Something Every Depressed Person Should Hear

I've almost always experienced depression from an inside perspective. Apart from, you know debilitating self-loathing, another disadvantage this gives me is that I often have a hard time seeing what depression looks like from an outside perspective. 

 

Still, the great thing about being human is you can put yourself (to an extent) in another person's shoes with some mental effort. Most of us don't do this as often as we should but I don't think anyone would say that trying to grasp another person's perspective is a bad thing.

 

As a depressive, trying to think of how others perceive me can also help me understand challenges those who don't suffer from depression have when they look at those who do.

 

One common question I think a lot of people who want to help a loved one with depression face is -What do I say to them?

 

This is a tough item to advise on even for someone who has regular struggles with depression. Many times, we depressives don't always know what it is we want or need to hear. When I'm in a depressed state I sometimes don't have the mental clarity to know what is I need to hear or need to do to feel better. All that I can really feel and comprehend is misery.

 

Depression also makes your entire perspective on life skewed. Everything gets filtered and twisted through a negative voice that makes even the most well intended advice come off in a critical light. For me this is especially true with advice such as 'Oh, maybe you should exercise more.' or 'Try and list all the positive things in your life.' While is this very well meaning advice and might help some people, a depressed mind will often process this as 'You see, this is something you could easily fix. You don't have any excuse for why you feel this way. You suck.'

Depression is very clever like that. 

 

Lastly, knowing what to say to a depressed person is hard to know because everyone experiences it differently. Although depression can generally be defined with terms like 'deep and ongoing sadness' and 'crippling despair' people experience it differently from one another. What triggers episodes in one person might not be a big deal for another person. As such, advice, comforting words or activities that might help one person won't necessarily be of benefit to another. I've known some people who use yoga to treat depression. For some that doesn't work mental exercises do. 

 

With all of that said though, and keeping in mind that what works for me might not work for you, I do think there's one message that depressed people need to hear, often multiple times. That is:

'You're okay.'

I think often we, (people) try and give advice to depressed people first without really making it clear first that we recognize the person's pain and still accept them. You may not necessarily understand it but you see that they are struggling and to be in that struggle is okay. 

 

From my own experience and based on what I've shared what other depressives, we very often know that we can take actions to make our lives a little easier. Often we're already in therapy and browsing tons of articles to try and understand and cope with our condition better.

When depressives get into a mood, we often know that our feelings are ridiculous in many cases. I know logically that the negative criticism I'm bombarded with is often not accurate. However, it's so powerful that it overwhelms me.

What we often lack in those dark times is not ways to feel better or a sense that it's okay that we feel this way. That our feelings or lack thereof are real and that the people who matter to us see this and value us nonetheless.

Does Facebook Need More Misery?

Does Facebook need more misery?

This has been on my mind a lot lately.

As I’ve been trying to deal with my bouts of depression these past few months, Facebook (and social media in general) has been a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, it’s been a great way to share my darkest feelings and get support from friends. On the other, I’ve also felt as if I’ve been burdening others by putting negative energy in the newsfeed.

 This conflict, I think, exists on some level for a lot of people.

There’s an unspoken rule on Facebook that sharing too much negativity is taboo and that posting a status that reveals or alludes to a darker personal issue is simply attention seeking.

Personal problems should be kept personal, talked about in private or among close friends in a closed online setting like messages, email or Skype. 

These attitudes were what kept me in the past from sharing many of my problems online and they’re understandable.

Sharing too many personal issues online does get grating. It’s tiring to see that negativity in your newsfeed.

Yet at the same time I think there’s also a danger in allowing too much positive energy.

What do I mean by that?

Well, social media has a powerful emotional effect on people.

As much as we like to think that Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are separate worlds from our ‘real life’ deep down we all know that what happens online is just as important as what we do in the office, at home or in the grocery store.

Our selves, for better and worse, are intimately connected to social media and the line between our day to day lives and what we do in cyberspace is increasingly blurry.

If you’re a millennial, this is especially true.

The younger you are, the more your feelings, attitudes and sense of self-worth are going to be informed by your online personas.
 

Now, you might say: ‘Okay, so doesn’t that mean we should focus on sharing positive or non-negative items so that we avoid bringing ourselves and others down?’  

 Well, in my opinion, no not necessarily.

Much like in ‘real life’ the unspoken rule about not being open about our miseries causes more problems than not.

For someone who struggles with depression, bipolar, loneliness, social anxiety or another issue social media is sometimes the only outlet they have for sharing their misery

Again this is especially true if you’re a teenager who’s practically been raised from the crib with a device in your hand.

If you’re wrestling with personal monsters the constant barrage of selfies, personal accomplishments, funny memes and self-aggrandizing updates makes it that much harder to open up both online and in person.

The fact that most people predominantly share good news about themselves, creates a false impression that everyone you know is in a better place than you and that no one else can relate to what you’re going through.

Essentially, it’s the iceberg effect. With social media, we almost always see the tip of the person floating above the water not the much larger, deeper part that’s beneath the surface.

Most of us know this. However, we’re human beings and that means what we know doesn’t always match up with what we feel.

Even if we know that the doctored Instagram images of Susie with her smiling baby don’t represent the hours of tantrums, dirty nappies and sleepless nights that come we parenting all we see is the smiling picture and that clouds our minds.  

 
The same can be said of Molly’s vacation to Spain, which no doubt was earned with hours of tedious paperwork and years of being unable to take long vacations.

Because of this, and because we are so intimately familiar with our own shortcomings and faults we bottle ourselves up.

 So what to do? If anything? 

Well, as I said before sharing every single difficulty is not warranted. Disputes with another person, no. Venting constantly about how awful work is, yeah probably not.

However, deeper issues I actually think are worth sharing. Deep personal misery, uncertainty in yourself, the fact that you aren’t as strong as you are at a moment are just as much a part of life as our happiest triumphs.

Sharing our miseries and uncertainties openly allows others to know they are not alone. It allows others to understand that most of us have similar or identical insecurities.

And when we do achieve something, the fact that we’ve been able to overcome the darker periods of our lives makes our accomplishments even grander.

I’m sure there are certain aspects of this issue I have overlooked or haven’t discussed.

However, ultimately I think adding a bit more serious, self-reflective and self-questioning updates about ourselves has more benefits than detriments.

If nothing else, the least we can do is know we aren’t the only ones who hide our miseries behind a smiling profile picture.