One of the key purposes of Chez Palafox is to help and inspire people to overcome the things that most weigh them down. To that end, I wanted to do a series of things I have personally wrestled with and overcoming including suicidal tendencies, depression, PTSD (I’m healing), crippling anxiety, emotional eating, the binge/purge phenomenon and other things that hamper us from being our best selves. My hope is that we all continuously uplevel together and help ourselves and the world at large to be better and brighter.

It hurts your whole body to suffer from depression. Everything aches. Head to toe, night and day, there is frequently no escape, rest or reprieve. Everything is gray. Sometimes darker. Everything feels heavy and no one can wave a magic wand and make it better. Frequently we feel no one would care or even try. Many of us suffered through in silence or told that we should just cheer up or just be grateful. It’s a slap in the face, like telling a man with no legs to run. Many of us go through life functioning, even smiling, but the darkness closes in fast and continuously and there is no light at the end of a tunnel. There’s no tunnel. Just darkness covering the face of the earth.

I don’t have it anymore. Completely, thoroughly gone. And I don’t recall in my childhood ever a time when I didn’t have this feeling of dank heaviness – it was always there. I did many times want to end it all, but that’s a discussion for another day.

So how do we get out? I can’t speak for everyone but I can speak for me. I didn’t have a therapist, or a close friend, or anyone I could talk to. But I had God, and being the Master Physician He provided me a way out of hell. It wasn’t easy – it wasn’t a roses strewn path – more like a constant uphill battle I had to claw my way out of bearing scratches and bruises and what felt like flaming arrow wounds. But I eventually got over the mountain ridge and viewed the glorious vistas on the other side. For me, the answer resided in a very specific form of service.

Now I know what you’re thinking “I can’t be serving others – it’s a struggle to even get up and shower or do things for myself or make it through the day.” And I hear you. Hence the clawing up a steep slope. But if we understand depression and how it affects the mind, and learn about this particular brand of service you’ll see how they logically match and how it can literally rewire your brain for happiness.

Depression is essentially an emotion that focuses inward at all times. “My life is so terrible, no one cares about me, I’m not worth anything, me, me, me.” I’m not calling anyone selfish, I’m just calling the disease what it is. So we need to rewire our thought processes and for me, the answer came in writing notes of appreciation to others. Allow me to explain why this works.

For years I had a stack of stationary next to my bed and when life hit me hard I would look through the directory of people at church, write them a note about something I appreciated about them – a comment they made, an attitude they had, something like that – lick a stamp and send it on its way. And I will tell you plainly, it sucked. It was the hardest, most counterintuitive thing on the planet to do. I would collapse from exhaustion almost every time. And that is why it worked. If we want to rewire our mind and turn it 100% away from the direction it is naturally headed, we need to do the most counterintuitive thing possible. Writing notes of appreciation helped for a few reasons. One, it took the focus off of “Me, me, me.” It forced me to think of something outside myself. Secondly, it forces the mind to focus on something positive. You have to find something positive about someone in order to thank them for whatever it was they were doing or the example they were setting. This led to a habit of sitting in Sunday School taking notes of things people wore that I liked, comments made, attitudes exhibited. I’d store those notes for a time when hard waves of anguish hit and I’d take it to my stack of stationary and stamps and get to work. I remember countless times writing seven or eight notes until I broke down completely, sweating, shaking, entirely spent. But it worked. Thirdly, it takes you out of isolation and naturally brings people to you telling you things like “You are just the best person! I ‘m so touched that you cared!” And hearing that frequently breaks the spell of “I’m all alone and no one would miss me.”

I get that stationary and a stamp doesn’t work for everyone but the concept is the same regardless of the tool. Social media is a great framework and one I would utilize now if I needed to fight off the ravages of hell. It takes a quick comment “hey you did that so well!” or a DM “I just wanted you to know that I appreciate your positive attitude all the time.” Will it feel forced at first? Of course. Will everyone be appreciative? Nope. But you aren’t doing this for them first and foremost. You’re doing it for you.

I don’t get depression anymore. Not even a little. Not even when hard things happen. I’m not sad often – probably less than the average Joe – because my mind has been rewired completely. Happiness can be possible and it is a skill that can be learned.

One last word to those who, like me, grew up without knowing what happiness was. Those who were for all practical purposes born with depression. Change can be scary. I get it. Maybe we don’t want to be happy. Maybe that’s too frightening a change. Because yeah, depression is hell itself but it’s a hell we understand. Striving for happiness is as daunting as giving up the only life we have ever known for a completely foreign planet. Maybe we will lose our identity. Maybe we will lose our creative talents that are fueled by misery. I get it. But from one who has jumped off that cliff, taken that leap and landed on a new reality I gently assure you that it’s great out here. Come join me.