It has become cliche to say: “never give up.” These cliches stick around for a reason. There is obviously a lot of knowledge and simplicity involved in a cliche. When we are dealing with emotional struggles, internal demons, chronic pain, OCD, grief, etc., a simple and practical reminder can be a real blessing.
If we keep leaning into people and activities that we care about, regardless of what negative things are occupying our brain, we are doing our best to create a life we want. We will fall. Sometimes we will just bruise our patella, and other times the fall could hurt even worse. Broken bones, broken relationships, or maybe broken hearts. We want to keep moving forward, as much as we can, no matter what. Sometimes it will hurt like hell, there is no doubt about that. But if we keep moving forward, going after a life we value, when we fall, we fall in a direction we care about. It’s better to try to enjoy our lives than to isolate from what and who we care about. This sounds incredibly obvious, but as we know with depression and anxiety, this is such an easy trap to fall into. Staying home or avoidance of a situation may feel better in the short term, however we know what often comes after we do this. Guilt, shame, regret, and all of their other pain in the neck relatives. Just like with OCD, we let the fear or “off” feeling be there and respond differently by not doing the rituals and compulsions. If we face a situation in grief, or if we finally start going back to exercising, the uncomfortable part will be present, but we can see it lessen more and more if we keep pushing ahead and not avoiding. We build on this momentum and we start to fall and snowball in a direction we care about, forward.
Let’s do our best not to let the text message that was not returned ruin our day. Enjoy our day as much as possible, regardless of what we have going on, this is our best option. Let’s try to enjoy the moment regardless of how many likes we get on some social media platform. We often see with OCD, impulsive behaviors, trying to be certain, etc., it’s never enough, ever. We need to find our area of the gray where we can move forward, and live, in spite of all our demons. Things are rarely black and white. Most of life is uncertain and in the gray. I promise, this is really good news. Let’s keep falling forward and leaning on each other in the process. Talk with you soon.
Jeremy Rudd
“I had better keep…… rolling on.” Israel Nash- “Rolling On”