We all fall into the darkness.

When I can attribute a “normal” cause to my feelings (i.e. my head is spinning because I got too drunk), then I am fine with pain or abnormalities because I either know how to fix it or that it will just go away eventually. Could you imagine if your head was spinning like that and you had no idea why it was happening? It would be scary.

When I cannot attribute a “normal” cause to my feelings (i.e. being claustrophobic on a 15 hour airplane ride or my head is spinning without any tangible cause), then I tend to freak out over this uncontrollable panic/pain/feeling that I don’t know how to fix or when/if it will ever go away.

Anxiety/Depression/Deep Sadness/An Un-Reflected & Tangled Mind are the most common examples of when human beings cannot attribute a “normal” cause to our out of line feelings. It is scary…especially the first time it happens to us. “What the hell? I have never felt this panic or this sadness before and I can’t foresee it ever going away.”

This is life. There are some things we can know and influence and there are others that we can never know and will never have control over. Because society consistently tells us that we can control everything in our world as a human, this concept of “no control” can just rock our worlds when it hits our own experience.

After years…10 years and counting…of knowing what this is like and continuing to get better at accepting and handling this out of control world/mind we all live in, I have a pretty general, yet effective outline that helps me while passing through the darkness.

What I have come to find is that all of those “abnormal” causes of my strong and hefty feelings/thoughts have never amounted to my death or anything seriously life altering in a negative sense. All of those feelings have just been temporary.

Knowing this, if I just continue on doing what needs to be done in this moment (i.e. I am hungry and it is time to eat…no matter how I feel, I need to eat), then that feeling will eventually just go away and never take hold of my reality in a significant way. Most of the time it is harder to get out of the darkness if we continue to let it effect our outside world…letting it remind us through visual cues.

When I do carrying on with my day to day life, I cannot ignore it though. No matter how hard it is to eat or to not over-eat, I still need to do what is right for me in this moment while also facing this treacherous pain. l will carry on and learn and grow a bit while I face the beast that forces me to face it.

Again, even though it forces me to pay attention to it and even though it is not beneficial to ignore it (i.e. mourning is important to spend time doing), I need to take extra time, care, energy and effort to take responsibility for my needs. I will still need to go to work the next day. I will still need to eat/drink/stay healthy for future Kevin. I will still need to carry out my plan of creating a happy life for my present and future Kevin.

Why do I keep carrying forward when I see the world in such a negative light though? Can’t I just give up and let my doubt win?

No way. Because I know that this is just the darkness. Because I know that this beast is not real. Because I know that most of the dooming feelings are coming from irrational feelings and thoughts and that is what makes the pain huge and beastly, but what also makes the pain nonsense and not true whatsoever. Because I know that this is just a fact of life sometimes and that the feeling is temporary. Because I know that there is still love, warmth, meaning and growth out there beyond this negative spiral.