12 Common Patterns in Those Finding Lasting Healing from Depression
An even shorter, 23-page abridged version of preliminary results from our ongoing long-term study.
Photo by Kate Kozyrka on Unsplash
We all know too well what the experience of serious depression, anxiety or other mental distress is like. What’s far less familiar is what it looks like when these kinds of intense emotional struggles heal over time, for real.
The experiences related in this chapter are a small sampling of that kind of deeper healing for those facing depression, who said things like: “I never imagined that there could be emotional pain so overwhelming.”; “It robbed me of my life.”; “God, please help me make my mind stop torturing me.”
But their stories didn’t end there, eventually saying things like: “For the first time in my life, I felt settled, calm and peaceful.”; “I enjoy my life, and feel peace.”; “I had no idea I could ever be that happy.”
Today is my birthday, and it’s the first birthday in a long time that I truly felt like celebrating. I now have a life that I love and wake up grateful for it every day.
Something special has clearly taken place in these stories. Mendek Rubin described a “seemingly endless sea of pain, fear, rage, guilt, grief and loneliness,” which later became a “life of deep peace and boundless joy.”
We wanted to know what went into this healing. Although they still had challenging days, each person was clearly in a different place than before:
“I still have bad days, but I no longer feel pain leaking out uncontrollably. That’s gone.”
“Now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesn’t stay long enough to immerse and drown me.”
Elsewhere, we’ve published in-depth reports regarding what we’ve found so far across 12 key themes:
1. Holding onto hope in the possibility of deeper healing
2. New learning that helps to see life and suffering with fresh eyes
3. The big three – nutrition, physical activity & sleep
4. The other big three—mental diet, mental exercise, and mental rest
5. Designing supportive physical settings and schedules
6. Working with thoughts in a gentle, mindful way
7. Working with emotions in a creative, mindful way
8. Deepening relationships & emotional support
9. Pursuing forgiveness and healing from past trauma
10. Expanding a sense of meaning, purpose, and identity
11. Discovering a new source of confidence, comfort and connection
12. Increasing emotional freedom, reducing mental dependence
Here, we touch on a few illustrations from each theme, which no doubt offer some insight into mental health recovery across other conditions as well.
1. Holding onto hope in the possibility of deeper healing
“A sense of a positive future protects you,” author Johann Hari said in his memoir. “If life is bad today, you can think—this hurts, but it won’t hurt forever.” A number of people shared things like, “I didn't want to just cope. I needed to hope that tomorrow could somehow be different.”
Yet there were times when many felt otherwise: “Hopelessness was a huge part of my life for a very long time.” Many recount hearing from a professional things like, “You will have to live with this for the rest of your life” or “Your clinical depression is a life-long condition, your brain chemistry is permanently out of balance.”
In a deeply painful time, Mendek recounted, “I was able to perceive the bare whisper of my inner voice telling me, ‘Life is worth fighting for, no matter the price.’ Otherwise, I would have perished.” Many pleaded for others to not give up their own hope:
“If you ever find yourself in a position where ending your life seems the only option, remember you will never know what could have been.”
“The world is full of wonderful things. Don't ever give up on the chance of seeing them.”
“Even if you feel as though you’ve exhausted your options, just try again—please. You can find healing. Even if that’s just a tiny flicker of hope or desire, that’s all you need!”
2. New learning that helps to see life and suffering with fresh eyes
Many described some kind of learning that made a significant difference—picking up a book, watching a video, hearing a story, or meeting someone impactful:
“I journeyed into an obscure bookstore and found books that taught me how to look inwards for more answers.”
“I looked at everything in my life under a microscope.”
“Gaining a fresh view about myself, others, and the world greatly impacted my healing.”
Watching for clues behind the pain. Some came to moments where they said, “I'm exhausted, it’s not working, I need to throw on the brakes and take account of what’s going on. When I did that for the first time,” Thomas continued, “I was just really stunned by what I saw. My life was in total shambles.”
“I came to realize that I had additional hurts, habits, and hang-ups to deal with in my heart,” another said, comparing them to the “dirt, filth and junk piling up for years” in a dirty home.
People emphasized engaging these evaluations with gentleness. “We may not be in the place that we want to be,” Vicki said, “but can we take a step back and thoroughly understand where we are?”
People described paying attention to subtle influences, since “determining factors of depression are often little things we are not aware of,” one said.
“I’ve come to “listen” to pain, rather than “trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain,” said Johann. “Your distress is not a malfunction. It is a signal—a necessary signal. . . . This pain isn’t your enemy, however much it hurts, . . . let it guide you—away from the things that are hurting and draining you, and toward the things that will meet your true needs.”
Re-narrating the problem. A number of people described a burst of new hope as they saw mental health problems in new ways:
“I had a beautiful, powerful a-ha moment” reading journalist Bob Whitaker’s book on the mental health epidemic and “saw life in an entirely different way.”
“None of the realizations I’ve come to would have happened had I not been at least slightly open to thinking about things in a different way.”
“We have been systematically misinformed about what depression and anxiety are,” Johann said—describing the story that mental illness was “some kind of malfunction in the brain” as something that “made sense to me. It guided me through life,” so much so that he felt hesitant to meddle with it. “I feared that if I messed with the story . . . the pain would be like an unchained animal, and would savage me.” That didn’t stop Johann from eventually embracing another view of depression more focused on the conditions of his life.
3. The big three – nutrition, physical activity & sleep
Nutrition, physical activity, and sleep are widely embraced as crucial for physical health. Yet some still scratch their heads as to why they matter for emotional health. Michael recalled:
I asked the psychiatrist whether he thought there was any link between nutrition and mental health. He looked at me as though I had just asked whether there was any link between mental health and UFO rectal probes.
More people are appreciating the food-mood connection today. Juanita described being among those who were “sleep deprived, ate too many fast-food meals, and dependent on caffeinated drinks”—eventually realizing the “many ways that I abused my body, mind and spirit.”
Good mood food. New foods and supplements were often emphasized. David described how he “increased the amount of green vegetables” he was eating. William reported taking a new set of B vitamins “on the recommendation of my psychiatrist.” Another found she was “severely deficient in vitamin D, so I’m taking mega-doses now”—with a variety of benefits highlighted:
“Once I started mainly eating fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats, eliminated white flour, and most meat, I noticed a difference in how I felt.”
Another family prioritized “organic, grass-fed beef and purged the house of most processed food.” Within a week or two, they saw glimpses of their “formerly happy, joyful child” again.
