Changing the script

[Catsamaze]

The script says that if I feel what I’m feeling now and thinking what I’m thinking now then I must descend into the dark abyss of depression. If you’re an actor and you really want the part, you dutifully read the script and do what it tells you to do. At many points in my life I’ve been handed the same script and I’ve believed every word of it. This time, as I feel those familiar and foreboding feelings after doing well in my recovery from depression for quite some time, I’d like to try, for once, refusing to take that same old script and write a different one with a different ending...one where I have a setback but not a relapse. Where I realize how resilient I really am, even though the old script says I’m not. The old script is so comfortable because I’ve memorized it and practiced it for much of my life. Getting a new script is challenging and unfamiliar but I’d like to try it. The new script is not handed to me; I get to write it. Have any of you been able to dump your old habitual scripts and taken a different path....one where you feel those old feelings again but step AROUND the abyss without falling into it as if it is inevitable?

[Starrlight]

Yes I started falling into depression last night but I decided I would pull myself up and do extra work to stay out, and it’s working. Glad you are not rereading old scripts.

[Catsamaze ADAA Volunteer in reply to Starrlight]

Thank you Starrlight. Love that username!

[Starrlight in reply to Catsamaze]

Thanks! I like yours too. So we are 🍀 lucky. Not everyone can get out of the pit. For years I was in one. Only looked up at the sky wishing to love it and be free but everything was always tainted and I don’t know why.

[Myre]

Hi. Loving the analogy. These days, mine is a blank script. I am ready to let go of all of before, means I have to start over. There are loads of possibilities but quite a number of errors too.

[Hidden]

I love this analogy too. I would have loved to be creative enough to come up with it and even use it raising my daughters.

That said using this analogy, I rewrote my script about 9 years ago. It was an overhaul of a script written many many years before. It was never comfortable to be living via the old script, actually it was torture.

Getting to a fresh blank page allowing me to have new perspectives took a ton of work and very hard choices. Grateful for it, but I do still live and breathe a fair amount of anxiety daily, my abyss back to darkness rears it’s ugly head from time to time, but I’ve written a script that foresees a future me, I kinda wrote the ending first and when followed, dancing with depression isn’t part of it. 🌺💜

[Catsamaze ADAA Volunteer in reply to Hidden]

Thanks, Myre and Roxy Dawn. Sounds like you both have been able to change your respective scripts albeit in different ways. It's hard because we are so used to the old one that even though it is incredibly painful at times it is familiar and already written. Changing the script is hard work, but so worth it. I haven't yet been able to change mine but I'm working on it. I love the image of refusing to dance with depression. I'm doing that now but I'm going to excuse myself and find a new dance partner. A lyric I love from the Indigo Girls is "I will not be a pawn for the Prince of Darkness any longer." I love that.

[Hidden in reply to Catsamaze]

A new dance partner. Love it. 💜💜