The “wall“ around the heart

Today I want to adress something that I call the wall around the heart. This is something that occurs in different types and magnitudes of depression. For some it is a choice that is made either rashily or a hard decision they give in to after pondering about it for a very long time. For others it happens without them even noticing until it is too late and they are stuck in that state.

I will now explain what I mean with the wall around the heart. It is the state when you no longer feel emotions, because they are hidden behind an ice cold wall, protecting your heart. In some cases you become indifferent towards every subject and emotion. You just become empty, feeling neither positive nor negative emotions. This is caused by different thinking patterns concerning our emotional state or certain events that happen to us.

The most common thinking ways, I know of, are these:

• Trying to protect yourself from feeling pain, willingly (or subconciously) accepting that you turn off the positive emotions as well, since you do not experience those often anyways.

• Trying to numb yourself, because you have given up on anything getting better. You stop caring ,becoming indifferent towards everything and anyone.

As you can see, it is mostly connected to trying to avoid feeling pain. Either because of frustration of not being able to stop the cause of the pain, or the desperate need for liberation of that pain, because you just can’t take it anymore.

This wall can be something that actually helps you, if you know how to break that wall down again after a short period of time. This can allow you to take a step back from extreme emotional fluctuations to look at your situation. It can end up helping you focus on dealing with your other symptoms, but only if this emotionless state is short-lived. Even if you are capable of taking down the wall on your own again, it is still not without risk to build the wall. You can get caught up in that state of not feeling and end up keeping your wall up longer and end up being trapped in it. It is not something that should be done on purpose! Even if you think „I have done that so many times already, it will be fine, I know what I am doing“, you can never be 100% sure!

However, this can also be a very counterproductive state to be in when dealing with depression, if you do not know how to dismantle it again. It can also be very harmful, if the wall you have built, conciously or subconciously, only keeps the positive feelings inside, but you still feel all the negative emotions. It will worsen your depressive state:

• If your wall is only partial and you still feel the negative emotions, but no positive ones, you can end up in a downward spiral. Or it can cause the downward spiral you might already find yourself in, to become faster and more violently emotional. This can increase the magnitude of your depression. How severe the consequences of a partial wall are, depend on how long this state continues to last.
  If you are in a relationship, this state can destroy it. You will no longer be able to feel love. If you tell your partner that you can no longer feel love, they might be able to cope with it, if they understand that it is a sideeffect of the wall that is around your heart. (In some cases people can deal with that, in other cases they can deal with it for a limited amount of time, but end up splitting up if that state continues for a longer period. In most cases that I know of, the partner can’t deal with it and will feel lonely and unloved and in almost all cases I know of regarding my friends, it ended in a break up)

I have actually experienced a relationship first hand in which my partner was actually able to cope with it and he was just a teenager. But that was a huge exception and it was only for a limited amount of time.

• If your wall keeps all emotions away and this state is maintained for a longer period of time, you might start getting used to it. This way you can become indifferent and actively or passively choose to stay in that state. If this happens you will have little to no amibition to free yourself from depression at all. Self isolation can also be a consequence of this state, if you are not in self isolation already. This can also end up destroying friendships and relationships…

Therefore if you are a person who can actually actively choose to built up a wall, either partial or complete, you should think this through. You might even feel confident if you have broken down a wall you had built in the past, BUT this does not mean, you will always be successful in doing so. Your emotional and mental state changes during depression and with it, your capability of tearing down that wall. There are also only very few things to gain from a wall, as stated above. The downsides and risks are definetly higher and thus building a wall is a bad choice to make. You have no guarantee that you can free yourself from it any time you like.

BE CAUTIOUS IN CHOOSING TO BUILD THAT WALL OR NOT!! I strongly recommend NOT building that wall

My personal experiences with building a wall

I have done this many times in my life, sometimes it happened without me noticing and once I actively chose to do so. I have learned through each time I had that wall, that I am definetly one of the people who can not tear down that wall on my own. I used to call this state being a robot, the type of wall that I called being a robot, was without any emotions at all.

When I was a teenager I noticed the first wall around my heart, it was a partial wall, I still felt all the negative emotions but no positive ones. This caused me to change how I was feeling, thinking and acting. It immensly influenced how I acted towards family and friends, I became bitter, annoyed and very resentful.
If I felt that my family or friends didn’t understand me, I got angry and felt like they didn’t care at all. (Let me tell you this, try to not give in to those kind of toxic thoughts, they cared very much and if I wouldn’t have been blinded by anger back then, maybe I would have seen it clearly. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have even tried to understand me or genuinely inquire about my wellbeing!)