Caleb was surprised to find that reducing soybean content made a difference. As his wife reported, “Every time he eats something from the bean family, depression symptoms come back like clockwork. When he doesn't eat legumes, the brain fog is not there, no suicidal thoughts, he can handle stressful situations better, and is even able to feel joy.”
The pattern was trying different things and following hunches until something made a difference: “I’m going to really focus on nutrition now, I just know that's really out of whack.”
“Once the caffeine effect wore off, after a few hours I would experience a hard emotional landing” and feel “more susceptible to negative mood swings.”
“Stimulants can play havoc with moods and energy levels. I rarely drink coffee. I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.”
After a difficult emotional period, Michael was challenged by a doctor to stop consuming refined sugar, alcohol and coffee. “Forget it,” he thought. “What else do you have for me, because that’s not going to happen.” He eventually decided to accept a yearlong challenge. Although difficult at first, Michael described one morning when “the haze in my mind had lifted. It was a clear, crisp, brilliant sunny day in my mind—the first such day of sunny internal weather for years.”
“What came out of my year without sugar, coffee, or alcohol?” he asked. “I got my life back. Whereas before I was a mess, with moods all over the place and energy levels in the gutter, for the past four years, I have felt energized and in control of my life.”
Upping physical activity. Gentle physical activity like yoga and hiking was emphasized by some. Others described benefits from a more “vigorous exercise regimen” with one saying, “Man, that thing kicks my butt, but it feels great.”
William said, “I have found that running works the best for me to get the strongest anti-depressant effects.” Running with her dog taught one woman that you can “endure more than you think, and that there’s no other depression therapy quite like pavement beneath your feet.”
More light and “vitamin N” (nature). From light therapy lamps to schedule adjustments, people describe a boost from increasing their exposure to light. William described “stand[ing] in the window of my apartment for a few minutes. During fall or winter, when sunlight is sparse, I use a light box.” Others said:
“Being in nature is like an elixir. It's like drinking in health. I need it. All seasons.”
“Going for a walk on the beach, or looking closely at a tree or a flower, always helps me return to peace.”
Melissa Bernstein described the impact of “being simply an observer” inside a “boundless ecosystem” outside. She reflected on being “aware of just how much was occurring without my involvement” in the natural world and how this helped “the clamor” in her head to “subside.”
Better sleep. “I’m very sensitive to sleep deprivation,” Vicki said. “So, I always try to get as much sleep as I can.” Diana described the impact of “resting quietly even if I can’t sleep,” which helped provide her “adequate rejuvenation” for the day. Others reported:
“It was in hindsight that I realized how significant sleep was in holding all my physical and mental health together.”
“If I go without sleep and start partying a lot and get overextended and stressed. That’s the recipe for madness for me.”
Kyle continued, “You’ve gotta kinda watch this and not think that you can go without sleep just because it feels like you could. You can’t do that to your brain for years on end. You’ve got to take care of your body because your body takes care of your brain.”
4. The other big three—mental diet, mental exercise, and mental rest
Compared with wide attention to physical diet, exercise, and quality rest for mental health, far less public attention has gone to mental diet, exercise and rest. As Thomas said, “We're all pretty sensitive to how we feel after a meal. I don't think we have the same sensitivity for what goes on with the mind.”
Refining mental content. “All the mental and emotional content” that felt like “sludge” emotionally, prompted this same man to become “more choosy” about what he consumed. “My relationships changed, and my relationship with literature changed, and the way I interacted with media, internet, things like that changed a lot.” This is a common theme:
“I’ve found that steering clear of the anger and acrimony so abundant on the internet helps avoid a negativity that can trigger a depressive mood.”
“I feel less anxiety and depression since I stopped checking social media as often.”
In addition to paring back negative and dark content, people described upping the positive:
“I listened to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of books” which helped to “put me in a positive frame of mind.”
Others described what it meant to “surround yourself with positive people” and “cut off negative ties.”
Another described “a newfound awe and confidence” from reading every word of the Bible.
Enhancing mental activity. Julie said, “I’m quilting again regularly” and another person described the benefit of keeping hands and mind busy by coloring, reading novels, and listening to audiobooks—all of which helped shift her mind away from “racing and ruminating.”
Some spoke of the emotional lift from taking a class, and one described involvement in family history as gradually eroding despair and depression—offering a healthy place to consistently direct the mind.
Prioritizing mental rest. Something more than mental intake or activity seemed equally valuable:
I just stopped, and just sat still, and I just closed my eyes. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. My focus was not taking more stuff in, not seeking more stimulation—but to just really, be in my own experience.
At that time, Thomas said he felt like a “total disaster… I was as broken and beat up as I felt, emotionally.” And yet, in that moment of resting in a place beneath thoughts and feelings, he “observed this deep stillness, this profound calm.” William recalled finding peace in small, everyday moments:
I found that a slow, warm, and quiet breakfast is the single most influential factor on how I will feel throughout the day. To this day, I get up early enough to not have to rush in the morning… I don’t check my phone or emails during this time. I take the time to appreciate the food, the quietude, not allowing myself to think about any problems. I am simply present in the moment.
Juanita initially felt disconcerted that her period of depression struggle was “filled with deep silence.” But she eventually discovered that “silence too is a significant gift,” since “marinating in the silence” helped her “break down the tough issues in [her] heart.”
“I have heard people say that they were afraid of silence. I get it now! Because of the silence and slowing down, my thought life became magnified. This was the me I had not wanted to see.” Others said:
“Meditation allowed me to quiet down my brain and emotions so that God could really communicate with my soul.”
“It was in the moments I’d close my eyes, and tune out the noise to relax,” Johann said, “that I’d finally sense something different about myself. I started to change; I started to grow.”
Present to what is. This kind of raw presence was different from the more typical living-in-my-head normal experience for many. As Mendek recalled, “Constant engagement with my thoughts prevented me from experiencing full contact with life. I couldn’t enjoy the sweetness, security, and spontaneity that come with being truly united with the world around me.” Thomas likewise observed from his experience:
Over-thinking our problems can become a form of resistance to the problem itself. Whatever your primary problem was, that is now side-lined, and what’s taking up the majority of your moment to moment experience is a lot of thinking itself. We put up a barrier and are no longer engaged with what was initially painful and causing the problem.
Chrystal described past years as “marked by an intense craving to escape. I really didn’t care where I escaped to, but figured anywhere would be better than where I was. As it turns out, you can’t get away from yourself, no matter how fast or far you run.”
