Lets recognize depression for what it really is, a compulsive liar. It tells you life is hell, you are not good enough and never will be, it robs you of the joy of life and poisons your thoughts. I know this because I spent 7 consecutive years in a downward spiraling depression. You are not worthless, not everybody hates you, things can get better. I know what it’s like to have constant negative thoughts and feelings beating you down, but one day a lightbulb went off. I was feeling shame and deep self hatred and thinking thoughts like “you are the ugliest person alive” “everybody is talking about you behind your back” “you are worthless and everybody hates you” “you deserve to die” “nothing will ever get better” Sound familiar? I finally snapped and said to myself what a bunch of bullshit, everyday I do the best I can to be the best person I can be, I don’t deserve to be abused like this by my own mind. Look, you wouldn’t say that to anybody else so why would you say it to yourself? Think of your best friend, now imagine telling them they are worthless and deserve to die. You would never do that because nobody deserves to hear that shit. Depression is really good liar and manipulator and it’s time to see it’s lies for what they are, nothing but bullshit. I care about all of you and it sucks seeing good people hate themselves.
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The fact that not all suicidal people are depressed aside, those who do suffer from depression are just as capable of thinking for themselves and making decisions in life as anyone else. This idea that people who are depressed are being controlled by some disease that takes over their minds has been used as an excuse to lock people up, take away their rights, and destroy their lives. “Depression lies” is one of those platitudes that is thrown around on the internet to the point that I want to put my fist through the screen.
Hey, I’m just sharing my experience with depression, that’s fine that you don’t agree with it. I never said that people with depression are unable to make decisions in life….. I’m also not using to lock anybody up or take right away so I have no idea where the hell you are coming from.
Also you say that people with depression are fully capable of thinking for themselves. Yo u are speaking for everybody with depression. The way I experienced being severely depressed it really did completely cloud my mind, warp my thinking and fuck with me on an inner level. Perhaps some people with depression have control of it but I really did not. Honestly I am detecting quite a bit of anger in your post.
No, I am reacting to “Depression Lies” being a widely-promoted cliche that is used to dismiss the experiences and thoughts of people with depression as invlalid because they just need to be medicated to “fix” their thinking. No one objects when people with depression manage their own finances, hold jobs and pay taxes, go to work and help make a company successful, spend their money to support the economy, raise families, and so on, but the instant that someone with depression has an opinion or feeling that doesn’t agree with the accepted societal norm they’re “dangerous”, and they need to be locked up, and they need to have their rights taken away, because they “can’t think clearly “. It’s just another double standard disguised as the desire to help, when it’s really an excuse to discriminate. “Depresion Lies” pops up everywhere, along with “it will get better”, “there is help”, and people with mental illness “don’t realize they are ill”. All of these cliches are either used to dismiss people with depression as irrelevant or to oppress and discriminate against them.
So it isn’t your personal experience that is angering, but rather the continued widespread promotion of the false idea that a person cannot make a logical, well-considered decision simply because they are in pain or are suicidal for whatever reason. It is the continued promotion of the whole “Depression Lies” meme.
Again, I am speaking from my experience. You are basically giving me shit for sharing about something I personally experienced. I’m not spreading the depression lies meme or trying to invalidate anyone. I am only saying that when I was in a deep depression I felt like my thinking and thoughts were pretty warped, and were constantly negative regardless of if things around me were good or not. I didn’t get that from the mental health system, that’s just what my experience of depression was. By the way I share your contempt of the mental healthcare system and being locked up involuntarily, I have been locked up myself and I honestly still feel deep rage about the experience.
This analysis of depression is very accurate in my opinion wolfenstein. As someone who has been through severe depression and has overcome it through meditation, I can tell you that unless your brain has been damaged severely somehow, everything that causes your depression is environmental. I don’t wish to make anyone angry, but I do know if you look hard enough, you will find that the judgement and misunderstanding of others, and a lust for materialistic and superficial pleasure is the root cause of depression. These things consume your mind, making you unable to feel positive emotions of gratitude, compassion, understanding and forgiveness. Most people in our society avoid depression by building and sustaining an ego, which means that they avoid feeling inferior to others by feeling superior to others. Without the ego, we would all see each other as truly equal, and that it is our environment we are born into and level of understanding that makes us different from one another. Those that understand life are happy, and usually not rich. I want go as far as to tell you that authority is lying to you, but just that they are wrong about the causes of depression. Again I hope people are not angered by someone being opposed to the psychiatric industry on this topic, but trust me I know depression very well, and have tried to end my life before, however that was a very long time ago, and since then I have learned a great deal and I am much happier for it. Peace to you all.
I find it funny you should say that, because we agree but I think I may have expressed what I was trying to say wrong. I have been locked up inpatient and I hated it, I felt my rights were stripped from me and they treated me like shit. I am not trying to say people with depression are flawed or need meds to be fixed. I have been on meds for years and I am actually trying to get off of them currently. I have been fucked over by the mental health system as much as anybody and I know it’s full of shit. I wasn’t even intending to spread the depression lies thing. I simply said that because it scared me that I felt like my mind was going out of control. I just wanted to encourage people to consider that if they are dealing with self hatred or shame it could be due to depression because that was what I experienced when I was stuck in depression. Again I was basically abused being locked up in a mental hospital for a suicide attempt and I lost my trust for the entire mental healthcare system, so I think we are on the same page here.
whoops, reply intended for mysterious visitor.
I’ll be honest here, I truly thought at first that your original post was promoting depressed people can’t make their own choices, but I see now where you were coming from.
Yes, being locked up involuntarily does far more damage than good. How can being treated like a criminal and a prisoner be considered treatment?
