While this may seem strange to you, being told that their self-image is point-blank wrong is actually one of the more useful things for people suffering with depression. Knowing that you have a mental illness can be a useful tool in trying to survive with one (which clinical depression is), because it gives you something to stand-on when facing the barrage of thoughts that will be coming your way on a daily basis. There's also the fact that it is wrong, at least when it's stemming from the depression itself.TehCookie said:Depression runs in my family and they could easily be talked out of suicide, but my family is also extremely rational. A few of them have attempted suicide while on drugs that threw away their reason, but realized that they didn't want to die when they tried killing themselves. If someone only thinks they want to die and when push comes to shove they change their mind, they need help. Another thing with saying that way of thinking is wrong, imagine how someone with depression would feel being told that their mindset is wrong or not clear without people trying to understand them. Try to understand them and show them another side, you can't just force the "right" way on them.
As I mentioned in my last post, having clinical depression will mean have to cope with a very low sense of self-worth, characterised by very frequent thoughts about how worthless you are, how you don't matter, how pathetic you are, how no one should like you. These thoughts happen regardless of any actual basis in reality. You can be a really smart or talented person, but still remain unable to shake the idea that you're useless and a failure. You can wake-up each morning to your brain telling you that you do nothing but drag everyone else down and that they'd all be better off without you no matter how many people actually care about you and consider you one of the best things about their lives. You can be a generous, kind individual but that won't stop the thoughts that you're really just a selfish wretch from crowding your mind. You can in every other respect be an entirely normal person, but still never quite escape the feeling that you're really subhuman.
In some cases, these thoughts will fester and become about how you deserve to suffer, how you need be injured, that you should die because that's 'the right thing'. This is what I mean when I say a compulsion. These thoughts will have no real rational basis for them, but they will be there anyway. And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't say that any decision based on taking this sort of thinking as read is a particularly sound one.
The fact is, these thoughts are wrong, and recognising that is important when it comes to trying to withstand them. On the face of it, you'd think it would be obvious to dismiss these idea, but when they're inside your own head resisting them gets a lot harder.
I appreciate you probably haven't been through that sort of headspace. It's entirely possible none of your family members have either, but that doesn't make it any less of a reality for all of us who do have to live with it.
Yes. I have heard a lot of things said by normal people about depression in the past. Even if I hadn't, the fact of the matter is that having an unconventional opinion, even one that would mark you out as being 'weird' in general society, does not make you any less of a normal person when it comes to depression.Sure there brain chemistry is way off from normal, but look at my wackjob opinion, do you really think a normal person would say things like this?
I understand that it's very difficult for someone who does not have much experience with depression to fully understand what living with it is like. I'm not asking you to do that, but I would ask that you listen to what is being said to you by people who do have depression and who do have experience with it.