Slowing down to relish small joys. Robert spoke of having “regained the experience of small pleasures.” Mark found “packets of joy in experiences large and small, obvious and hidden”—saying, “tucked away in every day are reasons to rejoice in being alive,” but sometimes you have to “pull the blinders of depression off to see it.” He then described storing up and treasuring “little notes, cards, letters, and photographs that come,” which he calls his “memorabilia against depression.”
Mendek related how he treasures “every moment” with his young grandson, saying, “I stay present as we crawl through his plastic toy tunnel, dig holes in the sand, and even when he cries inconsolably.” This reflected a broader life practice for him:
I try to do only one thing at a time and appreciate everything—a child’s laughter, the texture of a rose petal, clouds floating across the moon in the night sky. I pay attention from the moment I open my eyes in the morning and gaze out of my window at the beautiful mountains.
When sorrow threatened to overwhelm him, Mendek described being able to relish the sweetness of “little, everyday moments of my life”—“a state of grace” in which he welcomes each day as “a glorious adventure.”
Presence is where peace lives. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. Nothing is too small or unimportant. Making oatmeal is my meditation. Folding laundry is my meditation.
“This magical path to Utopia, the yellow brick road that we all seek, well, maybe you’re already on it.”
5. Designing supportive physical settings and schedules
Marsha said, “I learned the value of beauty, and that the effort to bring beauty into any setting is worth the work it entails.” One woman struggled to do so at first. “Always a generally neat and tidy person,” Wendy was shocked by how her home “fell into disarray”—describing how impossible it felt at first to find any order: “Everything was totally overwhelming. Looking at my massive to-do list made me want to give up right away.”
“I needed to break things down into smaller chunks, one room at a time.” She then added, “Getting my kitchen organized was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself and my family. I was happier, and I just felt lighter.”
This prompted her to become a professional organizer, encouraging others to ask: “If you could have just one room in your house organized, which one would make you feel happiest or the most relieved?”
Habitual patterns. Many highlighted the value of crafting a healthier routine to support more emotional healing. One person described “regular physical exercise, good nutrition, healthy weight, adequate downtime, rest, recreation, and sleep” as helping “immunize” them against further depression.
Nicole described the impact of “daily spiritual” practices like prayer, meditation, “singing praises, the psalms, and reading the Bible.” She said, “doing this on a daily basis, I started receiving peace.”
Stress-busting the life around you. Others described realizing the negative emotional impact of “the amount of stress I allow.” Juanita emphasized the impact of “living an unbalanced life.”
Every person or organization I was associated with wanted something from me. I had not yet developed the ability to set boundaries or have realistic expectations for myself.
Wendy recalled better navigating financial stress: “As I got older, I had no idea what a healthy relationship with money should be. I didn’t know how to create a budget or how to manage debt. Taking charge of our finances was one of the best things we did. It gave us so much freedom.”
Being okay with hard things. When it comes to different inescapable stressors, Marsha underscored the value of growing in “distress tolerance” and “emotion regulation.” Another said:
Pain and difficulty are going to happen to you. Trying to fight this truth is pointless. I’m not suggesting a pessimistic, fatalistic attitude. You can passionately work hard to improve your life and still accept that your life will inevitably include difficulties.
Such acceptance can feel liberating, especially when the constant resistance lightens. As Thomas put it:
When you stop resisting, when you stop avoiding, and you look—you open your closet and look at that bogeyman, and you realize that you’re equal to that task, and that you can look at it and it won’t destroy you. It’s a willingness to hold your life—all of your life in awareness.
6. Working with thoughts in a gentle, mindful way
People described struggling to know how to navigate dark thoughts. Thomas noted: “Thoughts in and of themselves are fine—they’re innocuous, they’re just thoughts, but when all you have is thoughts,” and “your whole experience is characterized by [an] unbroken stream of thoughts, they beat in on you.”
Getting out of our heads. Some eventually realized their earlier response to distressing thoughts wasn’t working. “My head was nothing more than a prison,” Melissa said—“a direct channel to despair” as “I exhausted and depressed myself with crazy anticipations.” Others reported:
“Thinking about how you feel will not help you feel better.”
“Thoughts couldn’t possibly solve the problems that stood in the way of my happiness.”
Stephanie said being around others helped her get out of her head “for the most part” but admitted it was harder when alone: “I am never without my thoughts.” One woman said, “My husband is not a gamer, but we found that when he was ruminating, an hour session of games that occupied his mind 100% did wonders for stopping rumination.” Melissa noted, “Whenever I stopped thinking and turned angst into spontaneous action and positive creation, I felt exhilarated and at peace.”
Pushing back on thoughts. While many “believe you are your feelings and thoughts,” Jonathan said, Mendel described learning “how dysfunctional it was to consider his beliefs to be facts.”
“My thoughts were not my own, and often told me lies, but still I did their bidding,” he said, adding that he often “felt trapped by my beliefs like an animal in a cage.”
Thomas acknowledged that it takes a “lot of practice learning to just push back from the thought process, rather than getting absorbed” in mental content and assuming it is important and needs further interpretation, “which, of course, only leads to more thinking.”
Watching thoughts as a practice. Thomas went on to reflect on “just how calming it is to be aware of thought, as opposed to being thought,” suggesting: “Being thought can be like being on a bucking bronco, right? And we’re getting tossed all over the place. It’s a lot nicer to be in the bullpen, behind those cages where the bull is bucking that poor cowboy around and say, ‘Wow, I’d hate to be that guy right now.’”
“What’s amazing” about becoming aware of thoughts, he said, is that “you certainly get better at it over time” and “there’s an incentive built into the process, it feels so good to be able to take a break, take a little vacation from thought.”
Training the mind. What was previously experienced as a kind of “torture, being enslaved by the thought process,” changed in this man’s experience after learning to “push back” from the mental content and “just notice it.” By “no longer believing” any passing thought, he was no longer controlled by “their doom and gloom”—describing how he now approaches difficult thoughts and feelings like “black clouds that pass by in the sky,” letting them “drift by, even if it’s slowly, like leaves on the river.”
“Healing from depression starts in your mind,” one woman said—before clarifying that the battle centers less on fighting and more on learning to “train your mind.” Robert described “speaking the truth to depression’s lies” and working to “eliminate negative thought patterns.” George said, “It is our thinking that betrays us.”
The same woman would ask herself, “Does this thought benefit my soul?” If the answer was no, she continued, “I immediately dropped that thought. Immediately. No sitting around and thinking about it.”
