It has been two weeks since I started attending a CBT group online. We haven’t covered much, but the little bits we have learned has touched many of our issues. This week’s topic was negative thinking patterns and how depression distorts our thinking & self beliefs.

My memories for instance are distorted by depression. I find it very hard to remember positive events, especially when depressed. I described it to the group as having to forcefully meditate on my past to pull up positive times. The depressed voices quelling the happy memories.

Hopelessness also etches itself through the channels in my mind. Whispering those bitter truths that I don’t want to declare out loud. I’d rather not admit the hopelessness, but the feeling lingers. It whispers how much better I’d be, maybe alone, or worse. Constantly feeling like life will never make a turn for the better wears on a soul.

Those inward emotional voices of low self esteem yell out my failures and insecurities. Trying to face that emotional mirror and see past those negative flaws is like breaking a car out of an inch of ice after an ice storm. Solid & fragile, it feels that if I crumble the foundation of depression, my own self will fade away.

I don’t know much past depression. I’ve been depressed since I was a boy, and diagnosed with bi-polar as an adult. Knowing my disease is life long, it almost feels like I shouldn’t try. My emotions want me to give in and stay in bed for my entire life. However, my intellect always try’s to shout past my emotions and pull me out of my slumps. Pushing me out the door into the world to try.

The constant fight between the two waring factions in my mind and heart pulls me like a game of tug of war. I’m proud I have the faculty to acknowledge this war. Hope, something I have little of, is promoted by this wisdom.

As I move forward with CBT, I hope to gain more insight. I acknowledge CBT is another tool in the arsenel. With medication, therapy, and CBT I hope to be able move through this current depressed episode. I’m looking forward to the next respite in-between these bi-polar stages.