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Reaching out to others can be a wonderful way to boost your own mood. There’s something about accepting that you are sitting on the edge of your own darkness and at the same time choosing to offer understanding, companionship, compassion, and support to another person who is feeling sad, scared, vulnerable, lost, angry, ineffective, etc. Feelings you may know well. By sharing your understanding of these feelings and being willing to listen to what it’s like for them, you are grounding yourself in what you know and using it as a tool for serving others. Shifting your focus onto serving the needs of others helps you tolerate your own dark feelings, and it builds confidence towards your ability to be a resource and support for others. Which feels good.
Our local foothills are replete with oak trees, one of California’s best symbols of stability, resilience in times of drought, expansive home for birds, insects, squirrels, perch for the occasional bear or wildcat, source of nurture, beauty, and age-old repository of wisdom. You see many of these scrappy yet gracious icons of strength, half their roots exposed, tenaciously clinging to the remaining soil and rocks of an eroding canyon wall. We may wonder: which is holding up what? Are the tree’s roots holding the soil and rocks in place? Or are the soil and rocks holding the tree in place? The truth is that both are happening at the same time.
There’s a perfect symbiosis to the relationship; together they create a beautiful symbol of fragility and strength holding each other up in a balancing act with mutual benefit for both. Each enables the other to be contained and sustained despite the precariousness of its own circumstance. Each of them benefits from the presence of the other as it leans into the giving and receiving of support.
When we give support and we feel it being received, we feel strengthened by our ability to nurture and sustain. When we receive support, we feel contained and bolstered by the other’s confidence in our ability to tolerate what previously felt unendurable.
Depression causes us to feel overwhelmed and fragile. It can be difficult to motivate towards any goal, no matter how simple. But if you remember that the act of reaching out to another person can help you feel better, it might make it easier to give it a try. And then, you would be helping two people to feel better about themselves. And we can hope that things would continue to improve from there!