“I used to spend a lot of time reliving painful memories and wallowing in my hurt… What if I had done this instead? What if that had happened instead? All these thoughts had to go.”
Externalizing despairing thoughts. One man described a moment where “a strange,” new and unfamiliar voice rang out crystal clear,” saying in a calm tone, “Why don’t you commit suicide.” Before that morning at school, the thought of ending his life prematurely, he said, had “never crossed my mind.”
Aaron concluded that toxic thoughts were “not coming from me.” Likewise approaching depression as a “separate entity” from his own mind, William spoke of “earmarking certain thoughts” as coming from his true self (e.g., ‘I want to get better’), compared with those coming from depression (e.g., ‘I’m worthless’)—a differentiation process that helped him “consciously and purposefully ignore” when “it’s the depression talking.”
7. Working with emotions in a creative, mindful way
Like painful thoughts, difficult emotions are often something we push away and avoid. Juanita described “Years of anger stuffed and turned inward, ignored, or swept under the rug for the sake of politeness. My anger went underground.”
I didn’t take the time to process the pain. In fact, I had never allowed myself to grieve any of the losses I’d experienced, whether deaths, business setbacks, failures, broken relationships, or other disappointments. My way of coping with pain was to stuff it and keep moving.
She went on to speak about learning “how to be with my feelings,” which “seemed so foreign” to her at first. “Marinating in silence for all those many months was exposing emotions I had stuffed away for far too long” thinking, “ain’t nobody got time for all that!”
Getting it out. Out of a past with limited space for expression, Melissa reflected on how “this tangled mass of emotion had nowhere to go but into more darkness, pushing me even further within myself.”
“When you hold everything inside, it’s like closing the Ziplock bag on your feelings and letting the bad things grow,” Crystal said. “The longer it sits, the grosser it will be, and the harder it will be to clean. So, we need to “open” our hearts and get some airflow.”
Another said, “In order to stay healthy, I have to feel all my feelings instead of numbing myself to them.”
Still others described painting, the “therapeutic release of art”; “playing piano to express emotions”; and “acting” as being helpful, providing what Ashley called an “opportunity to sort through some chaos in a creative way.” Melissa similarly found “Creating had become her pathway out of despair.”
Resisting the depressive pull. “I was quite surprised to recognize and learn that I had to resist a certain psychological seductiveness to depression,” Mark said.
Who would have thought depression could be seductive?! Like a drug, it promised escape from life and all its struggle. All I needed to do was surrender to it, let it take over, and indulge in its permission to retreat and disappear from life.
Ashley spoke of learning to stop “romanticizing the effects of depression, saying, “There’s a propensity for artists to indulge in sadness because it has creative dimensions.” Mendek recounted, “Breaking the habit of living in perpetual dissatisfaction was extremely difficult. At first, I didn’t realize . . . that a substantial part of me had become addicted to misery.”
He continued, “Suffering added drama to my life, filled my conversations and kept me occupied day and night. My mind even invented problems where none existed.”
Learning to respond to emotion skillfully. “Our culture tells us to indulge our whims and emotions,” another said. “Most people are completely at the mercy of their emotions—which are fickle and cannot be trusted. Emotions are unstable and can swing drastically from moment to moment. A life based on emotion is a life built on shifting sands.” By contrast, Thomas observed from his experience:
The awareness, the willingness to be present with an emotion, actually softens it, gives it a kind of permission to activate and do whatever it wants to do—whether it's anger showing up in the body, whether it’s sadness showing up in the body.” Our only other option is to deny it permission and push it down into the cellar where we keep all those unwanted emotions. I mean, if we don't face these things, if we don't make room for them, do we really think it goes away?
He then describe how he has learned to work with challenging emotion:
I've just found this practice of letting emotional activity well up, and expand, and grow, and just show up in me in whatever way it wants to, to be so empowering. Because every time, if I'm willing to stick with the movement quality of the emotion, then eventually, at some point, like all things, it exhausts itself, it burns out, and we can ride those waves.
Welcoming the full spectrum of emotion. Thomas continued, “As individuals, we usually have preferences in terms of what emotions are okay, or what’s welcome. And it's often negative emotion that we have such a problem with, like we're judgmental with ourselves for being angry, or we’re judgmental with ourselves for being judgmental. Or there are feelings coming up in the body we can't make room for.”
Rather than insisting on a “rosy view of reality, where we just ‘buck up’ and have an optimistic view,” he suggested instead that this is about “realism, it’s about really training awareness to look at All of Life—everything that's happening moment to moment.”
8. Deepening relationships & emotional support
On their own, most people don’t seem to be able to find what they need to heal, Mendek said, “Using willpower alone, I was unable to change these patterns. Battling my thoughts made me their prisoner, and resisting my emotions energized them.”
Opening up to receive others’ support. Chrystal decided that she couldn’t leave her church meeting “without someone knowing what was going on.” From that night on, she was included regularly by those concerned for her: “These people didn’t just put on events as some church gimmick—they actually cared about one another.”
Nicole, having had a similar experience, said, “I felt loved—it was a place of belonging. I found an open, friendly, shoulder to cry on to talk with people about my desperate feelings.” Jennifer noted: “It takes incredible courage to reach out for help when the tools you have are no longer working.” And Jane attended Emotions Anonymous (EA) meeting as a “last ditch effort to find some measure of relief,” saying:
For the first time in my life, I felt real hope. I was not alone! They care for me in times of illness. They lend me their strength when I haven't enough of my own.
One woman described how her physician “treated me as an equal partner. Instead of talking down to me, she listened to my experiences and ideas and incorporated them into the treatment plan. I felt respected and listened to, and that helped keep me motivated.”
Not as easy as it looks. Opening up, however, doesn’t guarantee a positive result. When Julie was at her “wits end” with depression, she recalled her friends being “incredibly supportive” when she opened up, but not knowing “what to do.” This left her family as well “in a state of complete fear”— “afraid that I may try and hurt myself.”
However valuable active support is, Thomas spoke of the importance of letting relationships breathe: “There is a real power in reserving some time, day by day, for not doing anything… Not fixating on these problems coming up. We fall into these ruts so quickly, where 'This person is depressed, we need to make them not depressed.’”
“Can we defer the impulse to judge it, and to need it to be something else?,” he asked. “Can we just make space to allow it to be as it is?”
This is different from unhealthy isolation, where “disconnection spirals into more disconnection.” Johann felt that depression is “itself a form of grief—for all the connections we need, but don’t have.” To counter this trend in his own life, he described proactively “spend[ing] much more time face-to-face” with those he loved, reporting being “more deeply connected” now than he had “ever have been before.”
