One of the hardest things to get used to these days is being able to talk to folks about depression. The responses I’ve gotten vary pretty broadly from the usual ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ to ‘Suck it up and move forward’.
I try not to let any of the suggestions rub me the wrong way but I think people all too often don’t really have a frame of reference for understanding clinical depression vs. being depressed. So I sat around in my bed doing art therapy and came up with what I hope is an example that people might be able to relate to.
Being depressed and situational sadness fades over time and you move on. Great, the healing process as intended. Clinical depression hangs with you for years and in a lot of cases is almost like a horrible aversion therapy. Unlike other therapies intended to break you of bad habits it’s aversion towards happiness. Imagine for a second that through the course of your day you go out and you do something you like, read a book let’s say. Now imagine that the second you feel happy you get shocked by electricity. It’s unpleasant, it breaks your ability to do the thing you enjoy, it makes you angry maybe sad. Now imagine that happens, every time you experience a moment of happiness. After a while your mind starts to simply not feel anything because it’s ‘safer’. It sounds pretty screwed up but it’s the closest parallel I could think of.
Tough love folks will of course turn this around “It’s just in your head, you’re being emo” etc. If this were situational sure, OK I could see that criticism (don’t entirely agree with it but that’s another discussion). If it’s clinical depression, be it persistent depressive disorder, major depression however it’s only half the story. It’s often frustrated me when people figure that you can simply ‘be happy’. Going through CBT, reworking my diet, exercise etc has made me feel almost like it’s rehab. Instead of a muscle being torn, it’s like your happiness legs broke and you’re learning to walk again. That might sound overblown to most, but understand that for folks who have been fighting clinical depression for 2+ years the whole thing really does feel crippling so the metaphor has some foundation.
Like rehab and PT, it’s a slow slog, it isn’t easy to see. I can understand that as someone on the outside looking in, maybe at your friend, your loved one struggling it’s hard to stand by not sure what you can do to help. Best advice I can give from my perspective? Listen to them if they rant, laugh if they laugh. If someone you know is already on the track of trying to recover from depression they’ve heard it all before, they know the schpiel, they’re just looking for someone to nod and recognize they’re fighting.
