do well.  My challenge through much of my adult life has been to beat myself up and feel depressed for poor choices.  As I have said numerous times in my work in addiction recovery, if I have an addiction, it is the addiction of beating myself up emotionally and feeling sad and depressed about my actions, or inactions as the case may be.

Reflecting again on my upbringing, my mom suffered from severe depression.  She had a nervous breakdown not long after she had colon cancer and was given a colostomy, which back in those days in the early 60s was a permanent and traumatic solution.  She took anti-depressants—such as they were back then—for the rest of her life.  I remember her as being sad, experiencing crying jags, and feeling sad and depressed often.

Some clients that I deal with will often inform me that the depression that they feel was likely passed on to them genetically from a parent/parents, and occasionally, from grandparents, and even aunts or uncles.  I’m not sure if depression is in fact passed on from generation to generation; I’m not sure what the latest research would inform me about that.  What I am pretty sure of is that descendents can have a disposition to have depressive thoughts, just like children/grandchildren of alcoholics and other addictions can have a tendency to surrender to those chemicals and behaviors.  But just because one has a disposition or tendency to be depressed, in most cases it doesn't necessarily mean that they must be depressed--or addicted.  One may have a physical issue or may be taking medication that makes them feel depressed, but often, skills can be learned to enable one to function and not feel the storm cloud in their life.

In my life, especially in the last few years, I have really been developing the skill of challenging my tendency to feel sad and depressed—emotionally beating myself up.  As I educate my clients about challenging and interrupting their automatic, negative thoughts, I have likewise been practicing the same action on my thoughts.  I acknowledge the automatic, negative thoughts that I experience but then ask myself either or both of these questions:

Where did this thought come from?  This involves mindfulness and introspection about my family of origin and my life experiences, and recognizing that I might be dealing with dysfunctions of my childhood or using a ego defense/survival thought to supposedly take care of myself.  

Where will this thought take me and do I want to go there? This again demands thoughtfulness about what actions could occur as a result of these thoughts.  I ask myself if those actions are congruent with who I am and what I want in life.  I ask myself if any harm could arise physically or emotionally within me or my loved ones if I act on the thought.

             Particularly in the past year, I believe I have been given to understand an important truth about being depressed about who I was or what I did/didn’t do in the past, and about being anxious about what might happen in the future.  This is the existential truth:  If I live in the depression of the past and the anxiety of the future, I miss out on the present.  So if I am powerless to change the past and am ultimately powerless over what will happen in the future, why not surrender the depression and the anxiety and live in the here and now?

             As I have attempted to live in the present, surrendering my past and my future, I have experienced great serenity.  I believe I am trying to do what AA teaches—“to let go and let God.”  I am learning better how to live and love.  I find that I notice, enjoy, and appreciate more the common day-to-day occurrences and tender mercies.   I have realized that this paradigm is incredibly liberating. 

             I certainly don’t live this way all of the time.  But I do manage to espouse this way of looking at life most of the time.  It is part of my transition to a better life.