Receiving love. Marsha described a friend who was “always there for me, always ready to listen, again and again and again, always giving comfort,” emphasizing how this “kept me alive.”
“Kind words can be short and sweet, but their echoes are truly endless,” she said, motivating her “active decision to find a community where I would feel supported emotionally and spiritually.” She concluded, “life is all about love. I was happier living with people.”
The impact of such loving support is especially apparent in times when someone is desperate. In one dire moment, Ben described standing on a bridge ready to take his life but recalled how a “stranger in a light-brown jacket” stayed close. “He wasn't particularly comforting, or deep, or intentional. He was just there.”
“He didn't try to tell me that everything would be okay. He didn't give me any of the empty motivational platitudes,” he said. Instead, describing how the man “asked me about my life. It was comforting to have someone stand with me. The little I said, he heard. He saw me. He didn't leave. Maybe it's because he stayed—I did too.”
“You’re not going to be able to deal with this problem alone,” Johann said about what he wished he could have told his “younger self.”:
If you stay broken up and isolated, you will likely stay depressed and anxious. You have to turn now to all the other wounded people around you, and find a way to connect with them, and build a place where you are bonded to one another and find meaning in your lives together.
Yet like everything described here, this isn’t a panacea: “Even with new friends and church activities,” Crystal noted, “the darkness was still trying to lure me back into the deafening silence of isolation.”
Creative ways to connect. What about those who struggle to find someone? Grant, immersing himself in the history of his family, “gradually” noticed that he began to “feel lighter”—to the point that he “didn’t “even notice the depression at all.” Nothing reached Julie until she adopted a Golden Retriever puppy, who became a healing “place without ridicule, doubt, sorrow, or anger.” Another described a pet’s love as uniquely involving “no judgment or criticism, just unconditional love on a continuous level.”
9. Pursuing forgiveness and healing from past trauma
“I didn’t talk at all about the violence and abuse I survived as a child until I was in my mid-twenties,” Johann said. Sarah admitted that when she eventually “felt able to share with others the details of her father’s abuse, I was close to a panic attack. It surprised me how hard it was to talk about my experiences, even though [others] had told me about their own abuses.” Even then, memories can be fuzzy:
As a child, teenager and adult, the first ten years of my life had been mostly erased. There were no memories of sexual abuse, but my body never forgot and replayed the disgusting events every night in the form of nightmares and night terrors.
Emotional freedom from the effects of abuse. Sarah described eventually learning to stand back from her life and see how she could “extricate” herself from the “wreckage” of her past—allowing her to “stand beside it” so she “could view it more objectively.”
“I hadn’t made my father do anything. He was the abuser; I was the child.” In turn, “the abuse no longer controlled me as much,” she said. “I learned to respond more and react less.”
William described working to “not be so controlled by my pain,” and Moni described becoming able to forgive her abusive father, who had died 19 years earlier, “for all the pain he had caused [her] as a child.” As a result, she said, “it was as if a heavy curtain was drawn back from the window of my soul.”
When “forgiveness” is not enough. “Because I’d wanted to be a good Christian, I had ‘forgiven’ my father [as a child] when he asked for forgiveness for having been ‘a little fresh,’” Sarah said. Later in her healing process she learned that forgiveness “has to be accompanied by an appreciation and understanding of what has happened and the impact of it on your life.”
“I forgave my parents because hating them was hurting me,” another said. “I am slowly building a relationship with my father based on mutual honesty and respect. Sadly, my mother remains unapproachable. I will leave that relationship in God's hands for now.”
While reconciliation can help, sometimes separation is needed for healing. After years of “living in an abusive marriage filled with sorrow and pain,” Helen described divorce from her abusive husband as crucial to healing.
Another woman who had been “horribly abused” described how some of “these deep hurts can take years, decades, to work through.” She added her belief that “some wounds will never completely go away in this life.” Instead, she suggested we “can learn to embrace them in forgiveness.”
Removing the burden of toxic anger. “One day I will die,” Mendek wrote. And “before my last breath leaves my body, I don’t want to carry my bitterness and venom to the grave.”
One woman realized how she had over-blamed her mother and father, saying, “In all honesty, my parents only did what they knew how to do, and I totally get it, because that’s what I’m doing now as a parent. We work with the tools we have.”
Another reflected, “I was finally able to see my father in his true light, and feelings of compassion and understanding flowed out of me toward him.”
Even while seeing the clear impact of her parents’ actions on her life, Sarah described a profound moment where she was able to say “Forgive them, Father; they did not know what they were doing.”
“The person who wounded you is not hurt by your unforgiveness, but you are. I had to learn how to let go of all the hurt and unforgiveness. Nothing that hindered my healing process could remain.”
“I was tired of hating the world,” Melissa said. “I was tired of seeing it in fogged lenses that only magnified the world’s bleakness and darkness.” She concluded: “the world was full of beautiful people,” including so many who had “endured their own version of suffering.”
Re-seeing the pain. Pain is one thing. Our explanation and interpretation for it is another:
“The story we tell ourselves about our past experiences dictates how we feel about them,” Alexi said.
“It's not the things we remember that define us,” Mark said, “but the stories we tell ourselves about the things we think we remember.”
“We experience pain when we encounter trauma, hurt, or loss,” Brooke explained, “but we perpetuate suffering by what we tell ourselves about what happened.
She then described how painful events can “become integrated into our greater life narrative” bringing freedom and “cleansing.” Another spoke of coming to see meaning in even the agonizing pain associated with the poor treatment of others, especially as she “gained understanding of the purpose of life on a deep and spiritual level.”
10. Expanding a sense of meaning, purpose, and identity
We’ve found in our statistical analyses that one of the strongest predictors of depression is how much meaning and purpose people feel (or don’t feel) in their lives. In addition to receiving love, people who had found deeper emotional healing also spoke repeatedly about giving and sharing love with others.
Getting outside of your head. Crystal said “volunteering was pivotal in learning how to get my eyes off of myself and start considering others.” Another said “in my isolation I was stuck inside of my head, focusing on myself most of the time.” Johann likewise acknowledged the self-absorption that is often common with depression: “you become trapped in your own story and your own thoughts, and they rattle around in your head with a dull, bitter insistence.”
He continued:
If you want to stop being depressed, don’t fixate on how you’re worth it. It’s thinking about you, you, you that’s helped to make you feel so lousy. The real path to happiness comes from letting yourself flow into other people’s stories and letting their stories flow into yours.
