My struggle with depression, anxiety etc., and glimpses from my long journey of recovery....

Hello Everybody. I became member of the STEEMIT community yesterday.
Goes w/o saying that I am very happy and honored to be here.
God be my witness, I have a lot to discuss and put out there for you
all to read and comment on.

    Today I read some of the self-help type blog postings in the 

steemit system.
My discussions from here on will be on similar kind of concepts,
but I think I will gave out my contents/discussions of self help
topics in a very a different flavor. The very few ( and I will admit very few )
blog posts I read about self help concepts in the steemit system
sounded very much like the super old cliches that I have encountered
for the last 20 or so years. I read comments similar to "pull yourself up
by your bootstraps", or something like we should laugh at our struggles
and problems. I am not going to mention exactly in which blog posts
these ideas were put forward, but if nothing else, I do not agree with
these kinds approaches to dealing with life's struggles.
If something traumatic happens to me, if a dear friend suddenly dies
or is in a horrible car accident, then how will laughing at this event
will help me deal with this situation.

    Many years back when I was in 5th grade, I would be doing

simple math problems. These math problems were never easy for
me to do, specially the word problems. Ten years later when I was
long done with high school, 5th grade math problems looked
incredibly simpler. So yes I might laugh at the math problems
of 5th grade when I am done with high school, but I had to wait
more then 10 years to get to that level. For me that is a little too
long to wait to get to that level confidence with 5th grade math
problems. However when I was struggling with the 5th grade math
problems, there were few students in my 5th grade class who had
no problem with those same math problems. It was like they were
sleeping through those lectures and could do all the home works
and exams like it was boring. Why I was not like them, why I did not
have the same level of brain power...? why at 5th grade and later on
I had to do all the struggle with math and tech subjects and very few
other students in the class did not, very few students though. What
made those students so exceptional ? Only recently I am beginning
to see why. At least I think I am, and I can today write this blog post
with confidence and honesty is because recently, for last 14 months
I have felt a lot of healing, lot of inner healing. When inner healing happens,
trust me you will know that it is real. It's like some weight has been
lifted off you. It's a wonderful feeling of relief.

    People who study self help ideas or try to create techniques

which will get us out of our depression etc rut are on the right track,
no doubt about that. I will not criticize them or their effort. But I
believe that the allure for a quick fix is always there. The placebo
effect will mislead us again and again, and we will feel and think
that we have found the so called final "RIGHT" solution. Actually
we are just ending up with the "suntan effect". Now what is this "suntan effect"...?
When we get suntan by going to the beach or in whatever other way,
this suntan will last only so long. If we are engaged in ways to make
our life better, then the suntan effect is like getting a "high", a very
short term clarity. But this "high" is very temporary, will last only maybe
a week or so. In our effort to heal ourselves, We can read self help books,
we can watch videos, DVDs etc, or listen to audio MP3 files, and feel that
very temporary "high". But eventually that "high" disappears. We can
go to presentations/seminars about life improvements, but again,
that "suntan effect" will disappear within a week. This has been my
experience repeatedly. Maybe my situation was worse then the
regular Joe or Jane. My levels of depression, anxiety and
procrastination was definitely more deeper then the many people
I have met, but then I have met quite a few people who had similar
symptoms as me at a similar level for sure and sometimes even at a
deeper level then me. Now you might ask how do I know that
these people I met had it worse then me, is there any way to measure
or "quantise" the suffering.....? Well all I can say is that I knew
for sure that they were suffering just like me, because that was
the reason I met them in the first place. Then when I found out
more about their suffering, I told myself " and I thought that I had it bad..." .

    We know that the self help industry keeps on getting 

bigger and bigger. The very fact that the self help industry is getting
bigger and bigger point to the other fact that human suffering
is also getting bigger, not by any means getting smaller. To me
this means that maybe the traditional methodologies offered
by the self help industry might not be hitting the target at all,
but that is just my opinion. I get to form that opinion because
I have gone through some of those methodologies and the
suntan effect coming from those efforts would wear off in days.
I am not a rich person, so I could not afford this "merry" go round
anymore.

    Again I will point out that I am not the person that 

developed or invented any solution or cure that will get us out
of the doldrums, the depression, procrastination or any other
kinds of self defeating behavior/response that we keep on going
in circles in. But I think I did stumble onto a concept, a
methodology by chance in an Youtube video that has began
to change my life, for the very first time in my life. After that
YouTube discovery I immediately started doing lots of research
online and in libraries on that topic. As I did more and more
research, this approach became clearer to me, and I started
to apply it on me. As time went by, the very very dark clouds
over my head began to clear just a tiny bit at a time.

    It is like I was absolutely lost, I was lost forever, and 

eternally wandering inside this thick heavy dense forest,
and the sky was completely dark and shut out. All I could
see was darkness and nothing else. All I could feel was tremendous
tension, suffering, failure at every step of life. Every body was
snickering at me and jeered at me. All I could do in response
was to become very shameful, very tense, stutter and have
this huge swelling of shame and pain in my chest. ( These
symptoms are much less now, otherwise I would not dare
to blog about it) . Then, after an eternity spent in this jungle
of nightmares day and night, I stumbled onto something.
Then ever so slowly the thick forest began to clear, and very
thin beams of light began to hit my face, my head, ever so rarely.
The point of this rather melodramatic metaphor is that the
journey to recovery is a very long one, and frankly it is a journey
that never ends. That is because we as human beings are
always hungry for more of a "good" thing. This journey of
recovery is not any particular religion, it is a very clinical
approach/ treatment methodology, albeit very new in the
western world, to deal with hopelessness, helplessness and
being condemned to an eternity in living hell.

Well I have to go now, sorry if I am leaving you (anybody) 

in a Cliffhanger, I am reminded of a Stallone movie from back in the day.
will post the second installment hopefully tomorrow.

Thanks,

    Nadim