Anxiety

It's tough to come up with something positive to write about when you're depressed.

One of the main purposes for this blog was to help me focus on the positive things in my life in order to keep moving in an upward direction rather than continuing on into a downward spiral...and, truly, it has helped. over the last couple of months I've found that in general I've been able to react to (most) people and situations in a more confident way--reminding me that I've not always been a sullen, untrusting, and difficult person. But still common are situations where I find myself impossibly relapsing into an anxious, suspicious, guilt-ridden, hateful mess and in a spasm of terror and desperation I'll turn around and unwittingly hurt people I respect and care about. After this happens, I find that additional fear makes it very difficult for me to remedy the situation directly and instead I hide away and just avoid the people I've affected.

This bout of depression has been different than those of my past in that I'm still able to bury myself wholeheartedly in my work and remain productive. In fact, my motivation to work may be the one thing that's consistently held me together lately. I pull out my trumpet and allow the required focus of practicing to help shove all those terrifying and disturbing feelings into the background of my mind with the hope that eventually they'll dissipate and I'll be able to move forward as if nothing had happened. The problem is: it's unlikely anyone else realizes this is what's going on, and because it's natural for me to imagine that others must be constantly thinking about how completely horrible and rotten I am, (and maybe I am), when I'm asked to "hang out" in a "relaxed" setting (where there's not an active endeavor to ease the social pressure) I find myself cringing and hiding and unable to interact in a "normal" way. This does nothing to help the situation or people's perception of me, so my reaction is to leave or just avoid placing myself in that position to begin with.

As is usually the case with this kind of thing, it's just another one of those never-ending cycles. I have no idea how to fix myself and will likely be seeking some help when it becomes more readily available to me as a student. Till then, I guess I'll just keep "starting today".