“My healing came through connection, it came through motivating and encouraging others,” Linda reflected, “and it came through making an impact in people’s lives.”
Healing through newfound purpose. One woman described the profound impact of “playing happily” with her two children, seeing “this peace and comfort and love in their life,” and “how different” it was from her own.
“Creating, giving, sharing and connecting gave me reasons to get out of bed each morning,” Melissa said, “and defined why I was here.”
“Paradoxically,” another said, “losing myself in love is my best self-care and healing prescription. Pouring myself into others lifts my spirits, turns my mind and heart, and brings relief and sustaining packets of joy.”
Johann emphasized, “Everybody wants to feel useful, and have purpose. . . . [People] want to feel like they’ve had an impact on other humans—that they’ve improved the world.” He suggested that “happiness is really feeling like you’ve impacted another human positively. . . . If you can be happy for others . . . vicarious joy is going to be available millions of ways every single day.”
The relationship nudge to keep going. One woman admitted: “I wasn’t interested in staying alive for myself. I wasn’t important to myself.” But at that time, she said, “I was important to my daughter”:
I loved doing all of the things with [my daughter] that my mother had never done with me. We read together, which became a part of her nighttime ritual. We said prayers before bed and then I would kiss her goodnight. I always tried to listen [as she told] me about her day. All of this was immensely healing. Knowing I was important to [her] gave me strength.”
Jane said, “The thirty or so people whom I have sponsored [in Emotions Anonymous groups] over the years have inspired me, with their honest and courageous actions, to grow along with them.”
Recentering your life. Johann suggested, “the more you think life is about having stuff and superiority and showing it off, the more unhappy, and the more depressed and anxious, you will be.” Others shared:
“People who are the center of their own universe are the most wretched beings alive.”
“The dark night of the soul is the place where one is invited into a deeper, more transformative relationship with the divine.”
After feeling “parched by life, sucked dry,” Juanita said:
I was humbled, grateful beyond words, thrilled speechless in the presence of God who was quenching in me a thirst that only God could satisfy. I was being energized and charged to live and move and to know what it meant to be fully alive.
All this entailed for many a new sense of self. One woman described how therapy helped her “discover who I really was. I was worthy of better. I was safe now. I could have dreams. I could move forward. I could live. Really live.”
Healing others, and finding more yourself. We’ve explored how different kinds of relationships and connections—being heard, loved and having chances to serve—can help encourage and support healing. It’s also obvious that healing itself reinforces the health of relationships. Ben described feeling like he had “finally escaped, for real this time and not only in my head.”
After finally becoming emotionally “unstuck,” he felt like he was “making up for lost time” like Scrooge. Nothing excited him more than the possibility that he “might really be able to help people.” Melissa similarly reflected, “I knew my mission was to now help others unearth what gave their lives meaning and find the outlet to express it to the world, making light from dark and connection from isolation.”
11. Discovering a new source of confidence, comfort and connection
People have very different experiences of spirituality, with some finding religion and faith emotionally challenging. In most stories we reviewed, people reported being helped by engaging on a deeper level with spiritually transcendent practices—especially after coming to a place of feeling stuck.
“I acknowledge I don’t have the strength,” Aaron recalled. “These mental illnesses they’re so heavy, they’re crushing me, I can’t handle it.” Juanita also admitted, “My life was taken down to the bones,” feeling that “I had come to the end of myself. It all crumbled.” Nicole ultimately began to “cry out to God” to save her from the pain “because I didn’t know what else to do.”
A new encounter. Many who experienced profound healing in their lives likewise described a renewed or deepened spiritual connection:
“My roommate and I read the Bible cover to cover for the first time,” Crystal said. “This was the most transforming year of my life, and the healing was so drastic that I consider it an emotional death to life miracle.”
One person said, “My eyes were opened to creation itself—“rocks, clouds… Oh, God swirled those clouds! Engaged in my heart for a moment. Oh, my goodness, this is created! A euphoric joy came upon me.”
Juanita described coming to a “deep, loving union with God” involving “the kind of peace spoken of by those who have experienced a near-death episode.”
“I was surrounded by love I had never experienced, love that was dense and filled the space all around me, that fed the deepest part of my starved soul,” she said. “I can honestly say that I am grateful that my mind and body did for me what I could not do for myself,” Juanita said. “They shut me down, stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to stop believing that I was strong enough to pull myself out” and “stop believing that my intellect would get me through this.”
After a transcendent experience of pure divine love, Mendek said that “for the first time,” he “believed that the world was a kind and magnificent place.” Nicole said, “The thought of there being a God who was in control of everything was a comforting feeling for me—I then didn’t need to worry as much and do everything on my own.”
Aaron recollected feeling like “even the whole world—and everything in it—can’t help me.” Then looking upward, he said, “But you can”—referring to a scriptural teaching that “my grace is sufficient.”
Mark described the value of starting to “embrace your positive, creative, loving, caring and spiritual side; the real essence of what makes you, and takes you away from fear.” From her experience, Linda expressed hope that others hurting emotionally could find the “faith and courage to seek something bigger than our isolated suffering. A bigger meaning that says there is more to this world than what we see through our broken and teary eyes.”
Moment by moment guidance. Describing a period of grappling with depression, Linda said, “God showed me step by step how to heal from my depression” and “to recognize and reject the negative thoughts that fed depression.”
Another woman shared how God could “partner with us to reach our healing,” which happened “as we surrender to Him and follow His guidance.” For her, this involved learning “the skills that we need to be healed and continue to live out our healing. This is what God did for me. He taught me how not to be depressed.”
Surrender and alignment. Juanita remembered “being invited to surrender,” describing how “in the Twelve Step program they [encourage] this turning your life over to the care of God” as central to healing.” And Crystal suggested: “People or groups in and of themselves do not have the power to change you. If you are struggling with real depression, it’s your heart and mind that must transform.”
Josh described feeling guilt for certain choices, “After years of struggling, I decided to come back to the Lord. I went through a lot of confession and repentance—which was something I hadn’t taken seriously.”
Another man spoke of the critical importance of “congruence,” or “living in harmony with core life values and aspirations,” which helped to “refresh peace, joy, and love” in his life.
Marsha described a “deep spirituality and faith” as crucial to her healing—beginning with a “visceral longing to be with God and to please God” arising in her life—which prompted her to embrace new sacred commitments, “the usual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience to the church.
