Halloween is an interesting holiday that has of course kids who love it for the sweets and adults who revel in being someone else for a day. For me though Halloween is not a time I find happiness in. My ex-wife loved it and for a time I enjoyed it. Following the divorce though I realized how little I actually felt towards the celebration.<\/p>\n
I don’t begrudge children their fun, far from it. I think the idea of a fright but feeling safe is an important thing for kids to experience. For me it is the idea of masks that I have an uncomfortable relationship with. Anyone battling depression has probably in some small way felt a bit like going out into the world and being around others we are always wearing a mask. We pretend to be OK, the trick we give everyone is convincing them we aren’t hurting on the inside. May sound a bit dramatic to frame it that way but the reality is I wear a mask every day. I’ve learned to be slightly more open with my depression, I don’t pretend to be happy when asked and I’m probably painfully blunt when I am feeling low. My coping mechanisms may not fit everyone’s norm but I mix my activities (target shooting, baking) with more conventional treatments (CBT, fitness, diet). I continue to fight self-isolation and I try to find my release valves where I can.<\/p>\n
It’s definitely easy to fall into negative habits in holidays like this. Isolation, sweets everywhere are a quick escape. While I don’t have as much of a sweet tooth, I do prefer to shy away from crowds and I loathe holiday traffic. Still though I try to reach out to my friends abroad and email my well wishes. I still have friends who enjoy cosplay and of course Halloween is for them a time to show their skills, but I can’t smile with them anymore. I see people in costume and while I may see craftsmanship or creativity, there’s no joy in it for me as a spectator. So here I sit pondering what I will do, what mask do I put on as I try to navigate around crowds of people trying to be whatever their imagination desires? If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety or any form of mental illness, I know it’s hard to know just how to act when for others it’s a time of celebration. Find your own path with it. For me, I may hit the range and wrap my day with a good book or maybe even a simple Halloween movie like\u00a0\u00a0It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Halloween is an interesting holiday that has of course kids who love it for the sweets and adults who revel in being someone else for a day. For me though Halloween is not a time I find happiness in. My ex-wife loved it and for a time I enjoyed it. Following the divorce though I … Continue reading “Halloween and Dealing With My Depression”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,2],"tags":[4,31,40],"class_list":["post-790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-slice","category-depression","tag-depression","tag-halloween","tag-holidays"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/jack-o-lanterns-3735386_640.jpg?fit=640%2C426","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PG4O-cK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vraxx.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}