i’ve been well. I’ve been well for a long time now and I’m getting used to it. I’ve been working longer hours lately and I find that my mood is low at the end of a punishing week. I feel drained and i want to withdraw from the world. But this is not depression. It’s simply fatigue and everybody suffers from it. The cure is easy; rest and recharge the batteries. And once I’ve rested, I begin to feel more alive. Like I say, I’ve been well.
The challenge then is to maintain that sense of well-being. I’ve listed previously the various methods I use to stabilise my mental health. I don’t want to bore you with them again but I do want to mention something that I realised recently. To hold on to this feeling of wellness I must develop a sense of self-compassion.
As a Buddhist, I am encouraged to meditate every day. I don’t achieve anywhere near this but I do my best. One of the practices is called the Metta Bhavana which means “The development of loving kindness”. It’s a really lovely idea and during the meditation there are five stages. In the first stage you generate loving kindness for yourself, then for a good friend in stage two, a person neutral to you in stage three and for stage four you must think kindly of a difficult person. In the fifth stage you develop kindness for all four individuals equally and expand to include all people you care about and ultimately all living beings.
I have been meditating in this way for nearly two years and I have noticed an interesting benefit only recently. When I began, I found it very difficult to practice stage one and generate loving kindness towards myself. Part of the meditation involves repeating the following phrases to yourself: may I be well, may I be happy, may I be free from suffering, may I grow and develop. I felt very uncomfortable reciting this to myself. What right did I have to be happy? Why should I be well and free of suffering? I didn’t feel worthy. In essence, I didn’t really like myself.
And this lack of self-esteem infected other areas of my life. I didn’t feel worthy of my wife. I never felt good enough for her. I thought of myself as a burden and I carry a great weight of guilt over the many difficulties I have visited upon her and my family.
But in recent months this has changed. The first stage of the Metta Bhavana sits more easily on my shoulders now. I can meditate in comfort. I have learned self-compassion and I am beginning to value myself. There is a small flame of self-love burning within and I am coaxing it to grow all the time.
Not so long ago I was at a dinner dance with my wife. She looked truly beautiful and we had a great night. We even got the chance to dance together and that was a bonus. I met many of her friends and enjoyed their company. I am very fond of a few of them and it was lovely to see them. When I woke the next, as I reflected on the evening, it dawned on me that not only am I fond of them but they are fond of me too. They like me too. It was quite a revelation.
So if you are reading this and you suffer from mental illness, go easy on yourself. You are worthy of more than you believe. You are not a burden. You are loved by others and you deserve to love yourself. It is very hard to maintain stability without self-compassion. Take it from someone who has only learned the lesson recently.
I’ve always loved my wife. Only now do I know that I deserve her and she deserves me. We are a unit and we couldn’t have come to this point in life without each other. Undoubtedly, there are times when she carries me but sometimes, just sometimes, I carry her too.