Awareness

As someone who has struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, I'm incredibly passionate about educating others about what it's like to live with depression, and how you can be a good supporter. This is really just "dipping my toes" into what I hope will eventually be a much larger project.

To say that depression, in itself, is hard to deal with would be a gross understatement. However, I’ll admit that the hardest part of coping has always been, and continues to be, building a healthy support system in the midst of all of the misinformation surrounding depression. To hear people that you love and admire reduce something as debilitating as depression to something you can “snap yourself out of,” or something that will cease to exist with a hardy can-do attitude and positive thinking is nothing short of devastating; even when it comes from someone with only the best of intentions. As people, when we don’t quite understand something, we naturally try to fill in the gaps with our own experiences. Unfortunately, when it comes to depression, people often don’t realize the danger that comes in equating experience to a chronic mental illness, or making assumptions about what someone needs or is feeling. When you’re already disconnected from the world around you, it can be very hard to hear person after person seemingly confirm your worst fears: no one understands, and you are ultimately alone in a fight for your life.

Depression is not the profound sadness that so many assume it is; depression is not a mood. Depression is not an emotion. Depression is not a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month, or even a bad year. Depression is possession. Depression is a shadow that, even in your happiest moments, is always lying in wait just beyond your peripheral. Depression is a weight. Depression is a funhouse mirror. Depression is treading water for the entirety of your life.

If someone you love is struggling with depression: listen. Don’t assume. Don’t push. Don’t equate. Leave yourself behind.

Ask. Listen. Learn.