Tabaluga's

Yeah take it easy @TAB 

thanks @StuF hope your day goes okay

@Chasingsunsets @Shaz51 @AuntGlow @Fluttershy1 @creative_writer @wonderingalice1 @Captain24 @SmilingGecko @Emelia8 @Cuddlebear @Meowmy @TAB @StuF @Taali @Bunniekins

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Good morning friends looks like another good day to me. Slept near 7 hours last night. Things are improving for me. Mood still stable too.

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@DownMoreThanUp Hello lovely. I’m so glad you got sleep and your mood is stable. That is really good news. I wish so much was the same for me.

@Taali How are you feeling lovely? Awful you have a terrible cold. Is it easing up at all? So many colds and what not going around.

@Cuddlebear

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it sure is a battle to overcome a negative mindset. But if you have a wish living in you to feel better than you can believing the wish. Putting your hope in it.

i found that collecting the good times, albeit enjoying a shower, a flower, a nap, while feeling depressed, appreciating the moment and HOPING fro more, will add the good lived, one by one, as long as we do not let our depressive mindset take such moments again, but we defend them until next time we have such a moment and we add it to the time we already gained. i found that will 'grow' the good times even within the bad times and destroy them. However it is a slow process of growing stubborn persistence against the feelings of hopelessness, despair, anxiety, regrets, sadness. or loneliness.

Hiya @DownMoreThanUp

Great to hear things are improving for you :)

@DownMoreThanUp Thank you. I totally understand what you are saying. I’m currently experiencing anhedonia I can’t find the joy in anything. I do the things that would normally bring some joy but nothing is helping. I feel so lost and hopeless. And so very alone. You know these feelings do not stop. They are constant. And my nervous system is totally a wreck. I want so badly to improve. Even a little bit would be good. It’s been so long since I felt any happiness. I’m stuck. So stuck. I want to be better. I truly do.

Cold not too bad.

But bottom problem related to medications

I think you may know what I mean

@Cuddlebear

"I hear you, and I want you to know that the 'stuckness' you feel is not a failure of your character—it is the signature of a nervous system that has been in a war zone for too long. When you are at the bottom in your pit your soul isn't 'broken'; it is hiding in a bunker because it doesn't feel safe enough to come out. I have been exactly where you are—feeling like the joy has been permanently erased. Here is what I learned that helped me move from 'stuck' to 'tending my own field':

You are not alone in the 'stuck' place. You are in the training ground for becoming a stronger person. Be gentle with your body—it has been carrying the weight of a war for a long time. Just focus on the next right, small move. The joy will return when the right place for building joy in you has come into view.

What is important is to accept yourself as it is first off all. Not to be better or feel better but learn to accept who you are not feeling good. Because when those who have been traumatised do not love/like/want/appreciate/ themselves how can they move away unfinished business?

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So the desire in your heart to be not yourself as you are now is the first desire to lay down so you can move toward that. At least it was like that for me. Because i kept on ejecting myself rock bottom, rock bottom grew more rock bottom all the time but once i learn to accept, love and have compassion on myself rock bottom i hit the bottom and it has been up ever since. For when i do go back down the deep, depression wise, i feel different about myself, can appreciate and greet myself the strongest of self, me surviving those levels of depression without feeling bad towards myself feeling bad.

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Self love as you now feel my friend. Lots of it. Invest in it BIG time ALL the time. Pour it into YOU hurting. Every time i feel unloved, i hug myself some more love, every time i feel like giving up i greet myself the survivor. Ever time i agree with a negative thought/voice i reprimand myself doing doing that and every time i heed hopelessness i dump the thought and take on hope instead.

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i found that understanding how unwell, and how miserable my life really was, that brought me the most compassion as well as admiration for myself surviving. For where i had always called myself a weasel, for i had always been so scared, i now learn to understand that those fears anyone sane person would be scared of. Indeed i learned to understand that me surviving such levels of fears had made me basically fearless 'normal' every day fears.

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The same with you Cuddlebear you are a survivor. You are strong! You have survived traumatic experience that others have no idea about. You have been robbed of your good life for you have not been valued. Yet you have so much value, especially where it feels you have not. For the feeling that says you are not loved, valued, wanted, forgiven, needed, appreciated such are the lies sitting on top if who you who really are. Precious, valuable and completely loveable. So make sure each time you feel you are not you TELL YOURSELF THE TRUTH and pound the lie making you feel like that. It really helps - long term - and EVERY moment you resist the lie telling you are not good or not feeling good is one step closer to do so. i suppose what i try to say is do not take the depression personal, do not let those thoughts and feelings define you. Let go of thoughts that bring you hurt, and give love to you there instead, and then hold onto what brings good, in your mind, for you cannot feel it, or only for moments, let those moments grow. Got out of my pit doing that. Still get just as depressed as then. Just nowhere near as long, for so much else of me is not down there no more. Where before i had no way of dealing with the fear, i now have. And where before i did not have the ability to hold onto hope, i now do.

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Not because i was so good at it but because i understood i these levels will come past, and need to, much has happened for that to be, but such low levels do not need to rule my life. Better can be had.

Only in my darkest place, where before i go psychotic from misery, now i can lay on bed, and hug myself through it. Understanding i'm a hero, for i kept myself alive all this time, living times like these. To be down there without respect for myself was hell and my thoughts towards myself were hellish. Yet learning to love and respect myself when down there, the truth of the matter, has brought me understanding, acceptance, and peace of heart and mind. My most heartfelt prayers, reaching out to the outside, come from that place now. Shocking what trauma can do to us.

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@Bunniekins @SmilingGecko @Cuddlebear @Meowmy @TAB @StuF @Taali @heartathome @Appleblossom @Chasingsunsets @AuntGlow @Meowmy

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Blackest Black Shows Colourful

Eyes straining hard to have good insight,

pupils widening against my darkest night,

me trying to see beyond the crushing attack,

that inside turning everything in colour black.

Then one day an insight broke through my haze

my own lived truth offer a much brighter face

Where for once far more than black and white

visions of my true self were now in my sight.

Building a new reality in rich colour as my life,

Love for self caused the night to dissolve and die.

And through that warmth, so deep and bright,

True Love melted my frozen heart back to life.