Breathe, just breathe…

I was working through a new crisis…  I kept telling myself to be positive, stay strong, this will pass… Sometimes that just isn’t enough. What else could I do? Reach out to my support team!

Lol – I feel like that’s appropriate but it also makes me think of a computer that is getting error messages, the screen of death or some sort of nasty glitch that keeps you from doing your work. What do you do? You call the help desk and hope they can save your pc from fatal crashing!

So here I was, feeling much like a pc – I was glitching, my screen flickering… I needed to press my restart button and see what happened… Tried that – nope, I had to call the help desk i.e. my friends & family. I reached out for the support and you know what? I didn’t immediately get to 100% but I got better.  Thank you friends & family!

It’s really important to have people in your life that you can talk to, who can lift you up when you start to spiral and gently snap you out of it. It could be a best friend, maybe someone you just met moments ago (shout out to Oscar!) or even social media. Whatever it is we need it – we need support!

So while I was on my road to recovery from crashing, I started to type away my thoughts and slowly my files started reloading, my cookies erased and I was able to be productive and get back to a healthy head space.  It took a while for the full upload to complete but I felt the lightness coming and happy to report that a full crash did not occur!

I have never been very good at reaching out for help. Some of this comes from bad experiences that I’ve had in the past. There were times when I needed support and shared my struggles with friends. But I got very little help from these friends that I had in my life at the time. These people were very good at leaning on me in their times of crisis but when it came to me going downward, they disappeared.

I learned to understand that there are differences in friendships from these experiences. Unfortunately, some of these experiences were heartbreaking for me. It’s hard to learn that not everyone you know is going to be there for you through these types of situations.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t have a place in your life, they just don’t make the cut on the support team for meltdowns. So we stay strong and move on…

Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny. – C.S. Lewis

While I didn’t always have a strong support team, I have restructured it a few times over the course of time. I’m happy to report that the team I have in place now has been solid for a while and I am encouraged that no future turnover will occur. In fact, I’m adding on as time goes and finding more people that are kind and beautifully supportive which is so encouraging!

Life can be tough, not all of us are having a bright and shiny day. Things happen that can rock our world and while we hope for good things to come, sadly sometimes they just don’t happen fast enough. But we can’t lose hope! We must persevere and if we need help we must find it. We are precious gifts to this world and sometimes we need reminding that the rough times will pass and that there are people who can help us.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. — Aristotle Onassis

Depression is real and it can kill. If you are going through a tough time and find that you don’t have a good support team in place, please know that there are people in the world who do care about you. You mustn’t forget that!  If you are in distress, or anyone you know is in distress above your comfort level, please call out for help and if there isn’t anyone you can think of who will listen or that you don’t feel comfortable speaking with, please call out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.  They are a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their toll free number is 1-800-273-8255.

I hope you are all in a healthy head space!!  It may be hard to stay there sometimes but do the work in order to get out of it and reach out to others for help. Don’t be shy, most people like to help. In fact, studies have shown that there are tremendous health benefits to helping others! This is an excellent article on the science of it from @Reliawire.

Please be mindful of your actions so that you can catch the negative before it festers and get rid of those yucky feelings that are so unhealthy! I want you all to know that you are beautifully unique, precious gifts to this world. Please stay positive, be kind to yourself and to other precious beings, stay strong and carry on!

– Purr Out