Depressed people tend to not take care of themselves. We sometimes don’t eat right, don’t go out, sleep too much, sleep too little. Stuff like that. We all know that. But sometimes, we don’t even know that we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.
For example, this morning, I finally turned on the heat. It’s been cold all week, maybe even since last week. Why didn’t I turn on the heat earlier? Then it dawned on me that I didn’t know how to put me first and put my health first. I was thinking, nah, I can brave it, it’s not THAT cold yet, and turning on the heat costs more, so I’ll turn it on next week, etc.
I knew it was cold, and I felt cold, yet I didn’t think it was really cold cold, or that I needed to turn on the heat to not get sick.
Like it’s such a duh moment. It’s obvious I should keep warm. But when you’re depressed and don’t care to live, you don’t take very good care of yourself. Also, my entire childhood we didn’t have heat or AC, so I just got used to being very cold or very hot. Idk, when you’ve never been taken care of, you don’t know to take care of yourself. I can’t explain it. It’s like I know it but I don’t do it because of…habit? Or I just don’t know to take care of myself??
3 comments
Funny you should mention that – I’ve been having similar thoughts today. Just about self-worth in general – like: why do I sabotage myself so much, why do I hate myself, why do I feel so guilty for not killing myself, so unworthy of happiness? I’m really curious to find answers to these questions.
One guess would be that it’s simply a result of narcissism: the more you examine yourself, the more faults you find with yourself. Like a professional athlete: they might be disappointed they swam 1 ms slower than last time. But a casual observer might simply be deeply impressed at their speed and grace. Perfectionism, I suppose.
My ex used to say that. She said when she was depressed, she’d do stuff like go days without bathing or brushing her teeth. It’s not like she was trying not to, it just… didn’t occur to her. For a depressed person to look after their hygiene or self-care regularly, it’s a huge step in the right direction.
It’s very easy to stop looking after yourself when you isolate yourself from the world and when you’re sad. My sleeping schedule has been a mess in the last few weeks, and among other things I’ve been eating very little. Today it was a pain when I opened the fridge and noticed that there was nothing there anymore, i.e., I couldn’t postpone my visit to the supermarket for more than I already had (I even thought about writing a funny post about this here. I will someday).
But despite knowing that I feel better when I take a bath, eat well, brush my teeth etc; my laziness in moments like this is extremely strong, it will keep me in bed for as long as possible, it will make me eat whatever is easier to prepare, not what I need to eat, and so on…