by Chatty DM

Created on: March 30, 2009

A few weeks ago, I was officially diagnosed with my second severe depression in 4 years. Like many people out there, I am often fighting what I call inner demons. Such demons manifest themselves as anxious thoughts and recurring fears of failure and a certitude that I will end up losing everything I have obtained in life.

The ironic thing about it all is that by letting those fears take over me over these last few months, I ran the very real risk of losing everything: my job, my wife, my kids and my friends.

Because I became such a nervous wreck, I was prescribed an extended leave from work (as well as anti-depressive drugs) and I've been home for the last month. Some days have been good, many bad.

A lot of this time has been spent feeling guilty about not having been strong enough to weather this.

Try as I might, I failed to recognize the sources of my fears and I was unable to face them and change how I react to them.

In the last few weeks, I've tried the tricks of the Mind over Mood book (excellent I might say) and I've gone to weekly therapy sessions. While all this has helped me, it wasn't enough. Anxious thoughts still creep in my head and stay there for hours on end.

Little piece of advice to those suffering similar disorders: sitting idly in an empty house is NOT good therapy! Only the evil voices keep you company and its impossible not to listen to them.

Then two things occurred over the weekend that may be showing me the way out of this mess. First, both my physician and my therapists forcefully reminded me that I had to exercise more if I was serious about recovery. A psychiatrist once told me that regular exercise was a better anti-depressive therapy than drugs were. I believe that. Its just that when things go sour, exercise is the first thing you stop doing and you rationalize a gazillion reasons for having stopped.

I also recently read that an anxious mind can't occupy a relaxed body.

That's why I fished out the dusty Wii Balance Board from underneath the living room's sofa Saturday morning. I fired up Wii Fit, and took on the gentle reminder that I hadn't used it in 316 days. I've been using it for the past 3 days (including a full 30 minutes this morning) and for the first time in a few weeks, I felt fine on a Monday morning.

That's an encouraging sign!

Secondly, through my friend e of Geeks Dream Girl, I stumbled upon this post by James of Men with Pens. It discusses how to stay sane and alive if you are a creative person. In it was a 20 minute video

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