How true. The more we desire to  isolate and hibernate (detaching from others) we realize that something might be  slightly awry. Well. maybe we don’t realize it.  Isn’t  it interesting about our experience of melancholia (depression) that while we are right in the middle of it, something queer begins to dawn on our awareness. For me, this is what happened to me and possibly the same  has happened to you. It felt like  my feet were immersed  in a sea of molasses or that I was walking alone in a thick fog.  And the more I walked along the harder it became to walk along.  My feet were gradually feeling like hundred pound weights with each step slowing  me down to a snails crawl.

Now it’s winter time in our northern hemisphere, which makes it easier for me to hibernate and isolate myself from anything happening outside the four walls of  my life. I am aware that I want to try and figure out how I got into this messy fog as well as asking myself, “Do I really want to leave this cocoon?” Am I able to leave? I feel paralyzed.

I admit my life hasn’t been easy but neither has it been  for  those like me who see isolation and  hibernation  as a way to defend  ourselves from all the feelings of loneliness and personal worthlessness that keep me imprisoned.

I can see it coming. I know the red flags, the signal warnings, telling me about the road that may lie ahead. For those of us who want to  reenter the world of the “living” and walk out into the light, leaving behind the darkness of our very comfortable cocoon, we feel defeated before we take the first step. We think “defeat.”  The battle of thoughts challenge each other in the narrow confines of our mind telling us “I want to stay where I am” or ” I have to move or I will die.”

Maybe we have been at this place many times  before when we just  wanted to leave everything and everybody behind  and shout “leave me alone!”

We have a choice. We can choose life or to just merely exist in  the cave of one’s  own despairing thoughts. So, if you are a bear–stay where you are, please. But if you are not a bear, but a human being, please move your body, make a plan for the days ahead, do something pleasurable everyday. Place it (a pleasurable activity) on a calendar and make sure that you do what you choose to do. Put the plan on the calendar the day before,  and never say, “I’ll do it when I feel better.” That day never comes. You and I know that.

Do it now. Keep it simple. Just do it!!!

If you have a Depressed Anonymous meeting in your community, find out where it is located, the time it happens and then make sure you show up.

And finally, put  a lock on your cave door and never go back!

Hugh