up and down. but in the end it's only round and round.

Tuesday, 01/26/16, 2:21pm

Agh. This book. If you don't know what book I'm reading, read this then this. It is so in my head. I'm still not done. I think I've only made about 20 some pages progress since finishing up last night, but I have to read so slowly. There's a lot of re-reading sentences or paragraphs, then there's the required time to reflect. There's the time to get angry and defensive about my life.

I have remembered why I have a hard time getting into "self-help" books. The good ones really make you take a hard look at every aspect of your life and realize you could be doing a lot better. But then you hit times where you feel like you're doing all the right things in some aspects of your life and you float on top of a cloud for awhile. I have loved this book at times. I have hated this book at times. Mostly it's love though.

The depression adds a whole new spin to reading "self-help" books. For me, I tend to get feelings of "omygosh, my depression is all my fault" or most recently "my depression is caused by this stupid self-destructive behavior". When I view the depression as "my fault", it becomes not a disease. It becomes I'm just not strong enough. I'm a failure. Etc, etc. If you've been reading my blog up till now, you can probably recognize my typical self-talk. Sometimes reading a passage of a "self-help" book can cause a bout of depression.

Daring Greatly has been a little bit of an emotional roller-coaster but not really, because it's been more up than down. Hopefully it's one that ends higher than it started, although I do suspect it will based on what I've already learned.

Again, more to come.