If a friend accidentally wronged me in any way, I was extremely resentful and even jeopardized the friendship recklessly. I no longer valued interpersonal relationships. I was suffering from fear of loss, before I had that wall around me, but I became indifferent in that regard. I was thinking: If I will end up losing them anyways, then I no longer have to put any effort into it, if they really like me they will stick around regardless how I treat them. (I was very selfish and arrogant in that sense. I believed for some reason that I was such a great friend to them all this time, that it was a given for them to be there for me, no matter how much I changed or how mean I acted towards them. Be mindful towards your friends, especially if they endure your mood swings and bad behavior in order to try to help you.)
Sadly this wall was trapping my heart inside for almost a year…

The other wall I experienced
When I was about 26 years old I chose to build up a wall, despite my son being not even a year old. I felt nothing, not towards him, my friends, nor my husband. I didn’t feel any emotions at all, neither good nor bad. What caused me to make that decision back then, was not being able to cope with my emotional pain anymore.
This was also the only time that I ever managed to tear down a wall, but I stated already that I am the type of person who can’t. That is true, because that one time was an exception. That state was very dangerous for me, because I became indifferent to everything. I still took care of my son, but not because of my emotions, but because I knew he needed to be taken care of. I still had a conscience, I didn’t want my son to suffer because of my depression or the indifferent state I was in. My thought was simple: He has nothing to do with it, he is innocent and does not deserve this.

Thanks to my son, I snapped out of the indifference one day when I saw him smiling at me, wanting mommy to hug him. But it seemed that he felt, that mommy was acting cold towards the embrace, although I was hugging him back. He started to cry like the world was ending in that moment. That heart tearing cry, broke down my wall in one second and I started to cry for the first time, since building up that wall. I was lucky, that this wall was not sustained for a long period of time.

The one time I made the right choice, although it was painful
I don’t remember the exact age I was when I made this choice. (Maybe I will recall it later when I start writing about the development of my depression, which includes me telling a huge portion of my life story.)
Back then I felt like I was going to break, the emotional pain I was feeling back then, felt like it was tearing my heart into small bits and pieces. I cried so often and so long, that it felt like there were more times I was crying than not. I would mostly lay on my bed in a fetal position just trying to hold myself together, clutching my legs. As if holding my physical body, would stop my heart from shattering. I was thinking alot about that wall that I had already experienced multiple times, knowing well that I had never freed myself from it on my own before. But the pain felt so tormenting, that I was seriously considering giving up my caring heart, just to get rid of the pain. I was pondering whether or not to become a robot. At this point I had only experienced the partial wall, but I had seen family members become robots and emotionally cold.

With the tormenting emotional pain I was feeling, becoming a robot felt very tempting, although I knew I would probably just end up in that partial state again. That would do me no good, since I would still suffer the negative emotions and I did not want to harm my family and friends again. I didn’t want to be cold, resentful and angry all the time. It was a very hard decision, but I chose to keep my gentle and caring heart, despite the feelings of having my heart shatter.

I learned an important lesson when I made that hard decision, the pain got less, the moment I chose not to build that wall. I can’t tell you the exact cause of my pain becoming less. I do know however that my friends and family were always the source of my energy and drive to keep going. The love and support I received from my family and friends was what kept me going. I wanted to continue to protect them, support them, care and help them. If I became cold, that would become impossible. I did not want to lose anyone anymore, not a single person.

Later in my life I learned to become my own drive and motivation to press on and continue to face all of my struggles in life. Every moment of our life is a process of learning and growth. If we face those moments, with all the pain and suffering it causes, we will continue to grow, develop and adapt. We will get to meet a new „me“ a stronger self, more durable than ever. You will end up being able to follow your personal path you want to be on

Stay strong, keep your emotions, do not give in to temptation of turning ofsf your feelings, building up a wall or becoming a robot, or however you might call it. It’s never worth it, it always backfires and robs you of the opportunity to grow and go your own way.

Have a beautiful day everyone! I believe in everyones strength to overcome the obstacles in our life! I seriously believe that nothing happens without a reason and that we will one day arrive at that place in life we want to be!