Quote:
Originally Posted by Ixodon
It's hard to feel good about yourself though when you feel as if you've failed many times with different things and you feel like you're still facing the consequences in everyday life from serious past mistakes. And always wishing you can go back in time to fix things for a better today
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You can't. You can't go back and fix things. You can't change the past. Don't even try. If you need to grieve losses, by all means, find a way to grieve them, but don't allow yourself to even go into thinking about how things "could have been." This is what I'm talking about with thought hygiene. Every second you spend thinking on that line of thought you'll go deeper and deeper into depression. You've got to learn to stop those thoughts immediately to get out of depression.
It's poor thought hygiene to begin thinking about "how things could have been had I not made such and such mistake," and it's also a waste of time. Things wouldn't have been 100% good had you not made certain mistakes, and they're not 100% bad now that you've made those mistakes.
You have no way of knowing what would have happened.
The man I talked to you about who doesn't have depression could have been an international soccer star making millions and traveling the world, but he failed a drug test, and now he's living from paycheck to paycheck, raising his two kids as a single dad because his wife went crazy, cheated on him and got heavily into drugs. Even with all that he still is not depressed and finds ways to preform well on his job, be fun to be around and take care of his kids in every way they need it.
I'm not writing all that to shame you. Not at all. Having a chance to work closely with this man on various jobs showed me how to practice good thought hygiene and look after my own sense of self-worth.
He cannot afford to be depressed, and so has learned how to guard his self-worth, parry and riposte against depressive thoughts and practice good thought hygiene.
I hope you'll find someone like this to help you learn how to overcome depression and rule over it.
My recovery started with prayer. God is graciously answering my prayer. The co-worker I told you about was part of that answer.
Don't be afraid to humble yourself in front of the One who has all of the answers and ask for help.
It's a great thing to do.
It was the beginning of my recovery to do this.