Do you remember the day you learned to forgive yourself, to accept yourself?
I do. It was today.
As I sat on my psychiatrist’s couch attempting to suppress my sneezes from a nasty sinus infection, I rattled off my usual litany of random questions. She is a wise and brilliant woman (I look forward to our sessions, is that weird? I promise it’s not just because she holds a prescription pad…) who knows and understands me well after the four and a half years I’ve been seeing her, so I trust her insights implicitly.
While discussing the smaller episodes IÂ tend to think are setting me back further, she used the phrase “in recovery,” and it changed everything.
As much as I preach—and do believe—that there shouldn’t be stigma in taking psych meds, in dealing with mental illness, I realized today I didn’t apply those same standards to myself.
I’m crazy, I’m weak, what is this woman thinking about me when I walk out, am I crazier than her other patients? Why do I need so much medication just to get through life?Â
Walking up Lexington back to the subway, I finally internalized this: depression is a real condition, and my doctor is treating me for it and treating me as such. It’s something I’ve dealt with since before my mom got sick. I’ve had a shitty past few years, but I am healing and recovering, bit by bit.
As I wrote in my Women’s Health article, I’ve heard depression described as emotional cancer—it may go into remission but never go away. Even if I relapse—which I certainly have since being hospitalized—that doesn’t erase the progress I have made.
And today, I can recognize: I have made a shit ton of progress from the woman I was a year ago, nine months ago when I was hospitalized, even the woman I was arriving in LA three months ago.
Was there a moment you can point to when you learned to forgive yourself?
I love reading this because YES! You really do need to be compassionate with yourself and so, so often we preach that to others but don’t allow it for ourselves. I had so much guilt surrounding my mom’s death because I was a 17 year-old girl full of hormones, rebellion and desperately seeking independence when she died. I didn’t realize I was acting like any other 17 year-old because my mom died in the midst of all that, and I felt horrible about myself for years. Then, at a high school reunion I saw a video of myself. It was at a graduation party just four months after my mom died and I was STUNNED at how strong that girl looked to me and how harshly I had criticized her for so many years. In that moment, I forgave myself and I’ve been a different person since. I hope this same kind of peace for you my friend! I got nothin’ but love for you…
thank you so much for sharing your journey. I cannot wait to hear the podcast and really cannot wait to buy a book written by you! (someday maybe?!)
So. much. yes. It is really crazy how hard us women are on ourselves. The day I decided to forgive myself for “not being good enough” and just let myself be good enough was during a Thanksgiving 10k this year. I trained 6 weeks with that specific race, and in the last week I blew it. I was travelling, didn’t fuel my body optimally, and missed a few key workouts in the week leading up to the race. As I struggled through the 10k, I kept blaming myself for not preparing properly. And then it hit me: I’m still getting out there, being active, and doing something good for my body. The reason I signed up for that race in the first place was just to get out and burn some calories before eating turkey. I might have missed my PR, but the race was still a success. I wrote about that race in-depth at https://runningmybestlife.com/missed-personal-record/.