My complete and total inability to keep anything clean or tidy for any amount of time is a symptom of my depression. I may never be able to do this. Itâs important that I remember that and forgive myself when I clean something out (like my car) and it ends up trashed within a week.
Depression IS A DISABILITY. Requiring accommodations is okay.
Medications donât make you better, they donât cure your depression. They serve as an aid. Their purpose is to help you get to everyone elseâs minimal level of functioning.
Depression can cycle through periods of inactivity. This doesnât mean itâs gone away.
The reason I donât feel like other people understand me is because ⌠well ⌠other people DONâT understand me. They canât. They donât have my disability.
Paranoia is par for the course.
Depression can and will interfere with your physical mobility. Forgive yourself when you canât physically do something.
Itâs entirely possible that I may never be able to live by myself. I canât take care of myself. I need help to do it. And thatâs okay.
Iâm seeing a lot on social media this week about encouraging people who suffer from depression to reach out for help, call crisis lines, etc. And all of thatâs great, and important!
But letâs also talk about everyone else.
Reaching out goes both ways. And thereâs ways to help beyond just pasting suicide hotline numbers all over your online accounts whenever a celebrity takes their life, and making vague statements about how âyou can always talk to me!â to no one in particular. A few suggestions, from someone who has been dangerously depressed in the past:
If youâve struggled with depression yourself, consider being open about your experiences (if you are comfortable with doing so and will not be endangered financially or in other ways). Open and honest discussions about mental health help to de-stigmatize it, and also allow others to know youâre someone they can talk to who wonât judge them, and who understands a little about what theyâre going through.
On the topic of not judging â avoid complaining about or describing mental health crises as attention-seeking behavior to depressed loved ones, or on platforms where they will see it. Nothing is more likely to make someone choose not to reach out than the fear that their cry for help will be branded as a cry for attention or some egocentric attempt to make drama.
Calling other people who attempted or successfully committed suicide âselfishâ or otherwise condemning them for losing the fight to depression by attributing it to some kind of character flaw falls in this category.Â
If you have friends or loved ones who you know struggle with depression, talk to them about it. Donât make it some big intervention and interrogation â just a casual conversation about an aspect of their life. Learn how their depressive episodes manifest, and what the warning signs are likely to be when theyâre having a low swing.Â
Once you know how their episodes manifest, keep an eye out for their warning signs and check in with them if youâre seeing red flags.
Also check in at times when you know theyâre under a lot of stress. If theyâre going through a major life crisis (loss of a job, loss of a loved one, end of a relationship, massive debt, etc), pay particularly close attention. (A close friend always used to call and check in with me when I had final exams to make sure I was doing okay, because he knew I was always a wreck then.)
If you otherwise notice a friend or loved one retreating from social interaction, isolating themselves, forgoing activities they usually enjoy, or displaying other indicators of depression â donât just wait for them to reach out to you. Reach out to them. âHey, I havenât heard much from you in a while â how are you doing?â / âNoticed youâve been quiet. Is everything okay?â / âYou seen a little down; do you wanna hang out and talk sometime?âÂ
Even if nothingâs really wrong, showing that youâre someone who will notice something is off and that you care enough to reach out will make someone more likely to trust that they can actually reach out to you in turn when they need it. It also challenges the depressive belief that âno one will miss me or notice that Iâm gone.â
And lastly, when someone does reach out, or when youâve reached out to them and asked them to tell you how theyâre doing â be calm and listen. Donât freak out. Donât make it about you, and how worried you are, how scared you are, or how upsetting it is for you. They feel guilty and awful and like a burden enough already. Just listen, really listen, instead of just thinking of what youâll say once theyâre done talking.Â
Itâs great to tell people they can reach out to you in a crisis, but itâs even better to back those words up with actions that support it. Itâs good to urge people to reach out, but itâs better to reach out in turn and meet them in the middle somewhere. Depression is an absolute bitch, and we all have to work together to support one another and be proactive when someone is drowning in it.Â
âAvoid complaining about or describing mental health crises as attention-seeking behavior to depressed loved ones, or on platforms where they will see it. Nothing is more likely to make someone choose not to reach out than the fear that their cry for help will be branded as a cry for attention or some egocentric attempt to make drama. Calling other people who attempted or successfully committed suicide âselfishâ or otherwise condemning them for losing the fight to depression by attributing it to some kind of character flaw falls in this category.â
^^^ That. The expression âcry for helpâ drives me nuts because itâs entirely too easy to hear it as âOh, they donât mean it, theyâre not really that depressed, theyâre just looking for attention.â That kind of rhetoric just encourages people (read: past me) to think they shouldnât tell anyone theyâre thinking about it until theyâve found a method thatâs sure to work.
Ways in which my cat is helping me fix my mental health
Having a little living thing around makes me feel less alone.
He doesnât have the expectations that humans have. He will never judge me or abandon me. Heâs just there.
Caring for a living thing is honestly so therapeutic. I get to give, and Iâm good at it. Itâs good for my self-worth and it gets me out of my own focus.
Itâs not a lot of pressure or a lot of work so it doesnât affect my anxiety much.
I have to feed him and clear his litterbox which gives me regularity in my day. If I have to get up to feed him I donât stay in bed all day.
I can talk to him instead of being alone with my thoughts.
Getting to know him, play with him, communicate with him keeps my brain busy so I donât spiral.
