This Mantra May Sound Depressing, But It Really Helps

I woke up on Tuesday last week, got undressed to take a shower, and was horrified to see huge, red, raised welts all over my thighs, the size of miniature roadkill hamsters.

Seriously, my legs looked like topographical maps of Middle Earth.

If I had not been recently diagnosed with eczema, I probably would have had a cardiac arrest.

As it was, I had a mild panic attack, because my eczema up until that point had been limited to my face and neck, so to have it spontaneously — BAM! — erupt ALL OVER my thighs was shocking, to say the least.

“Will I be miniature-roadkill-hamster-leg-woman forever?” wondered my brain.

. . .

Wednesday night, I ate too much.

I don’t know about you, but I hate that feeling.

My husband loves feeling “packed,” but boy, not me.

Not only do I feel physically uncomfortable when I’m overfull, but it triggers a whole cascade of anxious emotions from my years of body dysmorphia and bulima.

I fear that I’m going to slip back into old behavior patters, spiral out of control forever, that my weight will blow up, that I’ll become a disgusting human being, that nobody will love me…

My mind spins out on this death spiral of anxiety that does nothing to help me!

“Will I live in this miserable state forever?” wondered my brain on Wednesday night.

. . .

Monday I acknowledged that I was feeling a bit depressed.

Things haven’t been progressing in my work life as quickly as I’d like, and that’s been making me feel like a failure and a fraud.

Even though the rational part of my brain knows I’m not a failure or a fraud, the feelings are still there.

I’ve been feeling stagnant, without a clear project to keep me grounded, focused, and jazzed up.

“Will I always feel this purposeless?” wondered my brain.

. . .

These three experiences happened in quick succession, and I dealt with all three of them in the same way — by remembering something that Ann, a participant in one of my Great ClutterBust sessions years ago said:

“Nothing is permanent, not even our bodies.”

Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

Now, you could take this as a depressing notion. We’re all going to die someday, so let’s all be sad and depressed.

Or you could let yourself be liberated by this same concept!

Because feelings are transitory.

Yes, that means whatever wonderful, blissful, ecstatic feeling you have, I’m sorry to say, is not going to last.

But it also means that whatever lousy, ugly, painful feeling you have is also not going to last.

Feelings are transitory.

Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

And our bodies are transitory.

We heal. We grow. We change.

Case in point: thankfully, precisely because I had been recently diagnosed with eczema, I had a tube of prescription ointment handy.

I hate using the stuff — it’s sticky and greasy — but hey, it works. And by Tuesday night, most of the roadkill hamsters were thinned down to paper thickness or nothing — just red marks.

In two days, all that was left of those topographical maps were a few pale pink blotches that nobody would have noticed if they didn’t know about them in the first place.

Case in point: the too-full, ate-too-much feeling?

As per usual, it took me a few days of eating too much to work through the pattern and get back to normal eating.

A few days of reminding myself, “Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.”

Case in point: the sense of stagnation and purposelessness?

A client call gave me sense of direction and a project to work on that jazzed me right up! Reminding me, yet again, that during any kind of drought, you simply never know when the next rain shower might come.

(I live in California, a drought state. It’s easy for us to forget that the rains will ever come!)

Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

As with any mantra, only use this one in times when it will lift you up — never when it will make you feel worse! But if you find it helpful, as I do, apply liberally and often!

And let me know how it goes.