This is one of those occasions when a topic seems to be coming at me from all sides. I asked a friend what should I blog about and her response, after a little back and forth, was coping strategies. Then I get a book I ordered in the mail and lo and behold it also talks about coping strategies. The kind that we use for depression. Then I follow a link and you guessed it, coping strategies and how they may not be working for us.

I was going to post yesterday but I got caught up in thinking about the connectedness of all things. It also got me thinking about what kind of coping strategies I am using and if they are still working. Chocolate, though a beloved coping strategy is really not working anymore. Yes the lovely taste of chocolate and the feeling of joy that it brought to me is still there. But I just can’t use it all the time. It was the link that I mentioned earlier that brought that home to me. All I am really tying to do is numb my depression not work with it.

It is the same with the book. All I have been trying to do is not working. The things that I am doing just help me escape from the depression not help heal it in any way. It is like the times that you don’t want to deal with a bill right now so you put it aside. It is still there. It still needs to be paid. Ignoring it or hiding it does not make it go away.

I have not even begun to cull out the strategies that are not working for me. I am however starting to look at them and realize which ones I don’t need. I think that maybe I have been doing that all along. Because as I look back I realize that I don’t do some of them anymore.
I don’t hide in the house and not come out anymore. Thank goodness. I don’t sleep all day trying to hide from people and the things that scare me or make me nervous. And then stay up all night when no one is around and putter. And I don’t keep people out because they might hurt me.

The last one is the biggest. Letting people into my life and allowing myself the possibility of being hurt was hard. And I have been hurt by people. However, I am still trying to be as open to people as I can.

Some of the things that I have mentioned the link “>http://brenebrown.com/2014/01/22/daring-interview-series-meet-jen-louden/ and the book: The Mindful Way through Depression are worth a look. Keeping myself open to new ideas and new strategies has been, probably, one of the biggest coping strategy that I have come up with yet.

But, as with all things, I am a work in progress.