I was brought up to pretend everything was okay. I've spent my whole life convincing everyone that I was fine, my family was fine, everything was fine - at one point I even managed to convince myself that I was fine! However that didn't last long.

There's a whole load of reasons why:
- stigma
- shame
- fear that the knowledge of my depression will be used against me (which has happened)
- people telling me to pull myself together, that I have no reason to be like this
- people telling me to fake it 'til I make it and I will feel better
- I don't want to waste my life doing nothing because I'm depressed, so I force myself to achieve things
and probably many more but I can't think right now.

I've completely accepted the fact that I'm expected to pretend everything is fine at least 95% of the time. The problem I have is going to medical appointments for help. I'm used to being a depressed-person-pretending-to-be-okay, but then I go to medical appointments eg T and pdoc and don't know how to open up properly. I can't just be a 'depressed-person'. I go to these appointments and feel like I'm a depressed-person-pretending-to-be-okay-pretending-to-be-a-depressed-person and I just feel completely fake. It's messed up...

*Willow*