How I work through bouts of depression

I guess we're all going through some shit at the moment.  

With the crazy world, everything that is going on like gas prices, inflation, the political divide in the USA.  Donald Trump and his hold on the Republican Party.  Our current president's incompetence at getting control of the country (no I'm not a Republican or a Democrat).  The price of everything is going up, my bills are higher.  There was an incident at my daughter's school that I had to deal with.  It was no big deal and everything is okay, but still. 

Also, there is a lot of anxiety around recent current events such as mass shootings, the war in Ukraine among other things.  It's sad.  The world is run by idiots.  And idiots vote for idiots who tell them what they want to hear.  That's why idiots win.

So it all started to get to me this week.  By Friday night, I found myself battling a bout of depression.  I get that way at times.  My problem is that I get overwhelmed, and when I feel that way the problems tend to run together and appear bigger than they really are.  The house gets messy, my daughter refuses to cooperate, money is getting tight, my ex is a nut job and I am now a single parent doing it all by myself.  The weather has also been dingy which probably played into it a bit.   

Then I find myself spending too much time on social media or looking at all the negative headlines.  That just pisses me off.  I had to stop.  So I did.  I stopped, prayed my rosery, then went to bed.

On Saturday morning, I woke up thinking about all of this shit again.  Fortunately, I understand that this is all just a state of mind.  Because issues tend to run together in our minds we need to stop and break it all down.  So, I opened up my notebook to a blank page, and created a mind map of everything that was going on in my head at that moment.  

A mind map is a way to organize your thoughts.  People use mind maps for many different reasons.  I use them for creative purposes mostly, but they are also extremely useful for working out problems.  I wrote "Why am I depressed?" in the center bubble, set a 15-minute timer and started listing everything that was bothering me and why.  I went for the full 15 minutes.  

By working it out this way, I was able to simply release a lot of that negative energy.  I was able to clarify what it was that was really bothering me and focus on solutions.  It turns out there are really just two major issues in my life at the moment.  Everything else is minor day to day bullshit.  Those still need to be worked out but now I'm doing it with a lot more mental clarity.  Everything else just bumped up against them, and that can become mentally irritating.  So, I created two more mind maps around each of those major issues and now I have a game plan and I feel a lot better.

What this does for me is it brings order out of the mental chaos.  Chaos leads to depression.  Order leads to clarity and focus.  I begin to see that my problems aren't as big as I originally thought they were.  It helps me to separate the issues that appear to be running together.

It works for me.  It is now Sunday and I feel pretty good.