If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little story about my battle with the darkness of fear and depression.
It was so bad for me that depression, anxiety, and stress had taken complete control over me. This state lasted nearly a decade. I was suicidal for most of that time. I had always suffered from depression (40 years), but the last ten of those years were the worst.
It all started to change when I was riding my very powerful sports motorbike from Noosa to the Gold Coast. The ride was about 2.5 to 3 hours by freeway.
This photo was taken that night when I got home. 
Half way down it got very dark. There was no one on the road. Just me. In the distance I saw a massive bridge over the freeway. The concrete pillars that held it up were gigantic. I was on the far outside lane when I began to drift toward the center lane, all the meanwhile I was accelerating more and more. I was going straight for the pillar at very high speed.
Only one thought kept going through my mind;
“I won’t even feel it“.
In the very last seconds I suddenly saw the faces of my kids crying hysterically. I think God was telling me that it wasn’t my time yet. This snapped me out of it and I went back to normal speed, and back onto the freeway. At that moment I began to cry hysterically, which is very dangerous when riding a motorbike on the freeway , especially while wearing a full face helmet and it’s night time. You can’t see anything. The reason I was crying was because pulling back onto the road and decelerating meant that I had to keep enduring the painful life I was living. I felt helpless and like a victim. So I cried for the next hour and a half on that freeway.
What followed in the weeks and months after that night was overwhelming. I felt completely sorry for myself. I felt alone, unwanted (I was unemployed at the time), I felt useless, like a failure, and all the rest of it, as you might imagine.
One day I was thinking about how shit my life had been. All the way from my birth, until that moment. I suddenly thought that I so wished I could go back to my childhood and kidnap myself. The small child version of me that I was back in the late 60s and early 70s. If I was able to do that, I would give myself a better childhood, a better life. I felt that I could nurture, care for, and love that small child like no other child had ever been loved before. You get the general idea.
This thought was in my head for days, if not weeks. But the feeling that I was helpless to do that only compounded my feelings of helplessness, of being out of control, or not in control. “Poor little me“. One day I woke up with the feeling that that little boy, little Tony, wasn’t in the past. He was right here, right now, with me. I came to realise that that little version of myself, that little mini-me never really went away. That little person is the one that does all the suffering. Even now.
At that moment I decided that I was going to take care of little Tony. I was going to nurture him. I was going to love him back to health, both physically, as well as mentally, or emotionally. You know what that did to me? That realisation and decision? It made me feel like I was no longer alone. Even though I had six kids, all minors at the time, I suddenly felt like a parent. For the first time. Not the parent of my kids. They are all old souls from another galaxy, I’m sure. All more mature than I have ever been.
I felt like the parent of little Tony. That version of me that was trapped suffering inside of my being for so many years. From that point on I felt strong. I felt an immense feeling of responsibility for this little person stuck inside of me. I also felt responsible for his suffering. In other words, I blamed myself for most of his suffering. I didn’t do this in a bad way. I didn’t beat myself up about it. I just assumed responsibility, I accepted culpability for my part in it all.
This was a good thing for me. For the first time I came to understand that I had never really loved myself. I felt that I had treated myself like a dog chained to a tree at the back end of the back yard, occasionally getting a bone. Still, I didn’t beat myself up about this. I forgave myself. I figuratively gave myself the biggest, heartfelt hug I had ever given or received. From that day on I became a parent of a small child that only I was able to care for.
Six years have passed since that time. Six of the best years of my life. I love myself. I take care of myself and I protect myself. I spoil myself. I take myself to the beach, to the park. I make myself laugh, and I respect myself, that little Tony version of me. I have respect for myself. I listen to myself respectfully. I treat me like I would treat the six year old version of me. The version that was unloved and abandoned.
This is what I want to share with you. Don’t see yourself as being alone. Go find your mini-me. Take that little person by the hand, look him or her straight in the eye and tell them this;
“I promise you I will never leave you.
I promise you I will always take care of you.
I promise you that no one will ever hurt you again.
I promise you that you will never need or want for anything.
I promise you eternal love.
And I promise you that I will always listen to you above anyone else.
You and I will walk hand in hand for the rest of our lives.”
I promise you this, when you do that, your life will change FOR EVER.
Tony Jarrah
You can heal your life. You have nothing to lose, and remember
Thoughts Have Power.
You can find out more about Taming Life – Happiness Is Not a Myth, and Stress – Understanding The Battle Within by clicking on the images below.
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Stress _ Understanding The Battle Within
Thank you for sharing such a private journey. I also did this during my EFT therapy.. it was a huge part of my recovery from childhood trauma. It was incredibly therapeutic.
Thank you Gaynor. I hope it stuck. Don’t let go of that little girl’s hand 🙂