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I have no idea who wrote this but it speaks volumes ♥
Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune.
It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage.
You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families.
You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself.
Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged. ♥
ty lucy that’s cheered me up no end :(
People who get high anxiety, hypertension, usually avoid depression. They tend not to go together.
But when depression and hypertension are travelling companions – oh boy.
Call for compassion as much as you like, people never really understand, and quite a few in our wonderful society take advantage.
Well said Lancy!
Depression is so difficult to understand for those who have not been touched by it – yet 1 in 4 people (yes, that’s 25% of the population) will be directly affected by mental health issues at some point in their life.
That’s every 4th person we work with, in our family, in the street, at the supermarket ….The word “depression” is over-used ( and very inaccurately) to mean “fed up”.
Contrary to what we read in the media, depression does not follow a bad football result or a weight-gain of 2lb.It is an all-consuming pit, a field of sinking sand, a quagmire sucking a person in.
A word of sympathy, a kind thought, a helping hand can make a difference, however small, but let’s not pretend that they are the solution. Someone suffering from depression cannot “pull themselves together” or just think happy thoughts.
As Lucy says, just because we cannot see it does not mean it does not exist. It is as real and potentially harmful as say diabetes and equally, it can strike anybody, regardless of lifestyle or genes.
Can we show more empathy and compassion and lessen the burden carried by sufferers?
I can imagine it perfectly
That is amazing and totally spot on whoever did write that. I just wish i had that to hand to send to whoever mistook my depression for ignorance, surliness or arrogance when i was at my worst. i could have saved myself no end of hassle.
@bullshiddy shidkins wrote:
That is amazing and totally spot on whoever did write that. I just wish i had that to hand to send to whoever mistook my depression for ignorance, surliness or arrogance when i was at my worst. i could have saved myself no end of hassle.
copy and paste and do it …….people need educating whoever they are, do it today…….it’s never too late to learn
They’ll still just tell you to buck up or some other inane (pull yourself together) type phrase
There is a real danger of getting into platitudes when discussing depression, as there is in discussing mental illness in general.
The effect can be patronising.
people who suffer depression, and other mental problems are suffering.
To have do-gooders coming having a weep and telling the uncaring off actually sounds worse than people who tell the victim to buck up etc.
Suffering is turned into a charity-attitude.
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