I've recently enlisted the help of a coach to guide me in reaching my goals in life - one of which is to be emotionally healthy.

One of the first things she said to me was 'You are choosing depression'. In that moment I don't think I could have hated a human being more if she had stabbed my mother and stolen my husband (I don't have a husband but if I did and she stole him... er... anyway, you get the point).

I rallied and pushed against her words until I almost walked away from our relationship. She just doesn't get me I thought, she's not the right coach, she has no experience of depression, what does she know, pah, pish, stuff it.

But I went ahead with the coaching. And I'm discovering she has a point. I do choose my depression. Well, not me exactly but my thoughts do. And those thoughts are a style of thinking that has been with me for 40+ years so undoing it and choosing not to choose that style is a very deliberate and conscious choice. And its a choice to make daily. Hourly. Minutely. (Minutely?) In every single moment.

What I've also discovered is that my thinking has a style or an act - lets call it 'The Victim' - and that act has run my life for a long time. Oh, I couldn't possibly do that, I'm not good enough, I'm not confident enough, poor little me, I'm not one of 'those people'. But I'm learning that no-one is one of 'those people', there are just people who choose confidence and action and to get out there. They still have the same 'I don't fit','I don't belong' nonsense in their heads but they laugh at those things until the thoughts lose their momentum. And they choose life.

The past few weeks since I started coaching have been hard but amazing. My coach is like an alternative voice who crashes through the self-limiting stuff that comes into my head and out of my mouth and never stops believing in me. And I have a choice: listen to her and her empowering words, or listen to the words of the victim voice in my head which keeps me small and depressed.

So I choose to believe in me. And all of you. You chose to join Moodscope, you choose to write, read, comment and support each other and me, and for those choices I will be eternally grateful.

With much love,

Debs xx

A Moodscope member.