Asking for help is not a weakness

I've helped several friends through some tough times and I've told even more that when things are rough, you need to talk about it and it's ok to see a therapist. It is NOT a sign of weakness to reach out.    Yet when I started to hit rock bottom I resisted asking for help. I didn't want to open up to friends and I didn't want to seek out a therapist.  I felt it was a sign of weakness and while I know I'm not always a strong person I like to pretend I'm strong.  If I admitted to how bad the depression was it meant I was weak.  If I had to ask for help instead of working through things on my own, it meant I was weak.

Taking our own advice is the hardest thing to do sometimes.

I suppose I'm starting to use this blog as a big of self therapy.  I don't run the risk of running in to any of you in my day-to-day activities, I don't think anybody I know in my home town actually reads this.  For some reason it feels safe.

I admit to having a lot of problems, a lot of things that I've never worked through that have been with me since my teenage years.  Normally this is not an issue as when I feel myself starting to get depressed and the old insecurities and crap start to creep up I can work through it before things are bad.    I suppose all the extra hormones kept me from being able to do that this time.  I started to get bad in August and it just got worse and worse until I was having a major break down at least once a week.  I tried to hide it, I don't think most knew what was going on or if they did notice a change they didn't realize it was as bad as it was.   If I happened to mention being depressed people would comment that it was the hormones and it was common to be upset over nothing.

I wasn't upset over nothing.  Everything that was depressing me were things that bother me a lot. This time I just couldn't fight it.

I tried to take my own advice and I reached out to somebody that I thought I had a connection with and was close to.  I misjudged that one big time.  Yet like an idiot a little over a month later this person seemed like they were reaching out to me and I opened up again, thinking the first time was a fluke.  Bad move.  It's really hard for me to open up to people so for me to open up to somebody and to be ignored and treated the way I was, not good.  At least I can use this as a learning experience.

Now, you might be wondering where Husband was during all this. I have to say he was great. There were nights I woke up him at night because of the crying and he would be there for me.  There were days he would get home from work and see how bad I was and lay down with me.  The problem was he didn't know what was going on, I wasn't talking. If I did talk I would skirt around the major issues and mention some things but not the major things. I wasn't ready to admit my problems.

It took Husband to tell me several times that I needed to call my OB and tell them what was going on and get on medication for me to make one of the hardest decisions in my life. I called a therapist and made an appointment.  See, you might not see that as being such a hard decision.  For me, I felt like I was being weak.  I wasn't strong. I had to admit that I wasn't strong.  I didn't like how that felt.

It took a lot for me to convince myself that asking for help WAS the strong thing to do, not the weak.  I wasn't showing weakness by admitting that I couldn't handle these things myself. I showed strength in admitting I needed help and taking the necessary steps to get that help.   As you can see, I am talking about this. This is a huge step for me, something I'm working on.  I  have come to realize recently that talking my own advice and talking about it really is the best medicine.  I found help in some very unlikely places, something I'll be touching on in another post.   If nothing else..I think I wanted to talk about this because this might reach somebody who is in a similar situation I was.  Maybe it'll  help somebody else in a time of need. If so, then it was worth it for me to open up with this post.