Even My Depression Tells Me I Should Be Paying Attention -

Who knew staying focused would be so difficult.

It is Sunday morning, shortly after 8 AM. I just spent close to 45 minutes scrolling through the internet on my phone. Up before 8AM, I had planned to do some writing before everyone else got up for the day.

That didn’t work out the way I thought it would.

And I seem to get suckered into the same types of scrolls. I even know that the picture they show, only partially, is not what I am going to see even if I scroll for 15 minutes or more. Maybe it will appear at some point, but usually I finally understand that I am just scrolling to scroll, and I stop.

This scrolling activity has been growing in recent months.

To an outsider, it would seem like I am not paying attention. And yet, I am very aware of the amount of time I am wasting. Now scrolling through Facebook, which I do once or twice a week, has it’s presumed payoff. I get to like people’s posts. This confirms that I have seen them, and I am still part of their world. I am using this logic to justify spending 20 minutes looking at the Facebook posts of my friends.

Feeling I need to justify my actions is a perfect way to remember that I can make a different choice.

I can choose to stay focused, to work on my plan. I am not letting this happen, or at least not letting it happen as often as I think it should. Maybe my thinking is off. Should I be worried that I am taking an hour break on a Sunday morning from working on myself?

Or should I accept that there will be times that I just need to “VEG” out and do something that has no goal, no higher purpose.

It could be that I have forgotten how to relax, to just enjoy the moment. And I am not comfortable pinning that on my depression. In fact, I am still working on the concept of which comes first, my depression or unhelpful thinking. If I start with unhelpful thinking, I can see how each of these ten ideas could lead to depression.

But if I start with depression, how do I get to the 10 unhelpful thinking styles?

I don’t want to blame someone or something for what is clearly my fault. But maybe my choices over the years have been influenced by my depression. On many days, I hope that is the case. If not, then I have opened the door to a lifetime of bad choices. And I am not saying that everything I have done is depression’s fault.

Yet I feel as if I am saying that it is not my fault, and I cannot accept that.

In the end, it is I who takes the actions, not my depression. I make the choice; I decide to do or not to do something. And I, in the end, have lived with the consequences. How can I say that my life would have been different if only….

As soon as I start to say if only…, I know that I am in trouble.

But that is what my depression is counting on. One of its signature moves is to get me second guessing anything, my life, my decisions, even what I am having for breakfast. Or how I spend the first hour of my Sunday morning. Is depression responsible for my taking an hour and doing something mindless?

Am I saying that I must be focused every second of every day?

That’s what I hear myself saying. And yet, in the same breath, I am saying that it doesn’t happen that often. So, I probably should be thankful that I am able to relax and do something mindless on a morning where nothing else pressing is going on.

Of course, now I am seeing that I am justifying my actions again.

What a silly circle. I do something, so I invent a reason why. I have a reason why, so I must do something to justify having the reason. Heck, I don’t even understand what I am trying to say. But in the end, I will continue to have the same question.

How many of my decisions is depression responsible for, and how much is on me?

There may not even be an answer to this question. And if there is, I may not want to hear it. In my head, I am assuming that it is all my fault, that depression was just the catalyst, and I was the flame that set things in motion.

How could my life not be my fault?

And how can I live with what has happened? How can I own my life and be satisfied with it? There are many positives about my life. And I have had experiences that no one else has had. Plus, I can describe those experiences to others in a way that they understand. Or at least that is what I am telling myself.

Because I have been and always will be a “glass half full” kind of guy.

And is what I am writing about the reason why I wanted to write this morning? Am I focused, am I paying attention? This is what I am asking myself. I am not seeing the value in spending time doing anything that is not goal oriented. How can I spend time on anything that won’t have a big ROI?

Why am I afraid to let my guard down?

That seems to be what I am asking myself? How can I learn about others if I am always waiting for them to stop talking so I can get my next idea verbalized? There was a day, several years ago, where I actually tested out the idea of just listening.

And I was impressed at how much I learned in such a brief time.

And I got the feeling that the person I was talking to left feeling that I was a good listener. Or that I was an OK person who understood what they were saying. In the end, the point was it was not about me. And that is what I have been saying for the past 14 years in my coaching, resume business.

“It’s not about you!”

I find that I can say this to others so they will hear it. Just don’t let me be responsible for my own actions regarding responsibility. I can make it about me very easily. People then say that this makes me controlling, that I search for ways to control situations.

I can do this controlling thing to justify my actions.

So, there is still a guilt component in this statement. I need to work on this and understand why I feel guilty about my life and the choices that I have made. I am not asking for forgiveness, except possibly from myself. For as Rue Paul says:

Even My Depression Tells Me I Should Be Paying Attention