Do No Harm

SO, I have been in a two week depressive cycle that I feel is mostly over. It ended this morning with a quick upswing into hypo mania that quickly turned into straight up RAGE, at which point I exhausted myself to the point of laying in the floor in tears. My husband picked me up, put me in bed and cleaned the house (the dirty house is what started the rage fest). I will say that what I was mad about was legitimate but the amount of anger that I reacted with was not warranted, at all. I know very few men that could show compassion after being screamed at. Sometimes (all the time) his unconditional love amazes me.

I’m sure you are wondering why I think the cycle is over when just hours ago I was losing it? When you are in it, it feels so real, legitimate, heavy and all consuming. People sometimes describe depression as a fog and I feel like mania has a fog to it as well. Both are “fogs” you can’t really see until you aren’t in them anymore. The fact that I can recognize the fog is how I know it’s lifted.

Anyways, I came to write about an article I read. It is from the Tiny Buddha, I follow the page on Facebook and it is a beautiful page with so many amazing articles posted daily. I have been devouring these articles lately and one was about taking care of yourself when you are going through a hard time. One of the points that was made was to say no to taking on other peoples problems when you barely have your head above the water yourself. A literal example could be that if a friend fell down a hole you wouldn’t help pull them up until you knew you had a firm footing and wouldn’t fall down the hole yourself. Your mental health should be taken with the same thought in mind. During these last weeks I have kept this in mind and removed myself from specific conversations, or not entered them because I felt like I was in no place to help anybody else and I might end up saying something I regret. So I stepped back and just held myself together. It was nice, it helped and I was proud of myself for doing so.

The Buddhist philosophy of Do No Harm, also means Do No Harm to yourself. Don’t give so much it puts you in a hard place, don’t hurt yourself to help because that isn’t helping. You are important too. Love yourself.

Love. Love. Love.