Cats are lively and like to play. Life is easy and fun for them. Seeing things through his eyes gives me a different perspective.
They also sleep a lot and watching a cat sleep is one of the purest and most soothing experiences on this planet.
Very Soft. Peaceful. Grounding. Warm. Petting a cat will improve your day 1000x
PURRING. Thatâs all.
I love him. Feeling this love makes me feel warm inside, itâs gentle, itâs hopeful. And it shows me I can still feel good things.
He loves me back and I donât think Iâll ever be over how happy and purry he is everytime I get home, how he comes running, taptaptap, squeaking, when I call his name, or the way he looks into my eyes when he feels safe and content. Iâm loved!
Iâm responsible for this little thing. He depends on me. Thatâs a good enough reason to stay alive even when things get bad.
If you are able to care for a cat, I could never recommend it enough. Plus, a lot of cats need homes.
If you canât, know that Loki knows it gets bad sometimes but he also knows that you are brave, and that you will be okay.
Cracked doing the Lordâs work and shedding light on ableism and inaccuracy.
So, is it AuntieMemeâs goal to make people with depression feel worse about themselves? Because thatâs how people who are predisposed to take any negative portrayal of their condition personally will take a PSA saying theyâll make terrible partners and ruin relationships. If sheâs not trying to trigger suicides, her PSA is dreadfully misguided. @cracked
OK, great, thanks for confirming that Iâll never be in a functional long-term relationship. I really needed that, Cracked.
There are a lot of problems with this list – which you can probably predict if theyâre given in bite-sized âmemeâ form.
22. Amnesia. âIn The Avengers, Black Widow punches back Hawkeyeâs memoriesâ – Did you even fucking watch The Avengers? Because thatâs not what happened. It was presented as a way to break magical mind-control (a problem that will never arise in the real world), not to cure amnesia. The âhead-bumpâ amnesia cure thing is a movie/TV trope, apparently, but The Avengers doesnât use it.
19. Psychopathy. âThe charismatic psychopath is everywhereâ – First of all, why is Lokiâs picture on here? He may be many things, but he is never characterized as a psychopath. OK, Tom Hiddleston inaccurately used the term in some interviews for The Avengers. But psychopaths donât start crying when their estranged brother urges them to stop the evil plan theyâre carrying out under threat from a bigger supervillain. More importantly, though: âantisocial personality disorder causes a laundry list of symptoms that make a person impossible to be in a relationship with.â Define âimpossible.â I donât think any movie depiction of a psychopath denies that it becomes extremely difficult, unpleasant, or even dangerous to be in a relationship with a psychopath for an extended period of time. But itâs extremely dangerous to suggest that you can identify a psychopath immediately in such a way that no one will ever be tempted to get into a relationship with them. Because people do, and it ends badly. Yes, there are charismatic psychopaths. They canât keep up the act forever, but they can lure people in.
15. Depression. âHollywood loves a sad, brooding love interestâ – @goingrampant pointed out the biggest problem with the claim in the second picture above: it suggests that depressed people are rightly doomed to be alone forever because they canât sustain a relationship, which is empirically false. It is true that it can be very hard to sustain a relationship with undiagnosed and/or untreated depression. But really, the problem with the two characters pictured is that theyâre immortal vampires in love with mortals, and in Angelâs case, tortured by guilt over centuries of murder (never having read or seen Twilight, I donât know what Edwardâs issues are). Again… probably not gonna arise in real life. What this entry should have said is that depression itself should not be romanticized. If youâre attracted to a sad, tortured person because theyâre sad and tortured, whether you think you can save them or want them to stay that way because you think itâs hot… just donât. Or maybe they should have pointed out that while many creative people are depressed, depression doesnât make you more creative. If you love a depressed person (or their art), encourage them to seek and/or stay in treatment.
9. Electroconvulsive (electroshock) therapy. Yes, itâs now quite safe and well-controlled. Many of the movie depictions take place in an earlier era, when it was not so safe and well-controlled (hereâs the history from the Wikipedia article). It would be good if media also contained accurate depictions of the way the procedure works now rather than allowing the sensationalistic, exaggerated depictions of earlier methods to dominate the popular imagination. But itâs misleading to use the contemporary status of ECT to berate Hollywood for its portrayal in movies set in the 1950s and 60s.
4. Autistic savantism. âEven if the character was meant to be autistic, the likelihood of him having savantism would be a scant 10%.â Um, OK… whatâs the likelihood of anything else that happens in movies? If the movie were somehow making the claim that itâs typical for autistic people to be savants, that would be a problem. Maybe audiences have drawn that conclusion, but that seems like a problem with the reception rather than with the film itself. (Unless there are a lot of other movies about autistic savants? Do most media depictions of autistic characters involve savantism? If so, they should have said so.) And then they go on to say that âthe prevalence of savantism in the non-autistic population… is less than 1%.â Sounds like they just confirmed that itâs way more common among autistic people than the general population, so itâs actually more probable than if it were just an otherwise neurotypical dude. Of all the problems you could have picked with Rain Man, this seems like an extremely odd one. Surely there are other harmful inaccuracies in the depiction of autism. Or you could point to the troubling fact that neurotypical actors use portrayals of people with mental illnesses or disabilities as Oscar bait.
The rest are fine and probably helpful to some people. But itâs not helpful to replace misconceptions with different misconceptions.
Loki is the Philosopher King 