Inside and Outside

I finished counselling today. I asked for help with depression late last year and have been seeing a therapist mostly once a month since the beginning of this year. It's been without question the most helpful therapeutic relationship I've experienced in the last two decades, and was the most realistic too. She helped me to notice the strides forward I've been making independently, and to trust that the thinking that's guided my life (for the most part) this year will be ever more helpful the more I trust it. Like learning to drive, the more I do it the more instinctive it gets, robbing my depression of its easy stranglehold. I wouldn't say there haven't been any instances of depression in the last 6 months, but each time I decided it didn't matter, and each spell has been very brief; my life has been more my own this year than at any point in my recent past, which was the goal.

I put this photo up (taken just outside of work) because my experience when I took it reminded me of how powerful an effect simply being outside can have on thoughts and thinking. I'd worked through lunch, and hadn't experienced the reemerging summer weather - it was a very intense day, with very constricted thinking, which was fine - it needed to be. The moment I went outside though it was like a switch got flipped, like an entire different world opened up. That's been one of the most important lessons I've learned this year, and apart from G's returning from two days away, left a challenging day finishing on a high.