Are You Simply Mean To Yourself?

Erica Marta Ball
2 min readSep 12, 2023
Photo and text by author

If you’re living with depression, burnout, chronic illness, or something similar you will regularly have to face the reality of not being able to do all the Things*.

In fact, you might be able to do very few Things some days and no amount of willpower, desire, or beating yourself up will help you do more.

In fact, your level of desire and degree of stubbornness not to give in may well be a major barrier in your healing. Stressing out about the things we can’t do, how little we did, or how slow our progress is will make it so much harder for your body and mind to do what they need to do. It is literally counterproductive.

So, what would you say to yourself if you were someone in your life you liked?

What would you say to yourself if you were someone in your life that you loved??

I bet you wouldn’t beat that person up.

Please, think about that once in awhile, and I will too.

And here’s something I made to cheer us up:

So peaceful. Art by Joseph August Knip. Hedgehog added by the author

*I capitalize Things sometimes because that’s how I think of them.

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