Hi Brooke, thanks for all you do, your work has changed my life! I have struggled with depression my whole life, and I used to attribute it all to genetics, as my parents both have a history of depression and have been on medication for it off and on. I am now realizing that I have been allowing my brain to go completely unsupervised because I thought there was nothing I could do about it and was doomed to be depressed no matter what. Of course this compounded the problem and made my depression so much worse than it would have been if I had questioned these thoughts and attempted to steer them in another direction. So here I am in my mid-thirties and finally able to see that I do have some control over my life! I have made some good progress toward directing my thoughts in a way that will serve me. However, I still have days that come out of nowhere when I wake up with this overwhelming heaviness and everything is bleak, even though the day before everything was fine. I truly feel like the feelings precede the thoughts on these days, and I can’t reason with myself no matter what. Despite all the progress I have made, my mind reverts back to all the old negativity and thinking about how wrong everything is. I married the wrong guy. I live in the wrong house. So many regrets about the past. My kids don’t listen. Nobody cares about me. Why am I even here? I know they aren’t logical, but my brain doesn’t care and will not stop. I usually stay in this funk for several days, sometimes even weeks. During this time I will try to listen to podcasts or read something uplifting to help get me out of it, but my brain rejects it. When I finally come out of it, I can start to see and understand how out of control my brain was, and I get frustrated that I allowed myself to go there and lose all that progress and time. How can I avoid these deep dives? I am starting to suspect that my hormones being out of whack with my cycle may be a trigger, as the timing usually aligns with my period. If I can’t completely avoid it, is there anything I can do to at least minimize the damage? I really don’t like the feelings I have when I think that my whole life is wrong, and I especially don’t like the way I show up for others when I think this way. Thanks again for all you do!