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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 by author Elizabeth Gilbert.

You don't have to watch it all, but it's very good. In it she talks about the anxieties of being a creative person (in her case a writer) and how daunting each success you have can be because you start pressuring yourself and doubting that you'll ever again be able to create something at least as successful.

Then she hits on a subject that rang so true to me about how ideas and inspiration often feels like they are given to you by an external, intangible "thing" and that you as an artist/writer/etc are just the vessel of that idea. I was struck at how real this felt to me. I will often be walking along the street and an idea will strike me like lightning and I know that if I don't reach a keyboard within the next hour or so, the idea will slowly fade and won't come back.

Now here's the thing. Gilbert says that she uses that belief as a psychological construct to help her deal with all those anxious thoughts and feeling of inadequacy. By believing that you are not the only one responsible of your own creation, by externalizing part of the creative process, you can detach yourself from the huge self-imposed pressures of performing all the time.

Interesting!

Now this morning I was thinking, if ideas come from whatever external source you decide to define for yourself and if you can choose to be receptive or not to them, then maybe anxious ideas and dark thoughts can also be modeled like that.

Now instead of feeling guilty about how anxious a thought makes me feel, I could say "Okay then, if I don't concentrate on this dark idea, if I don't give it life like I do when a crazy cool idea strikes me, then it will go away like all ideas do. Thus, I can free my mind to focus on better ideas and thoughts".

Nothing of this is based in science or in facts. Yet, the thing is about the human mind is that it doesn't so much care about what's true. Rather, it cares very much about what it believes!

And I choose to try to believe this. Very much so.

Lastly, yesterday evening I came to terms with the fact that in spite of my scientific background, training and experience, I was first and foremost a creative person. I've always been about ideas and creating stuff, not running them.

And therein lies my salvation.

Here's to seeking a healthier body and mind... and finding them!

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