Dealing with depressive feelings (pessimism, hopelessness etc.)

[Federico del pueblo]

Hi everyone,

Some of you might remember a post I made at end of July:

In this post I talked about how I didn't tolerate a LSD experience and fell into some pretty dark hole a few days after the trip.

Interestingly the trip was not nightmarish, there was just a rather negative moment when seemingly I brought up a bit too much of a specific trauma related emotion. That must have sort of blown apart my barriers a bit too much.

A few days after the experience I got triggered by one of my common triggers and then spiraled down into full blown panic.

I then had to deal with this severe anxiety or panic for almost a week.

In this time there really was no control over my emotions, the gates were simply too wide open and I had the most disturbing worst case scenario thoughts in my mind, which I could barely stop even though I did my best to not ruminate.

I suspect that these days must have sort of overburdened my emotional processing system in the brain.

The intensity of anxiety then gradually decreased and now I mostly have about the same levels of anxiety as before the experience.

Though I'm now dealing with depressive feelings stemming from a kind of pessimism and hopelessness regarding my entire life, especially my mental and overall health and thus my future perspectives.

Let me explain the constellation:

For over a decade I've been dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome and for a whole bunch of years I haven't been able to work because of it.

At the same time it seems obvious to me that this health condition was created by chronic stress and years of emotional problems stemming from earlier traumatic developments.

Now in this situation of joblessness and health issues of course my emotional issues initially got worse too, but I've been working on them for years and have actually managed to now feel much less affected by everything, like being less insecure about it and so.

And yet, since the severe post-LSD incident I'm now really struggling with existential fear about my chances of ever recovering from my emotional symptoms and overall health condition.

Also: It seems like my health limitations (fatigue, ability to exert myself) stop me from living a really fulfilling life and thus it's still harder to affect my emotions positively and overcome certain inner limitations. It seems like a difficult cycle.

I don't really ruminate myself into these states, it's rather like I wake up and feel negativity in the body. Or I just become aware during the day that there is this depressive feeling in my upper back and neck area. And then I know what it's related to and if I'm not careful I could exacerbate it with negative thoughts, but I manage to avoid that a lot of the time.

Basically the new inner reality I feel limited by goes something like this:

"It's too hard to overcome your trauma and emotional problems"

"Therfore you can't cure your nervous system and thus your health condition"

"So you won't have a fulfilling life again and will get old poor"

I know these are "just thoughts" but due to the dark emotional states these thoughts carry a strong emotional charge and can feel very real and definitive. Especially after waking up there is a tendency for these states and thoughts to arise.

Maybe some of you have experienced similar things and know different strategies to deal with these depressive feelings.

What do you think I should do exactly when the feeling is present and I have some time to work with it?

Yeah, I think that's it.

Please be positive, I'd be struggling to deal with negative input these days. Any uplifting advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!