New emotional shifts. “Down on hands and knees in a ball—I felt completely encompassed by this warm, tingly presence,” another woman recalled. “It just completely cloaked my body—His comfort and spirit all around me—and took all the fear away that I had. I felt the most intense love and peace. I cried out, ‘Thank you!’”
“He who believes in me in his heart will flow living streams of water,” another quoted, saying, “I want that.” As he heard and received from God more directly, he said, “I began to experience overcoming—or defeating —these mental anxieties and illnesses that I dealt with.”
Lucie, in a moment of desperate pain, asked her brother to pray for her. She said, “I don’t remember what he said,” but I remember feeling this warmth on my physical body as if someone was wrapping me in his love—as if I was being hugged. That’s the Lord’s way of telling me that He was still there for me, and He loved me.”
This woman described feeling “changed” after subsequently being baptized and “having a real inner peace and strength.” Immediately out of the water, she said “I began to smile. My smile began within me and didn’t stop at my face.” She said, “After two and a half years of turmoil, pain, of grief, of feeling lost, I awoke the next morning feeling the same love—the same unconditional love, safety, comfort and direction.”
Seeking, even when you’re not feeling it. This spiritual growth is not simply a one-time occasion, with people speaking of “spiritual practice” and “spiritual nourishment.” Nicole noted having “ongoing heavenly encounters on a regular basis” through scripture and prayer. “Doing this on a daily basis, I started receiving peace.”
Mark described “spiritual dailies” that included “contemplative scripture study and truly personal prayer,” which he called “listening up!—an hour every morning that grows sweeter by the year”—along with “weeklies” involving group communion and worship retreats.
“I had to accept sometimes feeling disconnected, without supposing it must mean something was wrong in my life,” Mark added. That meant continuing to seek and practice “even if [you] can’t always feel” the benefits. “I maintain spiritual routines even though a present moment of depression can make them seem somewhat empty.”
Faith in community. Douglas describes a pastoral counselor in his congregation telling him, “When one of our congregants was dying of cancer, we decided to bring her family, friends, minister, physicians together in one room. Their combined positive thoughts created a powerful healing energy.” Encouraging him to try the same, twelve different people gathered to support him:
After I described the history of my illness and my feelings of hopelessness and despair, the group shifted my focus, asking me to create a picture of what wellness would look like for me. I described in as much detail as I could the thoughts, feelings and behaviors I might experience if I were healed of my affliction.
“The group then agreed to hold in consciousness my vision of wellness over the next thirty days, until we met again. I left the group feeling nurtured by the loving attention I had received, but without any sense that a healing had taken place.”
Nonetheless, seventy-two hours after the members began to visualize my recovery, I awoke with a clarity and a peace that I had not experienced in five months. My normal feelings of agitation and hopelessness were absent. The black cloud of depression had begun to lift. Within ninety days, I was completely free of symptoms.
“If there is a moral to this story,” he said, “it is that no matter how sophisticated our brain science and technology become, there is no substitute for human love and caring.”
“I would be incredibly foolish to give credit to a recovery strategy rather than God Himself,” Crystal said. “In His mercy, he peeled me up off the rocky bottom of the pit and lifted me out when I had completely given up.”
“The truth is that God healed me from my depression,” another woman reflected—attesting how God had “walked with me to my healing every step of this journey. God is our ultimate healer. If you struggle with depression, please know that the God who created the universe knows you intimately and wants to heal you.”
12. Increasing emotional freedom, reducing mental dependence
Although there are benefits to different kinds of substances, drugs and medications, many people described reduced dependence as making a difference for their emotional healing.
Reducing long-term reliance on alcohol and illegal drugs. Repeatedly, people spoke of reducing or eliminating alcohol as part of their healing. “I realized the drinking was a slow suicide,” said one person:
I had really become very reliant on it. So, when I put the drink down, I was faced with the reality of my life. However, In a matter of weeks, my life just started to clear up a little bit. I no longer felt totally controlled by my emotions. All of a sudden, I felt this sense of hope.”
After a near-fatal car accident involving alcohol, another individual heard a voice say, “This is your last chance.” She said, “I was changed forever. I had to change or die. So, I changed… I threw away every single drop and never touched it again for many years.”
Other rippling effects. “I immediately noticed that I can’t tolerate dating the men in my life without drinking,” Brooke said. Previously, she described “getting drunk, sleeping with men who desire me, but do not have the capacity to love me, and in the morning waking up and dragging myself to class.”
At first, it felt “liberating to rebel against [her] religious past.” But noticing how much alcohol and casual sex altered her mood,” Brooke cried, “This is not the freedom I crave.”
After many years of drinking and medicating, Angel related what happened as she began to taper:
I had been hopeless for so many years. My world had become so small that I didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel—and all of a sudden, as I started getting sober from alcohol and getting off these medications, I just started to feel a little bit of emotional energy—and hope.
Illegal drugs and alcohol are clearly different from those regarding legally prescribed medications. But some common themes of emotional dependence on a substance to feel well do exist.
Reducing long-term reliance on prescription medications. After describing all the medications he was taking, one man admitted, “I felt crappy all the time. I couldn’t sleep well at night. I felt suspicious of people, nervous, hopeless, and tired.” One woman started taking antidepressants after developing postpartum depression, “which began a 14-year-long saga of medication usage and adjustment.” Another woman tried “talk therapy and almost every mood stabilizer and antidepressant on the market.” She said, “they worked for a while, but the symptoms always came back and increased.”
New realizations. Although the meds helped initially, one man said, "I realized I didn’t care whether I was alive, or about my girlfriend or my faith.” Another recalled, “Most of the medication either caused severe side effects or they made me feel dull, which I could not accept because I enjoy being an active person.”
“I had always been extremely conscientious about taking my medication. For a long time, I believed that the meds would help me get better if only I could find the right one.”
Finally, I realized that, despite the medications, I was getting sicker, had less energy and more anxiety every year. The medications were only helping a few symptoms but weren’t solving the problem. They may help some symptoms and are very helpful in acute situations, but tend to make the disease worse in the long run.
After describing how “a doctor tried to put me on antidepressants," Gwen remembered thinking, “If I need them, then yes, I'll come back to it, but I wanna first try” other options. In watching her daughter’s dwindling state, a mother expressed surprise that “not one” of her doctors seemed to be curious about the deeper root causes of what was happening to her child. Rather, they continued to focus on what other medications could be added to the mix.
