This Mess is for Real: Thoughts on Depression

I was really hesitant to make this post for a couple of reasons, the most important of which being that I have often been accused of being too open with people, and as such spent a lot of time in the past year trying to make that less so. I quickly realized, however, that one of the ways society at large (and unfortunately the church) deals with depression is to pretend it doesn't really exist, and tell people who suffer from this debilitating disease that they need to suck it up.

The truth of the matter is that if you have had this awful disease, you would know just how frighteningly real it is. To clarify, depression is not feeling sad all the time. It is so much more than that. In truth, being depressed is nothing like being sad. When I am simply sad, I can identify what is the root of this sadness and take a reasonable view on it. (For example, if my team loses a baseball game, I can understand that this sucks and move on from it) With depression, however, there is a massive chain of unreasonable mental cluster-effing that happens internally. To illustrate, here is an example of a depressed person's train of thought in all it's glorious action.

No one has called me today, I wonder why that is.
What if all my friends actually hate me and don't want to hang out with me?
Even worse, what if none of them even thought of me while planning their evening?
Crap, either I am a jerk or so forgettable that no one cares if I am around or not.
I wonder if I should call someone to hang out.
Probably not, they either won't answer or come up with a reason not to hang out.
I suck.
It's probably good that no one is hanging out with me, I'd just drag them down.
i'm doing society a favor by not hanging out with people.
It's my own fault no one is calling me.
I am so selfish for thinking about myself.
Wow, I deserve to be unliked, look how selfish I am
Once again, I suck.
I wonder if everyone knows what a terrible person I am?
on and on like so.

The worst part about all of this is that, the entire time, you know how illogical you are being, but you cannot stop it, which only adds to the feeling of helplessness. Now, if you're wondering how to make things worse, I'll be more than happy to tell you.

Tell a person with depression to get over it. Will not make things better, will in fact make things worse.
Try to fix it. Will not only make things worse, but will also make them resent you.
Tell a person with depression that it's not a real disease. Will not only make things worse, but also shows your total misunderstanding of a medical problem. You wouldn't tell a cancer patient that cancer isn't real, and thus you should treat this the same way.
Tell a person with depression that they are using it as a excuse. This is my favorite piece of BS of all time, because it is not only ignorant, but frustrating as hell. No one, given a choice between the daily complications that come with depression and dealing with life in a "normal" way, would pick depression. It sucks knowing you feel a certain way or do a certain thing because of a mental illness, and most people who have been through it will tell you how much they would love to just be like everyone else.

Since being diangosed with anxiety/depression back in 2007, I've been on and off about talking to people about it. Truthfully, my greatest fear is that I will be labeled by it as unacceptable, and I think this is reasonable given the stigma of the disease. However, I want to be out of the closet about this, not only to help myself but to help others. This disease is a killer, just like any number of diseases that we have compassion about. It's even worse for males, because of the stigma against being emotional attached to being a man. In fact, research has shown that the stigma for male depression may be why men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women.

So I'm out. I have depression. You don't have to be afraid of me, or tiptoe around me, just be understanding. Sometimes I can be difficult, so please don't take it personally, just ask if this is a depression thing and I'll let you know. I'm one of the lucky ones when it comes to this disease. i've managed to stay pretty high functioning and have been able to at least cope without medication. I've managed to overcome a number of things that I never thought I'd overcome, and I'm proud of that fact. But our society has a lot to learn about this issue, and those of us who struggle with depression need to stop being ashamed of it. If anything, it can only help to start taking pride in continuing to wake up every morning and get out there. There are not many people who have been hit with this disease and managed to keep getting up off the mat, so we need to keep encouraging one another.

Peace. (That actually felt really good.)