imagine if you had the flu and someone came up to you and said "why don't you just feel better?"
that's basically what most of the advice in this thread is. despite constantly growing awareness towards mental illness most people don't accept it as just as "real" as physical illness.
also "overcoming" depression can't be set as a realistic goal, you have to learn to live with and make your peace with your condition well before you can even consider "overcoming" something that's often lifelong
the most important thing to remind an actual depressed person is that their condition isn't actually their fault and at the end of the day they have no control over the chemicals in their own brain. the absolute hardest mental hurdle with depression is feeling that you're different and somehow more broken than everyone else and that gap can't be bridged with "just do normal people things". often depressed people WANT to do said normal people things and telling them to alter their lifestyle as if they'd never thought of it themselves just makes them feel more ostracized and broken. in most cases of moderate to severe depression it's hard to build a bridge to the depressed person and most "advice" ends up making them feel more isolated. being there for someone is good; "here's how you should live your life instead" is legitimately one of the most harmful things you can say to someone because it makes them less likely to reach out in the future, and unfortunately it's the kind of response that most well-meaning people give
it's really painful to my soul when someone asks for advice with depression and people respond with "just do stuff no matter how bad you feel" like jesus christ how out of touch can you be
deletedover 8 years
Am I at least in your top 1000 favourite males on the site??