Others felt grateful for the impact of medical treatment. Stephanie said, “They brought me back into enough of a state of equilibrium that my soul could commence healing.” Charlotte related, “It does not take away the despair, but it takes the edge off. I intuitively understand it is a temporary fix.”
A number expressed appreciation for the role of medication in their journey. As one woman said, “The medication I was prescribed was absolutely necessary and saved my life. It brought me through the darkest part of my journey. It was “a necessary stepping-stone” and now “I have stepped off.”
For some, the initial boost from the medication was so significant they don’t feel right about ever going off. For example, one woman said:
“After it kicked in [and] actually started working, and I feel normal again. And I’ve had no recurrence of symptoms for 2 years. And I plan to keep it that way. And, I have no plans to get off the medication any time soon. It’s working for me, and I don’t want to mess with what’s working.”
Some people also expressed concerns about lasting dependence:
“I was taking [my meds]. My mood was good, and I had few side effects. However, I did not want to remain on [them] for the rest of my life. I know it’s not the happiest message, but sometimes we need to feel pain in order to get better. Pain guides us to the problem area—where the work needs to be done.”
A decision that can feel scary. Influenced by “a changed belief about myself and what I began to entertain as possible for me,” one person started to take gradual steps to get off meds they had been taking for years. Part of the fear of tapering is tied to a social stigma of not taking medication. As Caleb put it, “When you choose to not take the meds, you get judged so bad.” One woman related:
“I was afraid to drop the meds, I was literally told in the beginning that I would probably be on medication for the rest of my life. Even though I knew my brain was healing, what if I was wrong about it?” I went to the Lord in prayer and told him what I thought, then I went to my husband because it was one of the scariest things I was about to do on purpose! I told him to watch me carefully, looking for signs of trouble.”
“It was so scary for me,” this woman said. “I never want to feel that darkness and pain again, what if getting off my meds, would bring that on again?” Yet “I knew how I felt as I brought it to the Lord.”
Navigating some turbulence. Michael, who was “under medical attention” when deciding to taper, said, “I definitely do not recommend stopping a medication without talking to a doctor first.” Another person suggested, “It is a mistake to try to go off of medications by yourself, especially if you have been on them for as long as I had!”
“There is so much more to getting off a medication than just gradually reducing the dose,” suggesting people explore “supplements and herbs” to potentially counter withdrawal effects and depression itself.
It’s important to note that similar kinds of reductions in dependency can happen with alternative interventions too. For instance, one person recounted, “I have gradually been able to decrease the amount of nutritional supplements necessary for maintaining my health.”
This kind of mindful taper involves ongoing watchfulness in how the body and mind is responding, which can lead to adjustments in the tapering approach. As one woman put it: “In the past, when I would taper my antidepressant medication, I experienced unpleasant symptoms, during the withdrawal process, such as mood swings, suicidal thoughts, severe PMS, difficulty making decisions, and lack of confidence in myself.”
However, this time when she tapered, “using an integrated approach of diet, nutritional supplements, and meditation,” she reported, over a gradual reduction over five months, “I did not experience any withdrawal symptoms, and I was able to continue to work full time.”
Feeling myself again. “With my doctor's help I have now been off of the depression meds for almost 3 months” Stephanie said. “And I feel like I think we are supposed to feel as people! Not blissfully going through life, rather living a life that has turbulence and knowing how to navigate my way around it and sometimes through it.”
David, after tapering off the antidepressants he had been on for 14 years, described feeling “intellectually at my best.” Carrie offered encouragement: “Anyone who has that still, small, but persistent voice in their heads telling them drugs aren't the answer and there has to be a better way” needs to know “there is, we are living it, amazed at the difference in our family, [we] will never go back.”
Slow and steady wins the race. In most cases, going off medication too quickly can make withdrawal effects worse. About their psychiatric medications, one person said, “Over time, my body and systems just became desensitized to them”—“they really weren’t working anymore.” Even so, his doctor “stated that I still needed to come off the medications slowly because my body needed to detox from them and coming off of powerful medications too quickly could be dangerous.”
With professional support, one person said, “I was able to wean off all my medications” within four months.” Another admitted: “Since the psychiatrist “wouldn’t have approved” of even his gentle and gradual tapering plan, I did it all without [her].”
“She told me I needed to be on medications for the rest of my life. She was wrong. So, I never went to see her again. My former psychiatrist would be astonished to see how happy and healthy I am today.”
A good professional may still express concerns, while affirming the individual’s right to make a decision for themselves: “When I told both my therapist and psychiatrist of my choice, they were concerned to say the least, but absolutely supportive. I remember my psychiatrist saying, if you’re going to do this, you will need two things, exercise and laughter.”
Life after. Sometimes tapering appears to be a part of the healing, while others seem to taper after getting better—with the discontinuation seemingly a result of recovery, rather than contributing to it. After a transformative period of learning, Moni admitted, “I felt that the medication was not needed anymore. For the first time in my life, I felt settled, calm and peaceful.” David described life changes leading him to a place of readiness:
My energy levels increased amazingly as I continued with my new diet and exercise regime, and I continued to meditate and work at finding peace with my situation. Within two short months, I found myself staring at the box of Prozac as I had a little “farewell” conversation with it—and threw it into the bin.
Even so, life after medication isn’t simply easy and blissful. Having been medication free for almost two years, one person said, “Is it easy? No. It is a challenge every day. But I choose this challenge.” Others likewise found positive places staying on their medications. Juanita said,
I wasn’t turning cartwheels—I never knew how—but I felt as though a five-hundred-pound monkey had been taken off my back and I could finally breathe again.
Recovering life. One woman admitted that emotional turbulence “sometimes still hits.” Michael said “of course, I still have moods, but they are normal moods, not the wild swings as before.” Mark reflected:
My wife and I still know that my Eeyore self is there, but we try to keep [him] at a ‘lovable and livable’ level.” He uses 6 key lifestyle steps taped inside his kitchen cupboard and if feeling “a little off” he can check the list and say, "ah, I'm not sleeping well. Time to soak in some sunlight to set my body clock."
Beth describes her life is now:
I pray. I take care of myself. I take deep breaths. I step away for those 10 seconds when things are getting a little crazy. I look in the mirror and try to see what God sees. I look at my husband and my children and see the reflection of God in them. I laugh more. I love my body. I love my life. I appreciate every day. I celebrate that I have chosen to be alive.
“Does this all mean I don’t get frustrated or sad or annoyed, or angry or have bad days?” she asks. “Absolutely not. But I choose how I respond. I am conscious of each moment and each thought. I choose healing.”