Depression

This is kind of my first blog post in ages. Technically, I’ve composed some more in between, however, much of them were really just halfhearted. The reason why? I was depressed.

This was a surprise for two reasons. First, the fact that I was depresses at all. I had many people around me that suffered from depression. I know what it looks like, however, that I might be affected of it seemed so odd.

The problem is that depression does not always manifest itself with the same way, and that makes it more difficult to spot. Also, the fact that I never really had it before. Hence, it was rather hard to see myself from outside.

Next was when or how it became evident because once you have the realization it changes a lot. It happened when someone made a comment about my behavior regarding motivation with the comment> “You’re just hanging around like you’re depressed.”

That was hurtful, why? Hmm…yeahr because it was true, and I didn’t want it to. At least a bit.

The exhaust and the anger I felt at the time was the sign. However, everyone is exhausted and angry at times, right? Also, we were kind of out of the worst of the pandemic and I started to work again after a year of parental leave. Things seemed to go upward. Except there was an unresolved conflict and more things that seemed to get out of control. People responded in the worst way and communication stops. At least for a moment, so things seemed to go resolved, right? I just got angry at countless things.

The problem was the way the anger was manifesting. I hold back the conflicts because I wasn’t able to solve them. There were many factors to it, but the anger showed me that. I should mention that I almost never gets angry. All of that felt very personal.

I felt like to know the way and was just missing the necessary energy. It will come back eventually, right?

But it didn’t, and this should have been the first alter. I stop engaging in things that I usually like to do. It costed me so much energy to progress the conflict that nothing was left for things like writing for this blog. Instead, I was getting more and more entangled in a conflict. This lead to a rather different pattern in me: The tendency to withhold myself.

Suddenly, I tried to avoid things, people, work. To save energy. To get back on track and the more I’ve tried to solve it the more it consumed me. The more I’ve tried to make sense of it, the more it drains me down. When I took all my energy to make things work I was hit by the most unexpected responses ever: The conflict entrepreneur was not even willing to resolve any conflict, in his view there were none. It was defeating.

At some point, a thing or two happened and I snapped. It couldn’t go on that way, and I had to change. I quit my job and the one source of the depression to me. Normally, I love working. But in these last months it turned into a nightmare. I might reflect more on what went down or how it was (not) successful resolved. But that’s it for the moment.

So far,

akendo