Welcome friend, :smt006
My readings are not mainly focused upon predicting what your most likely future over the next six months or so is, although I do understand that you would be comforted to have some clues what that future might look like.
I am much more interested and involved in helping other valued members and friends such as your very good self to learn to better understand what makes them tick, and by so doing help them to create a better and brighter future for themselves, as well as for their loved ones.
Your only true point of personal power to influence your future for the better lies in the present moment, primarily through what series of conscious decisions that you make now.
The first major decision on your list which needs to be made ASAP, if you are going to offer yourself the maximum chance of making some real forward progress towards surviving this traumatic experience is decide here and now to stop beating up on yourself for either having given up at some time in the past (if you really had given up you would not be here now to ask for my help through a reading), or for having such common human failings as you have just described.
I have myself suffered the self confidence and soul destroying effects of chronic anxiety and depression for most of my nearly 58 years on this Earth, and have gone through at least one nervous breakdown. I have also been to many of the same dark places which you have visited, and for a time did consider ending it all although I never got to the point of actually following through with my plans to do so.
Now I could write pages about why I feel that you are being incredibly unfair on yourself for feeling you are not doing the best you are able to with whatever resources you have already been given, but I feel that I might unintentionally offend you and that I would only be speaking to your logical mind.
But when we are depressed it is the emotional side of our minds which are almost always in control, and therefore me attempting to disagree or reason with the logical side of your mind will most likely be worse thn useless.
So instead of asking my inner guidance to predict your future, as this is to a large extent in your own hands to create, I asked it to give me the best possible ways to comfort and assure the emotional side of your mind that you are going in the right direction for you with regards to your recovery from this long dark night of your soul, and you eventually having the deep and long lasting type of love you I feel so richly deserve to have.
But at the same time I did not wish to offend or put your logical mind on the defensive by unknowingly suggesting that this has been easy for you, or that there are no further challenges ahead still waiting for you in the way of escaping this valley of darkness.
And what my inner guidance appears to be saying to you through his reading is to up to a certain point, feeling depressed is a perfectly logical and useful response during periods of extreme stress. Depression has been getting some bad press lately as if it is always abnormal or pathological for human beings to feel this way, when the reality is that it is a vital but often overused tool in every individual's survival toolbox.
It is believed that it goes right back to the days when humans lived in caves, and their biggest worries revolved around being either eaten alive by the next passing predator, or not having enough food to feed themselves and their families. As well as keeping themselves sheltered and protected from the weather through the long harsh winters.
Because both parents were the only thing between all these dangers and their children to protect and preserve the next generation, it as often to their advantage to put everyone's minds into a state similar to hibernation seen in other animals. So in these more modern times, depression is seen almost as the equivalent of a state of mental hibernation here thinking and worrying too much would only be counter-productive and also indirectly put everyone in greater danger.
So what your therapist or doctor is trying to do is not to change you into some type of cold, purely logical machine which does not have feelings or ever have any negative doubts or dark thoughts as all human beings do at some time, if only they are willing to admit it. They would be attempting by this to make you into something which is definitely not human.
While up to a certain point some slowing down of our minds and bodies can have the potential to maximise our chances of survival, when the levels of stress go well beyond our abilities to cope, then that is when depression can quickly become too deep seated and chronic for it to be thought of as a positive survival tool.
Psychologists clearly discern between positive, healthy stress or
EUSTRESS, as some degree of stress in life makes us perform at increasingly higher levels to improve ourselves, and the destructive, negative form which is appropriately called
DISTRESS.
During the period of time commonly thought to be covered by the type of reading given here which is approximately the next six months, if I can predict anything with a reasonable and useful level of certainty based upon this one reading, I would expect that you will be given more than one opportunity to get the balance better and more manageable between what relative levels of eustress and distress you are currently under at the time.
It is not so much the event itself which determines what will eventually become either positive or negative sources of stress, but it is more associated with how we think or feel about that event. This is why two people can have the identical same event happening to them, but their responses may be completely the opposite of one another.
If you see n event as being further evidence that you have failed or that you are powerless to change your future for the better, this must seriously damage you confidence in and respect for yourself. And it must make you feel more like no longer trying and giving up prematurely.
But on the other hand if you see these challenges as valuable opportunities to grow and develop as both a human and spiritual being and to show everyone as well as equally importantly yourself that you have everything to make the grade, you eustress levels will go way up, and your distress levels will fall down like a rock. And your resulting levels of self confidence and self respect will be correspondingly much higher.
This must make you feel much more like keeping trying longer, and not giving up prematurely when you feel that it is important not to. When someone is still in the process of successfully recovering from a severe and/or chronic case of depression,
EVERY SINGLE EVENT CAN BECOME IMPORTANT TO THEM IN THE WAY OF IMPROVING THE BALANCE BETWEEN THEIR LEVELS OF EUSTRESS AND DISTRESS AS A RESULT OF THAT EVENT.
Progress in this direction which might seem trivial and unimportant to someone else who has never been badly depressed can often take on great positive and above all encouraging and soul rejuvenating personal significance to people such as ourselves, who must often unwillingly but also courageously share the common burden of depression?
Love, Light and Healing,
eye_of_tiger (male)