No worries, simple miscommunication. Exactly they treated me like absolute shit. There was a points chart they held over my head to keep me obedient, if I got enough points they would consider letting me go, if I didn’t they would keep me there as long as they could. No joke, I fucking hated that place.
A points chart?? Wow, I don’t even have words for how horrible that is.
It was bullshit, they treated me like a little kid, talked to me like I was a little kid. Threatened to restrain me. I refused to get up one morning so the guy on staff literally pulled me out of my bed and locked me out of my room. They put me on meds that I told them that I had bad reactions to. Don’t get me started, I still want to burn that place to the ground with the doctors in it.
I think when you do that: when you talk about depression like it was a person — like it;s a bully that torments you, you really make it more difficult on yourself getting out of it.
Depression is just a word. A word some people made up o describe a certain state that humans sometimes fall into given certain conditions and environmental factors.
I think human beings, depressed or not, who are unhappy or stressed will tend to believe more negative things, especially when they are unhappy or stressed for long periods of time.
But yes. When I look back at the past 6 years during which i;m sure i;ve been depressed for a fair amount of that, i see so many things i used to believe that in retrospect are just complete nonsense.
“I;m the most disgusting person on earth” I
“I;m to scum of the earth”
“everyone hates me”
It;s almost vain looking back on it.
I see your point about personifying depression. I don’t mean to say it’s some type of demonic possession. I just believe that when a progressive problem goes unchecked if it’s addiction, phobia, depression or whatever it is, it can really start to feel like you are losing control of it. Also you the thoughts of “everybody hates me” “I’m scum” ect. are just not true. I guess my point of this post was to share my experience with others and to say that specifically the self hatred and shame that tends to go with depression is toxic.
mysteriousvisitor, have you ever been in psychiatric ward to get “help”? I have and you’re SO right. Experience in there was so scary, humiliating, I was treated like animal who cannot think for himself. I was locked up in there against my own will. The experience destroyed me. I was never suicidal before first hospitalization, but now… honestly – my main reason to commit suicide is that I don’t believe I’m normal because the “professionals” repeated me so long that I was ill. I wish I could express my feelings in words, as far as I understand, my psychiatrist believes I have to be medicated until my death, and I’m 24 now. So basically the ones who think they “help” me without my participiation are the ones who trigger me to commit suicide. (English is not my first language, sorry about mistakes.)
I am going to sound like a big-time hypocrite here, but my situation was an exception to the rule and certainly would not apply to most people:
I’ve never been hospitalized for a suicide attempt but many, many years ago was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. Overall my experience wasn’t too bad, but back then I didn’t know the things that I know today. I was, however, grossly misdiagnosed and that became an issue. A few months ago I actually went to the hospital voluntarily, as a sort of last-ditch effort to see if maybe I could give life one last chance. Because I had already chosen the medication, and I know how things work, I maintained control of the situation myself, but even then the law intervened to try to prevent me from doing so! The system is truly stacked against us in an attempt to keep us weak and easily controlled. Here’s what happened:
I was in a state of mind where I was so broken down that I just couldn’t function, so I went to the hospital (with a brand new prescription that have just been filled; I hadn’t even taken a single pill yet). They were refusing me admission because I wasn’t actively suicidal. Inpatient help is not available unless you reach the point where you’re suicidal OR if you are detoxing from drugs or alcohol. So I commented that while I wasn’t suicidal, I felt too broken down to go off on my own because I didn’t know if I would deteriorate to that point. As soon as I said that they brought me in on an INVOLUNTARY admission. Now think about that – help wasn’t available when I requested it. Help wasn’t available unless they could declare me a danger and make it involuntary!! What does that say about the true goals of our system?? As soon as I saw the psychiatrist, which was a little over 24 hours later even though it was supposed to be within 24 hours, I argued against what had happened and he immediately changed it to a voluntary admission. So less than half of the first 72 hours was involuntary, but that doesn’t change the fact that my record shows that it was involuntary initially. The rest of my stay was actually somewhat helpful. Another patient in there ran into a bigger problem. They were threatening to get a court order to keep her longer because she had become upset (she hadn’t done any damage, she was just upset, and really it was their fault). Luckily, she was aware of her right to appear at the hearing, and to have legal representation, so she contacted a relative who was an attorney and was out of there right away.
There are individual psychologists, etc. who genuinely care and can be helpful, but the system isn’t designed to help. It’s designed to label, stigmatize, and discriminate. There’s a greater interest in taking away patients’ Constitutional rights and turning people into second-class citizens than there is in helping anyone “get better”. And the unethical behaviors of the pharmaceutical companies greatly contribute to this by being major players in spreading the misinformation concerning the cause of depression. The “chemical imbalance” nonsense is repeated even more often than the “depression lies” that I complained about above, but they all serve the same purpose: control, control, control. Unfortunately, as is the case with every subject I have ever researched, the other side has a habit of making a illogical statements and sometimes spreading misinformation as well. It’s extremely difficult to get anyone to step forward and talk about this subject honestly and realistically or to view us as individuals with free agency.
My apologies, I should add that I don’t know to what extent a possible refusal of payment by my insurance company may have played in them insisting that my admission be involuntary.
Another clarification: what I meant about my situation being an exception to the rule is that not very many people would walk in and try to admit themselves to the hospital voluntarily, nor would they make an effort to personally maintain control of the situation.
I’m sorry you went through this. Research actually shows the risk of suicide goes up after a hospitalization, and I can certainly see why. If English isn’t your first language, I’m guessing you don’t live in the United States. What are the laws concerning the right to refuse medication where you live?
good post, no matter what your situation is if you only think about depressing things you can never feel better.